Solzhenitsyn said and taught the above in the 20th century but we know God taught it originally.
I have been noticing that there are some very deceived people in our society who often call themselves progressives. They break with traditional liberalism in that liberals have a consistent system, agree with them or not. Progressives have many self-contradicting parts to their belief system.
"Gender is a manmade concept" vs. "Gender is so central to a person's identity that they may have to alter their bodies to make them agree with their brains."
"Parents are so dangerous that school systems have to keep secrets about their own kids from them" vs. "children can never grow up into healthy adults if they have no fulltime role models."
And "terrorists are evil, toxic men" vs. "terrorists are evil, toxic men except when they are justified because they are going after Israel."
I have noticed that true progressives do not value history very much. Their minds are already made up on everything so why would they bother learning anything new? The past cannot teach them.
Even beyond that though, they are ahistorical. As Pastor has pointed out, in Greek and in English, the particle "a" negates the rest of the word. Progressives live outside of history, not just disliking it but acting as though it does not exist.
We can use this fact when trying to witness to progressives (because God loves them, too). Be kind but do not allow their ahistorical lies to stand unchallenged.
A big one to challenge right now is the idea that the UN arbitrarily dropped the Jews in Israel back in 1948, as though they just picked an area off of a map. In truth, Jews and Muslims had coexisted there all the way back to the time of Muhammad and Jews had been there continually since Joshua. They were mostly at peace there until the Nazis stirred things up, too.
It was more like the situation in Egypt under Moses. There were suddenly lots more Jews there in 1948. Even then, it might have been okay had Hitler not filled the Arab leadership of the Middle East with hatred during World War II.
The situation in Israel, like many issues, is extremely difficult to resolve, but we can prayerfully speak truth into it, even with our most progressive friends.
Thanks Mary, I appreciate this lesson.
I often remember that the word “liberal” itself (and “liberality”) were good Bible words meaning “generous” until man decided to make them mean “generous with somebody else’s money.”
Likewise, conservative meant to conserve old values, but obviously not all of them (slavery and treating people unequally by skin color had to end).
And progressive comes from progress, which is not always wrong. But today’s progressives are in love with all progress. Change for the sake of change.