If a Frog had Wings...!

There is a new commercial on television. Perhaps you have seen it. It begins with “IF” and then proceeds to promise you everything you might desire on the other side of every “IF”. But “if”, in its two letter status, is very possibly one of the biggest words in all of the English language. When my daughter was about 5 or 6 years old she began just about every sentence with “But, IF…” You could tell her anything and she would respond “But, if,” and then proceed to tell you why everything you had just attempted to teach her was wrong. But she would begin her immature correction of those instructing her most every time with an “if”, which of course made everything she had to say totally irrelevant, because the “if” was almost always an impossibility!

My grandfather use to say that “if a frog had wings he wouldn’t bump his butt.” As a little tyke I use to wonder what that meant and often told my grandfather that I personally didn’t care if the frog did bump his butt. Given the fun loving spirit (some would say “devilish nature”) of my grandfather, my response was probably why he made this statement to me so often in front of his cronies. He (like about every grandparent) liked to show me off and I am sure that based on my rather salty come backs, he thought I was going to be a chip off the old “grand” block. Little did he know that I would end up being a preacher.

My grandfather’s statement, regardless of its intent, did stick in my mind. At one time in our culture the very nature of the word “if” was understood and almost everyone was pretty aware that this giant of a word might relate some truth, but that the presence of “if” always negated the reality of the actual existence of that truth in its present place and time. In other words it was pretty well accepted by both farmers and politicians that any statement with “if” in it was contingent on something else that had to happen before the subject of the “if” actually became real. Farmers could not pick corn IF it were not planted and politicians could not get an office in the State House IF they did not get the votes.

Now all of that may sound a little self evident, and to those of us that have survived the genetic mutations that have robbed our culture of all common sense, we still are clinging to this truth of “if”. But in this relativistic world we should all be aware that our common sense has labeled us as just plain “common” to the elitists and those endowed with a “Da Vinci Code” style esoteric knowledge.

With all that we have done at Belview in getting you information about the Da Vinci Code, it might surprise you to know that I am really less concerned with the book and movie itself, than I am the inevitable results of the continuing bombardment of it and similar attacks on our basic common sense. Not only now are these elitists telling us that all truth is relative (maybe is, maybe isn’t) but they now want us to believe and accept that the word “if” really implies no contingency at all. At this point you may be asking “so what”?

I heard a politician say this week that he heard General Casey (the US general in Iraq) say that IF (some series of events happened) THEN he expected that the US would begin troop reductions by sometime in 2007. So this politician said, “since President Bush, said that troop reductions would be up to General Casey, that congress should pass a law mandating those troop reductions at that specific time in 2007 no matter what." Well, I hope you can see the “if” fallacy in this brilliant “no matter what”, statement. I think that some politicians think that if they just talk long enough and with enough passion that they will confuse enough people to both sound impressive and get re-elected.

But worse yet, I also heard a “preacher” actually say that “if Satan had NOT come up against God, that he would today be the most powerful angel and fighter for good in all of heaven,” but then he went on to say why this “truth” should cause us to extol and uplift Satan and that Rasputin was right when he said that if God was most glorified in forgiving us our sins (as it clearly states in the book of Romans) that we should all not strive for good at all nor even just to be ordinary sinners. He concluded that if we are to bring extraordinary glory to God that we must be extraordinary sinners. This preacher further concluded that Satan was more glory to God, by these very standards of God, than was Jesus and that the historic church had (and has) it all wrong.

As you read this, I am sure that most of you will say with me that this is just non-sense and just plain silly, but somewhere in the scholastic thought of this renegade preacher your mind might have gotten lost and in truth not be able to articulate where Rasputin and this preacher went wrong in their reasoning. This falls under the umbrella of common sense (you may not be able to say why something is wrong, but you just know it is). But now that there is an all out attack on common sense and the humanists and revisionists are succeeding at the dumbing down of our family, focus and faith; what keeps these weavers of sophistry from convincing large segments of our population (which could include your children and grandchildren) from believing these common sense absurdities?

Today we are taught that there is no absolute truth, that the word “if” has no contingent meaning and that if you believe in an absolute that you are both narrow minded and intolerant. This leads to a world with no foundations, no definite definitions and nothing on which to base anything. Now when Jesus says: “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me,” it can mean anything you want it to mean OR nothing at all. If all truth is relative then Jesus statement may or may not be true, or even mean anything at all. Of course if the word “if” has no contingent meaning, then neither the previous sentence nor this one has any real meaning, and neither the Gospel nor any newspaper or television news program has any value or purpose.

The good news is that there are a few of us left with both a fair degree of intelligence and some basic common sense. If for no other reason than spiritual and mental health, I believe it is incumbent upon the church to preserve both of these qualities in our society. The educational system has not done it, to the contrary. Higher education has been a “Dewey Downhill Spiral.” Start on the right track by taking your family to a God fearing, Bible believing church that teaches the absolute truth of God’s word from a Christian worldview, which is timeless and changeless and uses the Biblical word “if” in laying out our instructions for living. Check it out: “If you abide in me and I in you…” (John 15). It is an astounding contingent promise of God, you don’t want to miss it IF…!