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This was done by ordinary people – Part III

Posted by :admin On : June 13, 2014
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Category: Archives, Christianity, Culture Wars, Humanism

Adolf Hitler believed that “…Christianity preached ‘meekness and flabbiness,’ and this was simply not useful to the National Socialist ideology…” Hitler hated Christianity, but as a practical man, he was a pretend Christian and found the German Christian church temporarily useful in consolidating Nazi power. In time he subverted much of the church and changed its basic ideology.[1]

At the beginning of 1933, the German church stood at a crossroads. The great majority of German Lutheran churches chose the path of Hitler and the Nazis instead of the teachings of Jesus Christ.[2] All of German life was to be synchronized under Hitler’s leadership, and “…the church would lead the way.” The majority of churches called themselves “German Christians” and advocated a strong unified church seamlessly wedded to the state that would restore Germany to her former glory. The union of the state church with the Nazi regime required churches to conform to Nazi racial laws and ultimately swear allegiance to Hitler as the supreme leader of the church and by doing so “…blithely tossed two millennia of Christian orthodoxy overboard.”[3]

There was a minority of Christians and churches in Germany that opposed Hitler and the German Christians. The resistance centered within the new “Confessing Church” led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemöller, and a few others. When Hitler heard of a potential church split because of objections to his policies, he summoned several dissenting church leaders including Niemöller to the Reich Chancellery. He lectured the assembled churchmen and said all he wanted was peace between Church and state and blamed them for obstructing his plans. Hitler warned them “…to confine yourself to the Church. I’ll take care of the German people.” Niemöller responded that the Church also had a responsibility toward the German people that was entrusted to them by God and that neither Hitler nor anyone else in the world had power to remove that responsibility. Hitler turned away without comment, but that same evening the Gestapo ransacked Niemöller’s rectory while searching for incriminating material. Within days a homemade bomb exploded in the hall of the rectory.[4]

As Nazi pressure was ratcheted up against the dissenting churchmen, Bonhoeffer and Niemöller were criticized by their fellow churchmen for opposing Hitler and his policies. Eventually over two thousand would choose the route of appeasement and safety and abandoned support of Bonhoeffer and Niemöller’s efforts in resisting the Nazis. “They believed that appeasement was the best strategy; they thought that if they remained silent they could live with Hitler’s intrusion into church affairs and his political policies.”[5]

However, not all Confessing Church pastors and lay leaders bowed to Hitler’s demands, but they would pay a price for their courage. In 1937, a remnant of more than eight hundred were arrested and imprisoned including Niemöller who spent the next eight years in prison, seven of which were in Dachau, one the Nazis’ most infamous concentration camps.[6]

We have identified three groups of churches in Nazi Germany of the 1930s: the apostate German Christian church, the Confessing church which became the silent church of appeasement, and a faithful remnant that became the suffering church.

In the twenty-first century, the enemy of the American church is still the one that Bonhoeffer identified as the “…the most severe enemy” that Christianity ever had—humanism.[7] We are seeing the same patterns and methods used by Hitler to marginalized and make powerless much of the American Christian church through its seduction by the humanistic spirit of the age. The god of Hitler has been replaced by the god of humanism and its lesser god of equality in all of its destructive humanistic definition and interpretation.

In America there is an apostate church that has abandoned any pretense of adherence to the gospel message. Biblical truths are twisted, mocked, or dismissed altogether. Others champion a social gospel or preach a gospel of health, wealth, happiness, harmony, and cheap grace in place of the cross and death to self. Eighty years ago, Bonhoeffer described “cheap grace.”

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church…In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin…Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.[8]

Apart from the apostate church, there is also a faithful but mostly silent church in America that is content to preach the gospel and ignore the culture. Erwin Lutzer wrote, “Whether in Nazi Germany or America, believers cannot choose to remain silent under the guise of preaching the Gospel…we must live out the implications of the cross in every area of our lives. We must be prepared to submit to the Lordship of Christ in all ‘spheres’.”[9] Yet, as we live out the implications of the cross in every area of our lives, we must understand that the culture wars in which we soldier for Christ are not about maintaining the American dream however one may define it. Rather, the culture wars are about restoring the biblical understanding of truth in all spheres of our national life. To do so one must speak the truth in the face of lies, stand on biblical principles when others compromise, and take right actions in spite of consequences. A hostile culture and an adversarial government and culpable legal system will extract a price from those that dare to oppose them. What is accomplished by such opposition when it seemingly brings only hardship, suffering, and defeat? “Suffering communicates the gospel in a new language; it authenticates the syllables that flow from our lips…It is not how loud we can shout but how well we can suffer that will convince the world of the integrity of our message.”[10]

In recent years the forces of humanism have gained sustained power and critical mass in all spheres of American life and have become openly hostile and threatening to the true church of Jesus Christ. However, there is a bold remnant of the faithful church that is listening to the voices of modern Bonhoeffers and Niemöllers who are speaking out in those spheres of American life against the evils that have spread over America and much of the church. Such boldness follows the path of costly grace, and very soon that remnant may be able to claim the cloak of the suffering church.

Most in the American church cannot comprehend the meaning of the suffering church. It is something that happens “over there,” something that is foreign to their thinking. They believe the American church somehow has been exempt from the consequences of costly grace. To suggest otherwise is almost heresy. But the Apostle Paul would disagree.

…it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may be glorified with him. [Romans 8:16-17. RSV] (emphasis added)

In the dark days of World War II, Bonhoeffer wrote, “When God calls a man, he bids him come and die.” On April 9, 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer answered Christ’s final call. After two years in prison, he was hanged on the direct order of Adolph Hitler who ended his own life three weeks later in an underground bunker in Berlin.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2010), pp. 166, 171.
[2] Erwin W. Lutzer, When a Nation Forgets God,” (Chicago, Illinois: Moody Publishers, 2010), p. 44.
[3] Metaxas, pp. 151-152, 176.
[4] Lutzer, pp. 19-20.
[5] Ibid., p. 21.
[6] Metaxas, pp. 293, 295.
[7] Ibid., p. 85.
[8] Lutzer, pp 117-118.
[9] Ibid., p. 33.
[10] Ibid., pp. 120-121.

This was done by ordinary people – Part II

Posted by :admin On : June 6, 2014
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Category: Archives, Christianity, Government, Humanism

Many years ago I read a book about Adolf Hitler and the rise of Nazism in Germany during the early 1930s. Although I don’t remember the details of what I read, the book contained a photograph that disturbed me to such an extent that I still vividly remember it after all these years. It was a picture of a beautiful, well-dressed young woman perhaps in her thirties. She was attending a rally at which Hitler spoke during the time he was gaining political power over the German people. As she gazed at the Fuhrer, there was a smile on the young woman’s face which glowed with admiration if not absolute idolization. Her rapt attention made her appear as though hypnotized by Hitler and his words. The reason I was so disturbed was because I knew the end of the story. How could this young woman and the crowd around her be so naïve and susceptible to the Nazi message? She and the others were just ordinary people! But these ordinary people, in their gullibility and rejection of their Christian heritage, allowed themselves to be deceived and as a result made possible the greatest conflagration of death and destruction in the history of mankind.

The Germans had lost the First World War in 1918, and the fierce German pride was dealt a succession of body blows. The 50-year-old monarchy ended with Kaiser Wilhelm’s forced abdication. Communists and Social Democrats warred for control as the nation was near anarchy. The Weimer Republic was the victor but a deeply flawed democratic regime. Germany was forced to eviscerate its armed forces, give up much of its European territories, abandon Asian and African colonies, and pay huge reparations to the Allied nations.[1] Germany sank into years of hyperinflation and depression (both economically and psychologically).

Because of the consequences of the First World War, the German people and especially the younger Germans were disillusioned and lost all confidence in the traditional authority of the monarchy and the church. They wanted a fuhrer, and for the German people salvation would come from Adolf Hitler who promised that he would restore order, resurrect the economy, and return the nation to its rightful place on the world’s stage.[2] But their desire for a fuhrer required a loss of rights and freedom which led to totalitarianism and eventual destruction of Germany.

Hitler’s message was not a new one. Eve succumbed to its seductions in the third chapter of Genesis…Ye shall be as gods. In the eleventh century BC, King David wrote, “The fool hath said in his heart: there is no god.” [Psalms 14:1. KJV] Humanism is man’s second oldest faith—the great alternative faith of mankind—man without God. But it was the Greeks of the fourth through sixth centuries BC that gave form and body to the man-made philosophy of humanism that would impact the world second only to Jesus Christ.[3] Seventeenth century Enlightenment thought gave new life to Greek humanism and the doctrines of progress, rationality, secularism, and political reform. Values did not arise from fixed notions of right and wrong prescribed by a non-existent transcendent God but were a product of moral relativism in which man is merely a bundle of instincts and urges.[4]

Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “…’the Greek spirit or ‘humanism’ as ‘the most severe enemy’ that Christianity ever had.”[5] And in twenty-first century America, Christianity is once again at war with humanism. From this battle we can see alarming parallels between the political and cultural changes that occurred in Germany during the early 1930s and those of the United States since 2009.

• April 1, 1933 – Boycott of Jewish stores across Germany. The reason given was to stop the international press supposedly controlled by the Jews from printing lies about the Nazis.[6]

July 26, 2012 – The Christian owner of Chic-Fil-A was urged to back out of his expansion plans in Boston and Chicago because his company gave money to nonprofits that support limiting marriage to unions between a man and a woman. Because of his biblical beliefs, he had run afoul of Chicago mayor Rohm Emanuel, former White House Chief of Staff for President Obama. Emanuel said, “Chick-Fil-A’s values are not Chicago values. They’re not respectful of our residents, our neighbors and our family members. And if you’re gonna be part of the Chicago community, you should reflect Chicago values…” Chicago Alderman Joe Moreno said he will seek to block a permit for Chick-Fil-A to expand into a Chicago neighborhood. “To have those discriminatory policies from the top down is just not something that we’re open to,” Moreno said.[7]

• April 22, 1933 – Jews were not allowed to serve as patent lawyers. Jewish doctors were prohibited from working in hospitals with state-run insurance.[8]

March 2009 – An Eastern Michigan University student was expelled because she would not counsel clients regarding sexual relationships outside of marriage which she viewed as immoral because of her Christian beliefs. Julea Ward was in her last year of her completing work for her master’s degree in counseling at EMU. While in a practicum in which she counseled clients, she asked that a prospective client wanting advice on a homosexual relationship be referred to another counselor. A faculty panel of three professors and one student ruled that Ward had violated the American Counseling Association’s code of ethics. However, the Association’s code of ethics “…broadly allows for referrals anytime a counselor determines an ‘inability to be of professional assistance’.”[9] The university and Ms. Ward settled the matter out of court in December 2012.

• May 6, 1933 – Anti-Jewish laws expanded to include all honorary university professors, lecturers, and notaries.[10]

April 2007 – Dr. Mike Adams, a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina–Wilmington was denied promotions because of his religious beliefs following his conversion from atheism to Christianity in 2000. “Subsequently, the university subjected Adams to a campaign of academic persecution that culminated in his denial of promotion to full professor, despite an award-winning record of teaching, research, and service.” In April 2014, almost seven years after Adams filed suit, a federal court found in his favor and ordered the university to promote Dr. Adams with back pay.[11]

• June 1933 – Jewish dentists and dental technicians were prohibited from working with state-run insurance institutions.[12]

May 15, 2014 – Pasadena City Health Director Dr. Eric Walsh resigned after being suspended for two weeks pending investigation by city officials after their discovery of videos of sermons by Lay Pastor Walsh “…criticizing homosexuality, calling the founder of Islam a Satanist, and calling evolution a ‘religion of Satan’.” There was no evidence of bias or misconduct while serving in his capacity as the city’s health director, but the city’s Human Relations Commission Chairman Nat Nehdar strongly criticized Walsh for his beliefs. “We don’t tolerate this type of behavior, this type of thought.” Following his resignation in Pasadena, the Georgia Department of Public Health announced Walsh would be hired to manage a six-county health district. Strong pressure from the gay-activist community in Georgia resulted in an investigation of Walsh’s background including the video sermons and led the department to withdraw its offer.[13] (emphasis added)

• September 29, 1933 – Jews banned from all entertainment and cultural activities including literature, the arts, theater, and film.[14]

May 7, 2014 – Home and Garden TV canceled a home-flipping program planned for October by former major league baseball brothers David and Jason Bentham because of their Christian beliefs regarding homosexuality and abortion. Background reports from a left-wing organization given to HGTV labeled the brothers as “anti-gay, anti-choice extremists.”[15]

• October 1933 – Jews expelled from journalism when all newspapers were placed under Nazi control.[16]

September 6, 2013 – A college football commentator was fired by Fox Sports Southwest because of his Christian beliefs regarding same-sex marriage. A committed Christian, Craig James said, “…gay civil unions are wrong, homosexuality is ‘a choice,’ and gays will ‘have to answer to the Lord for their actions’.” He made the statements during his 2012 campaign for the Texas GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate. Fox Sports Southwest fired him one week after being hired. A spokesman said, “We just asked ourselves how Craig’s statements would play in our human resources department. He couldn’t say those things here.”[17] (emphasis added)

Change was the banner under which the Nazis marched. It would be accomplished by Gleichschaltung (synchronization) in which the country would be reordered along National Socialist lines “…which meant that everything must fall in line with the Nazi worldview.”[18]

The American Gleichschaltung of 2009 would also be a reordering of the nation to reflect the humanistic worldview whose default setting for organizing society is socialism. A Barak Obama campaign speech on February 5, 2008 captured both the message of change and the worldview behind it. “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”[19] President Obama’s words resonate with the clarion call of the humanists whose God is self as opposed to He who created the universe.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2010), pp. 33-34.
[2] Ibid., p. 141.
[3] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods-Humanism and Christianity-The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), p. 139.
[4] Ibid., pp. 92-93, 287.
[5] Metaxas, p. 85.
[6] Ibid., p. 156.
[7] Michael Scherer, “Chic-Fil-A meets a First Amendment buzz saw in Chicago,” Time, July 26, 2012. http://swampland.time.com/2012/07/26/chick-fil-a-meets-a-first-amendment-buzzsaw-in-chicago/ (accessed May 21, 2014).
[8] Metaxas, p. 160.
[9] Jeremy Tedesco, “The Julea Ward Settlement: A Win for Religious Liberty,” Townhall.com, January 4, 2013. http://townhall.com/columnists/jeremytedesco/2013/01/04/the-julea-ward-settlement–a-win-for-religious-liberty-n1478423 (accessed May 22, 2014).
[10] Metaxas, p. 160.
[11] “Court orders UNC–Wilmington to pay, promote professor after retaliating against him” Alliance Defending Freedom, April 9, 2014. http://www.alliancedefendingfreedom.org/News/PRDetail/3901 (accessed May 22, 2014).
[12] Metaxas, p. 160.
[13] Mark A. Kellner, “Pasadena’s medical director on leave after his Protestant sermons surface.” NewsOK, May 9, 2014. http://newsok.com/pasadenas-medical-director-on-leave-after-his-protestant-sermons-surface/article/4747892 (accessed May 24, 2014).
[14] Metaxas, p. 160.
[15] Ann Oldenburg, “Bentham brothers: If faith cost us TV show, so be it,” USA Today, May 8, 2014. http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2014/05/07/hgtv-nixes-benham-brothers-series-anti-gay-extremist-abortion/8810393/ (accessed May 22, 2014).
[16] Metaxas, p. 160.
[17] Barry Horn, “Craig James’ anti-gay stance during political campaign reason for quick exit from FOX Sports SW,” SportsDayDFW, September 6, 2013. http://collegesportsblog.dallasnews.com/2013/09/craig-james-anti-gay-stance-during-political-campaign-reason-for-his-quick-exit-from-fssw-college-football-duties.html/(accessed May 22,
2014).
[18] Metaxas, p. 166.
[19] “Barak Obama Quotes,” Notable Quotes.
http://www.notable-quotes.com/o/obama_barack.html (accessed May 28, 2014).

This was done by ordinary people – Part I

Posted by :admin On : May 30, 2014
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Category: Archives, Christianity, God's Law v. Man's Law, Government

The end-product of the Holocaust lay in the gas chambers and ashes of the crematoria within the German death camps spread across Europe in 1945. But the beginning of the Holocaust was much more subtle and seemingly innocuous except to the Jew and others on the wrong side of the German cultural and political wars of the 1930s. In his biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and spy, Eric Metaxas described the events that led to the Holocaust.

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became the democratically elected chancellor of Germany. On February 27, the Nazis set afire the building that housed the democratically elected Reichstag and blamed it on the Communists. That same day Hitler pressured the highly respected Field Marshall Hindenburg to sign the Reichstag Fire Edict which suspended certain sections of the German constitution and allowed restrictions on personal liberty, free expressions of opinion, rights of assembly and association; violations of privacy of communications (postal, telegraphic, and telephonic); warrants for searches of homes; and confiscations of and restrictions on private property. [1]

Following the Reichstag Fire Edict, Nazi storm troopers began immediately to arrest, imprison, torture, and kill their opponents. On March 23rd the Reichstag bowed to Nazi pressure and approved the Enabling Act which placed the whole power of the government under Hitler’s control.

With the tools of democracy, democracy was murdered and lawlessness made “legal.” Raw power ruled, and its only real goal was to destroy all other powers besides itself…
In the First months of Nazi rule, the speed and scope of what the Nazis intended and had begun executing throughout German society were staggering. Under what was called the Gleichschaltung (synchronization), the country would be thoroughly reordered along National Socialist lines. (emphasis added) No one dreamed how quickly and dramatically things would change. [2]

Hermann Goring described this reordering of society as mainly an “administrative” change. An understanding of what this “reordering” meant for the Jews would come swiftly.

• April 1 – Boycott of Jewish stores across Germany. The reason given was to stop the international press supposedly controlled by the Jews from printing lies about the Nazis.
• April 7 – Removal and prohibition of anyone of Jewish descent from holding civil service jobs. Government employees must be of Aryan stock. (Enabling Act – Aryan Paragraph.)
• April 22 – Jews were not allowed to serve as patent lawyers. Jewish doctors were prohibited from working in hospitals with state-run insurance.
• April 25 – Strict limits on the number of Jewish children that could attend public schools.
• May 6 – Laws expanded to include all honorary university professors, lecturers, and notaries.
• June – Jewish dentists and dental technicians were prohibited from working with state-run insurance institutions.
• Fall – Laws restricting non-Aryans expanded to include spouses of non-Aryans.
• September 29 – Jews banned from all entertainment and cultural activities including literature, the arts, theater, and film.
• October – Jews expelled from journalism when all newspapers were placed under Nazi control. [3]

It was another spring twelve years later that World War II ended in Europe and the gates of the death camps would swing open to reveal to the world the real meaning of Goring’s “administrative” change. The pogroms of medieval Europe and Tsarist Russia had been reincarnated and perfected in one of the most advanced societies of the early twentieth century. Germany’s organized destruction of helpless people has few equals in the history of mankind. With scientific precision coupled with administrative order, the Nazis murdered eleven million people including between five and six million Jews in the gas-chambers and crematoria of the death camps, through shootings in other parts of Europe, and by overwork and starvation. In 1901, 75% of the world’s Jews lived in Eastern Europe. A century later one-half of all Jews live in English speaking countries and 30% live in Israel. Germany’s “final solution” to the Jewish problem changed forever the map of Jewish life in Europe. [4]

The momentary euphoria, goodwill, and hopes for a more cooperative order at the end of World War II quickly melted away as the realities of the war exposed the heart of mankind and his capacity for evil. J. N. Roberts summarized the post-war search for answers as to the “why” of Nazi Germany.

In many ways, Germany had been one of the most progressive countries in Europe; the embodiment of much that was best in its civilization. That Germany should fall prey to collective derangement on this scale suggested that something had been wrong at the root of that civilization itself. The crimes of the Nazis had been carried out not in a fit of barbaric intoxication with conquest, but in a systematic, scientific controlled, bureaucratic (though often inefficient) way, about which there was little that was irrational except the appalling end which it sought. [5] (emphasis added)

The post-war world remained puzzled at Germany’s “collective derangement” given its veneer of rationality and scientific and cultural progress. But along with Germany, much of the world also worshiped the same gods of rationalism, science, materialism, secularism, and progress. Man was assumed to be basically good, but the realities of the war removed humanism’s mask of goodness to reveal the face of evil. The answer to the “why” of Nazi Germany was evil, that something that had been wrong at the root of civilization itself and which Roberts sought to identify. Evil was the source of the collective derangement, and it also resides in the heart of every man.

With few exceptions, the Nazis and their collaborators were not mere madmen as one would suppose. Rather, the whole story of the Holocaust can be summed up in one sentence. “This was done by ordinary people.” [6] Those words by Ravi Zacharias cut to the heart of the source of evil for it reveals the inescapable conclusion that there is an indelible stain upon the soul of man. In his Gospel account, Mark described the diseased heart of man.

For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man. [Mark 7:21-23. RSV]

Christians call the root of this evil original sin. It is the evil that is found within the soul of every human being that ever lived. But in the great meta-narrative of the Bible, we learn of the way for fallen man to be cleansed of that evil and mend his broken relationship with God. We find the answer in John’s Gospel: “For God so loved the world that he gave His only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” [John 3:16. RSV]

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2010), pp. 145, 148-149.
[2] Ibid., pp. 149-150
[3] Ibid., pp. 150-151, 156-157, 160.
[4] J. M. Roberts, The New History of the World, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 954, 1150.
[5] Ibid., p. 964.
[6] Ravi Zacharias, “God, Evil, and Suffering,” Foundations of Apologetics, Vol. 10, DVD Video, (Norcross, Georgia: Ravi Zacharias Ministries International, 2007).

Baphomet – Another symbol of American cultural decline

Posted by :admin On : May 23, 2014
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Category: Archives, Culture Wars, Truth, Worldview

These days it seems that nonsense and silliness have more than their share of the headlines. If you haven’t followed the moral indignation of the Left regarding the 2012 placement of a privately-funded monument depicting the Ten Commandments on Oklahoma’s State Capitol grounds, then you probably haven’t heard of Baphomet. Baphomet is a supposed depiction of Satan, a goat-headed figure with horns, wings, and a long beard sitting on a pentagram-shaped throne surrounded by smiling children. The New York-based Satanic Temple has proposed to erect a statue of Baphomet on the Capitol’s grounds in response to the erection of the Ten Commandments monument which a Satanic Temple spokesman says opened the door for placement of their statue on the property. [1]

But sometimes a pesky cultural rash evidenced by an overabundance of nonsense and silliness (e.g., the Baphomet statue) is merely a symptom of a more serious disease that is attacking the culture’s central nervous system—its central cultural vision. A culture’s central cultural vision develops over time as an expression of the collective worldviews of its citizens which create a pattern, design, or structure that fits together in a particular way to explain the world. This explanation of order generally must have a coherence or consistency to give that society orientation and direction for living life. The central vision of a culture reflects its citizens’ values, those things and ideals it considers worth fighting for. Healthy cultures become diseased and decline for two reasons. First, a culture declines and ultimately fails as it loses it cohesiveness or ability to unify its citizenry. Second, even if a culture maintains unity and cohesiveness, its vision of order needed to answer the basic questions of life must over the longer term be based on truth.

In America, the central cultural vision of the Founders and the American colonists before them was based on the principles of biblical Christianity. However, in spite of voluminous historical evidence from the colonial period and founding era, secularists and humanists deny the special role that Christianity played in America’s founding.

A popular culture that misreads and wars against the validity of a morally sound central cultural vision will either be destroyed or cause that society to disintegrate. That is happening in America. The post-Christian and post-modern worldviews misread and are warring against the morally sound central cultural vision upon which the nation was founded, that is, the principles flowing from the biblical Christianity.

Due to rampant radical egalitarianism, surgically precise efforts to separate church and state, and a growing humanistic worldview, all evidence of our Christian cultural heritage is being swept from America and its institutions. Even our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of religion and speech are no longer sacrosanct from such assaults.

America’s central cultural vision built upon biblical Christianity is in danger of utter removal because of a loss of an understanding of the uniqueness of its worth, the loss of America’s ability to exclude those things which strike at the heart of its central cultural vision, and America’s inability to distinguish that which counts for much and that which counts for little. With the steady dismantling and removal of the central cultural vision upon which the nation was founded, America is staggering in a moral stupor as it drinks the poison of humanism with its disintegrating notions of the autonomous individual, relativism, radical egalitarianism, progressivism, and denial of a supreme being. [2]

Without its central cultural vision firmly anchored in transcendent unchanging biblical truth, America will continue its cultural drift to oblivion in a sea of competing voices, each clamoring for recognition of their particular brand of truth. The Baphomet statue controversy is one more fitting symbol of America’s cultural decline because of its loss of cohesion and flight from transcendent truth. If there is doubt about this assessment, one needs only to look at Baphomet’s competitors who also want space for a monument on the Capitol grounds: a Hindu leader in Nevada, an animal rights group, and the satirical Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. [3]

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Sean Murphy, “Satanists want Baphomet statue in Oklahoma,” 3NEWS, January 7, 2014. http://www.3news.co.nz/Satanists-want-Baphomet-statue-in-Oklahoma/tabid/417/articleID/327468/Default.aspx (accessed May 6, 2014).
[2] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods-Humanism and Christianity-The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishing, 2011), pp. 404-405.
[3] Murphy, “Satanists want Baphomet statue in Oklahoma.”

Does God lie?

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : May 16, 2014
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Category: Archives, Christianity, Homosexuality, Marriage

[Portions of this article were printed in the Tulsa World on May 11, 2014: Marriage equality is not a matter of faith.]

Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit heard arguments regarding the constitutionality of Oklahoma’s ban on same-sex marriage. However, in a guest editorial in the Tulsa World, the Reverends Justin Alan Lindstrom and Robin R. Meyers said that regardless of the outcome of the deliberations of the 10th Circuit, the case has already been settled by a different judge—meaning the God of the Bible.[1] The Reverends said that, “…marriage equality is a fundamental right for all Oklahomans…The freedom to marry for all couples fits squarely into the tenets of our faith, the teachings of our church and reflects values of love and compassion that sustains our communities and congregations.” In other words, same-sex couples have the right to marry and that right does not conflict with the tenets of the Christian faith as revealed in the Bible. However, the Apostle Paul’s words are indisputable with regard to God’s condemnation of homosexuality.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth…Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own person the due penalty for their error.” [Romans 1:18, 24-27. RSV]

Therefore, we see that the Reverends’ view of same-sex marriage does not fit squarely into the tenets of Christian faith. It is one thing to disagree with the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality or to reject biblical authority altogether in defending homosexual practices. However, it is blatantly disingenuous to ignore, revise, or twist biblical teachings in order to excuse homosexual practices when the biblical record is unequivocally clear in its universal condemnation of homosexuality. However, the Reverends assume their beliefs supersede biblical commandments regarding homosexuality (and by inference same-sex marriage) on the grounds that those beliefs are “…grounded in love and acceptance of everyone.”

Love

The Reverends beliefs ultimately must place love above basic and clear biblical doctrines which are brushed aside in favor of non-judgmental love and acceptance of people as they are. God is willing to accept and save people as they are, but God was not willing to leave them that way. That is the reason He sent His son Jesus and allowed man to nail Him to a cross. God could not have fellowship with sinful man, and the crucifixion of sinless Christ for man’s sin made a way for man to be restored to a right relationship with Him.

I am a sinner and my sin is no less sinful than that of a homosexual. We stand as equals before God and are given a choice. I am a sinner saved by Christ. I have repented of my sin and have been forgiven. Not only have I repented of past sins, I have turned from my sins. Homosexuals can repent, be saved, and fellowship with God for eternity. However, to do so, they cannot stay in their sin. God does not approve of homosexuality, and He will not contradict or overlook His own commandments regarding homosexuality by coating them with a liberal layer of “love and compassion.” Man has a choice to accept or reject God’s love. The creation of man with a free will meant the possibility of rejection of God and His love. In other words, free will and the potential for rejection of God was the penalty for the possibility of love.

Acceptance

Must Christians also unreservedly accept the homosexual as implied by the ministers? Christians must love the sinner, but it is not a blind love that overlooks sin. Although Christians should reach out in love to the homosexual, we cannot accept homosexuals into fellowship as fellow believers if they continue in their sin nor can we condone the sin of homosexuality by passing laws that allow same-sex marriage. We find our example in the Apostle Paul’s chastisement of the Corinthians for allowing immorality to reside in the midst of their fellowship.

It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. [1 Corinthians 5:1-2. RSV]

Homosexuals must be welcomed into our churches if they are seeking truth and escape from their bondage to sin. But in his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul again warned against communion with unbelievers.

Do not be mismated with unbelievers. For what partnership have righteousness and iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? [2 Corinthians 6:14. RSV]

Does God lie?

If the Reverends believe that God accepts everyone including partners in a same-sex marriage and persons engaged in homosexual conduct because of His boundless love, the ministers have effectively labeled God as a liar. But God cannot condemn homosexuality as He has throughout His word and at the same time embrace the homosexual that persists in rebelling against His commandments. If He does so as the Reverends imply, then God would be guilty of a lie. But Paul said that God never lies. [Titus 1:2. RSV]

God created heterosexual marriage as a cultural universal, and the strength and unity provided by it is the foundation of a strong and enduring society. Where traditional marriage is in broad disarray, as it is in most Western societies, it does not disprove the truth of the heterosexual marriage universal but rather speaks of the ravages caused by the ascending humanist worldview. Where traditional marriage declines, so do those societies decline that allow it to occur.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Rev. Justin Alan Lindstrom and Rev. Robin R. Meyers, “Marriage equality is a matter of faith,” Tulsa World, May 4, 2014, G-2.