A Call to Arms

When The Vast Majority are Secular Atheists 

The curse of atheistic secularism is scourging the land like an ancient Balrog.  Evil now comes finally to full flower.  The point of the modern world is this: man is the measure of all things, and nothing human is foreign to me.  This self-contradictory dogma places Man at the centre of the universe.  All meaning, all coherence, all truth is to be found in man.  

There are only two ways this nonsense can play out.  Either it will morph into militant libertinism; or, it will morph into the benign rule of the Great Leader.  For the latter think of Kim Jong-Un as a current manifestation.  In the case of the former think of the vast majority of people living in Western nations.

The West's version of roiling atheistic secularism places man at the centre of all meaning and truth.  The pace of integration into this nightmare gathers by the day.  Rod Dreher writes:

In the past, a person looked outside of himself to learn what he was to do with his life.  But in modernity, when we know that religion and all claims to transcendent values are an illusion, we must look into ourselves for the secret to our own well-being. Psychology did not necessarily intend to change a man's character, as in the old Christian therapies of repentance as a step toward conforming to God's will, but rather to help that man become comfortable with who he is.

Sociologist Rhilip Rieff, the great interpreter of Freud, described the shift in Western consciousness like this: "Religious man was born to be saved.  Psychological man is born to be pleased."  [Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (New York: Sentinel/Penguin Random House LLC, 2017), p. 41.]

Christian civilisation, naturally enough, depends upon the majority of the population in a country being Christian in Spirit and in truth.  When seventy-five percent of a population are Christian, no-one disputes that abortion is an act of high-handed murder.  When seventy-five percent of a population are atheistic secularists, no-one disputes that Christians should be put to death.  The atheistic world of secularism is rapidly moving forward and taking control.

Despite a conservative backlash in the 1980's, Psychological Man won decisively and now owns the culture--including most churches . . . . The new order found its constitutional confirmation in the Supreme Court's 1992 Planned Parenthood vs. Casey decision reaffirming abortion rights.  Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the pro-choice majority, explained (no doubt unintentionally) how the Sexual Revolution depends on a radical, even nihilistic, conception of freedom:

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life.  [Ibid., p. 41, 44]

Man is the measure of all things, and nothing human is foreign to me.  People say they are aghast at the rapidity of the drive towards the void.  This should not surprise us.  When one is falling down a cliff, every handhold or root or rock is clutched at feverishly--but in this case, none hold.  Just when the atheistic secularist finds what he thinks is a handhold, a haven, society moves rapidly beyond him, downward, ripping his handhold out.  Every technology, every advance is put to evil and the facilitation of wickedness.  Take robotics.  A great advance forward--to this!

The West will now not re-emerge as a Christian civilization until it has been through the tender embrace of the Balrog, that demon of the ancient world, and repented in dust and ashes and put Psychological Man to the sword.  It will not re-emerge until the Justice Kennedy's of this world are universally pilloried as idiotic fools from an ignorant benighted past.

The Christian remnant now has the opportunity to draw the lines far more clearly than what has been possible in the previous three hundred years.  It will become increasingly clear that the way of life and the way of death are radically different and that no compromise is possible.  But for those who persist in stumbling between the two, trying to make peace with Unbelief, the scathing indictment of John the Baptist remains both apt and timely:

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  [Matthew 3:7]