Taste versus Truth

Now...A century ago...Two millenia in the past...False doctrine and heretical teaching has a "sweetness" more palatable to the "times." In a world more determined by "taste" (over which there can be no contention) than by "truth" (which always must be contended for)... in such a world "sweetness" wins. Those who oppose sweetness--even though it be false--will always be labeled "bitter"--though they be true.

Many things combine to make the present inroad of false doctrine
peculiarly dangerous. There is an undeniable zeal in some of the
teachers of error: their “earnestness” makes many think they must be
right. There is a great appearance of learning and theological
knowledge: many fancy that such clever and intellectual men must surely
be safe guides. There is a general tendency to free thought and free
inquiry in these latter days: many like to prove their independence of
judgment, by believing novelties. There is a wide-spread desire to
appear charitable and liberal-minded: many seem half ashamed of saying
that anybody can be in the wrong. There is a quantity of half-truth
taught by the modern false teachers: they are incessantly using
Scriptural terms and phrases in an unscriptural sense. There is a morbid
craving in the public mind for a more sensuous, ceremonial, sensational,
showy worship: men are impatient of inward, invisible heart-work. There
is a silly readiness in every direction to believe everybody who talks
cleverly, lovingly, and earnestly, and a determination to forget that
Satan often masquerades himself “as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians
11:14). There is a wide-spread “gullibility” among professing
Christians: every heretic who tells his story plausibly is sure to be
believed, and everybody who doubts him is called a persecutor and a
narrow-minded man. All these things are peculiar symptoms of our times.
I defy any observing person to deny them. They tend to make the assaults
of false doctrine in our day peculiarly dangerous. They make it more
than ever needful to cry aloud, “Do not be carried away!”

- J.C. Ryle
1816 – 1900




As St. Paul instructed his student and successor, Timothy...
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.  (2 Timothy 4:3)


Two millenia in the past... a century ago... Now... the "truth" must be contended for over and against a "taste" more palatable to the times.


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