In September I wrote about our tendency to justify the religious traditions and belief system we find ourselves in.  Things we would not believe, and evidence we would not be persuaded by if we were on the outside looking in, somehow seem so believable and persuasive when we are on the inside looking out.  As someone once said, the easiest person to deceive is yourself.  I think all of us are guilty of doing so in one matter or another.  There are strong social and emotional motivations for justifying the beliefs we were raised with, or the beliefs those in our social community collectively hold.  The cost of denying them is often too high to assess them as objectively as we should, and might otherwise do if we belonged to a different tradition.

I was reflecting further on this today as I was reading the attempts of a New Testament scholar to justify monism (the belief that man is only physical—he has no soul) from the Bible.  Such a position is so evidently contradicted by Scripture as to be near-laughable.  “How could anyone believe such a thing?,” I thought to myself.  Then I began to reflect on other attempts to justify positions that so manifestly contradict Biblical teaching.  There are those who attempt to argue that the Bible is neutral toward, or even positive about homosexuality.  Others argue that Jesus is a created deity.  The list could go on.

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