By Selwyn Duke

When writing about Barack Obama’s religious orientation recently, I pointed out that while I do believe he favors Muslim over Western culture, bowing before another — even God — is above his humility grade. I further mentioned that in keeping with this self-centeredness, Obama is (like all leftists) someone who denies moral reality.

Ironically, after penning my piece, I became aware of an interview Obama once gave — one quite relevant to the topic at hand. It was conducted in 2004 by Chicago Sun Times religion reporter Cathleen Falsani while Obama was running for the U.S. Senate, and it offers great insight into the nature of Obama’s “faith.” I think you’ll be interested to hear what he had to say.

The whole interview is infused with typical leftist philoso-babble. Obama says he’s “a big believer in tolerance” and thus looks askance at “certainty” and believes in the necessity “doubt” (an attitude mysteriously absent when pushing health care), bringing to mind G.K. Chesterton’s observation, “Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” Yet Obama also told Falsani that he had “deep faith.” This might cause some to wonder “In what?” And this brings us to the part of the interview in which he was asked “What is sin?” Here was his answer:

“Being out of alignment with my values.”

Perhaps this question was also above Obama’s pay grade, or maybe he studied divinity with Al Gore. Whatever the case, this is not the definition of sin. Rather, sin is when you violate God’s laws, or, to put it in more modernistic terms, it’s being out of alignment with God’s values (which are the Truth). So it was an interesting answer. Some might conclude that if you define sin as being out of alignment with your values, you believe you are God.

An even stranger answer came earlier in the interview. In response to Falsani’s query about whether he prayed often, Obama said, “Uh, yeah, I guess I do. It’s not formal, me getting on my knees. I think I have an ongoing conversation with God. I think throughout the day, I’m constantly asking myself questions about what I’m doing, why am I doing it [emphasis mine].”

Did everyone catch that? If I pray to God, I may ask Him questions. I won’t say that I have “an ongoing conversation with God” and then reflexively follow up with “I’m constantly asking myself questions . . . .”

That is, unless I believe I am God.

Now, do I say that Obama thinks he is a supreme being who created the Universe? Unless it’s a universe of programs, laws, regulations and debt, no. But I am certain (if it’s still legal to be so) that Obama is a typical leftist: self-centered and solipsistic. He has deified himself, in the sense that he believes he is above everyone else. This is why he, showing no doubt whatsoever, feels so sure about reshaping our world in his own image.

His comments also vindicate my assessment of him as a moral relativist. Whenever you hear “my values,” know that it’s the language of relativism. It’s the belief that, hey, you have your values, I have mine — you say “potato” and I say “potahto” — and it’s all just a matter of perspective. This is contrary to any absolutist faith, such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. They teach that God has determined right and wrong and that it is something eternal and unchanging, encapsulated in a word leftists avoid: Truth.

Understand that “values” itself is a term of relativism. Mother Teresa had values, but so did Adolf Hitler; values aren’t good by definition — virtues are. This is why the latter term is hardly uttered in today’s if-it-feels-good-do-it culture; instead, people may boast about how they have values, which is much like a street pusher defending his trade by saying that he provides drugs (which can cure or kill). A value can be sinful as well as sublime.

But in the leftists’ universe there is no sin. After all, they believe as ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras did that “Man is the measure of all things.” However, if this is so, what is what we call right and wrong? It then can be nothing but opinion. But think about the implications of this: If that unchanging and eternal thing called Truth didn’t exist, “morality” couldn’t have any basis in reality. And this would mean that right and wrong doesn’t exist at all. Ergo, no sin.

Unfortunately for Obama’s opponents, however, this insight into his un-faith won’t lose him many votes. This is because he has a lot of company, as moral relativism is the characteristic spiritual disease of our time. And this is why I will use this opportunity as, to quote our relativist-in-chief, a “teachable” moment.

A poll in recent years found that, strikingly, 62 percent of those identifying as Christians didn’t believe in Absolute Truth. I’ll also note that we have seen a great number of articles lately about how Christian youth leave the Church as they move through college. These two factors are not unrelated.

On a simple level, if there’s no Truth — if virtues are just values and values are just opinion — why pick up your cross and carry it? Why embrace a faith that places moral constraints upon you (especially the sexual variety, which interferes with moderns’ favorite recreation)? “If it feels good, do it” then makes more sense.

Delving a bit deeper, relativism strikes at the foundational act of Christianity: the sacrifice at Calvary. After all, if right and wrong are just opinion and there is thus no sin, there was no reason for Jesus to die on the cross, was there? (But He never said that His blood would be shed for you and for all so that opinions may be forgiven.) So if you haven’t instilled your children with a belief in Truth, don’t be surprised when they leave the Church. If they don’t believe in sin, they cannot believe in a savior.

But this doesn’t mean they won’t desire salvation — that is, at least the worldly variety. And this is one reason why millions of Americans, especially the ever-more-relativistic young, voted for The One. A people who believed in Truth would never cast such a vote — and those who do believe in it generally didn’t — but when man doesn’t believe in God, he makes man God. As to why, I explored the reasons in The New American magazine in 2009, writing:

Among other things, people find a belief in God comforting. It involves the ideas that God, or good, will always triumph in the end; that someone is watching over them, cares for them, will help them, and will be there for them in the end. Now, since this human need doesn’t disappear along with faith, it follows that people will replace God with something else when they lose faith in Him. Thus did millions of Germans cheer Hitler believing he represented security, triumph, economic resurrection, hope, and change. And it isn’t surprising that he rose during the desperate days of the Weimar Republic, with its hyper-inflation and hypo-industriousness. It is when people are desperate that they search for a savior; when they are brought to their lowest, they have nowhere to look but up. It is then that they find either the Deity or a demagogue. And when you mistake the latter for the former, the danger is profound. For you don’t disobey a god, you don’t question him; a god is infallible. A prostrate people will follow a messianic leader to the ends of the Earth even if it takes them to the edges of Hell.
. . . Someone who would accept any degree of deification is not only unfit to be worshipped as a god, he is unfit to be followed as a leader. As G.K. Chesterton said in his classic work The Everlasting Man, “A great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it…. Nobody can imagine Aristotle claiming to be the father of gods and men, come down from the sky; though we might imagine some insane Roman Emperor like Caligula claiming it for him, or more probably for himself.” It is also correct to say that truly great people know that their leaders aren’t God, and the greater they are, the better they know it.
So, ultimately, the warning here isn’t about Barack Obama. It is about us. Our tendency to make man into God will always be directly proportional to our tendency to make God into myth.

Thank God, the myth of Obama has finally been punctured in the minds of many. As with the Daniel Dravot character (played by Sean Connery) in “The Man Who Would be King,” the natives have now seen Obama bleed, and they’re not happy. He is bleeding America, and he won’t stop until somebody (hopefully the Republicans starting January) stops him. After all, why would he listen to the people or compromise with anyone? Despite his extolling of uncertainty, when he has his “ongoing conversation with God” and is asking himself questions, I tend to think he views the answers as most infallible, indeed.

Selwyn Duke is a writer, columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show and has been a regular guest on the award-winning Michael Savage Show. His work has appeared in Pat Buchanan’s magazine The American Conservative and he writes regularly for The New American and Christian Music Perspective.  He is a regular contributor to Ether Zone.
Selwyn Duke can be reached at: SelwynDuke@optonline.net

“Published originally at EtherZone.com

 

WesternFront America

Man is by nature a political animal.

~ Aristotle

Like Aristotle, conservatives generally accept the world as it is; they distrust the politics of abstract reason – that is, reason divorced from experience.

~ Benjamin Wiker

Dr. Benjamin Wiker, in his new opus, “10 Books every Conservative Must Read,” refers to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle as the father of political conservatism. Citing Aristotle’s work “Politics,” Wiker lists two primary reasons: First, Aristotle understood that the essential political argument happens between those who recognize that political life and morality are natural (from God) as opposed to those who believe that political life and morality are entirely manmade, like the Sophists and Epicureans of Aristotle’s day.

Secondly, “conservatives, like Aristotle, lean toward political suspicion, since they believe mankind is not infinitely malleable, and they understand that morality is objective and places restrictions on what human beings can and should do in a civilized society.”

From the beginning of “Politics,” Aristotle draws a distinction between his ideas and that of the Sophists – the liberals and moral relativists of his times – regarding the natural foundation of political life and society, claiming it lies in the natural union of husband and wife, the family. Aristotle thought that humans are social and political by nature; therefore politics should not be about acquisition of power but about “acting out and perfecting our human nature insofar as that is possible.” However, perfecting our human nature is not Aristotle favoring some utopian socialism, but that our political existence must be in accord with our human nature – Natural Law.

Aristotle systematically outlines the building blocks of society being derivative of the family, which is a husband and wife having children. Several families form a small village. Several villages make a city and several cities a nation. While the village was too small and the nation too large for “the full flowering of our nature,” Aristotle believed that the city-state was ideal in size and resources to achieve the fulfillment of our nature.

According to Wiker, Aristotle maintained that “society doesn’t rest on some kind of social contract that guarantees abstract rights, but on the natural union of husband and wife that binds the past and present to the future with children.”

In the spirit of modern deconstructionism, liberals of today will crow about Aristotle favoring slavery, subordination of women, abortion and infanticide as being “natural.” Of course, Aristotle was wrong on these issues, and thankfully Christianity historically allowed for those corrections of Aristotle in regards to slavery, abortion and infanticide to be made. Yet, contrary to deconstructionists of today who want to eradicate the legacy of Western civilization, particularly white males, conservatives and most rational people can accept the singular genius of Aristotle while disregarding his philosophical excesses.

The central premise of Aristotle’s “Politics” lay in his division of political regimes into different types according to the number who rule, and what kind of rule, good or bad:

• Kingly – one person rules for the true common good;
• Tyranny – one person rules for his own advantage;
• Aristocracy – a few rule for the true common good;
• Oligarchy – a few rule only for their own advantage;
• Polity [Republic] – majority rule for the sake of the true common good;
• Democracy – majority rule for their own private advantage rather than the common good.

Aristotle’s government-rule paradigm seems a bit counterintuitive today because we have been taught in our state-controlled public schools that democracy is the epitome of just government, but Wiker states, “Aristotle takes the quite sensible position that the majority can be as selfish, foolish and tyrannical as any tyrant or oligarch. Therefore, he calls democracy a perversion.” The constitutional framers agreed with Aristotle and understood the diabolical nature of democracy, considering it to be “mobocracy” – the tyranny of the majority.

For Aristotle, the “greatest factional split is perhaps that between virtue and depravity.” Morality is the cement that holds the republic together. When war is waged on morality and depravity trumps virtue and replaces it in the marketplace of ideas, then a good government quickly devolves into a bad one.

For example, Aristotle cites “demagogues, in order to make themselves popular” so as to manipulate the electorate, assert that the will of the people is supreme over the law, which in American politics means that popular social programs like Social Security, Medicare and welfare can overrule the Constitution.

Admittedly, Aristotle was a Greek pagan who believed in a pantheon of gods; nevertheless, the singular genius of his philosophical worldview allowed for the understanding that all governments of men absent virtue were doomed to collapse into utter failure and tyranny. On this point Wiker commented:

The reality of wickedness, or sin, makes the creation of perfect political regimes humanly impossible, and it ensures that any imprudent attempts to create political perfection, or utopia, will end in disaster. Conservatives believe in original sin – or the simple reality of human wickedness – and understand that this limits what good politics can achieve.

Throughout Aristotle’s “Politics” is a relentless striving for the perfecting of our human nature, that our political life has to comport with our nature and Natural Law; yet Aristotle was not some utopian socialist who believed that man was a tabula rasa (blank slate) upon which a perfect nature could be written.

Aristotle was a practical man who understood that the best way to understand humanity is to study the past. Aristotle loved the family and saw this institution as both the fundamental economic entity as well as the singular disseminator of morality. This explains why since the Enlightenment Age liberals and utopian socialists have been so hell-bent to undermine and destroy the family at every opportunity – destroy the family and you will destroy the nation.

Aristotle’s political worldview understood that without virtue and a republic based on morality, the most savage men will devolve from political animals (Natural Law) to savage political beasts (survival of the fittest). Therefore, I agree with Dr. Wiker that Aristotle is indeed the father of political conservatism.

© Ellis Washington

Ellis Washington is former editor of the Michigan Law Review and law clerk at The Rutherford Institute. He hosts a radio program Thursdays at 11 a.m. Eastern on 1620 AM in Atlanta. It can be heard online at the Radio Sandy Springs website. His weekly podcasts are available Mondays at The Conservative Beacon. Washington is a graduate of John Marshall Law School and a lecturer and freelance writer on constitutional law, legal history and critical race theory. He has written over a dozen law review articles and several books, including “The Inseparability of Law and Morality: The Constitution, Natural Law and the Rule of Law” (2002). Washington’s latest book is “The Nuremberg Trials: Last Tragedy of the Holocaust.”

 

WesternFront America

…that is faithful, true, and enduring.

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.” — 2 Corinthians 5:17

At one point in my grandfather’s young life, he found himself to be a very unhappy man. He became angrier and angrier with every passing day. He knew he had a problem, but he wasn’t about to admit it to his wife and children. Grandpa would often say that he was misunderstood by others, including his own family. Instead of seeking guidance, he made them pay the price for his pent-up frustrations.

Too often he took his anger out on his family by becoming verbally abusive behind closed doors. And then, when it was over, he would leave the house in a huff, while hanging his head in shame over the fact that he had just treated his defenseless brood so badly. Within his heart, he knew he was wrong.

With tears stinging his eyes, he would walk down the street whispering to himself a promise to never do that again. He would assure my grandmother that he really meant it. But just a week later, after a tough long day at work, he would do it again. And at times he would break furniture into pieces while shouting at the top of his voice. He frightened his entire family, who cowered in their bedrooms.

These escalating acts were repeated just like a time-bomb ticking. He yelled at his wife and snapped at his kids without provocation, again and again. It was those outside forces that annoyed him. Unfortunately, this young father and husband had not learned not to bring destructive emotions through the door of his own home.

A changed heart

Thankfully, grandfather’s life changed and there was happiness after all. For you see, grandfather made a promise to God to follow Him. And by grace, he allowed Christ to have His way. He literally became the father that my dad longed for. And to God’s glory, grandfather became one of the major reasons why my own father gave his own life to the Lord. His father’s transformation was a tremendous witness to attest to what Christ can do when you’re willing to yield to the power of the Holy Spirit.

Because of my young age, I never experienced the out-of-control and angry side of “papa.” He was, to me, a happy, kind, smiling face who sang with the church choir. Those are the memories I’m privileged to have whenever I think of him. He died a little over two years ago with his loving family by his side.

The truth is that no matter what your personal circumstances are, when the human spirit yields itself to God, His love can bring about changes because He is faithful. It’s my personal opinion that folks can’t truly alter their lives without a commitment to a loving God. The Bible describes this as having a born-again experience:

“Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).

Man is sinful and separated from God, yet He still loves us. Being apart from God makes it impossible for people to keep promises to themselves and put a stop to doing things they know are destructive behavior. But by the grace of God, they can overcome their sinful nature.

“When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying Who then can be saved? But Jesus beheld them and said unto them, With men this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible” (Matt. 19:25-26).

Willpower not enough

To this very day, America is still fighting a war against terrorism. I can’t help but think of the tremendous increase in church attendance shortly after the World Trade Center collapsed in 2001. Stunned and very frightened, people suddenly became determined to be on good footing with the Almighty God.

Prominent pastors became enthusiastic because an act of terrorism promised to precipitate a major spiritual revival in America. Unfortunately, it took only two short months and it was over. Church attendance went right back down to where it was before the horrific attack took place.

It’s regrettable that this revival only lasted a couple of months. Didn’t the people who suddenly went back to church actually mean to return to matters of faith and take it seriously? They had the perfect opportunity to experience a renewal and make a positive impact on society, while bolstering morality which is floundering in our country today. I am convinced, for the most part, that they did, at least for the time being. It’s evident, however, that fear was not enough of a motivator to keep their religious faith intact, it was enough only to bring them to church temporarily. When the planes stopped crashing into buildings, life just simply went back to the mundane. People quickly forgot all their promises and went back to the way things were.

We can spend a lot of time deciphering the self-sufficient will of human beings who do a lot of talking about willpower and the strength of sheer determination. Apply those topics to arenas in the world of business, careers, or politics, and there is something to be said for that. We live in a country where we can become as successful as the next person. However, in the world of faith, sheer willpower simply isn’t enough, because most temptations are bigger than the willpower we can muster up all by ourselves.

Broken promises

While reading through my Bible, I’m reminded about the Israelites. In the Book of Exodus, they had just been delivered from Egyptian slavery. God’s “Promised People” had seen the hand of God part the Red Sea and drown the Egyptians. They witnessed the fiery presence of God come down on the top of Mount Sinai. As they were privileged to watch the spectacular wonder of the moment, they made a solemn promise to God. Moses spoke with God, and then gave a report to the Israelites:

“And Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and laid before their faces all these words which the Lord had commanded him. And all the people answered together, and said, ‘All that the Lord hath spoken we will do.’ And Moses returned the words of the people unto the Lord” (Exodus 19:7, 8).

The Israelites made a promise to God, and they believed it was an easy promise to make after following God’s presence out into the desert. They repeatedly made the same promise after Moses had received the Ten Commandments:

“And Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, ‘All the words which the Lord hath said will we do’” (Exodus 24:3).

They repeated the same promise again a couple of verses later:

“And Moses took the book of the covenant, and read it before the people, and they said, ‘All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient’” (Exodus 24:7).

When the Israelites made these promises they were sincere. Unfortunately, the rest of the Book of Exodus and the Bible exposes the sad record of God’s people repeatedly breaking their promises to the Lord. They found themselves doing the very things they had promised God they would never do again.

The problem is not just sin, but ‘sinfulness’

I believe that God’s people today mean it when they promise to stop committing certain sins. They just don’t have what it takes to keep their promises. There has to be a real personal relationship with the Lord. When you love God, you want to please Him.

The Word describes sin as the transgression of God’s moral law: “And the problem of sin runs very deep. Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4).

But sin is not just something we do. It’s also something we allow to enter into our lives. God could have solved the whole problem by just removing the laws we were breaking. Yet, intuitively, we know there’s more to it than that. Our sins separate us from God. The Scriptures say that we are powerless to change our sinful ways by ourselves:

Isaiah wrote, “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear” (Isaiah 59:2).

The prophet Jeremiah expounds on the subject plainly: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil” (Jeremiah 13:23).

God says that you can no more change your sinful nature than you can change the color of your skin. If transgression were just a matter of breaking the rules, all you would have to do is stop breaking them. Can you do that?

But there is something about the human heart that has been changed by the nature of sin. Unless regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit, Christians will continually find themselves helpless to live the life they know they should live to glorify their Savior. They will not be able to witness to others and draw others close to them. The work of the Great Commission will be difficult to complete —

“Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:16-20).

A faithful heart

It’s obvious that too many Christians suffer from a heart problem. So get out there and flex your spiritual muscle, and with God’s help begin to change your ways.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

Breaking God’s law is sin. Acting out and being disobedient has trickled down into the very essence of our being. Everything we do is infected by it. Even the good things we do, according to the Bible are sullied:

“But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness is as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away” (Isaiah 64:6).

Without a spiritual rebirth, even with all the good we do, our works are like filthy rags. Sin will have sway over us. Mankind’s thought processes have been perverted. Sin has altered our misguided priorities. Most importantly, it has taken our focus off “The Great I Am” and put it squarely on ourselves.

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

Our own weakness explains why we sometimes find ourselves unable to walk away from sinful habits. We know that smoking cigarettes can cause cancer. Yet we often refuse to take personal responsibility and break free from a psychological habit. We know that bad temper can ruin our family, but we can’t seem to close the lid on our fuse. We know that our lying, gossiping mouth is doing untold damage to others. Yet many will not have that conversation with the Lord and ask Him to help them change.

Not alone

Take solace in the fact that you are not alone and that everybody struggles with something. You have never experienced a temptation that somebody else hasn’t felt:

“There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

Whatever you’re going through, others have walked that same path. Let me share with you a little secret. The most recognized persons in the Bible have struggled with the same temptations you struggle with.

Most of the disciples proved to be faulty in one way or another because they were human, despite being saved by the blood of their Savor. Did you know that Moses had an extremely hot temper? David certainly struggled with a lust problem. And Abraham lied about his wife to save his own skin. Peter struggled with taking a stand in public acknowledging his discipleship. He denied his Lord three times. Noah had a problem with alcohol.

The Bible is full of people just like you and me. It’s amazing that throughout His Word, God refused to abandon suffering people. If you are willing to be used by God, and willing to let Him make the changes in your life, you’ll be astonished at how He can turn things around.

Real hope and change
As we strive to remove a Marxist progressive agenda that now plagues our country, we must understand the game plan: If “We the People” are not willing to return to the God of our forefathers, there will be little or no chance to do what we desire to accomplish.
America’s beginnings where ushered in by men of faith who embraced the fact that mankind received their inalienable rights from our Creator God.

Patriots, it’s time to dust off your Bibles and put your emphasis on the Word of God. Let us never forget that God established the greatest nation in the world. When we think of freedom, remember that it is The Almighty who has given us the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What America needs is a change of heart that is faithful, true, and enduring.

My grandfather’s favorite hymn: I Come To The Garden Alone — George Beverly Shea

RenewAmerica.com encourages grassroots movements that are based on Godly principles. The site has a clarion call for a Spiritual Renewal.

Feel free to study: America’s Documents

Introduction

When the Founders laid the groundwork for our republic, they stated in the final words of the Declaration of Independence:

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. (emphasis added)

In the spirit of the above words from the Declaration, we invite all to join us in a “Pledge for America’s Revival.” Those who sign the Pledge commit to stand with likeminded patriots in advancing America’s God-centered revival, upon the principles of our nation’s founding.

Prayerfully consider the words of the Pledge. If our country is to survive in liberty, it needs citizens who understand their vocation as participants in the political process — not merely spectators. We are counting on you to make a difference, of your own initiative, in preserving our republic.

If you are prepared to commit in good faith and with a heart for God’s will — and find others equally committed — America’s Revival will grow into a mighty grassroots reality, capable of helping to restore America’s allegiance to God, and the connection between our liberties and our respect for His authority as our Creator.

Upon this depends the future of our republic!

The pledge

In viewing the needs of America against the backdrop of current destructive trends, and seeing an urgent duty to “make a difference” by my own individual voice and activism in the cause of preserving our nation —

I HEREBY ANNOUNCE my support for the purposes of America’s Revival, purposes that center in the values and traditions that define America itself — beginning with the need to acknowledge the authority of God in all areas of American life, including the political arena.

I UNDERSTAND that the purposes of America’s Revival include:

• Teaching and promoting the self-evident truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.
• Upholding the requirements, guarantees, and protections of the Constitution of the United States.
• Preserving and defending the vital moral foundations of our republic — including the sanctity of life; the God-ordained family; the free exercise of religion in both public and private life; and the divinely-appointed equal rights of every individual.
• Encouraging God-fearing Americans to recommit to living in harmony with the will of God — yielding their hearts completely to Him and trusting in Him in all things. (See Jer. 31:33-34 and Prov. 3:5-6.)
• Doing whatever else might be properly included in the obligations and responsibilities of American citizenship, in accordance with true principles and the requirements of self-governance.

I THEREFORE PLEDGE to stand with likeminded Americans in advancing this cause — and pledge to do my best to find and encourage others who are willing to make and keep the same pledge. I also pledge, as did our Founders, to commit my resources to assist worthy patriotic causes, according to my individual ability and circumstances.

FINALLY, I pledge to give my best effort in all other needful, exemplary ways as God may guide me — for the cause of America’s Revival and for God, who is my witness.

Sign the pledge

© Marie Jon

 

WesternFront America

The early 21st century stands as a period of profound moral confusion. On the one hand, mothers and doctors are permitted to crack open the skulls and suck out the brains of nearly-born babies with government sanction under the banner of partial birth abortion. Should these very same people hike into the woods and crack open a bald eagle egg, they could face serious prison time.

It would therefore seem that contemporary society is marked by two seemingly contradictory extremes — that of extreme license and that of excessive control. However, upon closer inspection it could be concluded that these conditions are not as contradictory as the situation might originally appear. Rather, it would seem each is the result of the systematic removal of the ethical balance provided within the Judeo-Christian tradition with its emphasis upon transcendent standards provided by an infinitely just and loving God.

With the increasing complexity of knowledge and technology, those trained in the acquisition and use of this complex body of thought (those broadly referred to as “intellectuals”) have taken on increased levels of influence and responsibility throughout society. No longer does agriculture or manufacturing dominate society to the degree it once did.

Futurists from Alvin Toffler to Newt Gingrich have characterized the current sociological epoch as information-based, with those manipulating this information from government bureaucrats to Hollywood producers exercising unfathomable power over the composition of the contemporary mind. Therefore, it must be remembered, as Lord Acton is believed to have said, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Through a historical process too complicated to detail to a significant degree in this brief analysis, the prevailing secular elite came to see the world around them and their own assorted intellectual systems as satisfactory explanations in and of themselves for the reality in which these thinkers found themselves. According to Phillip Johnson in “Reason In The Balance”, this way of viewing the world prevalent among the most influential intellectuals is naturalism. Naturalism is the idea that the material reality constitutes the totality of existence and the idea of God is merely a mental construct promulgated in an attempt to cope with the stark realities of the universe in which man finds himself (7).

The average person might naturally conclude that naturalism by its nature would confine itself to the issues of blunt observable scientific fact. However, naturalism has left the tedium of the laboratory and now seeks to influence fields as divergent from science as education, ethics, and government. It is through this set of paradigms embracing the present material reality as the highest criteria of judgment that the twin siblings of chaos and tyranny have become so prevalent throughout world society.

No matter what the secular elites call their particular systems or what concerns these systems emphasize, it is the goal of the secular elite to remake man in the image of the prevailing secular elite. According to Alister McGrath in “Intellectuals Don’t Need God & Other Modern Myths”, prominent ideologies competing for the minds of men include Enlightenment rationalism, Marxism, and scientific materialism (160).

Despite the shades of difference between each of these systems, at their core each shares the assumption that man is bound by no eternal standard beyond this reality and can be remade into whatever the powers that be see fit. It is from this effort to remake the fundamental nature of man that the sorrow of anarchy and tyranny flow.

Bound by certain God-ordained limits regarding behavioral standards and human relationships, man can expect nothing but heartache should he decide to ignore these warnings. However, those seeking to craft a cultural ethos standing apart from the moral will of God regularly ignore these moral stoplights like newly-licensed teenagers barreling down the Las Vegas strip.

Proponents of modernism originally hypothesized that man could retain a high degree of morality without reference to all that theological superstition. Yet without a clear theological reference by which to measure, the actions of man degenerate into the depths of unfathomable evil.

According to Norman Geisler in “Introduction To Philosophy: A Christian Perspective”, when man looks to himself as the source of right and wrong, the result is existential subjectivism and relativism where each person becomes a law unto themselves (404).

And while modernism attempted to maintain the illusion of objective standards apart from the revelation of God, the logical conclusion of such atheistic thinking — postmodernism — holds to no such delusions. In fact, political radical and literary critic Michel Foulcalt has stated there are no facts (though this assertion is itself stated as a fact) and his fellow travelers down the deconstructionist superhighway literally fancy themselves as “assassins of objectivity” according to Lynne Cheney in “Telling The Truth: Why Our Culture & Country Have Stopped Making Sense & What We Can Do About It” (91).

Such sentiments possess ramifications beyond settling the issue of whether or not hemlines will be low or high for the coming year. Such ideas determine the very shape and composition of human society and relationships.

This is particularly evident on college campuses where these kinds of ideas enjoy free reign having the status of orthodoxy and where no one bats an eye with anarchy and tyranny walking together hand in hand. For example, Dinesh D’Souza points out in “Illiberal Education : The Politics Of Race & Sex On Campus” that many college campuses distribute condoms and support the vilest profanity as art yet advocate a radical form of feminism just about branding traditional forms of sex as rape and enforce speech codes so broad as to punish “misdirected laughter” and “exclusion from conversation” (238).

Furthermore, much of twentieth and twenty-first history has been a running commentary on the chaos and tyranny that result from attempting to undermine the insoluble union between morality and divinity. The former Soviet Union perhaps stands as the primary example of this kind of experiment where in an attempt to better himself man turns his back on God and reaps the consequences in abundance. That particular society experienced bloodshed and misery rarely repeated in human history except perhaps in its sister dictatorships of Nazi Germany and Maoist China.

Without an objective standard as provided by the moral revelation of God, the state as embodied by the Communist Party was free to do as it pleased such as changing the law at the drop of a hat and then violate the law when it suited without any degree of institutional recourse available to the Soviet people. In his monumental “Understanding The Times”, David Noebel quotes a Communist functionary who said, “There is no God, no hereafter, no punishment for evil. We can do as we wish. I thank God, in whom I don’t believe, that I have lived to this hour when I can express all of this evil in my heart (104). Few Evangelical thinkers have been able to express the moral dangers of atheism in a more succinct manner.

Standing in marked opposition to atheism and its law of the jungle and inherent antinomianism is belief in God and the corollaries of morality flowing from God’s existence. From the heartaches and confusion mentioned previously in this exposition, it is evident that mankind is incapable of establishing a satisfactory moral system of his own accord.

Instead, man must be provided one by an objective outside source yet one familiar with the conditions under which man is capable of thriving. Furthermore, it is only through God as revealed in Scripture that one is even justified in speaking of morality in the first place.

Try as he might, C.S. Lewis points out in “Mere Christianity”, man cannot escape the encompassing embrace or rebuke of morality. For even in the attempt to flee from its more traditional formulations, one must invoke the structure of its dialogue in order to appeal to a competing set of standards (3).

For example, D. James Kennedy points out in “Character & Destiny: A Nation In Search Of Its Soul” that tolerance is the last virtue of an immoral society since this moral principle in invoked to cover over a plethora of popular abominations ranging from pornography to abortion to sodomy (78). The issue is not so much that man will live without some degree of morality, but rather by whose standards will man live and the consequences resulting from such decisions.

Westminster Seminary Professor John Frame elaborates in “Apologetics To The Glory Of God” that, in order to exist as objective standards beyond the level of subjective sentiments, morals must stem from an absolute source; and since these principles govern personable entities, they must exude from an absolute ultimate personality (100). If morality exists in a transcendent source apart from man in God, morality is granted a degree of liberation from the murky fog of subjectivism yet is accessible to man and can be said to exist in all situations even if finite man refused to disentangle himself from the passion of the moment to view these conundrums from the crisp peaks of objective detachment.

Since these divinely legislated standards stem from God, they exist as part of the underlying fabric of the universe. Try as he might, man cannot escape the lure of morality, such a situation further attesting to the power of the God standing behind these principles. Romans 2:14-15 says, “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts…(NIV).”

Even those who actively choose to suppress and undermine this universal order appeal to it when it suits their interests. C.S. Lewis writes in “Mere Christianity”, “Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining before he can say Jack Robinson (5).” Norman Geisler illustrates this point in “Christian Ethics” in the story of a student professing antinomianism who appealed to objective standards upon receiving a failing grade from this ethics instructor regarding a trivial matter (384).

At this point, readers not normally enchanted by the banter of academic dialogue may concede that morality does indeed flow from God but may wonder what practical impact such a truth may have in everyday existence. Actually, quite a bit.

Since God is both the legislator of traditional morality and the loving creator of man, it follows that the traditional moral system established by God and set forth in the revelation of the Holy Bible is the system of morality best suited to the nature of humanity, both protecting him to the greatest possible degree from the rampant evil plaguing a fallen world and allowing him to enjoy whatever goodness that remains in it through the grace of God.

For example, God did not establish the rules surrounding marriage in order to toss a wet blanket over the fornication follies. Rather, confining the act of human intimacy within the context of marriage balances both the desire for physical pleasure and the need for lasting love, to say nothing of protecting the individual against the proto-apocalyptic pestilences now ravaging millions. Instead of withering away like a forgotten memory as predicted by some, Tim LaHaye hypothesizes in “The Battle For The Family” that the family will in reality provide a foundation of stability in times of unprecedented social turmoil (237).

The moral argument for God is far more than a dry academic proof found in seminary textbooks. Its reality is being made more concrete each day throughout the culture as the nation continues to drift away from its Judeo-Christian foundations.

In “Turning The Tide: The Fall Of Liberalism & The Rise Of Common Sense”, Pat Robertson describes the two possible futures that await the United States (293-296). Americans can either repent of their wickedness and return to God and His standards, experiencing national renewal, individual well-being, and eternal salvation in the process. Or, the American people can continue in their sin and deny God’s very existence, risking national decline, personal suffering, and eternal damnation as a result. The choice is up to you, with your eternal destiny and the welfare of your family hanging in the balance.

 

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