Leonard ,

I did not intend to come off as better or enlightened in a self righteous way. We have all been deceived from the beginning. My point that in the West and America in particular there has been a movement , since the age of the Enlightenment to celebrate man instead of God. Descartes started this with his famous, I think therefore I am. Man became the starting point for truth instead of God. who is the I AM. Now Descartes was a Christian , but that does not absolve us from being led astray as so much of the Epistles warn us as well as the history of the OT nation of Israel does.

We still do this , even more so today for we have as a Christian natioon left the Godly didactic way of thinking for the dialectic. Our founding fathers understood and most of them thought in the didactic manner. They knew man, left to his own devices was evil and would perpetuate evil upon his own kind. Thus the form of government they formed. By contrast the French, who spurned God as the center and embraced the philosphies of Rossueu and other Enlightment thinkers set man up as basically good and his Reason as the beginning and end of truth and knowledge. They then proceeded to guillotine anyone that did not go along with this dilectic thinking process. America was immune from this for a while but slowly Europe exported this thinking to our Universities. Eventually our students became learned in this way of thinking and the result was a huge dicotomy between the religious and secular spheres. As the philosopher said “God is dead”. And He was as far as the elite in America believed, the educators and other mover and shakers. In the 60’s Time magazine had a headline that read God id Dead in America and that in essence signaled the total shift, paradigmn shift in thinking in America. We as a nation embraced the philosophy on Man. As the govenment gained control over education , legislating it away from the parents control, they instituted the Marist philosophys ofHegel, Kant, Freud, Dewey and others. Men such as Abraham Maslow are required reading for all teaching certifications in America including Bible colleges. This new wave of thinking was know perpetrated on all Americans, In infiltrated not only education , but business , media, and government as well. The goal is one world unity.

Christianity is not free from this stranglehold because most of the leaders are also taught in this dialectic process. Relationship is king over truth. I can see this in all of the replys to me. When one disagrees with this way of thinking he is ridiculed , ostarasised and isolated and more. Eventually there will come a time , even in the name of Christianity when people that hold to the truth of law, the thou shall nots and the thou shalls will be martyred. Read Revelation.
What we use to win people to Christ with is what we win them to. This is a truism in the reality of life and we see it all the time. The tools we use have a philosophical basis to them and whatever that philosophy is , will affect the faith . That is why it is so important to obey the Scriptures in their entirety. That is why God is the law giver and we are the obeyers. The dialectic thought wishes to upstage authority, the patriarchial structure that God set up. Traditional family that believes in stating the law and the child obeys it or else, or the teacher that says 2 +2=4 or else you will flunk is replced with a matriarchial authority which says “johnny please dont do that when he has done it for the upteenth time or the teacher that says “ thanks ok Johnny , what really matters is that you are putting your imput in when you say 2+2= 5. and then has a big group hug.

This same thing is going on in the church today. We are trained to believe that we are family and relationship is all that really matters. As long as we all agree then that is truth for us. We really have no basis for our way of doing church but that of , this is the way I want to do it and it is the way others want it done to. This is not the same as the traditional church that says , this is the way God wants it done. The traditional church may be wrong in some applications but the office of authority was perfect, the patriarchial structure. This is what the CGM rejected in full and by consensus set up a “ew way of doing church”, which they proadly boast is not you parents or grandparents church. It is the authority that they proclaimed that was being rejected. The thou shalt not and thou shalls.

The method employed against those that hold to a didactic way of thinking is to accuse them of legalism, narrow-mindedness, stuck in tradition and oldfashioned. They will use enlightening terms such as total management control, vision casting, life-long learning, emerging thought, sustained growth , imminent domain, etc. These are all UN terms and are used by marketeers to influence the thoughts of society in order to construct a world of peace amidst the diversity. They will use Religion to achieve this goal and the PDL is an example of this as well as the new P.E.A.C.E plan which corelates perfectly with the UN peace initiative and Agenda 2000. Take it for what its worth beloved, unless you come out of her you will fall prey and not even know it. Trust not in your own understanding but in ALL your ways lean on the Lord.

I can’t address someones brother’s uncle’s wife’s church which is “just like Willow”, but at no time in my involvement at Willow did I see or hear any evidence of throwing the baby out with the bath water. Never was there a style over substance issue, a downplaying of sin, or a watering of the Gospel. Jesus was always first. Perhaps at some churches this may be true, but I’ve never seen that at Willow. Sorry, but like the Gospels themselves, mine is an eyewitness (including behind the scenes) account. Perhaps a visit to Bill Hybels is in order to discover firsthand what THAT particular body is about before lumping it into a pile of philosophical “THEY’s”.