Monday, April 23, 2007

Book Review: The Ever-Loving Truth



Voddie Bauchum, a post-graduate from Oxford in Cultural Apologetics, wrote this great book on our postmodern culture. The Ever-Loving Truth is a response to non-absolutists. These postmodern, non-absolutists basically believe that there are no absolutes. You may be surprised, but a lot of people think this way. There are many in our culture who believe that all faiths and beliefs are people's own prerogative. So if you're a Buddhist and I'm a Christian, then the postmodern reaction to that would be to say, "that's fine, you be you and I'll be me".

Christians, explains Dr. Bauchum, are not following the gospel in conforming to this cultural belief system. He explains that God Himself is an absolute in the highest sense. There is only one God. He then argues that non-absolutists shoot themselves in the foot with their own argument because it is tantamount to saying: It is absolutely true that there are no absolute truths! So, if truths are only valid if it is absolute, then should we not seek the "ever-loving truth"?

Dr. Bauchum also explains something that I find remarkable. Without giving too much away, he explains that we Christians can do three things to spread the absolute truth of the gospel, we can: (1) immerse ourselves in the culture, (2) isolate ourselves from the culture, or (3) insulate ourselves in and from the culture. If you read the book, he explains very cogently that all of these strategies of spreading the gospel have dangers, depending on the faith focus of an individual. So, he says that there is a fourth option: "infiltrate and invade".

I love this phrase "infiltrate and invade" because it means that we are actively spreading the gospel by humbly-covertly infiltrating people's lives, and coherently-unabashedly invading people's lives. We are at war, and though we must be patient-kind-faithful (Galatians 5:22), we worship God first by proclaiming the gospel in any and every way.

Read this book. It's worth it. Amazon.ca

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