In fact, quite the opposite. While
the whole world listens, the rebel’s doctrine from the war in
heaven undergirds the messages, like the plumbing that runs beneath
a neighborhood. It may often be invisible, but it is everywhere.
God’s Sovereignty Challenged
The worldly philosophies sound familiar,
the mutiny against God is the same. Now the sovereignty of God
is not just challenged, he is declared persona non grata. He
died, he didn’t exist, he never was. Don’t mention his name in
the marketplace of ideas or you are branded, dismissed as naďve,
unsophisticated. You may be sued.
Scripture is not a message from our
Creator who is eager to teach us who we are and what makes nations
rise and fall. It is not a trusted operating manual for existence,
but a collection of myths from desert poets.
Morality is not embraced, but attacked
as self-righteous, bigoted or even hateful. We have been taught
to be wary of hierarchy — that one set of behaviors or beliefs
could be superior to another. We have been told it is judgmental
to discern one philosophy as healthy and life-giving and another
as destructive.
No longer can we make appeals to
“right and wrong.”
What’s surprising is how readily
we have accommodated ourselves in our discourse to the rules laid
down by those who hate what we believe. We have collapsed before
their insistence about how the debate should be structured. Don’t
admit that you are religious or that your concerns come from a
religious perspective. Don’t claim that all lifestyles and all
choices are not created equal.
The irony for a religious people
is that we are not allowed to bring God or his commandments into
any debate, but once we play by these rules and leave God out,
we have already lost. We have acknowledged that materialists
get to set the terms.
It is amazing how often religious
people are told not to thrust their lifestyle on others, when
in fact, it is religion that has been in the retreat for some
time.
Most scholars agree that the cultural
war that is raging comes down to this: What we think about God
influences everything else. The essence of the culture war is
the great rift over the issue of God. That is why the secularists
so often rage with fuming hostility against religion or the mention
of God in society, why lawsuits are mounted against Ten Commandment
plaques or the words “under God” in America’s Pledge of Allegiance.
That is why they will not be happy
until every last vestige of God and his sovereignty is annihilated
with enthusiasm and persistence. Not until God is utterly dethroned
are they completely free to create a new order.
Deadening Materialism
In our public discourse we have succumbed
to a materialism that suffocates the human spirit. By this we
don’t mean the tendency toward consumerism and greed, though that
is a symptom of a materialistic worldview. It is instead a mindset
that sees matter as the only true reality and refuses to recognize
as genuine knowledge anything that cannot be derived by scientific
experiment and scientific method. That suggests that everything
else has no legitimacy.
Only arguments backed by studies
can be taken as credible. The intangibles — love, beauty, truth,
spirituality, passion, salvation — are cast aside like relics
of a superstitious past. These are merely subjective notions
imposed upon a world of atoms and empty spaces where such concepts,
strictly speaking, have no actual existence.
As Daniel Peterson and William Hamblin
describe it, “Morality becomes relative. (Atoms don’t care one
way or the other.) Personality is nothing more than a fleeting
by-product of biochemical interactions. There is no real meaning
in a universe indifferent to human hopes and dreams, and all will
end with our personal deaths and, ultimately, with the death of
the universe itself.” [ii]
This mindset accomplishes what the
rebels in the War in Heaven set out to do — dethrone God and his
troubling laws that demand effort, progress, growth, risk, beauty,
creativity and faith — in short all that is most excellent about
the human soul. .
Those who follow the Judeo-Christian
tradition that has shaped Western culture ask “Why am I here?
What is life’s purpose? What is true? What is right for me to
do?” Modern materialists ask, “How does it work? What controls
behavior? How can I get what I want?
Assumptions Influence Choice
If we descended from God, we have
one set of expectations and laws to follow, if we merely arose
from primeval sludge, the most evolved of the animals, we have
quite another. Our core assumptions affect every behavior and
every institution.
In sexuality, if man is an animal,
he has nothing to do but satisfy his instincts. He has no need
to create a family, to go about the difficult work of nurturing
others over the long haul and attaching himself to one woman.
What, in fact, would prohibit any sexual activity — however out
of bounds? What standard or law should stop pornography?
The notion of right and wrong over
this important aspect of life disappears and is replaced, instead,
with the need to avoid frustration through egoistic self-expression.
Materialistic society, relieved of any consideration of morality,
becomes a slippery slope to the worst kind of debauchery — because
what’s to stop it? What law or rule can we appeal to when the
giver of laws is dethroned?
We invite sexual anarchy, misery,
and the complete dissolution of the family when we give up on
God and his laws.
Consider issues of the sanctity of
life. If we are merely a bundle of atoms, a bit of protoplasm,
a piece of expendable meat, what’s to say we shouldn’t abort babies
or design them to meet our needs, or end life when it no longer
is convenient for us? Without a sense of the divine, we have
no place to stop in our tinkering with biology. We cannot appeal
to morality to restrain us.
In
a society that has eliminated the divine and has thrown away
Judeo-Christian tradition, who’s to say that humans are more
important or special than animals? Who is to balance their
competing claims? A teenager was given the ethical question
that if her family dog and another person were both drowning,
who would she save? She didn’t know.
What’s
more in the materialistic mindset, evil ceases to exist. People
are not seen as creative agents, the product of their choices,
but are determined by their environment. Thus, the day after
the terrorists struck and demolished the World Trade Towers,
killing nearly three thousand, a college teacher asked her students
if the act was evil. The students couldn’t say.
Tolerance
Once
society was structured around the belief that right and wrong
are absolute, unchanging, and that these laws are communicated
to men and women by God. This view of truth and morality formed
the basis for much of Western civilization.
But
as David F. Wells said, “A certainty about the existence, character
and purposes of God — a certainty about his truth — that seems
to have faded in the bright light of the modern world. They
were convinced that God’s revelation, of which they were the
vehicles and custodians, was true. True in an absolute sense.
It was not merely true to them; it was not merely true in their
time; it was not true approximately. What God has given was
true universally, absolutely and enduringly.” [iii]
In
contrast, relativism is the belief that man is the author of
truth; one man cannot tell another man what is true for him.
Truth is individually defined not externally existent. To the
relativist, one man’s truth is just that — one man’s truth;
it can be nothing more, unless agreed upon by society or enforced
by law.
The
catch phrase for the relativist to stop cold any conversation
about the nature of things is, “That’s only your opinion.”
In
our relativistic world, tolerance is the crowning virtue and
diversity the highest aim. All ethical views are created equal.
“I don’t judge you, you don’t judge me. Neither of us has to
feel bad.” Appealing to our lowest natures, this is not only
a bleak recipe for stagnation of the human spirit, but also
the groundwork for chaos. Here there are no higher claims upon
our spirit, no self-discipline or growth demanded.
“If
there were no eternal truths, to what principles would mortals
look for guidance?” asked Elder Neal A. Maxwell. “If not accountable
to God, to whom are we ultimately accountable? Furthermore,
if nothing is ever really wrong, then no one is ever really
responsible. If there are no fixed boundaries, then there cannot
be any excesses. Why should we be surprised, then, at so many
disturbing outcomes, including the lack of community, when every
man does that which is ‘right in his own eyes’ [iv] and seeks not the righteousness
of the Lord but instead walks ‘in his own way.’ [v] ?” [vi]
Jim
Birrell noted, “Once tolerance is claimed as the highest virtue,
all others fall away. Tolerance for the right things in the
right amounts is a virtue. No decent or democratic society can
exist without it. To respect individuals you disagree with
is Christian; however, to tolerate evil as a Christian drains
society of virtue. C.S. Lewis made clear the nature of evil
— it is predatory; it will devour virtue. And when there is
nothing of virtue remaining, it will devour itself.” [vii]
Who
then prospers in this relativistic world? How do we settle
things when two claims about issues of value clash? It is not
by an appeal to a higher law or by an appeal to right and wrong.
Instead, the winner is the one with the most power to wield,
the most will, perhaps the most money. Raw tyranny becomes
a dominant feature of society, power forces that take it upon
themselves to dictate truth for everyone else.
This
idea is familiar to Latter-day Saints in the figure of Korihor,
called the anti-Christ. Following the pattern of the War in
Heaven, first he sought to set aside Christ, saying, “Ye do
not know that there shall be a Christ.” [viii] Next, he trampled
and belittled their morality, their understanding that absolute
truth existed, calling it being “led away… after the foolish
traditions of your fathers.”
[ix] He claimed that he wanted to liberate the
people from bondage to their traditions, a familiar phrase.
Of
course, he had an alternative — a substitute morality. It was
raw will, the domination of the fittest, “every man fared in
this life according to the management of the creature; therefore
every man prospered according to his genius, and that every
man conquered according to his strength; and whatsoever a man
did was no crime.” [x]
Here
lies the hidden and dirty secret of a morally relative viewpoint.
Once the sense of morality and right and wrong have been abandoned,
people are ripe to be dominated by others exercising sheer will.
If whatever a man does is no crime, “mere anarchy is loosed
upon the world.”
A Substitute
We are reminded that the aim of
the War in Heaven was not only to dethrone God, but also substitute
his plan for another more pleasing to the rebels. They hoped
to be “as God” on their own terms. They had a new religion,
a new idea, a new system of things to replace God’s laws. It
was a plan based on safety, seeming equality in that all would
be saved.
The rebels had a plan for creating
what they claimed was utopia.
So, as we have watched the Judeo-Christian
tradition trampled and marginalized, we can assume that there
is a similar pattern. The battle of ideas is not between religion
on the one hand and bland neutrality on the other. It is between
religion as exemplified by the Judeo-Christian tradition and
another religion. It is not called a religion, but it has every
characteristic.
Call that other religion Political
Correctness or the New Age or merely the assumptions of the
cultural elite, but it is a movement and an ordered system of
thought. It inspires enthusiasm and blind acceptance of its
tenets. It begins with many of the assumptions of relativism,
but moves on from there to be dictatorial. It desires the destruction
of Western civilization as we once knew it.
Though this religion
is hard to label, it is easy to see. In towns and cities,
in schools at all levels, in the media, in large foundations,
and in the military, standards derived from the Ten Commandments
and the Bill of Rights have been replaced by the dictates of
this new religion. All we need to know to realize its importance
is to listen to the news. It is better to break a commandment
than be politically incorrect. If an actor slept with several
women, that would be no problem, if he made a movie about religion,
he may be banned from Hollywood.
The goal of this new moral vision
is “further emancipation of the human spirit.”
“Further emancipation of the human
spirit” sounds good, until we note that is Korihor’s appeal
as well. “I will make you free,” goes the chant as you are
put in bonds. “Emancipation of the human spirit” is a code
phrase for the culture war, a revolution that actively seeks
to change and demolish our values. The individual is to be
liberated from his or her ties to the family, tradition, religion
and cultural values.
Only when these things are diminished
and then swept away will this PC religion/movement be able to
establish its vision of utopia. Here is the clue to the truth
of this. All ideas, religions, cultures and societies are the
same as all others through the eyes of the cultural elite, but
“the Western tradition with its Judeo-Christian foundation is
the repository of all evil and should be replaced with something
that grants no superiority to any idea, culture or philosophy
— except, of course, PC.” [xi]
The cultural elite who embrace
this new order will be tolerant of everyone except the religious
for whom they often express disdain. Their technique for all
of those who do not comply or conform is vilification and intimidation.
This, of course, means the death of the free exchange of ideas.
Some subjects cannot be discussed or debated. We have become
a muzzled generation who can shout obscene things on television
but can’t mention our feelings about Christ at Christmas in
school.
How ironic that this new morality
mandates charity, but punishes student study of the Lord of
Charity; that it makes legal blasphemy, vulgarity and obscenity
(things offensive to people of all faiths), but outlaws “hate”
speech that offends favored groups and their political issues.
How ironic that it legalizes pornography,
even daring to call it ‘art,” despite its offensiveness and
destructiveness to women, marriage, families, and little children,
but outlaws the posting of the Ten Commandments for its lack
of ‘sensitivity’ to people of no faith.
Christian charity persuades; the
new “virtue” demands. Christian morality hates the sin but
loves the sinner; the new morality loves the sin itself, legalizes
it, sees to it that it is taught in our schools as normal, happy,
healthy and then places the sinner on a pedestal, proclaiming
him or her the beau ideal of progressiveness, courage and irreverence,
the kind of a person or group who deserves special protections
and privileges.
All
of this, of course, is accomplished while the devotees of
the new order claim the moral high ground. The religious
tradition is destroyed on the grounds of social justice, tolerance,
love, and human compassion. Their new system, they claim,
offers perfection, paradise and harmony on earth — the same
ideas that were trumpeted in that earlier war before this
world was.
As
Diane Alden said, “The world they see is a utopia where tolerance
will be mandated, and right and wrong will depend on what
those ‘enlightened’ totalitarians decide.” [xii]
It
creates a world that is on the one hand over-regulated and
on the other lawless. This is not something that happens
all at once or in a dramatic flash. If it did, we might arise.
Instead our freedoms and moral climate are lost piecemeal
and incrementally, while our heads are turned and we are doing
something else.
A
Sobering Time
Thus,
this is a sobering time, when as the scriptures remind us,
“all things shall be in commotion,” [xiii] a time President Boyd K. Packer
described as “days of great spiritual danger for this people.” [xiv] We have seen progress
in some areas; our technology continues to thrust ahead, science
has made some resounding discoveries and many of us are materially
well-off, but these mask a deeper malaise and emptiness.
We sense that round and round in the turning world, the center
is not holding.
As
a society, we are in a spiral downward, a decline in our values
and morality that is rushing along at a startling pace. We
have read in the Book of Mormon of cultures that deteriorated
in a matter of years, at a ghastly momentum, and have not
fully understood how this could happen — until we have observed
our own world lurch and dive.
It
is not just that pornography is thrust at us at an ever more
aggressive pace, that media are corrosive and violent. It
is not just that marriages are failing and religion is marginalized
and beaten out of the public square. It is not only that our
children are rebellious and talk back, that they are taught
the intricacies of sexual involvement in the youngest grades
or that they hide in back corners and take drugs. These are
all symptoms of something deeper.
Some
would suggest that our problems are political — that if we
can only get the right people elected we’ll see a turnaround.
Some see our problems as cultural — the erosion of our souls
through the constant intake of media rot. Certainly, both
political and cultural problems must be addressed. Yet at
the heart of it all is a spiritual darkness that we have allowed
to creep into our world and dominate our discussion and our
social institutions.
God-fearing
people haven’t resisted very much as the new culture of liberal
secularism has triumphed over their world view. “Resistance,”
said Robert H. Bork, “has been mild, disorganized and ineffective.” [xv] Christians fell asleep and the world
changed.
In
a dismal moment, Paul Weyrich said, “I believe that we have
probably lost the culture war… in terms of society in general
we have lost. This is why, even when we win in politics,
our victories fail to translate into the kind of policies
we believe are important…I know that what we have been doing
for thirty years hasn’t worked, that while we have been fighting
and winning in politics, our culture has decayed into something
approaching barbarism. We need to take another tack, find
a different strategy.” [xvi]
It
is time to awaken and reclaim our world. Time to cast our
lines deep to find the new strategies and personal spirituality
that can help win this new battle for the souls of men.
Can
we do it? The stakes couldn’t be higher.
Tomorrow:
The Stakes in the War
[i] Madsen,
Arch “The Battle of the Mind”, Meridian Magazine.
[ii] Peterson,
Daniel and Hamblin, William “A Classic Book on Religion” Meridian
Magazine
[iii] Wells,
David F. (1993) No Place for Truthi. Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans Publishings
[iv] Judg.
17:6, Judg. 21:25)
[vi] Maxwell,
Neal A. “Take Especial Care of Your Family” Ensign May
1994
[vii] Birrell,
James R. “Relativism and the New Meaning of Tolerance in America’s
Culture Wars”, Meridian Magazine
[xi] Diane
Alden “PC — The Rise of the Religion of the New World Order”
NewsMax.com Oct. 30, 2000
[xiv] Address
to J.R. Clark Law Society, Feb. 28, 2004
[xv] Robert
H. Bork, Slouching Toward Gomorrah, (New York: Regan
Books) p. 7
[xvi] Weyrich,
Paul, An Open Letter to the Conservative Movement, February
16, 1999
