Paganism, again

I recently debated a guy about my earlier article on Evolution.  He counts himself as “Christian” but insists that Genesis wasn’t real and that he knows this from his scientific education.  I offered up that a man can be a Christian and a Scientist, but that it’s important to know which they are first.

Are they a scientist first, and anything God has related in the Bible can be adjusted or dispensed with to make it fit science?  Or are they a Christian first, and anything science says can be adjusted or dispensed with to make it fit what we know to be the truths of God’s word?

The debate ended with him expressing an agreement that either he does not truly feel, or he is agreeing with something utterly unlike what I was speaking of.  Most likely, he was doing that thing where he tries to just leave a debate peaceably without concession.  I guess we’ve all been there.

But to me, the politeness is irrelevant.  It's of no comfort to watch a person disagree with the word of God but claim belief in God.

I have seen this happen with homosexuality in various churches.  Where they sure want to accept practicing and unrepentant homosexuals as ministers, but they sure don't want to stop calling themselves a Christian church.

We're born this way, but drunkards and thieves are not.

All the benefits then of being perceived as on a moral high road, but none of the austere self-sacrifice and discipline needed to live that kind of life.  I have to do this with alcohol, because I am the drunkard that the Apostle Paul said would not see heaven.  And it takes courage for me not to drink.  A courage utterly lacking in others, who inclined to sin in other ways, figure that instead of they changing, God and His word can.

But this kind of thing makes me see how much deeper - and for how much longer - this has gone on.  This is part of the theological liberalization of the churches from back in the fifties and sixties, and the current acceptance of homosexuality as "normal" is just the latest effect.

Jesus spoke about building houses on a firm foundation, of stone and not sand, but I see that modern "Christians" of all faiths and denominations feel that not even a foundation of any sort is needful.

To me, this is all absurd upon the face of it - yes, as a man of faith, but more to the point, as a man of science.  The illogic of it all is vast, and having forgot more scientific thought and principles than some young pups are likely to ever learn, it annoys me.

Picture it - the whole world knows of God first and foremost from the writings He inspired many men to write of.  Men we justly call "Prophets".  Whatever one may know of God by their faith and their feelings, it is well known that such communicates little more than "that" He is, for the "what", we must go to the Holy Books.

There are those who only accept the Old Testament as inspired.  These are the Jews.  Others accept the Old Testament and the New Testament as inspired, these are regarded as Christians, of many denominations, yes, but all Christians.

Some instead of the New Testament believe in the Koran - they accept the Old Testament, so we know they worship the same God, but the difference in character and description from the Koran versus the New Testament is large, in one Jesus is the Son of God and God, in the other he was but a man, "a prophet, and the most blameless".

So such as believe in the Koran are the Muslims.

And there are Mormons and there are members of the Church of Christian Science.  Those two faiths  pass the point of "denominations", as they don't just have other books as "advice" or "thoughts" upon the matter, they instead each have another book that is believed to be divinely inspired Holy Writ, the same as or greater than the Bible, and thus instructive in learning of the character of God and/or His son Jesus.

And yet they still hold to the Old Testament and the New, and so for that they are esteemed by many as Christians.

But then we have the new breed.  And the new breed, the "modern Christian" is not a thing of the Mormon church, or the Methodists, or the Baptists or the Presbyterians.  You may find such in nearly every church, I daresay you could find them in the Eastern Orthodox churches, too.

No, the "modern Christian", who fancies himself so new and up to date, is just the regurgitation of New England Transcendentalism.  Which was nothing more than a regurgitation of prior Deistic movements, and before that Naturalist and before that Paganistic movements which have as their commonality a desire to keep the idea of a God, to keep the idea of a moral high ground, but not to keep any kind of solid wrote down book by which their own behaviors and conduct could in any way be measured against it and found wanting.

Like then the Pagans of old, it’s an “I’ll believe in God as I see fit, and you do the same, and we’ll call him the same, and it’s all good!”  No, it is not all good.  Oh, yes, politically, fine, believe as you wish.  God will deal with you as He sees fit, He needs not my aid.  But the claim of a practicing homosexual who thinks the Bible was wrote by dead patriarchal oppressors that he is a Christian, same as I, is false. And frankly, rather obviously false.

As are the claims of a great many other “Modern Christians” who would be more honest if they simply dropped the “Christian” word and went with “Modernist”.  Or better yet, and in an acknowledgment of their roots, simply went back to “Pagan”.

In this latest modernist movement it’s a buffet.  But a buffet not where one picks and chooses between which few things are sins or not, but a larger and more brazen buffeting where the aroma of the food is found pleasing and may stay, but the table and that which is upon the table would be better off gone.

A God without the Old Testament - let alone any subsequent inspired writings - is but that faith and feeling I mentioned, and the whole secret point of that, and it's a secret that some of these folks keep from themselves, too, is that it lets them play aces and deuces - and tres and hearts and clubs - wild!

Then on any matter of what is or is not God's will, they need not pick up the Torah or the Talmud, the New Testament or the Apocrypha, The Koran or the The Book of Mormon.  They need not review or study the writings of the men of old who earned the title Prophet from their contemporaries and from history.

No, they need only consult with how they feel, and if they wish to aggrandize it, how their own personal faith tells them that it is.  On any and all matters. Thus their feelings - by any name, faith or knowledge or study - becomes their god.

And like the pretense of believing in God without believing in the things that describe what or who that God is, they can arrogate themselves all the rights and privileges of a Prophet, or even really, a god, and by simply denying that they are doing that, it all somehow be good.

It is not good.

Now if one wishes to stand up and proclaim that which one believes is the Will of God and that he or she is inspired to say so, then more power to that person.  If they believe that they are a divinely inspired Prophet or Prophetess, maybe I will agree and maybe I will not, but there is an honesty in saying so openly and unashamedly.

What I intensely dislike is those who seeing how such men and women come under scrutiny and fire for what may - and is - often counted as a brazen farce, decide to sneak it in, not by saying, "Here is something new that the Lord has let me know of" or "Here is a correction that the Lord desired us to know of" but instead by saying, "Oh, six days?  No, that means four billion years!  Who me?  A prophet?  Oh no, not I!  I just happen to know that it was four billion years meant!"

No.

No, you do not get to "know" and proclaim that without stepping up and courageously claiming new revelation.  If one did so, then I could agree or not, but I'd respect the honesty of it.  But to simply label an actual Prophet as wrong, not due to revelation but simply due to feeling?

Even when feeling is called "what I know"? It's blasphemy. It's denying the Word of God, not openly and honestly, but sneakily and cagily, such that children, the uneducated, the gullible, might well then figure that what you say is Christianity, as you say it with pretty words. I find it violative of the commandment against having no other gods, for if you ask for Dr. John Smith the well known cancer curer and I take you to Psychic Astrologer Jane Doe but greet her with the words, "Hello, Dr. Smith", am I being honest? Is it really the same person for me falsely calling her the same name?

I thought as a child reading the works of Louisa May Alcott and Emerson and Thoreau that as cool as some of them were that there was a wrongness in them claiming Christianity when they were much more clearly Deist.  But perhaps they could be forgave as it could go hard on those who were non-Christian in those times.

But that wrongness remains in those today who desire to live life off only their own feelings on the matter, only their own knowledge of a few decades - but to pass it off in public as the faith of millennia!  They cloak their idle opinions in the garb of the hard won theological knowledge of several thousand years, and figure there’s nothing wrong in that! And yes, any who are thinking that "My opinions aren't idle, I studied for years!" - ANY opinions of one man are idle compared to the totality of mankind's knowledge over the ages!

It's remarkable then that any dare this, as if their off the cuff pronouncements as to the wrongness of Moses - while carefully not calling him wrong - are to be accorded equal, if not more, respect than that of the combined men of the past six thousand years! And some of you thought I went to far in claiming that such people were making themselves gods!

To put it in language a scientist could understand, it would be as if I proclaimed myself a "Doctor".  And why not?  I've read and studied more books on history, philosophy, religion and economics than most students in those fields!  I feel I am - heck, I "know" I am!  Therefore, do not take what I say as just the opinion of a simple man - no, regard my words as if from a learned Doctor!  

Am I then?  Am I a doctor for feeling so?  For even “knowing” so?  Or in this culture, in this world, is a necessary predicate of being called "Doctor" a course of study that may vary from state to state, nation to nation or era to era, but always falls within some recognized parameters, such that if one has it not, they should not be called "doctor"?

We know the answer to that.  A doctor is based upon certain things, not faith, not feelings, not any one person saying, "But I know I am!"

Same with Christianity - or for that matter, Islam.  Maybe one wishes to define Christian as believing in the Nicene Creed.  Maybe they have yet other solid and wrote out definitions the validity of which can be discussed by men of good will.

But there must at the end of the day be a definition a bit more stringent than, "How I feel" or "What I, a fallible man of a few decades, count to be my knowledge and wisdom."

Such are not "Christian". Such are only sorely deceived. In truth, there are no "Christian Evolutionists", though I titled the previous article that. There are only those greatly deceived who have accepted some current and fleeting doctrine of mortal men and placed it - and how they feel about it - over the received wisdom of the ages, over the truths described in the Holy Bible, and over the very God who inspired the men who wrote of those truths.

There may be as many definitions of a "Christian" as you like, but none can include, with logic or love, "Disagreeing with Christ's Father in Heaven".