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Sickness in the Soul of the American Republic – Part II

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : February 28, 2014
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Category: America, Archives, Christianity, Culture Wars, Government

In Part I we described the sickness in the soul of the American Republic as being caused by a loss of unity and the denigration of the truths upon which the nation was founded. At its founding, America’s unity was derived from a central cultural vision that reflected a Christian worldview whose truths rested upon biblical principles. For those that adhere to the central cultural vision of the Founders, certain actions must be taken to not only defend but reverse its decline in American society. To restore the central cultural vision of the Founders, these actions must be taken by Christians but also by non-Christians who believe in the biblical moral code as a guide for living life and governing the nation.

John Adams said that our Constitution (the framework for governing) was made only for a moral and religious people, and by morality and religion he meant Christian morality. In other words, morality in government must flow upward from the morality of its citizens. Without a moral citizenry, there is no hope for a moral and just government. Therefore, moral reformation must start with the individual, that is, morality begins with us and our families. Humanists war against the individual through exaltation of self. Exaltation of self leads to egotism and loosens the bonds of moral restraint and weakens relationships with God, spouse, family, and community. From such comes a devaluation of a society’s moral traditions, heritage, and history. For a regeneration of both private and communal morality in the American Republic, we must adhere to and teach our children and grandchildren the standards of biblical morality.

Moral degeneration has affected every sphere of American society. We have mentioned the individual and family, and here we see the attack on the traditional view of marriage and the elevation of homosexuality in society; the fragmentation of family structure through divorce and co-habitation; and the devaluation of life through abortion, assisted suicide, and in some cases calls for infanticide. Moral degeneration in other spheres includes government, politics, education, arts and entertainment, economics and business, and religion. As humanists gained dominance in these spheres, the individual can have little direct or sustained impact on these monoliths propagating the humanist worldview. However, the collective worldviews of like-minded individuals who actively stand against humanism’s onslaught can turn the tide.

In the education sphere, humanistic policies and practices in conflict with biblical standards of morality are dictated to schools and universities by an entrenched academic establishment and federal bureaucracy. If change is to come in the sphere of education, it will be a long process and must come from concerted action by our elected representatives who ultimately control the purse strings and can reign in insulated institutions and bureaucracies immune to the wishes of the people. However, in the near term there is still power to hinder if not change humanistic policies and practices at the local and state levels. To do so we must have the courage to speak out against immorality in public education, elect officials that hold the Christian worldview, and hold those elected officials accountable for their actions and inactions.

Likewise in economics and business, the individual can take a stand and hold accountable businesses for breaches of morality through public exposure and withholding one’s dollars from support of such businesses. Economic policies are typically a function of government which will be addressed as part of the discussion on government and politics. The arts and entertainment field are blatantly humanistic in worldview and offer little opportunity for influence. However, we must remember that they are businesses and sensitive to loss of patronage and revenue. We must make our positions and concerns regarding immorality known to the leadership of this sphere of American culture and withhold patronage and revenue where those concerns are not sufficiently addressed.

Religious organizations are not exempt from humanistic influence. And because religion is closely tied to biblical standards of morality, there have been significant declines in patronage, membership, and revenue in those religious and church organizations that have abandoned biblical precepts and morality in favor of a humanistic worldview in matters such as abortion and homosexuality.

We now turn our attention to government and politics for the remainder of this article. Many Christians disdain any involvement with politics and government, having bought into the erroneous liberal argument regarding separation of church and state. This is a tragedy and responsible to a large degree for the sickness that pervades our Republic. However, apart from individual morality and concerted and sustained prayer by Christians, our efforts to influence and change government and politics offers the greatest opportunity to advance a moral reformation of America.

America is a republic by which is meant that power is “…lodged in representatives elected by the people. In modern usage, it differs from a democratic state, in which the people exercise the powers of sovereignty in person.” [Webster] The American Republic is a constitutional democracy (as opposed to an absolute democracy) in which the constitution is a body of fundamental laws and customs that are just and join together various regions, classes, and interests of a country. The beauty and longevity of the American Constitution occurs because “…it is in harmony with laws, customs, habits, and popular beliefs that existed before the Constitutional Convention.” [Kirk, p. 416.] Constitutional safeguards against abuses by the majority or dictatorial officials and bureaucrats include separation of powers among the federal branches and a division of powers between the federal government and states.

In humanism’s effort to remake America in its image, the safeguards built into the Constitution must be weakened or made of no effect. Additionally, the voice of the people through its elected representatives must be muted or diminished in relation to the wishes of a regal presidency and a radicalized judiciary. For anyone with eyes and ears and who is concerned about the future, the massive attacks on the Constitution and the republican form of government in America over the last five years are abundantly clear.

The attacks become obvious when one understands President Obama’s “above-the-law” attitude and actions that include his many instances of unilateral violation of the constitutional separation of powers between the executive branch and the legislative and judicial branches; seizing powers allotted to the states; imposition of illegitimate executive orders; non-enforcement of laws passed by Congress; and vocal denigration of the judiciary and its decisions with consequent promotion of disrespect of the law. Through judicial activism of liberal judges usurping the role of the legislature in making laws, the courts have appropriated unto themselves a law-making role never intended by the Founders. Additionally, their power to decide what is right and wrong is all too frequently based on man’s law, not God’s laws. These abuses of power by the judiciary have significantly undermined the Founders’ meaning and intent with regard to the Constitution.

For Christians and those non-Christians who also adhere to the biblical worldview of morality, it is imperative that we become actively involved in electing and supporting men and women who will defend the Founders’ intent with regard to the Constitution; who will uphold biblical standards of morality, both privately and publicly; who will govern based on Christian principles; and who will tighten the reigns on humanistic bureaucracies and government-funded institutions that impose their policies, practices, and regulations that conflict with the laws and directives of the elected representatives of the citizenry.

Humanists will scream that such mixing of morality and politics is nothing more than a ruse by religious zealots attempting to impose a theocracy on the nation. But, an examination of the historical record reveals otherwise. In the founding era, politics was defined as the science of government and considered a part of ethics. This definition of politics includes “… the protection of its citizens in their rights, with the preservation and improvement of their morals.” (emphasis added) [Webster] Therefore, the active involvement of government and politics in the moral well-being of its citizenry is not of recent invention but a pattern established and followed by the Founders.

There is one other action that only Christians may take. It is more important than all of the actions listed above but not a replacement for those actions. Ultimately, the preservation of the Christian worldview as the dominant central cultural vision of America depends on her people’s reliance on the principle expressed in God’s covenant with ancient Israel: “…if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. [II Chronicles 7:14 RSV.] We must work and pray.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Noah Webster, “Republic,” American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828, Facsimile Edition, (San Francisco, California: Foundation for American Christian Education, 1995).

Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order, 3rd Edition, (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1991), p. 417.

Webster, “Politics,” American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828

Sickness in the Soul of the American Republic – Part I

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : February 21, 2014
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Category: America, Archives, Culture Wars, Truth, Worldview

The soul of a republic can be viewed as its central cultural vision—that collective worldview that animates and informs all of society. Rooted in their hearts and minds, that vision is also supported and invigorated by its citizens. However, the American Republic is comparable to the demise of high civilizations in ancient times in that certain elements of alienation have entered into America’s central cultural vision which has weakened its citizens’ love for and belief in its compelling purposes. [Reinsch, p. 98.] These elements deny the value and truth of the Republic’s beleaguered central cultural vision and attempt to replace it with multiple centers of cultural vision based on arbitrary and ever-changing inventions of man. In other words, the sickness of the American Republic’s soul is cause by a loss of unity and the denigration of the truths upon which the nation was founded.

Loss of Unity

Culture is a product of the collective consciousness of a group seeing certain felt needs, “…a complex of values polarized by an image or idea.” The very foundation of the cultural concept is unity that presupposes a general commonality of thought and action. As a culture is formed and begins ordering its world to bring the satisfactions for which it was created, directions must be imposed on its members. These directions, limits, and required behaviors radiate through a center of authority with a subtle and pervasive pressure to conform. This pressure may range from cultural peer pressure to moral and legal restraints. Those that do not conform are repelled of necessity. Thus, in any culture there are patterns of inclusion and exclusion. Without such patterns, the culture is unprotected and disintegrates over time. Every culture has a center which commands all things. Weaver calls this center imaginative rather than logical and “…a focus of value, a law of relationships, an inspiring vision…to which the group is oriented.” The intrinsic nature of culture compels that it be exclusive rather than all inclusive. Cultures fail and disintegrate without the power to reject that which does not adhere to its central force. [Weaver, pp. 10-12] When a culture’s complex of values is polarized by an image or idea, we describe this image or idea as its central cultural vision, that is, its collective worldview.

In America, disunity is pandemic in every facet of cultural life including government, education, family, politics, standards of moral behavior, arts, economics and business, and religion. Disunity is evident as the war of words flow from daily newspaper headlines and radio and TV sound bites. This disunity occurs because of the ubiquitous attack on America’s original central cultural vision.

Denigration of Truth

For a culture to survive over the long-term, its central cultural vision must be based on truth. In other words, a culture’s central cultural vision must be informed by and reflect that which is true. In Western civilization, the Christian worldview reflected this truth. Since the nation’s founding, this central cultural vision has been under assault by the humanistic worldview that gained ascendance in Europe during the eighteenth century. The core of the battle revolves around the truth about the nature of man—who he is.

In the Christian worldview, the Supreme Being (God) created matter out of nothing and formed the universe. He impressed certain principles upon that matter, from which it can never depart, and without which it would cease to be. These principles dictate rules of action and applies to animate and inanimate objects. These “laws of nature” must invariably be followed by the universe and the created matter therein. One exception was man, the pinnacle of God’s creation, who was allowed to choose to follow or depart from those principles as they relate to human nature. Those principles are truths that are intrinsic, timeless, and are essential elements that provide a coherent and rational way to live in the world. These absolutes are called by various names: permanent things, universals, first principles, eternal truths, and norms. [Johnson, p. 392.] These absolutes were revealed to man by God through His creation and His revelation to the ancient Hebrews and first century Christians.

The humanistic worldview regarding truth is one of cultural relativism which requires a suspension of judgment since all belief systems contain some truth within while no one belief system has all truth. For humanists, all social constructions are culturally relative as they are shaped by class, gender, and ethnicity. Thus, there can be no universal truths because all viewpoints, lifestyles, and beliefs are equally valid. As a result, no man or group can claim to be infallible with regard to truth and virtue. Rather, truth is produced by the free give and take of competing claims and opinions—i.e., truth can be manufactured. [Johnson, pp. 392-393.] Man is merely the end-product of a long evolutionary process that occurred by chance and not the result of some supernatural Creator.

The central cultural vision of colonial Americans and the nation’s Founders was built on the truth of Christian principles. The assault by the opposing forces of humanism was repelled until the mid-twentieth century when they gained critical mass in the various spheres of American life.

For those that adhere to the central cultural vision of the Founders, we will examine in Part II what must be done to defend and reverse the decline of the central cultural vision of the Founders?

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Richard M. Reinsch II, Whitaker Chambers – The Spirit of a Counterrevolutionary, (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2010), p. 98.

Richard M. Weaver, Visions of Order – The Cultural Crisis of Our Time, (Wilmington, Delaware: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1995, 2006), pp. 10-12.

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), pp. 392-393.

Work

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : February 14, 2014
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Category: Archives, Christianity, Government, Socialism

A few years ago before my mother passed away at age 79, we were talking about life on the family dairy farm when my brothers and I were kids. For those that don’t know, a dairy farm is a seven-day-a-week job with long hours, and as kids we thought everyone worked like that. Teasingly, I told my mother that if I knew then what I know now, I would have reported her and my father for child abuse! We both had a good laugh. While my brothers and I may not have appreciated it when we were children and teenagers, the instilled work ethic molded us, shaped our characters, and made possible the joys and blessings of life.

However, as our nation staggers toward the looming welfare state, work has become just another profane four-letter word. The denigration of work has been around for thousands of years and flourished in the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome in which physical work was considered demeaning to all except slaves and the lower classes. In ancient Athens, one-third of freemen sat daily discussing the affairs of state in the court of Comitia as slaves, who outnumbered citizens five-to-one, performed all manual labor. In the “bread and circuses” pleasure-seeking Roman culture, it was again slaves who did all of the manual labor. [Schmidt, pp. 194-195.]

But during the first century, at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, a child was born that would give voice to God’s view of the dignity of labor. His name was Jesus, the promised Messiah. His early disciples were mostly callus-handed fishermen, tradesmen, and even a local IRS agent. And the arch-persecutor-turned-apostle of this tiny Christian sect was a brilliant theologian and evangelist but also a tent-maker by trade. And the Apostle Paul admonished the Thessalonian Christians that, “If any one will not work, let him not eat.” [2 Thessalonians 3:10. RSV] It was in the first century that Christians were driven from their homeland and made their first appearances in the Greco-Roman world. Because Christians believed in the dignity and honor of work, they were held with contempt by their Roman masters. Persecution arose, in part, because those strange Christian beliefs about work conflicted with the Romans’ view of the world and also because of suspicions and jealousies of the Christians’ prosperity due to their strong work ethic. [Schmidt, pp. 195-196.]

But the first century Christian view of work was not a new philosophy but a reflection of the image of the Creator stamped on man, the pinnacle of His creation. Biblical instruction and admonitions regarding work are abundant. The first chapter of Genesis records God’s labors in creating the universe. Not only does God work, He charged man with responsibilities and duties of being fruitful, replenishing and subduing the earth, and having dominion over all living creatures. When Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden because of their sin, God told Adam that “…cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life…In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground…” [Genesis 3: 17, 19. RSV] Notice that God did not impose work as a punishment for their sin. Rather, the curse was on the ground upon which they would toil. In other words, the curse was upon the conditions under which the work would be performed, not on work itself. But God loved man and would make possible a way for man to re-enter right relationship with Him by sending His Son Jesus in human form as a babe. Perhaps this gives us another insight into God’s view of work in that the earthly father of God’s Son was a carpenter.

With the decline and fall of the western half of the Roman Empire by the end of the fifth century, a remnant of the Christian heritage of the western portion of the Roman Empire was pushed northward into the sparse and hostile forests of France and western Germany. The inhabitants were Gauls whom the Romans had conquered and brought civilization at the beginning of the Christian era. To this group was added a smaller number of Teutonic invaders that had come from the East and hindered for a time the building of an organized social life and assimilation of the Mediterranean culture. Life was harsh in the pioneer wilds of northern Europe at the beginning of the Middle Ages around A.D. 500. However, out of this difficult and meager existence was built a cohesive and somewhat refined civilization, and the broad and general characteristics of their medieval society remained for centuries. Those characteristics and viewpoint, worldview if you will, became the ideas and ideals of Christendom which were the foundations of the American experience from the earliest colonial days to the middle of the twentieth century. [Johnson, p. 88.]

Christendom’s creedal reverence for work and the practical necessity of work amidst primitive conditions in the forests and clearings of early Europe produced the phenomenon of the middle class, unknown before the advent of Christianity and now present in all of Western civilization. With the birth of the middle class came the reduction of poverty and its attendant disease. And from the middle class arose political and economic freedom of a magnitude unknown in the history of the world to that time. [Schmidt, pp. 198-199.]

In the very earliest years of Europeans on the American continent, socialistic answers were sought to replace the Christian work ethic as the North Star for organizing society. Because of their isolation from the civilized world, Jamestown and the Plymouth Colony stand as great laboratory experiments regarding questions as to the validity and worthiness of socialistic principles. Communism of an almost pure variety, in the isolated and controlled environment of the New World, failed miserably in its initial years as laziness and inefficiency trumped thrift and industry. As the colonists abandoned their experiment in socialism, the colonies flourished. [Johnson, p. 247.] Karl Marx’s ideas regarding socialism presented in The Communist Manifesto became the twentieth century’s grand socialist experiment which led to the enslavement of a third of humanity behind the iron and bamboo curtains. For three quarters of a century, the consequences of these socialistic systems were death and misery unparalleled in the history of mankind.

But our collective memory is short and socialism’s propaganda machine is strong. As a result Christianity and its values are being rapidly abandoned in Western societies in favor of a humanistic worldview requiring socialistic solutions to society’s problems. As a result, socialism is destroying the middle class and its indispensable Christian work ethic, and America is becoming a bread and circuses culture.

The displacement of the work ethic by the actions of the American government’s social engineers since the 1960s has had a multitude of far-reaching consequences. Just one example is the humanistic welfare solutions that have fractured the concept of family by substituting governmental assistance to unwed pregnant teenage girls. Fathers are not required to work and provide for the mother and child for whom they are responsible. This welfare system perpetuates itself through ensuing generations that repeat the cycle. The direct consequences of institutionalization of illegitimacy in American life are a rise in the illegitimacy rate (6% in 1963 to 41% in 2014) and consequent increases in drug use rate, dropout rate, crime rate, and incarceration rate. [Buchanan, p. A-14.

In the mid-1990s Congressional welfare reforms required those seeking welfare to work. However, this requirement was removed by an executive order by President Obama in 2012. Additionally, governmental subsidies provided by the Affordable Care Act have now been determined to be a disincentive to work by those receiving subsidies with a consequent loss of 2.5 million jobs over the next three years according to a Congressional Budget Office report. [Carruthers]

The operation of man’s fallen human nature exposes the soft and rotten underbelly of the tenets of the socialism and humanistic faith in mankind and their commitment to the principle of the greatest-happiness-for-the-greatest-number which humanists consider to be the highest moral obligation for humanity as a whole. [Johnson, p. 247.] The operation of human nature conflicts with man-made socialistic solutions to the problems of life, and the end result is failure. People fail, families fail, and cultures ultimately fail. The socialists’ false view of man’s nature leads to poverty, starvation, and loss of freedom. The antidote is a rejection of socialism and a return to the Christian work ethic.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Alvin J. Schmidt, How Christianity Changed the World,” (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2004), pp. 194-196, 198-199.

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), pp. 88, 247.

Patrick Buchanan, “Is this end of the line for the welfare state?” Tulsa World, February 12, 2014, A-14.

Wanda Carruthers, “Joe Scarborough: CBO Report Shows Obamacare ‘Still Red Hot Mess’,” Newsmax.com, February 6, 2014. http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/cbo-work-obamacare-disincentive/2014/02/06/id/551246#ixzz2tEpiNt4b (accessed February 13, 2014).

Love and Commitment

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : February 7, 2014
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Category: Archives, Marriage

It seems that in our modern world that the image of “commitment” has taken on a dubious persona. Evidence of the disdain for commitment is found in every facet of our society. “No commitment” is a hot seller in advertising these days. One need only do a quick Internet search of “no commitment” to discover pages of web sites offering everything from no commitment phone services to no commitment dating services. In the spirit of no-fault divorce, wedding vows that once included the supposed straightjacket of “until death do us part” have conveniently substituted the noncommittal “until love is no more.” But in this non-committal world that we live, perhaps it is in an understanding of the real meaning of love that we find the value of commitment. In love and much of life, commitment is not only important but indispensable.

I was reminded of this indispensable connection between love and commitment by a story that I recently heard. The story was told by a Christian minister who had officiated at a large wedding in India at which 2,000 people were in attendance. The marriage was arranged by the Indian families of the groom, a brilliant young man with a Ph.D. in chemistry, and the bride, a beautiful, articulate, and well-educated young lady. The families had met, discussed the couple, and agreed the bride and groom would make a great marital union. Being an arranged marriage, the bride and groom did not know each other and had never met. Even as the bride came down the aisle and stood beside her husband-to-be, the groom did not look at her. As was the custom, the groom made a speech at the reception following the ceremony. He began by thanking his parents. He thanked the bride’s parents and others. He ended by thanking his bride for loving him. The minister and others were surprised and intrigued by his statement. What did he mean? How could she love him for they had not met nor talked to one another? What the groom meant was his bride loved him because she was willing to commit herself to him even before they met. Although marriage is an experiential relationship, commitment is an indispensable component. Bring a commitment to your love and you’ll reap the rewards of love. If you are not committed in love, you will not reap the rewards of love. [Zacharias]

As we examine the importance of commitment in love, we see a reflection of God’s nature that is stamped on mankind. This nature is evident in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, “…even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. He destined us in love to be his sons though Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.” [Ephesians 1:4-5. RSV.] God did not create man out of need. Rather, it was a will (commitment) to love, an expression of the very character of God, to share the inner life of the Trinity. Man’s chief end is to glorify God by communing with God forever. [Johnson, p. 158.]

Here we also see that commitment in love or the lack thereof is compatible with God’s grant of freewill to man. By creating man with a free will meant the possibility of man’s 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. So it is on the earthly plane, to risk love is to risk rejection. Rejection was not a surprise to an omniscient God. Before creation, God knew the cost of His will to love man would be the death of His Son and is revealed in Revelation 13:8, “…Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” God committed to love man before He created him, but God knew man would reject Him. But the value of that infinite love exceeded the cost of that love at Calvary. [Johnson, p. 158.]

Throughout much of history marriage has been a ritualistic and solemn occasion between a man and woman—a highly public profession of commitment to the most private of relationships. The solemnity of the occasion arises from the enormous magnitude and significance of the commitments—to take the marriage partner as wife or husband, to have and to hold, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part. This ceremonial language resonates with powerful sentiments that link us with prior generations since time immemorial and to an enduring and exclusive commitment to union while facing the uncertainties of life to come. The ritualism symbolically binds the families of the man and woman and attests to the importance of the unbreakable commitments of which God is both witness and participant. [Bennett, pp. 184-188; Johnson, p. 312.]

William Bennett called marital love that rests upon a foundation of unconditional commitment as “…safer, more enduring, and more empowering that any sentiment yet discovered or any human arrangement yet invented.” The reasons for such commitments arise from human nature which is rooted in creation. The humanist will argue that these things can be attained without requirements of marriage, monogamy, commitment to the permanency of relationship, and God. But such humanistic counterfeits are a weak, unsatisfying, and an imperfect imitation of a man and woman bound by unconditional commitments in marriage, “… the honorable estate, instituted by God.” [Bennett, pp. 184-188; Johnson, pp. 312-313.]

The story of the young Indian couple reminded me of commitments my wife and I made almost forty-two years ago. I had watched the young woman for several months. She was as advertised—attractive, vivacious, and had a winning personality. I was almost twenty-six, and she had just turned nineteen when I summoned the courage to ask her for a date. Three months later we were engaged. But what did I know about this young woman that would cause me to commit a lifetime to her? More importantly, what did she know of me to make such a similar commitment? [Johnson, pp. 99-100.] At our wedding a few months after our engagement, we confirmed our unconditional commitment to love each other until death do us part.

Love infused with commitment will survive the inevitable trials of life, faded youth, and cooled passions. And such love will yield bountiful rewards.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Ravi Zacharias, “Volume 4 – Establishing a Worldview,” Foundations of Apologetics, DVD Video, (Norcross, Georgia: Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, 2007).

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), pp. 99-100, 158, 312-313.

William J. Bennett, The Broken Hearth, (New York: Doubleday, 2001), pp. 184-188.