THE RELIGION OF MAN

Secularism does not provide a neutral meeting place for all of us to gather together. Instead, it is a new and thinly veiled religion with its own belief system. Chris Cuomo, CNN, recently expressed the central hope of this alternative religion:

·       "If you believe in one another and if do the right thing for yourself and your community, things will get better in this country. You don't need help from above. It's within us." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZPRvHlBvls

Secularism places hope in humanity instead of in God. However, are we fitting objects of hope? Are there nations that have replaced the hope in God for the hope in humanity, and can we learn any lessons from them before we have gone too far?

“Fortunately,” the last century has given us many models of nations where the “religion of man” has forcefully replaced traditional forms of religion. However, these nations have also modeled the loss of freedom, speech, liberty, and even of life. Communist nations have slaughtered one hundred million of their own people. They all have served as exemplars of repression and the enslavement of thoughts, minds, and words at the threat of death. Only the Party’s word can be heard, and children have been taught to expose their parents if they are speaking a different word.

Today, in the West, their proponents tend to call themselves “democratic socialists” to not evoke images of their genocidal past. However, several groups still call themselves “Marxist” or “Communist.” They set up their tables at the yearly Brooklyn Book Fair andy still call for “revolution.” Therefore, I have asked them, “You are not calling for a violent revolution, are you.” On a number of occasions, they have answered, “Yes!”

I therefore asked, “How is it that you are willing to pay such a price in lives for an experiment, which has universally failed and proved unsustainable.” On one occasion, the Marxist answered, “That’s not true!”

I asked if he could provide just one example where it hasn’t failed and resulted in a bloodbath. I was surprised to hear him answer, “Cuba.” I knew that, economically, it had been a failure, which had required the USSR to continually prop it up. I also knew that it was highly repressive of any other religion or of speech which opposed the communist party. But had the Cuban communists also been genocidal as had all the other Marxist regimes. Perhaps it hadn’t been. After all, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara remain heroes for large segments of the West. How could genocidal tyrants be held up as heroes?

When I returned home, I immediately made a Google search and found that these “heroes” had exterminated 125,000 of their own people, even on this tiny island.

Today, most young Western idealists, rarely call themselves “Marxists” or even “communists” but “social democrats.” However, a limited number of young people are still advocating violent revolution. We encountered a very likeable group of proponents on the steps of Columbia University in NYC. They assured me that it wouldn’t be a bloodbath as it had been before. Instead, they winsomely explained that they would merely make a clean surgical strike to eliminate the top 1%. I therefore responded:

·       Usually people do not want to be eliminated, even surgically. My guess is that they will retaliate as they always have done. Won’t this just result in another wholesale genocide?

They confidently assured me that it would not, and that they had learned from past mistakes.

The religion of man is energized by idealism and not the facts of history. Instead, of looking to a God of love for meaning and identity, it has substituted the opportunity to find redemption through their social justice cause. As a result, they attempt to overthrow the present system by painting it as the pinnacle of injustice, while presenting their own cause as the  of justice.

I asked two young ladies carrying a placard, “No justice, no peace,” “How much justice will you need in order to live at peace?” They couldn’t answer and became defensive. I was trying to make the point that no system will ever be perfect, not in this world. Therefore, would they continue to agitate, even violently, for an unattainable level of justice? However, they promptly walked away.

The religion of man is a propaganda machine of clever sayings and not of clear thinking. History has shown us that there is a vast difference between the two religions. So too has the Bible:

·       Thus says the LORD: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.” (Jeremiah 17:5-8)

Secularism is a belief in the earned goodness of man through self-sacrifice for a worthy cause, rather than in the worthiness of our sacrificial Savior and the goodness He freely confers upon us. These two religions are in opposition. However, “the religion of man” has proven that it will resort to any means to win, while the religion of God is convinced that truth is on its side and will eventually, in God’s timing, prevail. Therefore, it is willing to resort to peaceful means: reason and the gentle persuasion of their God.

These two religions are opposed to one another. Consequently, I know of only one “communist” regime that, at least for now, values the contributions of its fledgling Christian community and does not oppress them.

Lacking any assurance of the truth, the religion of man demands complete submission and will oppress and denigrate any dissenters. Even now, we are witnessing secular “social democratic” oppression and silencing, a mere foretaste of what is surely to come. Jesus has warned us to not be surprised:

·       “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. (John 15:18-20)