The Reign of Western Idolatry

The Last One Hundred Years

All mankind is incurably religious.  Man is a worshipping creature.  The distinction is not whether mankind, cultures, or nations worship, but whom they worship.  A second proposition is this: either individual human beings will worship the one, true Living God, or they will worship an idol--a god manufactured by men.

Some religions claim to believe in no god.  Buddhism--at least in its Theravada form--is an atheistic religion, for example, believing in no god, but in the eventual annihilation of the human soul.  Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the West, professing belief in no deity, would end up manufacturing a veritable workshop of idols.

One of these is economics.  Filthy lucre has been cast in the light of a pure god, able to bestow upon mankind a millennium of prosperity.  Now to those who have missed it, these doctrines of the religion of economics have been seriously proposed.  It has not been intended as a metaphor.  Nor is it offered as hyperbole to make a point.  It has been (and continues to be) argued as a literal proposition.  Money is the god of Western man.

William T. Cavanaugh, in The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) cites Robert H. Nelson's 2001 book, entitled Economics as Religion in which the author argues:

. . . the replacement of Christianity and other religions by the religion of economics has ushered in an age of freedom and prosperity.  Nelson shows how market economics exactly parallels the earlier role of Christianity in Western society, with its own providential god (the invisible hand of the market), sacred texts, priesthood, and plan of salvation for the recurrent problems of human history: "The Jewish and Christian bibles foretell one outcome of history.  If economics foresees another, it is in effect offering a competing religious vision." [Op cit., p. 108f.]

Thus, one example of a modern atheistic Western religion is economics.  There are others.  Socialism is another.  Fascism is a third.  All three exalt Man to the status of a god, to the same extent as other religions exalt their deities.

Worship and Death

We Worship By Faith, Not By Fun

Bill Smith
Kuyperian

As you approach the outer court of the Tabernacle with an animal in tow, your journey has been filled with thoughts of what is about to happen. This little animal, an animal of which you may have grown fond, is about to be slaughtered in your place. There may even be some thoughts of turning back.

The priest meets you in the outer court somewhere around the bronze altar; this big, hollow box with four horns on the top in which a fire is constantly burning. You lay your hands on the head of the animal, ordaining it to stand in your place to be offered up. The knife is then taken in hand and the throat of the animal is cut. The blood that gushes from its throat, being pumped out by a heart taking its last beats, is caught in a basin so that it can be splashed on the sides of the altar. The smells of death fill your nostrils. The priest finishes filleting the animal, cutting it up into pieces, washing the parts, and then placing it in this bronze altar in a particular order.

Though after a while in a culture that practices this day-in and day-out you become somewhat accustomed to this, it is not really what you would consider fun. In fact, this is something of a chore. It is difficult at many levels. You can think of many other things that you would rather be doing with your time. So, why do you do it?

You do it because God commanded you to do it. You walk by faith, not by fun. You are created by God to be a worshiper, and this is what worshipers do.

True Nobility

Greater Love

The account published below was posted in Patterico, by Dana.  She introduced the piece as follows:

I’ll leave you instead with the picture of a real woman whose bravery and toughness rivals that of any man. She is an honorable woman who clearly bears the marks of having known the steadfast love of a good man, has reveled in the gift that is her womb as she provides safe harbor for her baby, and, as a result of a noble sacrifice she is making, will come to know a deeper, richer meaning to life than most of us ever will:

Here is the account of a noble couple.

The other night, before I left for New Orleans, I was watching my beautiful wife sleep peacefully on the couch.

I looked at her laying there, her belly big with our daughter kicking away, a daughter that won’t live more than a few days, and it just overwhelmed me of how incredible this woman is.

Studies in I Samuel

Strike Three

Expository - Book of Samuel
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, August 06, 2011

I Samuel Chapter 15

INTRODUCTION:
Saul falls away from his position of favor with the Lord in a series of three falls. In chapter 13, he did not wait for Samuel to sacrifice, as he had been instructed to. In chapter 14, he makes a rash vow concerning the battle, and doubles down with a self-maledictory oath. And here, in chapter 15, he falls the third time, and for good, when he rebels against the express command of the Lord.

Meditation on the Text of the Week

Lights in a Dark Place

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay your vows to the Most High.
Psalm 50: 14

We have a common-sense understanding of what it means to sacrifice. We know that it means to give something up, to self-abnegate. Usually it connotes self-denial for the sake of another—in this case, the Most High.

Sacrifice, then, always involves giving. The one who offers a sacrifice gives up something that would otherwise belong to him and dedicates and devotes it to God—to His honour, His praise, His Name, His worship. As all Christians know, giving to God is in one sense a ridiculous idea. How can you give anything to Him who already owns and possesses all things? It is precisely this point that the Lord drives home to His people in this fiftieth psalm.

He says that whilst He does not reprove Israel for its sacrifices, He yet needs to testify against us (verse 7). For our fathers had fallen into the error of thinking that offering a sacrifice was like a commercial exchange. It is as if we were taking something that ultimately and originally belonged to us and we were giving something to God, so that we lose and He gains. The subtle sub-text always lurking nearby is that our sacrifices buy something in return from God in a crass commercial exchange. By sacrifice, the demons whisper, we are paying a price for something and now God owes us. He is in our debt.

He reproves our fathers by reminding them and us that every beast of the forest, every farm animal on the hills, every bird, yea everything that moves belongs to the Lord. They are His (verses 9--13). He commanded them out of nothing. He alone is the only true and original owner of all things. Therefore, when we sacrifice our self-denial is relative only. For whatever we are giving up—whether it be time, money, possessions, energy, talents, voice—never really belonged to us at all in an absolute sense. We are only, ever, and always mere stewards of what belongs to God.

Therefore proper and only true motivation behind all sacrifice is thanksgiving. It is giving to God which is simply a vehicle or means of expressing and conveying our thanks to Him for all that He has been and is to us. It, therefore, can be in no sense a bargain, a sale and purchase agreement. This was the offensive sin of our fathers—and we would do well to put any trace of their wrongdoing far from us.

The paying of vows is central to true faith and worship. It is an ordinary part of Christian living, devotion, and service to make vows to God, and pay them with great thankfulness for all His goodness. These are the sacrifices which are acceptable to God. The way it works is aptly demonstrated in the life of our father, Jacob. God had met with him and promised that He would love Jacob, care for him, and bring him back safely to his father's house—despite the fact that he was at that time a fugitive, fearing for his life, possessing only the shirt on his back. He took a vow—if God would do all this, then he would take a tenth of everything that God gave him, and would give it back to Him. (Genesis 28: 22). And so he did, for the rest of his life.

So central is this dynamic to the life of faith that the Lord summons to Himself those He calls His godly ones who have made a covenant with Him by means of sacrifice. (Psalm 50: 5). Once again, sacrifice is not a “buying” of God's favour. Even as God had set His love upon Jacob and made promises to him, so Jacob had responded by a sacrifice which expressed his thankfulness to God for His love and promises. The expression of our thanks by way of sacrifice or giving is our way of responding, of entering His covenant, of taking it to ourselves, of showing that we believe God and are thankful for His mercies. The sacrifices of thanksgiving make the covenant with the Lord insofar as they are our believing response.

As the darkness of Unbelief deepens upon our world it results in the starlight of Belief, of the Gospel of grace, shining ever more brightly. One of the brightest stars in the Gospel firmament is the light of thankfulness in the hearts and upon the countenances of God's people. It shows in their merriment, their joy, their exuberant sacrifices, their cheerful generosity.

In a world made increasingly ugly by a rising tide of victims' claims, by spurious demands for payments, and by pseudo-entitlements; where “you owe me” is the klaxon screech signalling each new day; where the West's minaret call to its house of prayer is the brazen assertion of society's debt to me; where the mosques of the West hum to the querulous demand that all debts be paid; on this darkening plain the light of perpetual thankfulness adorning the countenance of the Lord's people appears more and more beautiful. It is one of the Kingdom's brightest stars.