Last time, I went hard after the secularism that caused the "right" to drift to a non-traditional candidate four years ago in Donald J. Trump. Since that post the RNC has had their national convention, nominated Trump for a second term, and done their best to convince Americans that he continues to be the right man for the job. Their argument has been bolstered of late because of the further demise of decency and values throughout our nation expressed in the riots, demonstrations, and crimes that are plaguing our major cities in recent days. Again, I am not a Trump defender and I am more than happy to call the president out when he tweets inappropriate comments or violates the principles of conservatism rooted in historical liberalism, but that is not the purpose of this post.
The purpose of this post is to turn our attention to the Left and its continual lurch toward secular humanism and the removal of the bedrock of Western Culture, the Judeo-Christian Ethic. To get the fullest picture of these things I would encourage any reader to check out RC Sproul's teaching series "A Blue Print for Thinking." For simplicity you can click here and it will take you to the teaching series. From the Enlightenment on thinkers and philosophers have been seeking to understand humanity outside of the normal, or at least the historical ways, that man was pondered before. There was the idea that man was not the center of the universe, but something outside of him. And whatever that something was, it was what drove man "to be" and to live in such a way that he promoted the good of others, even if it meant suffering for himself. This was modeled in Plato's writings concerning Socrates, the Hebrew Bible, and ultimately in the New Testament with the life of Christ. Now, of course the Biblical record has an even greater purpose in its writing, namely the personal revelation of the God who has made all things and for whom all things exist, but for the purpose of this examination we are simply highlighting the ethical and moral teachings of that Sacred Book.
With Enlightenment thinking aimed more directly at man's pursuit of his own personal happiness, philosophy and other disciplines began to follow suit. The greatest display of man's desire to make himself the center of the universe finally arrived in the mid-19th century with Darwin's book, "On the Origin of Species." Evolutionary biology and humanistic philosophy now had their treatise on how to break away from the problem with a "Creator" and move to a view that all of creation was not actually a creation at all as much as it was an accidental achievement of evolutionary chaos. This only further cemented the view that man existed for his own good, because without a god to keep man accountable to himself or his fellow man he was free to pursue his own pursuits however he saw fit. Now, for clarification I will state that in varying degrees man has always been given over to this desire to throw-off his Creator. This was exactly what happened in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, and what man has being doing ever since that day in worshiping idols, false gods, himself, or any other thing like science, sports, politics, money, fame, etc. has only further illustrated man's fallen heart and sinful nature.
Man's proclivity to such thinking is what allowed for the immediate spread and adoption of Darwin's view as the chief "scientific" and "philosophical" received truth that began to be pushed by the intellectuals of the day. It truly did not take long, historically speaking of course, for Darwin's theory to become the accepted science and for it to even find its way into classrooms and colleges in no time at all. With this mindset also came the Progressive Era, where men and women seeing themselves as the center of everything, began to demand rights not based on Natural Law or what may be best in a pluralistic society, but on the basis of what made them feel "equal." Whether it was the right to vote, taxing income, a right to work, the need for safety nets, or the great number of issues that arose in the early 20th century, no longer were we as a people seeking what Higher Law had established, but we were finding comfort in the Civil Law, man's ideal of equity based on jurisprudence and legislation and not a rooted ethic. Yes, there had been some Natural Laws that had been violated in the past by this government and others, namely the acceptance of race based slavery and the idea that people of color where somehow less human than others. However, this errors were exploited to deny the usefulness of Natural Law, instead of rightly recognizing where people had been erroneous in their interpretation of what God had rightly demanded from his creation.
Woodrow Wilson was the first president to not only use his progressive ideas to come to political prominence, but he himself was a racist who viewed people of color as inferior to others, which was a logical conclusion based on his view of human beings and their origins. Some may have tried to use biblical links such as the infamous "curse of Ham" to make the same arguments, but this only revealed their ignorance of Scripture, because there is no "curse of Ham" mentioned in the Bible. Canaan is cursed by Noah in the biblical account after the flood, but the larger family of Ham is not included in that cursing. The argument can be made historically that this is what sets God against the people of Canaan, and contributes greatly in their future judgment by the people of Israel in their conquest of Canaan's land after the period of Egypt captivity. All of this is in fulfillment of God's promises made to the Patriarch Abraham and continued through his sons Isaac and Jacob. All this aside to simply say the continuation of racial injustice and inequity has much more of a basis in progressivist secularism than it does in a Biblical Ethic.
This is the direction I want to continue in as we further examine 20th and 21st century culture and society and how we have arrived at where we are today. I do believe that secular humanism rooted in an evolutionary philosophy of mankind pushed by the progressivist left has been the primary engine that has moved our society and culture away from Natural Law, Western Philosophy, and a common morality. However, I think the same mindset that has allowed this is universal in all man. I think our fallen nature blinds our eyes, deafens our ears, clouds our minds, and hardens our hearts to the truth of God and what He demands of His creation. I do not think that Truth can be found in governments of politicians, but I do think that those in authority have a God-mandated right to do what is good and to protect the people God has placed them over. I firmly believe the Left has diminished the role of the family, men, and the church in the lives of people to the extent that the violence and anarchy that is ongoing today is a direct product of. In my next post I hope to finally getting around to explaining those things, and then ultimately providing good and healthy solutions to how we might be able to solve the problems that plague us, if we are not too late. Thank you for reading. God bless you and come, Lord Jesus!
