We read something in a paper, we hear something on the radio, and an argument starts about it.

And I kind of watch, and I see right off the bat, the issue is that term has never been defined.

So you've got sides lining up to defend this or that when in fact

the ambiguity of the point of contention admits of both positions and you don't know what they meant yet.

Why do precise definitions and clear statements matter in an age of ambiguity?

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper shows how commitment to clarity safeguards truth in a culture that embraces vagueness.

This seminar was originally presented at Bethlehem Baptist Church on February 2, 1994.

Number seven, pressure from an atmosphere of evasion and imprecision. This is not too much different, but a little different than what we've been looking at.

Machen alerts us to the hostilities of modernism toward precise definitions and clear statements about what is affirmed and what is denied.

Thus, truth disappears in an atmosphere of vagueness.

The fog of ambiguity conceals that orthodoxy has become a language shell,

and the truth is gone. Here's his quote. This temper of mind is hostile to precise definitions.

Indeed, nothing makes a man more unpopular in the controversies of the present day. That's 1920s, I think is just as true

or more today. The controversies of the present day, nothing makes you more unpopular than an

insistence upon definition of terms. Men discourse very eloquently today upon such subjects as God, religion, Christianity,

atonement, redemption, faith, but are greatly incensed when they are asked to tell in simple

language what they mean by these terms I experience this a lot at home you know we and I use it a

lot as we try to teach the boys we're listening we read something in a paper

we hear something on the radio and and an argument starts about it, and I kind of watch,

and I see right off the bat, the issue is that term has never been defined.

So you've got sides lining up to defend this or that when, in fact, the ambiguity of the point

of contention admits of both positions, and you don't know what they meant yet and so you ask all right hold it

...