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The Lie of Neutrality: Why “Just Following the Facts” Is Never True
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The Moment Neutrality Is Claimed… A Side Has Already Been Chosen
Most folks think the biggest threat to truth is ignorance. It isn’t. Not at all. It’s comfort. It’s the warm, flattering idea that you can stand in nowhere land, owe nothing epistemologically, and still see clearly. That you can hover above belief like a referee, calling balls and strikes without ever stepping onto the field.
But the second you try to do that, you’ve already taken a position… you’ve crowned yourself judge. And once you see that, everything starts to shift. Politics, science, law, even your own private opinions suddenly look less like neutral conclusions and more like the fruit of allegiance.
Here’s why: Because in a world built by God, there is no view from nowhere… and pretending otherwise is how whole civilizations quietly lose their footing.
One of the most comforting lies of the modern world is the idea that the human mind can be neutral.
The Fantasy of “Thinking From Nowhere”
A laurel‑crowned classical philosopher‑king sits like a priest on a marble throne while his shadow betrays him as an idol, and the crowd bows to reason deified rather than to the living God.
People like to imagine themselves hovering above belief, bias, and obligation… cool, detached, rational observers looking at reality from a clean, godlike distance. They tell themselves they’re “fact checkers,” just “following the facts,” just “being reasonable,” just “keeping an open mind.” But that picture has never been real.
Nobody floats in mental limbo. Nobody reasons from nowhere. We are creatures through and through… breathing borrowed air, standing on borrowed ground, thinking borrowed thoughts in a universe we didn’t design. Whether we admit it or not, we belong to God. Every heartbeat, every neuron firing, every flash of insight is sustained by Him.
And once that’s fully realized… the concept of neutrality collapses.
The moment a person claims to reason independently… on his own authority, by his own standards… he hasn’t avoided taking sides. He’s already chosen one. He has declared war on biblical dependence itself. Sooner or later, that rebellion leaks out of the mind and into everything it touches: morality, politics, law, science, and even the definition of truth.
So neutrality isn’t a middle ground. It’s a mask.
The Old Greek Disease
To understand where this illusion came from, we have to look backward a bit… long before modern laboratories and courtrooms, back before the Cross cast its long shadow across history.
In the ancient Greek world, classical philosophers introduced an idea that still poisons modern thinking. They taught that truth, beauty, and goodness existed as abstract ideals… free floating somewhere above gods and men alike. These values weren’t personal. They weren’t covenantal. They weren’t rooted in creation by a personal God. They simply were.
At first glance, that might sound high-minded and noble. But it carried a deadly implication. If moral truth exists independently of God, then God Himself is no longer the final authority. Morality becomes something to be discovered, analyzed, and eventually managed by human reason.
And that’s exactly where the Greeks went next.
They decided that the philosopher… the man most disciplined in pure reason… was uniquely qualified to access these higher truths. So Plato’s Republic didn’t merely imagine wise rulers; it granted philosopher-kings sweeping authority over life itself. Who could marry. Who could reproduce. Who was useful. Who was expendable.
Step by step, human reason moves forward like an army on the march. And step by step, the state took the place of God. Once “universal truth” could be claimed without reference to a personal Creator, power naturally flowed to those who claimed to understand it best. Please understand:
Thrones don’t disappear. They just change occupants.
From Philosopher-Kings to Lab Coats
Fast-forward two thousand years, and the Greek disease hasn’t gone away. It’s only changed outfits.
Today’s philosopher-kings wear lab coats instead of robes. They carry credentials instead of scrolls. They speak in charts, models, and peer-reviewed papers. But the claim is the same: we are the true and wise… neutral ones.
Scientists. Experts. Technocrats. Policy planners.
They insist they’ve risen above bias, above belief, above faith. They present themselves as objective arbiters of reality… qualified to rule because they’ve supposedly transcended starting assumptions. But that’s a fantasy.
Every thought begins somewhere. Every interpretation rests on a foundation. Either a man submits to God’s revelation, or he asserts his own authority in defiance of it. There is no third option hiding between the two.
Scripture is blunt about this: “By Him were all things made, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” If that’s true… and I believe it to be… then nothing is neutral. Not facts. Not data. Not laws of nature. Not logic itself.
Every molecule belongs to God. Every fact only makes sense inside His world.
When Your Church Let the Virus In
Tragically, the Church hasn’t remained immune.
Early Christians confessed creation, but over time many tried to fuse biblical revelation with Greek philosophical categories. God’s truth became something like a two-ingredient recipe: part Scripture, part autonomous reason. The result was a slow theological infection that blurred the line between divine authority and human autonomy.
For centuries, that compromise limped along… until it hit a wall.
Then came Darwin.
Evolutionary theory didn’t just challenge a few verses in Genesis. It openly asserted that creation could be explained without reference to a Creator at all. The Greek dream of independent reason came roaring back, now dressed in scientific “Scopes Trial” credibility.
At that moment, the Church was forced to choose.
Some, like Scofield, tried to split the difference. Others surrendered ground. But those who stood firm rediscovered something the apostles had never forgotten: there are no brute facts. There is no raw, uninterpreted reality. Every fact already speaks… and it always speaks of its Maker.
Creation doesn’t whisper neutrality. It shouts ownership.
The Collapse of “Natural Law” Neutrality
Nowhere has this confusion lingered longer than in debates over the neutrality of “Natural Law.”
In the medieval world, thinkers split into two camps. One group… still under Greek influence… argued that Natural Law could be discovered by human reason alone. According to them, morality was written into rationality itself. The human mind, if disciplined enough, could serve as judge and interpreter of right and wrong.
Scripture dismantles that illusion in a single stroke: fallen man suppresses the truth in unrighteousness. Human autonomous reason doesn’t free float above sin. It bends under it.
The moment human intellect becomes the final court of appeal, man ends up worshiping his own reflection.
God Is Not the Conclusion… He’s The Starting Point
But there was another camp. Figures like Gratian put a different spin on it. This camp argued that natural law is not human reason… it is actually God’s Law. Certainly heading in a better direction. But this simply confuses natural law and natural theology, with natural revelation.
Now, what’s the difference between natural theology and natural revelation? The simplest way to explain it is this: one tries to reason in a neutral fashion to God; the other starts with the fact that God is already there and proclaims that fact.
Natural theology does work step by step. I’ll grant you that. You look at the world, collect a few observations, line them up carefully, and then argue your way toward the conclusion that God probably exists. It’s a process… slow, methodical, and is always an objection or two away from falling flat.
Natural revelation is nothing like that. It doesn’t inch forward by argument. It doesn’t squint at the evidence and hope it adds up. It’s the direct recognition that God is present and unavoidable… the same way you recognize light when you open your eyes.
Creation Isn’t the Evidence… It’s the Testimony
The problem is that you’re not really reasoning from creation to God; you’re actually seeing creation because of God. No ladder of logic. No discursive detour. Just the immediate awareness that the world is already speaking, and it’s been speaking of Him all along. So “Natural Revelation” covers all things embedded in creation itself. Definitely not floating above God, but flowing out from His character and nature.
That changes everything.
It means we don’t manufacture morality, as Plato attempted. We receive it from a personal God.
Law, then, isn’t negotiated. It’s declared.
The Rock Beneath Every House
Jesus told a simple story that modern culture loves to sentimentalize and ignore.
One man built his house on rock. Another built on sand. The storms came. Only one house survived.
Christ is that Rock… not an idea, not a moral abstraction, but a living King whose Word undergirds reality itself. The truth is, every civilization is built on something. And whatever that something is… will eventually be tested.
Modern humanism chose sand.
It built on progress, expertise, and human autonomy, then stood back in confusion as the walls began to crack… families collapsing, justice unraveling, truth dissolving into preference.
Sand always looks solid in fair weather. It only betrays you when the rain starts falling.
The Mirage of “General Justice”
Many well-meaning conservatives sense the danger but still hesitate to ground law directly in Scripture. Years ago, Russell Kirk famously argued that law needs Christian morality… but warned against rooting it explicitly in the written Word of God. Instead, he appealed to a nebulous “general understanding of justice.”
It sounds reasonable for the times. It sounds moderate for our culture. It sounds safe.
It isn’t.
A “general understanding of justice” has no spine. It shifts with culture, mood, and power. Once God’s commands become vague principles instead of clear standards, anyone can reshape them.
That’s how abortion gets baptized as compassion. That’s how theft rebrands itself as redistribution. That’s how sexual chaos hides behind words like “identity” and “freedom.”
The moment we trade God’s specifics for abstractions or general feelings, injustice wins every time.
God’s Law Is Not a Rubber Ruler
Precision makes people nervous.
They call it legalism. They call it rigid. They call it unloving. But without precision, words lose weight. Commands blur. Meaning evaporates.
Try telling the IRS your income is roughly this or approximately that. Try explaining to a judge that your crime was “mostly” lawful. Watch the judge’s face. Obedience doesn’t come in averages or probabilities.
God’s Law isn’t cruel because it’s clear. It’s merciful.
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