Protocols And The Christian

Johnson C. Philip, PhD(Physics), ThD, DSc, DNYS

Saneesh Cherian, MA (Sociology), PhD, DMin

Editor: Dr. C Wissing

5th Revised Edition

Contents

Protocols And The Christian

Classification of Protocols

Violation of Protocols:

Reason, Analysis And Protocols

The Crusade To Obliterate Protocols

Talk-shows, Reality-shows and Protocols

Summary

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Protocols And The Christian

Protocol is a technical word, increasingly heard in the modern world. There are protocols when the head of one country visits another country, when two heads of states meet, or even when there is mutual talk between two countries.

Many government offices, diplomatic missions, military offices, and even some very large business houses have protocol offices and officers. Pilots who fly airplanes, medical doctors, research labs, disaster recovery units and emergency medical units all have their own protocols.

A protocol is a formally or informally set of agreed upon steps about what is to be done and how is to be done in a given situation. They serve several functions. In medicine they establish standard procedures in the light of decades or even centuries of experience. In political meetings and discussions they establish parity between the two sides. In dangerous situations protocols keep people safe.

In social life protocols help to establish boundaries. These boundaries in turn protect society from anarchy. For example, a subordinate is obliged to obey a superior, even if the superior is junior in age, experience, or social status. When protocols are absent, there is a tendency for a more senior subordinate to despise or disregard a superior officer.

The moral aspects of human life and behavior are also governed by numerous written and unwritten, formal and informal protocols. They help everyone to distinguish between acceptable and offensive behavior. Thus moral protocols serve as great preservers of human society.

People who advocate Moral Relativism directly and indirectly attack social and moral protocols because the protocols generally tend to preserve morality, whereas moral relativism can reign only when protocols are replaced with arbitrariness to the level of anarchy. Since Moral Relativism tries to work against protocols in very subtle ways, most people may not even realize what is happening, and will awaken only after a given set of protocols have been totally destroyed. Since in the current milieu it is easy to destroy but difficult to establish good practices, it is essential for everyone to understand the wholesome protocols that exist in society and conserve them.

Classification of Protocols

Protocols can roughly be divided into three groups:

1.   Natural protocols

2.   Contrived protocols

3.   Divinely ordained protocols

The first two borrow from each other and also from the third and this creates some overlap. However, once we clearly understand these three basic categories, it is easy to understand the borrowing and interdependence.

Natural Protocols: there are numerous protocols that everyone takes for granted and which are followed worldwide without much difficulty or resistance, even though they are more or less unwritten and non-formal. These protocols relate to parent-children, husband-wife, and older-younger persons in family relationships. Many of these protocols extend to the next category where insights from this category are developed in a more formal manner and where the codified protocol is often written down in manuals related to conduct.

Contrived Protocols: while natural protocols take one a long way, there are situations where they are inadequate. For example, in an office, in the army, and in traffic-regulation it is essential to have codified and written protocols.

In the medical fields, in air traffic control, in research that deals with dangerous chemicals or deadly bacteria, people need carefully developed and printed protocols that take all possible situations into consideration, lest people be put in mortal danger.

These protocols are formally developed, and are therefore called contrived protocols. Contemporary society is a safe place because of these carefully contrived protocols.

Divinely Ordained Protocols: once God had created mankind, He also made His protocols clear to mankind. The first five books of the Bible are full of divinely ordained protocols about how people should interact with one another and also with God. There is no ambiguity in these matters.

So good and of universal value are these protocols that a good number of them were adopted by modern western societies that had built on high Christian principles when these societies were founded. Societies and experts in legal matters opine that one reason for the greatness attained by these societies was these protocols. Things that people ought to do were done in the proper manner and things that they were not supposed to do were avoided via these protocols.

In other words, whether protocols are unwritten and non-codified natural protocols, or written down and codified divine protocols, or humanly contrived ones, all of them keep human society free from anarchy and avoid collapse. History is our witness that when individuals continually overlooked protocols it led to great destruction, and when communities bypassed protocols it led to anarchy and total chaos.

Violation of Protocols:

The Bible speaks of numerous natural, divinely ordained, and contrived protocols and it is quite enlightening to survey a few of them.

In the book of Genesis we see Eve beguiled into eating the forbidden fruit. However, subsequent to that, Adam also ate the fruit with the full consciousness that it was wrong for him to do so. Several passages in the Old as well as in the New Testament make it clear that Adam should have followed the divinely instituted protocol and should not have consumed the fruit along with his wife. He broke the protocol and the results are obvious to all.

Genesis chapter six, without introducing much detail, makes it clear that as per divinely established protocols intermarriage between sons of God and the daughters of men was prohibited. As to precisely who these parties were Scripture is silent, but it is explicit in its verdict that the violation of this protocol over a prolonged period resulted in such anarchy and chaos that God had to destroy them all. Obviously the consequences of the breach of certain protocols can be catastrophic.

When Ham saw his father lying naked due to an excess of wine, he ought to have covered his father immediately. That is what people do when they see a person without clothes. But instead of following the obvious protocol, he went out and announced the situation, creating additional embarrassment for his father. This invited a curse on his descendants from his father. Violation of social/moral protocols are not to be taken lightly.

People who play leadership roles among God’s flock have several strict protocols to follow. For example, they need to guard their tongues and will receive more punishment for verbal trespass than non-leaders. In the Old Testament, when Moses lost his self-control and smote the rock instead of speaking to it, God provided water in spite of this breach because it was a test of whether God, who had redeemed the Israelites from Egypt could also protect and provide for them or not. But since Moses had broken the protocol and thereby brought dishonor to God, he had to pay the cost in his personal life. The man who had brought the people of God out from the clutches of the mightiest empire of that time, without the help of a military force, and the man who spoke to God face-to-face the way two friends talk, was prevented from entering the very country towards which he had valiantly been leading the people of God for decades.

People who lead God’s children are not ordinary world leaders. They have dual citizenship and also dual leadership responsibilities. Thus when they break protocols, it dishonors God much more than the same act committed by a common believer. Thus, just as the rewards of a leader are great, the punishment and discipline of an erring leader will also be many degrees more than that of common believers. The breach of protocol by a Christian leader is, according to God, no ordinary trespass.

In the case of David and Bathseba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, Scripture makes it clear that this was the season when kings went to war as per custom. David’s army also had gone to war, but instead of leading his army according to the protocol, he remained back in the palace. We also notice that as he was walking back and forth on the palace roof, he did not control his gaze when he chanced to see a bathing woman. The Biblical instruction is to flee from youthful lusts. The book of Job, written at least a thousand years before David, speaks of making a covenant with the eyes so that one prevents them from the “second look” at a strange damsel. Yet the king and leader of the God’s people failed to follow the protocol. The rest of the story is history to us, but set out in great detail for our moral and spiritual admonition. Great is the catastrophe when a spiritual leader fails to keep the protocol.

Throughout the Bible we read about protocols that believers need to follow. One of these in the Old Testament forbade Jews from eating with uncircumcised gentiles. In the book of Acts God revealed to Peter through a vision that a new protocol has been instituted in the church-age whereby the old barrier between the Jews and the gentiles was abolished. Having understood it clearly, he went to the household of Cornelius and announced this fact first, and then shared the Gospel. Yet a short time after that he broke the new protocol and avoided eating with non-Jewish believers out of fear of a vocal minority that was not willing to follow the new God-instituted protocol for fellowship.

Finally the Spirit of God had to use Paul to confront Peter and rebuke him publicly for not following the new spiritual protocol. So serious was this breach that God’s Holy Spirit preserved a written record of this trespass in the epistle to the Galatians, in which, for the past two millennia God has been telling His children about what Peter did so that others may not repeat it. Breaking divinely established protocols are not minor trespasses, and we should see them with the same gravity with which the Spirit of God depicts them in the Scriptures.

Sexual protocols are mentioned in unusual detail in the Old Testament, particularly in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Proverbs, Song of Songs, and also in a couple of prophetic books. Many incidents of violation and their consequences are also recorded. The New Testament has not abrogated any of these protocols. On the contrary, it has only made things tougher by labeling the mental sin of lust to be as serious as the actual act of adultery.

Thus it is clear that God is very serious about the divinely-established protocols. It is also clear that God takes breach of protocols seriously and that He will not condone them. Spiritual leaders are warned by the Spirit that they invite additional punishment upon themselves, compared to ordinary believers, for the corresponding trespass. Thus spiritual protocols are to be handled with utmost care.

Reason, Analysis And Protocols

If people were programmable machines devoid of autonomy, everyone would have been a factory-perfect, assembly-produced, perfect automaton that never strayed from the direction imposed by the creator or programmer. Mankind has both intelligence as well as free will. What is more, we also have a range of emotions that can easily sway reason and free will if they are given an opportunity. Thus it is necessary for all people to take adequate precautions that their freedom might not seduce them to break protocols, not all of which are formally written or in the form of printed records.

Human life encompasses such an infinite variety of situations, difficulties, and even temptations that no oral or written manual can contain an exhaustive protocol guide for them all. Thus one has to arrive at the best protocol in a totally new situation on the basis of certain fundamental principles. These are social, moral, and Biblical principles that are universal, and that do not change with time, season, culture, or country. For example, consider the protocols related to the Biblical command, “Honour your father and mother”. Exactly how one honors them varies from place to place and era to era, but the principle itself (that one ought to honor them) remains unchanged for millennia. It is the application that changes with the era and country. Thus while appointing a home-nurse to look after one’s parents might be the best protocol, in another country and situation the best might be to look after them oneself. Principles remain the same, but the implementation keeps changing.

This means that people need to know the essential principles that are universal, and also that they need to have the tools that are needed to analyses a diverse set of situations so as to come up with the appropriate protocol for that situation.

Experience, memory, and exposure to what others have said and written can aid the process of analysis and that can be illustrated with the following block diagram

Obviously experience and memory are a great aid to human reason in the process of analysis and one should always take advantage of what is known from the past. In real life, at least two more factors automatically come into play and try intensely to influence the process of analysis. These are human emotions and human selfishness.

Both human emotions and human selfishness are exceedingly strong forces and they frequently try to cloud human judgment. That in turn leads to violation of protocol and the serious consequences that can follow.

The way David’s emotion of lust, and Peter’s emotion of fear, made them violate sexual and church protocols is a good example of how emotions and selfishness can cloud judgment, to lead a person to break even well-established protocols. Scripture very clearly says that the human tendency is to do things that one ought not to do. Thus guarding against trespass is essential.

If reason and analysis have to overcome emotions and selfishness, then many things have to take place, the most important of which is spiritual growth, sanctification, and maturity. At the same time, one also needs to acquire the tools of and abilities for analysis. This also means that people who are in positions of leadership and training should make special efforts to train people under their care in reasoning and analysis.

Since the tools used for this kind of analysis are all invisible and non-physical, developing, maintaining and sharpening needs constant attention. What cannot be seen or touched by hand definitely requires greater care for their maintenance.

Bible teachers and Christian communicators/apologists need to study and monitor society and prominent social phenomena/movements continually, so that they know what forces are undermining, or can undermine the discernment of people whom they are trying to teach, train, and protect. Often these movements are so deceptive and so subtle that average persons will need a good amount of instruction before they are able to handle the movements independently.

A good example is the way morally degenerate movements have been using the “everyone is doing it” slogan to brainwash people to embrace deviant behavior. This is a totally deceptive movement and a detailed analysis is presented in our document “Everyone Is Not Doing It”.

Similarly, parents need to understand contemporary society and its powerful movements carefully so that they can accurately instruct and train their children in analysis (spiritual discernment). The influence of the world is often so subtle and so continuous that it requires almost eighteen to twenty years of guidance, teaching, and instruction by parents.

The Crusade To Obliterate Protocols

Since protocols create social, psychological, behavioral, and moral boundaries, they protect society from degenerating into chaos. Moral relativism is, in effect, moral anarchy. Protocols do play a role in guarding society from moral chaos, and while those who have a benevolent attitude towards human society love those systems that preserve society, the people who advocate the breaking of pre-established values do not.

Biblical values have created numerous protocols in countries that are dominated by the Christian faith. We see the goodness created in society by these protocols that ultimately have their origin in the Bible. At the same time numerous good protocols have also been developed through careful human observation and analysis. All of these have embedded these protocols firmly in human society due to a combined and cumulative effect.

Thus no kind of anarchy can easily prevail in society. This in turn means that those who desire to impose moral or any other kind of relativism need to obliterate protocols first. Since parents are the strongest and most effective teachers of the protocol, undermining the authority of parents is an essential step for the proponents of relativism. This is done in socialist countries by taking control of children away from parents, through legislation. A state then assumes total control of the children. Since the nations that snatch away children from their parents are amoral or immoral to begin with the nurture they provide will be eminently suitable for relativism. This is happening in all communist and socialist countries.

Meanwhile control and nurture of children is being increasingly assumed by the state even in free countries. They do so through licensing and related controls of the education system. The state is always amoral, and goes by the moral values of those who control it. Since state control of education in democracies and free nations was basically proposed and introduced by radical elements and on purpose, to propagate their deviant philosophies through the educational system, state control and regulation of education always results in the promotion of radical philosophies first and deviant philosophies soon after that.

The best example of the above is the education system in the USA. Initially almost all education was in the hands of the church, and parents had a good say in what was taught. This kept deviant philosophies out of educational indoctrination. At best these philosophies were only surveyed to show them what was wrong with them, but there was not even a remote endorsement. However, the state gradually usurped more and more of the education system due to the systematic campaigns by radical thinkers.

Once the amoral state gained enough control, totally radical, anti-national, and deviant ideas were introduced into the curriculum. This time it was not to survey them, but rather to indoctrinate young minds through an endorsement of these deviant ideas. What had been understood till yesterday as perverted was now taught as totally normal while what had been taught as normal and moral was now taught as abnormal.

Protocols related to sex were one of the first casualties. The state snatched the privilege of imparting sex-education from parents. Instead of introducing the topic to children in a culturally and Biblically sensitive manner, at ages that are individually appropriate, sex-education became an assembly-line job. There was no longer cultural or Biblical sensitivity.

Thus sensitivity, the sense of right and wrong, the sanctity of relationships, and all relational protocols connected to sexual morality were simply suppressed and an amoral and mechanical sex-education was imparted in the initial years. Gradually, in the absence of a moral code, the amoral became totally immoral.

The results are obvious. Teenagers can obtain contraceptives freely through school-based clinics in many places, and parents are never informed. When all moral and social protocols are jettisoned, and when getting contraceptives is easier than buying a cup of coffee, morality will be the casualty. Here is the first major casualty of the abolition of protocols.

Protocols in themselves are not morality, but they are behavior patterns that are expected when there is the right type of morality, spirituality, respect, patriotism, etc. Once protocols are jettisoned, these values take a quick beating. That is why there are so many crusades to obliterate protocols.

The more or less non-formally organized movements to destroy protocols include movements that target the family, monogamy, heterosexuality, schools, colleges, and every institution that has helped society to grow to the present level of refinement in free, democratic, and developed countries. Christians need to recognize these movements, their mouthpieces, and their spokespersons so that they can be exposed.

Talk-shows, Reality-shows and Protocols

There are so many celebrities around today, and many of them apparently have become celebrities so easily and with so little effort that many people deeply long to achieve some kind of popularity or praise, even if they do not rise to the level of celebrities. They reckon that becoming a celebrity for an hour is better than being no celebrity at all. What is more, since TV has permeated all of human society, a chance to be on TV would immediately bring them to the attention of all their friends, almost all of whom have TVs, but none of whom probably has a chance to be on a TV program.

TV program producers today face an ever-increasing competition to have an audience, because viewership numbers determine advertising income and the producers’ ability to survive. Thus they have been inventing ever more adventurous and bizarre programs to cater to people’s love for strange things. Thus the talk-shows which initially invited only celebrities gradually started inviting all kinds of strange and questionable characters.

Soon the above was not sufficient for “kicks”, because those important enough to be invited due to their celebrity status would entertain only a certain range of questions (questions that are too bizarre and that break conventional social/moral protocols will only invite the displeasure of the guest). Thus producers thought of the common man/woman, who is dying for a moment of fame, and they are invited to the studio and in the name of “reality” are asked questions about their hidden but real life. Most of them blurt out much information about their personal lives which they would otherwise never reveal even to their closest friends. All well-accepted social and moral protocols about privacy, reverence for the privacy affairs of others, etc., are broken in a moment.

Mankind is sinful. Thus everyone has certain hidden sinful things. Conventional wisdom has created a social protocol whereby people do not snoop into the private lives of others. Even if people become curious about the private life of another person, they do the snooping silently and in a discreet manner. While such snooping is wrong, the act of doing it discreetly ensures that others are not encouraged to do so. Social protocols help society to protect the privacy of individuals.

Since they are offering something “great” to their interviewees, reality-show hosts usually throw all protocols (and even decency) overboard and continue overwhelming the interviewee with question after question. In their hour of glory, most people interviewed forget protocols, shame, embarrassment, and blurt out their most secret passions and describe their most secret sins. All social and moral protocols are destroyed in these practices. What is more, these protocols are wiped clean from the minds of those who watch this kind of program. The absence of protocols, in turn, encourages moral anarchy because one restraining wall has now fallen.

The destruction of protocols by TV, and the willing participation of “the common man” in this destruction will create unbelievable anarchy and breaking-up of families. A recent program about which I read is a good example. A husband and wife were interviewed about the intimate details of their lives. The wife was connected to a lie detector. The TV anchor then asked the husband whether his wife had had any extra-marital affairs. He replied in the negative.

Then the anchor asked the same question of the wife. She said that she had never had any extra-marital affairs. The lie-detector immediately indicated, to everyone’s horror, that she spoke a lie. Though lie detectors are not reliable, and though their output can easily be tampered with, there is no place for such an examination in a TV program. A reality-show is not a court of law where one can challenge such results and where one can demand a re-examination or review.

The very purpose of these programs is to create an unusual sensation, come what may, even if families, reputations, peace, etc., are ruined by this. The program producers have not the least concern regarding this. They needed to air a sensational program, and they succeeded. If any harm is done, the husband and wife have to pay the cost for a few minutes of fame. Nobody comes to their rescue, and they might never be able to solve the trauma, breach in trust, and the depression created by either an erroneous or tampered-with machine.

Breaking social and moral protocol is never to be taken lightly, especially before an audience of millions. It not only has the potential of corrupting millions of minds, but it also has the potential of causing a rebound and ruining one’s own life forever.

Summary

Protocols are written or unwritten, formal or informal, rules that tell people what to do and what not to do in a given situation. They serve to create invisible boundaries that protect people, lives and morality. The more they are followed the more people become firm in them.

The more firmly protocols are adhered to the more difficult it is for anarchy and anarchists to reign. Since moral relativism is moral anarchy, the presence and prevalence of moral protocols is a hindrance to the spread of their philosophy. Even social protocols that do not seem related to morality and ethics reinforce morality and ethics in the long run through their focus on protection and conservation.

Obviously, proponents of moral relativism have a greater insight into these matters, and that is why they have been working systematically to destroy social/moral and even scientific protocols (such as in reproductive and sex-related medical sciences). They have gained much ground in the past few centuries and particularly in the twentieth century. Yet it is not too late for society-lovers to stem this tide. Those who love society need to understand the issues involved, the people involved, and the strategies they apply. Armed with this information, they can easily start a campaign for the conservation of values and the protection of essential protocols.

Table of Contents

Protocols And The Christian

Classification of Protocols

Violation of Protocols:

Reason, Analysis And Protocols

The Crusade To Obliterate Protocols

Talk-shows, Reality-shows and Protocols

Summary

Table of Contents

Protocols And The Christian

Classification of Protocols

Violation of Protocols:

Reason, Analysis And Protocols

The Crusade To Obliterate Protocols

Talk-shows, Reality-shows and Protocols

Summary