THE NEW PAGANISM

We are all interconnected. The priestess’ sermon communicated this point very clearly. She had vacationed on an island off the coast of Maine, which had eliminated its mosquito problem by draining the cranberry bogs. However, along with the mosquitoes, they also eliminated the cranberries, birds, night sounds, and an assortment of fish.

From this she reasoned that by changing one thing, all is changed. One action flows everywhere like water. Likewise, we are not merely a single drop of water, but a drop that impacts all other drops. What we say and do will impact those around us, and they will impact those around them.

This principle is undeniable, but what do we do with it? We ritualize it. The church gave water to each person. They were instructed to pour their water into a common trough to symbolize our connectedness. Then, this new batch was combined with last year’s water to symbolize our continuity with the past.

This principle also pertains to our beliefs. When we change one belief, we also change every other belief. When we eliminate God from our thinking, we are compelled to fill this faith-void with substitutes. Clearly, this is exactly what this church has done. It has invented new rituals, accompanied by meditation and an assortment of radical causes.

If meaning, love, validation, and forgiveness are no longer the product of a relationship with God, then alternatives must be found. Instead, we are taught to forgive ourselves and to validate ourselves through our activism. And, we can derive meaning and dignity from knowing that we are like a drop of water that flows everywhere, right?

However, will this awareness truly ennoble us? Will it cause us to respect and cherish every other drop of water? Will it enable us to honor others more?

Another way to envision these questions is to think about the water in a toilet bowl. Even though we might understand that this water will flow into the great oceans of this world and will be gathered up in clouds to water the earth, it fails to give us the honor and dignity that we so need as human beings.

Instead, this is an honor that can only come from the Creator who has created us in His image and has called us to represent Him, endowing us with a value and a purpose far in excess of every other created thing.

It is because of our special status that we are constrained to honor and love all other people.

·       Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. (Romans 12:10)

This is something that we cannot do for every drop on the planet. To love everything is to love nothing.

Besides, it is because I know that God loves, forgives, and cherishes me that I can pass it on to others, however imperfectly. It is because He accepts me that I can accept others. In contrast, we use water for very menial purposes. However, humans are not to be used but to be served.

At the end of the service, we sang, “There is a river flowing in my soul…telling me I’m somebody.”

It cannot be a literal flow of water that tells me I’m somebody, but rather the fact that God has created me and loved me so much that He has died for me. I need to know that I am more than an interactive part of the universe. Instead, I need to know that I am part of God’s family, and that this is something that will never change.

I was disturbed by the sight of this new paganism. I wanted to scream, but I also must love.

Proof of God’s Existence Based on Human Exceptionalism

If we want to affirm the human values, rights, dignity, and equality that we in the West so esteem, we must also affirm the existence of God. Consequently, if we reject God, we also reject these values. Here’s why:

1. Each human has dignity, equality, and unalienable value.

2. Without God, there can be no human dignity, equality, or unalienable value.

3. God exists. 

Premise #1:  This is a premise almost universally accepted in the West. We believe that all should have equal protections under the law, despite the surpassing wealth and influence of some. The Bill of Rights had been based upon this assumption of equality. Our Declaration of Independence provided this assumption - that all are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights.  We also intuitively believe that humans deserve to be treated with respect and accorded rights consistent with our humanity. The denial of these truths leads to regarding and treating our fellow humans as animals.

Premise #2:  This Declaration emphasized the fact that these unalienable rights find their basis in a God who had created humanity to be like Him. Therefore, are value is somewhat commensurate with God’s, and we must treat each other accordingly!  Instead, if government granted our unalienable rights, government could easily terminate them.

Our human dignity is based upon the fact that we are god-like even if we have corrupted ourselves. We therefore have an obligation to treat our fellow humans with dignity, even if they have acted in undignified ways. Consistent with this, psychotherapeutic practice requires that we treat the clients with unconditional-positive-regard, as if they possess an unalienable dignity. If they don't, they will lose their client, since they too have an intuition that they must be treated with dignity.

Pragmatic concerns alone cannot suffice to retain these concepts of dignity and equality:

• When we regard our fellow humans materially (rather than god-like), we cannot perceive any equality or even dignity. Instead, we observe differences - that some are better, nicer, more educated, and contribute to our welfare. Meanwhile, others present society with a high cost. Therefore, from a materialistic point of view, there can be no equality. Instead, some deserve respect and others do not.

• It is not enough to treat others with respect and equality for merely pragmatic reasons. It will make us schizoid. Imagine the therapist who knows he must treat his client with dignity, while he doesn’t believe that client has any dignity. It would therefore be nothing less than manipulative and hypocritical to treat him with respect.

• Human history provides overwhelming testimony that pragmatism alone will not create the better society. Instead, self-interest will reign.

Besides, if we are just another member of the animal kingdom, albeit advanced, any belief in human exceptionalism will eventually erode. Can we raid our neighbors frig at will as we pluck an apple from a tree or extract milk from a cow? Of course not! Should eating other life forms – lettuce and radishes - be criminalized? If so, it would lead to the death of humanity. Must we maintain human exceptionalism? If not, we cannot maintain humanity.

There is only one way to preserve the dignity, equality and unalienable value of all humanity - by recognizing that we are the special creation and the children of God! If human exceptionalism exists, so too must God!

Our Value as Humans

Beliefs and values matter. They have far-reaching implications. For example, some increasingly vocal voices are claiming that all life has equal value. British rock star Morrissey recently stated:

• I see no difference between eating animals and pedophilia…They are both rape and murder. If I am introduced to anyone who eats beings, I walk away.

I wonder whether he’d walk away from someone who just exterminated termites or disease carrying rats living in his house. Where would Morrissey draw the line? Would he swat a malarial mosquito? Would he eat yogurt – and this contains bacteria – or would he take an anti-biotic? Would he refuse an anti-biotic to a dying child?

Such obvious absurdities lead many animal rights activists to restrict their activism to the more intelligent animals, like chimps. However, if we try to establish the value of living things according to their intelligence, this will lead to other irresolvable problems. Here are a few that come to mind:

1.     Animals are not particular amenable to intelligence tests, least of all those anthropocentric measures that we would devise.

2.     If intelligence is to be the determination of value, then we also have to apply this criterion to humans. However, this will lead us to some very undemocratic conclusions. Consequently, some of us would be designated as more valuable and privileged than others. This criterion would also argue in favor of class. Our Bill of Rights would collapse in the face of this onslaught. Our laws would have to reflect a differential protection relative to intelligence. Therefore, killing one deemed intelligent would carry a greater penalty than killing one not so deemed.

3.     We would have to administer a continuous flow of such tests to determine whether intelligence is slipping and, consequently, one’s value as a person.

4.     If value is determined by intelligence, the door is swung wide open to euthanasia, eugenics, and the idea of the master-race.

What set of values could then protect society against this insipient materialism. I know of only one – the fact that all we humans are created in the image of God and therefore carry inestimable value, a value that God requires us to respect! This is the only rational basis for equality.

Thinking about Human Dignity

Ultimately, the way we think about humanity is the way we will treat humanity. The late and renowned Swiss theologian, Emil Brunner, affirmed the impactfulness of our worldview:

• The recent terrible years of the world war and of the preceding totalitarian revolutions have shown us that the understanding of man is the basis of all social order and of all culture…The denial of this dignity is equivalent to the total abandonment of man to the power of the state…The totalitarian state can arise, and is bound to arise, whenever the idea of human dignity has been lost. The idea of human dignity, however, is historically and, in principle, none other than the idea of man’s being created in the image of God. (The Scandal of Christianity, 69-71)

Most embrace an idealistic concept of the dignity of humanity and also acknowledge that, without such a concept, humanity is no more than an animal to be manipulated and used. But are there necessary preconditions for such an idealistic and dignified view of humanity? Brunner thought that there were:

• [The] time of idealism has always been followed by one of materialism in which human dignity was denied. Such was the case after the idealist tide of the nineteenth century, which was followed by a terrible ebb of crudest materialism, which had nothing else to say of man but that he was the most differentiated and developed animal.

Sheer secular humanism cannot long retain this idealism. It lacks the necessary presuppositional underpinning and, therefore, belief in human dignity will eventually erode. If the human is no more than a sophisticated bio-chemical robot, eventually he will be treated in this manner. Robots are esteemed as long as they serve a purpose, and then are thrown on the junk heap.

Brunner concludes:

• [The Christian] doctrine of man, which acknowledges the image of God as well as the depth of sin, is able to create a social order which has room for the dignity of man and at the same time provides for the necessary precautions against the terrible forces of evil which are slumbering in man.

These forces seem now to have been revived with renewed “progressive” vigor.