"For We Are Not Ashamed . . . "

Defying the Religious Establishment of our Day

Belief in God or gods is inevitable.  In this sense, all mankind is religious.  Secularism is an attempt to roll back this inevitability, and modify thought and action into a belief in Man.  The end result promulgates yet another religion: Humanism.  

This new religion, fashionable in the previous century, is unwinding at a rapid pace.  Humanism is so dumb that it can invent seventy different human genders, and insist that society profess and confess them all.  It's a human right to have my particular self-selected gender respected and acknowledged; it is also my right to embrace gender-fluidity: that is, my gender this hour may be quite different to what it was an hour ago.

The Apostle of the one, true Living God declaimed sin-wracked humanity in the following terms: "professing to be wise they became fools". [Romans 1:23]  But all religions, Humanism included, have the opportunity to present their systems of belief and theologies to the watching world.  Angelo Codevilla presents some of the unholy laws of Humanism:

The new religion's commandments range from the serious to the purely fashionable ("Thou shalt not eat fat, which is bad for you and the environment, nor smoke tobacco".)  The serious ones begin with what can be called the First Commandment: "Thou shalt have no truck with the God of the Bible, lest he outshine thee."  Its corollary, however, is that the state outshines each of us.  Hence, "Thou shalt obey the state--the source of all truth, prosperity, and status."  Then follow the practical commandments: "Thy children belong in day care, thy parents in nursing homes."

"Thou shalt abort," or at least speak of abortions as the ultimate act of liberation and regard denigration of abortion as heinous.  Having paid taxes, "Thou shalt struggle with all thy might to get more from and through the government than thou hast paid."  Further: "Thou shalt copulate at will, counting this as thy great freedom"; "Thou shalt keep guard over they neighbour for any sign of evasion of regulations and promptly report the same."  Ultimately, "If ever thou dost doubt the authority for these commandments, remember thou that it flows somehow from our Mother Earth, our fragile planet, through Science."  [Angelo Codevilla, The Character of Nations: How Politics Makes and Breaks Prosperity, Family, and Civility (New York: Basic Books, 1997), p. 185.]

This represents the religion of the majority in the West--the only exceptions being those who self-consciously adopt a different faith. The great problem with this religious establishment is that is has no higher power than itself with which to judge itself.  Therefore, as one would expect, it increasingly ostracizes, stigmatizes, and ultimately punishes those who will not dance in its mad dervishes.  In other words, secular humanism has totalitarian tendencies.

There is no more effective way to confront the established religion of  Humanism than to lay against it the indictments of the Apostle of the one, true, Living God:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 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 themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's decree that those who practise such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practise them. [Romans 1: 18-32]

It is for these reasons that we Christians take our stand against today's prevailing idolatry.  We declare that we, for our part, are not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it remains the power of God unto salvation, whereas Humanism represents degradation, destruction, and ultimately death.  Ironically, it is the Christian's love of man which makes Humanism a belief system to be resisted at every juncture.