values

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Biblical Doubts?

Doubt cat & lion

Tom Hill

“Who first coined the saying ‘A camel is a horse designed by a committee’? I don’t know, but I expect it was the same person who said ‘An elephant is a mouse designed to government specifications’.” (1)

This bit of trivia induces laughter. However, French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) applied this saying to truth. It developed into the creed for our culture today.

He declared that truth results as a product of a consensus of values. His declaration fostered a revolution in the nature and formulation of truth claims. Now, culture believes that all claims of truth develop within a group or culture, not from an objective standard. Ironically, no standard converted into the standard.

Cultural Truth Claims

Baudrillard’s theory developed into today’s benchmark for truth claims with far reaching effects. It brings us to the following conclusions:

  • the rejection of any objective standard for determining truth claims;
  • the belief of many interpretations of “truth”, i.e., every group and culture possesses its own “truth”; and
  • the rejection of any one explanation of life as THE truth.

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Mandela and Voortrekker monuments: Idols of my beloved people

Madiba vs Voortrekker Monument 16 Dec 2013

Grant Swart

On 16 December 1949, the majority of Afrikaners and a few others in South Africa inaugurated the Voortrekker Monument on a hill overlooking the city of Pretoria. A group of these South Africans continue to gather there annually, in a large constructed amphitheatre, to hold a secular ceremony in celebration of a day of remembrance, which they call the Day of the Covenant or Day of the Vow. They hold the belief that, years before, on 16 December 1838, a group of Voortrekkers had made an Old Testamental type of covenant with Almighty God. They believe that this covenant had moved God to empower them to defeat a large army of black Zulu warriors at the Battle of Blood River, in what is today, Kwa-Zulu Natal.

To the contrary, man does not have the ability to influence God’s plan for history. The Voortrekkers won the battle against the odds, not as a result of the covenant they thought they had made with God, but according to the eternal will of God. God was not taken by surprise by the events of that day, He was not waiting to see what the Boers or the Zulu Impi would do, He caused the events to happen exactly as they played out, from eternity.

The 40m wide, 40m long and 40m high construction of the Voortrekker monument, which is modeled on and resembles an Egyptian monument, has a cenotaph as central focal point. Continue reading →