Moralistic Therapeutic Deism
Episode description
References:
(1) “Soul Searching” by Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton.
(2) The Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is about belief in a particular KIND of God: one who exists, created the world, and defines our general moral order, but NOT ONE who is personally involved in one’s affairs.
(3) his book “Wordviews in Conflict,” the philosopher Ronald Nash says, “The most important ELEMENT of any worldview is what it says or does not say about God.”
(4) This deistic creator God is like an Absentee Landlord who built the house but never returns to make repairs.
(5) A deistic creator God cannot resolve a present day problem.
(6) I suspect the teenagers have stolen the idea of a god who resolves problems from the theistic God of Christianity and Judaism. But the God of Christianity and Judaism is DEFINITELY NOT ANYTHING LIKE a Deistic God because the God of the Bible loves others, performs miracles in the world in order to authenticate the message from God’s messengers, etc. The God of the Bible, Jahweh, is known as Jehovah-Jireh, the God who provides, and Jesus came to give us life and life more abundantly.
(7) The teens know very little about the nature of the God of Christianity. The Christian worldview centers upon the majestic Person and Work of the sovereign God revealed in the Bible. This eternal and morally perfect divine being — though one God in ESSENCE — is nonetheless Triune in NATURE. God is first revealed in the scriptures of the OT, the same God made a dynamic and decisive revelation in the historical person of Jesus Christ who according to the Gospel of John fully explained God.
(8) Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) so God and Jesus have the same nature. Jesus went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him” (Acts 10:38). So we can expect the character of the activity of God the Father and God the Holy Spirit is to have the same type of character as that of Jesus Christ. Therefore, there is NO REASON to attribute to God the curses of Satan. God is not responsible for putting evil on people to teach them a lesson. That‘s all due to Satan. Don’t be confused about that.
This is episode 146.