Two young men and their driver (all ages 15 to 17) residing in a small rural town in southern Oklahoma allegedly killed a twenty-two year old college student from Australia by shooting him in the back while he jogged down a road. The only motive mentioned by one of the alleged perpetrators was “boredom”. Within a week another random attack killed an 88-year-old World War II veteran in Spokane, Washington. The two 16-year-old killers’ only motive was robbery. The man was only slightly above five feet tall and died of severe head injuries. What threat could this diminutive 88-year old man have posed to cause the 16-year-olds to beat him to death? These are but two instances among hundreds if not thousands occurring in the United States each year.
Few people in America are unaware of the recent spate of so-called “thrill killings” in various parts of the country. Headlines blaze and talk shows buzz. People shake their heads and use adjectives such as “senseless, heatless, and soulless.” The first reaction to these irrational takings of human life is incomprehension, then anger. We wonder why all of this is happening with increasing frequency and heinousness. Then a quiet sense of unease casts a pall over our minds as we see the evil that is rooted in our being, that indelible hereditary sin stain that has passed down to us from our first ancestor. Either as victim or perpetrator, we wonder, “There but for the grace of God, go I …”
Pundits and experts search for motives and causes that can be addressed and treated, or they attempt to fix the blame on some failure of society or some perceived culpable villains (i.e., the perpetrator becomes the victim). The solutions come in all shapes and sizes including more laws, more regulation, or added layers of social engineering. But the real culprit is the domination of American institutions and popular culture by those holding the humanistic worldview. Always ready with excuses, reasons, and solutions, the humanists with humanistic answers merely exacerbate the trauma inflicted on a society whose central cultural vision is no longer anchored to the biblical worldview.
It has been a half century since prayer was allowed in American schools. The posting of the Ten Commandments in schools and on our public buildings is now illegal. Young people are not taught the values upon which this nation was founded. In fact, they are taught that there are no absolutes, no right or wrong, and all religions and belief systems have equal value.
Unrestrained by tradition or other moral force, popular culture denigrates the central cultural vision upon which the nation was founded. Tradition, by itself, can only maintain a central cultural vision for a time as the moral capital accumulated from adherence to that vision is eroded. If a society’s central vision is corrupt or false, that rebellion may be a good thing if one assumes that there are moral absolutes of right and wrong, truth and falsity. But a popular culture that misreads and wars against the validity of a morally sound central cultural vision will cause that culture to disintegrate. [Johnson, p. 367.]
Oklahoma’s State Capitol is seventy miles north of the little town of Duncan where three bored youths allegedly shot Chris Lane who died in the ditch where he fell. On the grounds of the State Capitol stands a monument paid for with private funds and inscribed with the Ten Commandments. The sixth commandment reads “You shall not murder” (NKJV). Six days after the murder of Chris Lane, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against Capital Preservation Commission of the State of Oklahoma, seeking removal of the monument. The suit states that, “This piece of public property, placed upon public property, conveys an explicit religious message that supports and endorses the faiths and creeds of some churches and sects.” Brady Henderson, Legal Director with the Oklahoma ACLU, stated “Our constitution makes it clear you cannot use state property and state resources to support a particular religion and this monument does just that.” [Fox News.com]
In answer to Mr. Henderson’s interpretation of the Constitution, we once again return to the words of Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story (appointed by James Madison, reputed to be the father of the Constitution which speaks volumes about Story’s understanding of the Founders’ meaning with regard to the Constitution and its Amendments).
…We are not to attribute this prohibition of a national religious establishment to an indifference to religion in general and especially to Christianity which none could hold in more reverence than the framers of the Constitution…Probably at the time of the adoption of the Constitution and of the Amendments to it, the general, if not universal, sentiment in America was that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the State…An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation (condemnation), if not universal indignation. [Barton, p. 32.]
One wonders if any of the killers in Duncan, Oklahoma and Spokane, Washington would have had second thoughts about their actions if at some point during their school years a copy of the Ten Commandments had been posted on their school room wall and a teacher had taken the time to explain what each commandment meant.
Even prominent humanists recognize the loss of our fundamental values in American society. One such was Benjamin Spock, famous for his baby care book. His life’s work and influence greatly advanced the humanistic worldview in America. He remained a champion of humanism throughout his life, and his efforts were recognized when he was named Humanist of the Year in 1968. In 1994, four years before the end of his life at age ninety, Spock wrote A Better World for Our Children – Rebuilding American Family Values. In the book Spock expressed considerable concern as he viewed the harmful effects of society on American children.
I am near despair. My despair comes not only from the progressive loss of values in this century, but from the fact that present society is simply not working. Societies and people who live in them fall apart if they lose their fundamental beliefs, and the signs of this loss are everywhere. [Spock, p. 15.]
Amazingly, Spock remained oblivious to humanism’s disintegrating effects and did not see that the ills of society are a direct result of well over a century of humanism’s dominance in American life as it stripped away our fundamental beliefs instilled by a biblical worldview. In his book The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis captured the essence of this cultural madness brought about by the unwitting soldiers in the army of the “knowledge class” having been indoctrinated with a humanistic worldview.
It is an outrage that they should be commonly spoken of as Intellectuals. This gives them a chance to say that he who attacks them attacks Intelligence. It is not so. They are not distinguished from other men by any unusual skill in finding truth…It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so. All the time…we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible…In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. [Lewis, p. 704.]
America is losing its fundamental beliefs. America’s original central cultural vision is held together by the moral capital banked decades ago but is near depletion. Faced with a hostile popular culture and leadership in our American institutions that embrace the humanistic worldview, we are in critical danger of forever losing the central cultural vision established by the Founders—those men with chests.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
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), p. 367.
“ACLU sues to remove Oklahoma 10 Commandments Monument” Fox News.com, August 22, 2013. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/08/22/aclu-sues-to-remove-oklahoma-10-commandments-monument/#ixzz2dHrcZwgM (accessed August 28, 2013).
David Barton, The Myth of Separation, (Aledo, Texas: Wallbuilder Press, 1989), p. 32.
Dr. Benjamin M. Spock, A better World for Our Children – Rebuilding American Family Values, (Bethesda, Maryland: National Press Books, 1994), p. 15.
C. S. Lewis, The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics, (New York: Harper One, 1944, 1947, 1971, 1974), p. 704.
