Save the seals, kill the babies.

I had an interesting and spirited conversation last night with a young lady. She was a Peta member and expounded, with great passion, the need to be "humane" to animals and not slaughter them. She was driven by her belief but her reasoning was confused and slippery. After listening to her a bit, I told her I appreciated her compassion for living beings, but I had a question for her. "Are you pro-choice?" "Yes", she answered. "Well since you are so passionate about animals why don't you show at least the same passion for the millions of babies being slaughtered each year?" She was stunned and initially had no answer. She proceeded to attempt to rationalize her belief by talking not about the babies but about the mother's rights. "The babies would be raised in poverty", she said. "So kill them," I retorted. With each new flimsy piece of reasoning she offered, my retort was the same. I saw a bumper sticker that sums up the illogical thinking. "Save the seals, kill the babies."This illustration aside, the subject here isn't abortion, it is the art of skewed thinking. Skewed, unreasoned, passionate, dogma-driven thinking is pervasive when it comes to religious belief and denominationally derived theology.

"I believe that the Bible is the Word of God and the only source of doctrine and belief, but the Church who gave us the canon of scriptures became apostate right after Paul and the real church didn't resurface in its pure form until over 1500 years later." So you trust the Bible you have but not those who gave it to you? Save the seals, Kill the babies?

Which came first; the Bible or the Church? The Church. What did Paul say was the "Pillar and foundation of all truth? The Bible? No-The Church. ..."I write to you so that you will know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, the pillar and foundation of the truth." (1 Timothy 3:15) While the Scriptures are the inspired truth of God in human words, the Church is the pillar and ground of that truth (OSB p489)- the keeper, the preserver, the mainstay, the protector. The Bible in its present form didn't come into existence until about 400 years after the birth of the Church.

So here is the skew ideology, theology, methodology:

Premise One: The Church went apostate, dark, fell into sin and error and stayed that way until Martin Luther (Lutheren) or Alexander Campbell (Church of Christ) or John Smythe (Baptist) came to reestablish the purity of the faith some 1600 or 1800 years later.

Premise Two: We believe every word of the Bible and it is the sole source of doctrine and faith.

Conclusion: You trust a Bible that was birthed, collected, maintained and canonized by men that were apostate, dark, fell into sin and error.

Question: If you accept and trust the Bible why can't you trust the men who gave it to you? And if these men are trustworthy, why can't you trust their interpretations of the Bible they gave you?

It always seems elementary to say, but the Bible didn't just fall out of the sky in leather back or hardback form. The Bible was birthed, interpreted and preserved by breathing men of faith, many of whom went to a martyr's death. These same men, you consider to be erroneous, sinful men who were not the real or pure church...yet you accept their Bible. Save the seals, kill the babies. Does that really make sense?

To understand the argument I put forth, I encourage you to set aside theology for a moment and simply, but throughly, look at church history. Church history began 2000 years ago not 200-400 years ago. See if you can find that the Church has always been there, not in small faithful groups hiding in caves, but in the open, always present, always speaking, not divided, keeping the faith as given to us by the Apostles. There was only one church, one doctrine, one faith for the first 1000 years - then the Roman Catholic schism. (another subject- another time)

A dependable rule of thumb for determining truth is to look for "what was believed at all times, in all places, by all people." Where does it say in the Bible or in history that the Church that Christ said "the gates of hell shall not prevail against" died less than 30 years after his ascension into heaven and that He would send a man later on in the 1600's or the 1800's to make all things right? Let's just start with the 7 ecumenical counsels (Free podcast on the Counsels). These are the meetings where all the Bishops of the church met to define and defend the faith from heretics. Read and hear what these men said and did. Point out where they were in error. Was it the first counsel, the second? If the Church went astray only to surface another day, where and when did it happen? Read the volumes on The Early Church Fathers, some of whom were discipled by the Apostles themselves. Read their own words. Where did they go astray? To keep from throwing the seals out with the babies don't just rely upon partial historical interpretations such as "Constantine humanized the church and there it was lost." So one man had the power to kill the church? If this and other presuppositions cannot be validated in your study of history, perhaps the authentic Church is found in a place other than you thought-The Orthodox Church. "To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant. "