The Age Of Reason - Has Something Gone Awry?
By Al Cronkrite The Covenant News ~ August 23, 2010
Muslims are constructing a massive mosque at the former site of the World Trade Centers. It is likely the Supreme Court with a new Liberal, possibly prejudiced, member will determine the legality of homosexual marriage. While public support of Christian morality is forbidden by the courts, freedom of speech has been extended to gross coarseness. On CNN Dr. Laura Schlessinger was lectured on morality by that great paragon of righteousness, Larry King, and, after the required grovel, announced she will be giving up her radio show because of overwhelming media condemnation of using the “N” word. Our president is providing support to Muslims. We are killing our babies not to placate the gods, as was often the case in historic societies, but for our own personal convenience.
Our society is awash in beliefs that contradict reason. When the female ovum is fertilized by the male sperm human life is initiated. It is human life at the instant of fertilization. If laws against murder are taken seriously abortion must fall under their dominion. The act of aborting a baby supports the freedom killing idea that the powerful are entitled to exert godly dominion over the weak. When a society legalizes the killing of babies they have legalized a particular kind of murder. The laws condemning murder are weakened and the acceptance of other kinds of murder will result. Massive military murder has been acceptable to American Christians since the birth of the nation. Euthanasia has a foot in the door and god-men are panting to determine who deserves to live and who deserves to die.
For a time, Thomas Paine was famous on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. He wrote the “Rights of Man” which provided popular support for the French Revolution and “Common Sense” which fueled the American Revolution. Though he was talented and famous only five or six people attended his funeral. He had designed bridges, written popular pamphlets, and mid-wifed two revolutions but his disdain for Christianity ruined his reputation. Robert Ingersoll, another rebel, described his departure: “On the 8th of June, 1809, death came – Death, almost his only friend. At his funeral no pomp, no pageantry, no civic procession, no military display. In a carriage, a woman and her son who had lived on the bounty of the dead – on horseback, a Quaker, the humanity of whose heart dominated the creed of his head – and, following on foot, two negroes filled with gratitude – constituted the funeral cortege of Thomas Paine.”
The change in popular perception of Thomas Paine not only mirrors the change in zeal for our Christian Faith but also showcases the tenor of logical behavior. In that era Christians deplored detractors and separated themselves from the enemy; today, they tend to champion detractors and mingle with the enemy.
According to a recent article President George W. Bush and his aides made 935 false statements in their efforts to secure public support for the illegal invasion of Iraq. A belligerent, blood thirsty public with a phenomenal lack of discernment bought the lies and elected the liar and his team to a second term.
The media, once a vehement supporter of freedom of speech, now suppresses utterances they have determined to be detrimental to their interests. Their agenda involves erasing the Biblical record of the death of the Savior while supporting fornication, adultery, homosexuality, divorce, factions, foul language, and multiculturalism. They hate Christians and the predominant religion of the nation is regularly denigrated, sequestered, and mocked. Their treatment of the Holocaust has been so effective that naïve, sentimental Christians provide massive support to a religion that hates them and their Savior. Hapless Christians seem to believe that our Christian God has begun to reward evil and is supporting a generation that stubbornly refuses to accept the propitiation of His Son. They disdain the theology of their fathers in the Faith and believe that God has repented from the Diaspora and is now supporting its reversal. That, gentle reader, is confusion!
When human reason becomes the standard for determining behavior the powerful no longer need the ruse of logic. Freedom is proscribed by the whims of the dictators and logic falls at the feet of expediency.
There is no better example of this malignant phenomenon than the Christian Church. As the Age of Reason invaded our society Christian leaders forgot that death is a result of following ways that seem right to a man (Proverbs 14:12). Instead of falling back on the Bible and cleaving to the Wisdom of God they followed human reason. Colleges manipulated the Gospel to attract more students and churches quickly picked up the cue. The Gospel of Jesus Christ became a commodity that could be hawked from the pulpit on Sunday morning and emotionally administered by manipulative evangelists. God’s servants became ad-men who selected the most attractive features of the Gospel and advertised them from the pulpit. It became a humanistic circus. God was forgotten along with obedience and His Kingdom. It was no longer a Faith for all of life but was now an heretical endeavor where the creature decided to believe in God and in return expected gifts and blessings Faith was placed in a preacher sanctioned by educational achievement, by the church, and the state. Instead of the One True God, the Creator of the Universe, the minister was expected to provide the Sunday blessing. The Church became an idol.
Islam will not be defeated by complaining about the Mosque at ground zero or denigrating Shiria law. Though it is a heresy Islam does what Christianity does not do, it provides a faith for all of life. Gary North contends that something cannot be defeated with nothing. Antinomian Christianity cannot defeat Shiria law and if Christians do not quickly understand the necessity of obedience, Islam will overwhelm them.
The Age of Reason has brought us to the point where instead of supporting the Bible and God’s Law, sincere, intelligent Christians are citing obedience to the Constitution as the panacea. They are seeking obedience to the document that supports the Mosque they are condemning. True Christianity cannot exist under secular law. Law forms the religious base of society (Thank you, Dr. Rushdoony). All law is religious. Our cancerous, humanistic laws must be abandoned and replaced with the only just and righteous code, the Law God gave to Moses. Without God’s Law Christians cannot win.
Christianity has fallen so far away from a sound theological base that the mention of Sharia law creates a visceral repulsion. Much of the problem is with Christians who consider God’s Law too cruel and prefer the leniency of human law. Christians deride the Old Testament as the “Hebrew Bible” and condemn God’s Law as “legalism”. Their fight against homosexuality, abortion, and Islam becomes a fight over two sets of opposing opinions. As pagans transform our society by setting us under malicious secular laws, they complain that their opinion is of no account against the evil humanistic legal system. Though some of its statutes are similar to God’s Law, Sharia law is a foreign legal system derived from a heretical religion. It has one redeeming characteristic: since it is supposedly from god it is immutable and immutable law protects people from the anarchy of human opinion which is the malicious foundation of humanistic law.
When Christians choose human law over God’s Law they insult the Creator by taking another bite of the Apple of the knowledge of good and evil. The United States Constitution is a fine document but it was birthed by human beings who were so stained by evil they failed to mention the intrinsic legal dominion of the One True God.
It was the same unchangeable God Who gave the Law to Moses that gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him might be forgiven of sin and have everlasting life. His Law was given with the same gracious love as the sacrifice of His Son. It was given so that those who obeyed might receive the blessings of peace and prosperity. (It is an obedience gospel – not a prosperity gospel!) Belief in Jesus provides forgiveness from sin and everlasting life and obedience to the Law provides peace and prosperity in His creation.
God’s judgment often comes in the form of confusion. What started as the Age of Reason is ending as the Age of Confusion. Politics will not change our nation. Only repentance and obedience can return the nation to rationality.
Unencumbered by immutable standards human reason becomes malignantly insane!
Al Cronkrite is a free-lance writer from Florida. He can be reached at fmsinfla@hotmail.com