The Religion Makers Polytheistic Christianity
By Al Cronkrite The Covenant News ~ March 10, 2010
I have been corresponding on the net with a Reformed Pastor who supports our military. My attempts to discuss his position from a Biblical perspective have been stymied by his assertion that discussions of this sort are always buttressed by claims that cannot be proven. He is correct; often what seems palpable to one person bears no witness to another. I countered with the claim that there are principles involved in the conduct of our international affairs that should be evaluated by God’s Commandments. So far we are at loggerheads. (Update: I sent him Fred Reed’s column and he angrily wrote “stop sending this kind of garbage”.)
God’s earth is home to hot and cold, light and dark, calm and turbulent, land and water, gases and substances, earth and sky. It is subject to creatures made in His image that are White, Black, Tan, Yellow, and Red. Each of these creatures has a unique perspective. When God’s creations ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree they acquired the knowledge of good and evil and began to live for their own pleasure. Limited understanding had centered them on God. Now they began to center on themselves and since they were not created to govern themselves anarchy, chaos, murder, and mayhem followed. From the dawn of civilization man has been a predator; ignoring God’s Law, both individually and collectively, he has avariciously murdered to accumulate the earth’s bounty to himself.
To the pirate theft is a virtue. To the murderer killing is defensible. To the crafty deception is gain. To the tyrant enslavement is success. Like beauty, to the fallen man, morality is in the eye of the beholder. The conscience is regularly breached by the evil spirit loose from the Garden that prompts aberrant behavior with justification.
From the beginning the New World was plagued by controversy. Immigrants were from several Christian denominations; Puritans, Pilgrims, Dutch Reformed, Congregationalists, Anglican, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Amish, Quaker, and Mennonite; later, Catholics, Methodists, Unitarians, and Mormons.
In the humanistic world everyone claims a right to his opinion. Opinions vary from individual to individual. They are usually strongly held but seldom foundationally secure. The ink was not dry on the pages of our Constitution before rancorous disagreements on the role of government developed; Washington, Hamilton, and Adams wanted a strong federal government while Jefferson wanted it to be harnessed. Their different opinions resulted in two political parties and the two parties became permanent fixtures.
Man was created to enjoy the bounty of God’s lush Garden, disobedience caused him to fall. It was the eating of the fruit of the tree of the “knowledge of good and evil” that set the stage for the creature’s incursion onto the throne of the creator. The Devil claimed the knowledge of good and evil would make the creature like God by increasing knowledge. This sin was passed on to succeeding generations and is ubiquitous in our day. In an act of love and mercy God gave His chosen people the Law before leading them into the Promised Land. Abiding by His commandments would help counter the chaos Adam created. When they forgot His Law, by Grace He sent His only Son as propitiation for their sin. His Son, slain and risen, sits at the right hand of the Father and is King over His creation. Through selected scribes God dictated His Word which is contained in the Bible. His Word is the sole foundation for peace and prosperity.
When it became popular to enshrine reason on God’s throne the creature substituted his frivolous abilities for God’s unchanging commandments. Refusing to live under God’s Law, instead creating his own law, he centered power in the creature instead of the creator and subjected himself to the chaos of unlimited opinions and ultimately to the varieties of evil powerful men can inflict.
Many Christians treat the Bible with the reverence they would apply to a game of Pick-Up-Sticks. They select a portion that can be appropriated without bothering other portions and make it their own. President Thomas Jefferson did it with a pair of scissors; he cut out portions of the New Testament and used his cut-outs to construct a new bible.
Every Sunday, in thousands of Sunday School Bible study classes, Christians gather in small groups and discuss their interpretations of Scripture. The Biblical text is thus subjected to the wickedness of the human intellect and interpreted through individual pride and prejudice.
For a millennium the Catholic Church was the dominate Western Christian organization and creation of any Bible other than the Fourth Century Latin Bible translated by St. Jerome was grounds for the death penalty. Imprisoning the Bible in a remote language and deterring its translation to prevent heresy and schisms might have been acceptable but distorting its meaning and usurping God’s dominion by accruing power to the church was a dreadful sin. When a quest for power begins the sovereignty of the deity is always in jeopardy. The duty of every Christian organization should be to obey God’s Commandments and transmit the Good News to the world. Christians should be the instruments of transmission. Power belongs to God.
As the Catholic Church’s grip on the Holy Writ began to falter during the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Centuries several new translations of the Bible were written and printed. John Wycliffe, an Oxford Professor and Theologian produced the first complete English hand written copies in 1384. He escaped the death penalty. Martin Luther, William Tyndale, Myles Coverdale, John Rogers, and Thomas Cramer produced translations. Later the Geneva Bible, and the King James Version were printed.
England was dangerous for Bible translators. John Wycliffe’s assistant, John Hus, was burned at the stake; William Tyndale evaded capture for several years but was eventually captured, strangled, and burned. Rogers and Cramer also perished in the fire of Catholic vitriol. Myles Coverdale escaped to Geneva and helped craft the Geneva Bible. The Catholic Church followed in the steps of Adam and encroached on the sovereignty of God. Executions resulting from defying the edicts of the Catholic Church were evil offenses. God’s Law provides the only standard for executions, not the Catholic Church.
The Geneva Bible was the first Bible to contain a complete array of study notes. It was the Book of choice for over a hundred years. Shakespeare quoted it extensively and it was the Bible brought to America by the Pilgrims and Puritans. In a puzzling irony the King James Version has become the exclusive choice of several protestant denominations. It is not a Protestant document.
Public access to Scripture has an upside and a downside. Scripture is the Word of God; the only reliable Word. However, when it is freely filtered through the sinful minds of men innumerable conflicting interpretations come forth. Since the advent of the Reformation public access to Scripture has resulted in a religious anarchy of gargantuan proportions.
Official religious proliferation is not the only problem. In Protestant (other than Catholic) circles individual interpretation of Scripture is common and often accepted as legitimate. New Testament emphasis is a major heresy. The full-orbed love of the Father is replaced by a truncated conception of Jesus, meek and mild. Law is scorned and flaccidity encompasses Christianity.
When this unmitigated arrogance resides in a talented intellect the result is paragraphs (sometimes pages) of tightly reasoned theology that reflects the brain of the writer but has little to do with the God of the Bible. These individuals are often unaware that they have pushed God from His Throne and enthroned their own intellectual prejudices in His place. They have put human reason above the sovereignty of God. Sometimes they say they are agnostic maintaining that not knowing is better then knowing. Though they delight in their erroneous contentions if they are challenged they will quickly forget about being meek and mild and react like the Serpent. They claim to be using reason but are often unreasonable!
The Holy Bible is an interconnected chronicle. The Old Testament predicts the coming of Christ in several different passages and claiming He came to fulfill the Law not to destroy it Jesus quoted the Old Testament several times. Real conversion to Christ creates a certainty that results in an authoritative proclamation. To an unsaved person it seems arrogant but to another Christian it affirms the Faith. Jesus denounced the Pharisees and proclaimed the Gospel with authority. Authority put Him on the Cross and it is with authority that Christians are expected to proclaim the Gospel.
The human intellect is to be applied to the Bible to enable us to understand and obey God’s Will. He is God and the Bible is His Word. We are His created beings. The creature cannot censor the Creator without encroaching on His sovereignty. It is our duty to read the entire Word of God with the intention of understanding His Will. Picking and choosing is like deciding it is illegal to murder people you like but legal to murder people you don’t like. If there are portions we do not understand we must remember that His ways are not our ways. His Word is prefect; our ways are sinful.
Religion without law is a clawless, toothless tiger. When Christians ignore the Old Testament and the Law of Moses (God’s Law) they create a pietistic humanism that has no leverage in the social order. Islam with Shiria law will trump lawless Christianity every time.
It is not only the humanistic character of our Constitution that should concern Christians but the fact that it is a product of the creature that can and has been amended on several occasions. A Christian nation living under the immutable Law of God has a stable unchangeable religious base that creates both righteousness and stability.
The heresy of New Testament Christianity is pervasive. It is a humanistic theology that is symptomatic of the condition of the Christian religion in our time. Pastors and preachers have forsaken the balanced doctrine based on both the Old and New Testaments and have preached New Testament gifts without Old Testament obligations.
One writer sent me this question: The America Version of Christianity; true Religion or America's Largest Cult and Social Club? The question is apropos.
The condition of the Protestant Christian Church provides a lesson in the results of absolute freedom. We are living in a time when dividing and conquering is a progressive reality. Power is multiplied in agreement and diminished in diversity. The world government power oligarchs seek diversity, multiculturalism, and conflict.
The Bible is God’s mandate for the proper conduct of human affairs. It is the yardstick for every action. Though it has been translated and retranslated the Gospel is presented in each iteration. It is blasphemous to desecrate it by ignoring or denigrating its contents. It is the anchor of civilization. It is a Holy, indivisible document, interwoven and interconnected. God gave it to us for our benefit. We are to study it and apply our reason to it but never distort it or dissect it.
Al Cronkrite is a free-lance writer from Florida. He can be reached at fmsinfla@hotmail.com