unPHILtered: The Way I See It - Hardcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Phil Robertson (1946–2025) was born and raised in a small town near Shreveport, Louisiana. After college he spent several years teaching but soon decided to devote his talents elsewhere: he began to experiment with making a call that would produce the exact sound of a duck, and thus Duck Commander was born, becoming a successful family business, and featured on the hit A&E TV series Duck Dynasty.

Mark Schlabach is the coauthor of the New York Times bestselling books, Happy, Happy, Happy, Si-cology 1, and The Duck Commander Family. He is one of the most respected and popular college football columnists in the country. He and his wife live in Madison, Georgia, with their three children.

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unPHILtered

1

BIBLICAL CORRECTNESS

Fix No. 1: Replace Political Correctness with Biblical Correctness

It will probably come as no surprise that there are a few people out there who wouldn’t exactly describe me as “politically correct.” My Webster’s Dictionary, which was first developed by one of our founding fathers in the early nineteenth century—Noah Webster—defines being politically correct as “agreeing with the idea that people should be careful to not use language or behave in a way that could offend a particular group of people.”

Hey, if what comes out of my mouth sometimes offends the people who don’t believe what is written in the Bible, I’m guilty as charged. But understand this: I’m not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings, and I don’t dislike people simply because their opinions are different from mine. I don’t hate anyone. In truth, I love everybody on this green earth. I don’t believe in stereotypes, and I do believe in respecting everyone, regardless of whether they agree with my beliefs or not. All people, whether they’re white, black, yellow, red, or green, are of great worth in God’s eyes, and His desire for us all is that we share in His kingdom. Jesus actually commanded us to love. John 13:34–35 says, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

I simply believe that what is written in the Scripture is the ultimate truth and that it’s the blueprint for my life. I’m certainly not the first person to believe it. In the very first edition of The American Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1828, Webster wrote the following in the preface: “The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. All the miseries and evils which men suffer from, vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.”

It doesn’t get much clearer than that, folks. Webster, who has been called the “father of American scholarship and education” and whose blue-backed speller books educated five generations of our country’s children, spelled it out for us nearly two hundred years ago. Webster believed evil occurred because men and women neglected the Bible and didn’t follow God’s Word. We’re still using Webster’s dictionary today, so I guess he knew what he was doing. I imagine Mr. Webster is rolling in his grave now that words like sexting, twerking, and selfie are officially part of the English language. Hey, only in America, Jack!

Somewhere along the way, political correctness trumped biblical correctness in America, and in my opinion it’s the cause of many of our country’s problems today. Political correctness tries to dictate what is right and wrong, instead of our country having a moral system of righteous laws. Our society is overly sensitive, and we seem to be fixated on building up people’s self-esteem and confidence. Hey, everybody needs constructive criticism once in a while. The way things are going, it’s okay to have an opinion in America, as long as you don’t offend anyone and don’t quote the Bible. Many people today are eager to share the “positive” bits and pieces of the Bible in order to be politically correct but ignore the parts of the Scripture that might offend others.

In 2 Timothy 4:2–4, Paul the Apostle warned us of the consequences of being ashamed to preach the gospel, saying, “Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”

I hate to tell you this, folks, but the times that Paul warned us about are here. Everywhere you look across our once-great land, politicians, special-interest groups, and people under the control of the Evil One are erasing any visible signs of Christianity. They’re muzzling the people who speak the truth. If you speak out about sins like adultery, drunkenness, or sexual impurity, you’re labeled as ignorant, insensitive, bigoted, or even hateful. The “PC police” constantly preach tolerance and acceptance, but they’re intolerant of beliefs that aren’t in line with their own. Certain Americans condemn businesses like Chick-fil-A for speaking out against same-sex marriages, but then we’re told to celebrate companies like Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Starbucks because they embrace them. Is it not a two-way street? Isn’t there supposed to be freedom of speech on both sides of the issue?

The amazing thing to me is that biblical correctness has never changed. It’s written on the pages of the Bible and the words have remained the same through the ages. The sins are listed and are there for everyone to see. Each of us has the ability to read them, study them, and then decide whether we’re going to sin or follow God’s commands.

Conversely, political correctness is constantly changing and evolving. What might have been “PC” yesterday isn’t “PC” today, even if it’s only the smallest of things. Now, I’m all for being kind and thoughtful in the way we refer to people, but good grief! We get a bit ridiculous at times. Manholes have been renamed utility holes so as not to offend women, and blackboards are now called chalkboards so as not to offend African Americans. People who can’t hear are no longer deaf; they’re hearing impaired. People who can’t see are no longer blind; they’re visually impaired. People aren’t even short anymore; they’re vertically challenged. So do we call a bald man follically impaired? Political correctness is constantly morphing into a dark maze of nonsense. It keeps getting more and more nonsensical.

Yet, there has been a constant erosion of biblical correctness in our country. Look at the evidence in recent years:

• A large cross that was prominently displayed outside a chapel at an isolated military base in northern Afghanistan was removed in 2011 because it didn’t adhere to U.S. Army regulations. The army chaplain manual now prohibits permanent displays of religious symbols. I didn’t serve in the military, but it would seem to me that the cross might be a source of comfort and relief to the troops who are risking their lives in battles in foreign lands. But, hey, that’s just me.

• In La Jolla, California, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups are demanding that a twenty-nine-foot-tall cross that stands on government-owned land on Mount Soledad be dismantled. Crosses have been erected on the land since 1913, and the present cross is the centerpiece of a Korean War Memorial. The ACLU contends the cross violates the separation of church and state because it demonstrates preference to a specific religion. In December 2013, a federal judge ordered the cross to be removed, but the case is being appealed.

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