“I observe that you are very religious in all respects.” – Acts 17:22
Most people I have found, both the good and bad, tend to be religious. I am not religious and atypically have never been. I would call myself a secular Christian, and by “secular” I mean that in the strictest definition of the word: nonreligious. Because that is what secular means. It does not mean that you do not follow Christ or do not believe that He is the Son of God and that He died on the cross to save us from our sins which lead us to damnation. It does not mean that I do not believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God and filled with eternal truths meant to guide us to the ultimate Truth, the ultimate Way and to Life itself which is God Himself. What it means is that I make no distinction between the sacred and the secular, between politics and religion, between religious truth and non-religious truth. Truth is truth and all truth is God’s truth.
Christ Himself greatly upset the religious sensibilities of the Jewish people when He dared to say, “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread also which I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh.” “The Jews therefore began to argue with one another, saying, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” Jesus therefore said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. – John 6:51-53 ….As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew, and were not walking with Him anymore. Jesus said therefore to the twelve, “You do not want to go away also, do you?” Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. – John 6:66-68. In saying this, Peter takes the nonreligious position of following after the truth regardless of his former religious teaching. But sadly, rather than understanding the controversial and nonreligious statement of Christ as well as Peter’s statement of personal faith in following Christ’s teaching, we have now created a religious practice, a communal sacrament, around this teaching. This is not what Christ intended. But this is what man does, when confronted with a Transfiguration, his first instinct is to erect a religious Tabernacle – “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, I will make three tabernacles here, one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” -Matthew 17:4. Ironically, this also was Peter who reflexively said this without thinking. Jesus ignored it.
Religion is primarily a cultural and social thing. Most people tend toward a communal relationship with God rather than a personal relationship. The closer one’s personal relationship is with God (the prophets, John the Baptist, Jesus, Moses, Abraham, David –for example) the shallower the communal relationship becomes. Those who are strongly religious struggle to understand this idea of a personal relationship with God, or, as Dennis Prager, deny its existence altogether. Their relationship with God revolves around their relationship to the church community. The religious mind only knows the communal and seeks it on a weekly basis while it tends to avoid the personal and private relationship with God. Truth becomes whatever the pastor teaches about God instead of God’s revelatory insight of the individual.
Christian leaders are most abundant, but men of God are most rare. Pastors and teachers are welcomed, while apostles and prophets are shunned. And according to their religious doctrine these are said to be “not for today”. Religious doctrine can be manipulated in any way that suits the advancement of the religion. Is this not precisely what the Pharisees and the Sadducees did? Is this not what infuriated Jesus? This you will never hear in church. Some pastors will go as far as claiming members of their flock as being Pharisaical because they are apparently not loving enough and dare to call out the social “love” gospel of the LGBTQ syndicate.
Along these lines, have you ever considered how idiomatic and unorthodox the disciples were who followed after Jesus against the advice of the Pharisees, the religious leaders, and the Jewish religious teachings of the day? They became outcasts of their religious community and they gave up all they had to follow Christ. They followed after this rabble-rouser; Him who spoke the truth with authority that the religious leaders could not comprehend. This tension between the disciples of Jesus and the religious leaders and the Jews who persecuted them in the book of Acts Is almost never spoken of in the churches who are busy establishing their own communal orthodoxy.
High religion is filled with people who don’t actually read their Bible or know what is written therein. They dare not read it lest they find something that might separate them from their communal relationships. In the past they have been told not to read by church leaders who wish to maintain their hegemony over doctrine and their church community. They do this with the best intentions, so they say, in order to “protect their flock”. In this same way the Pharisees were protecting the Jewish people from radical and unauthorized teaching such as that which came from the upstart Jesus. The full Bible has in the past been prevented from being read by keeping the people illiterate or having it written in Latin, a foreign language to the commoners. Or even, dare I say in a milder sense, The King James Bible claiming it to be the only “authorized” version– an unreasonable opinion – and thereby de-authorizing all subsequent, more closely adherent to the original text and easier-to-understand translations, as well as previous translations. These suppressive acts have been done in order to maintain magisterial control by religious leaders. It is also to maintain the hegemony of the communal relationship with God above the personal.
In the contemporary Christian world – those still believing the Bible to be the inerrant and inspired word of God – churches claim to be following the Bible with a ready handful of scriptures that purportedly prove their doctrinal claims. In today’s church world there is a new ecumenicalism forming around certain doctrines of which if any church does not adhere to them it is considered controversial and an outlier. Among these doctrines are: predestination (which I covered quite thoroughly here) and it’s half brother eternal security; all sins are equal in God’s eyes; salvation by grace alone with no evidence of repentance, works, belief –which is a work; God is all love above all other attributes; God is all good, with both love and good being defined in contemporary human terms; there is no unforgivable sin; etc., etc. and all the subcategories that follow. I hope to address more of these dogmas in future editions of The Tangent College newsletter.
And now to the real point of this email:
As the religious world dives deeper into their religion, escaping from the world, becoming victimized “people of faith” fighting for “religious liberty”, the secular world is also becoming more religious in it’s beliefs. “Secular Humanism” is a concept that is becoming old fashion. It is now, as they say, “so 40 years ago”. The terminology was appropriate at the time when humanism contested religious beliefs, but now having successfully marginalized the religious folk, It is beginning to reveal itself as the true religion that it is. “Religious Humanism” has come out of the closet and no longer pretends to be reasonable but rather simply pushes its absurd dogmas upon all of society. It’s now religious tyranny from the atheistic left. Understand that theism and atheism have nothing to do with religion and secularism.
Many liberty minded Christians and Jews use the term “secular humanism” when describing the opposition. But this term is, as I said, “so 40 years ago”. Humanism, the overriding faith of the left since there is no God, has devolved from being secular to being religious as it continues its slide down the left side of the political/religious spectrum into earth worship, sexual anarchy and spiritualism. As with right wing religion, which slides down the right side of the spectrum, it proceeds towards dogma as it no longer sees clearly with its eyes or can reason with its mind.
The current fight is no longer right wing religion which carries much of its own baggage of ritualistic dogma and irrationality, which the secularists have been most happy to point out during its rise in the 20th century; but instead it is right wing old religion versus left wing new religion. The organizations, groups, and people who clamor for religious liberty fail to understand this battle. They still feel they are fighting with secular humanism, that religion is the answer, and we just need to get back to that “Old Time Religion”. I will grant you however, that that old time religion is far better than woke new time religion. But this begs the question, who’s old time religion? That’s another quagmire.
Why am I so against religion? For the most part, religion is based in cultural beliefs rather than in universal precepts and metaphysical truth which applies to all human beings regardless of their ethnicity or traditions. For most of human history, each culture had its god or gods which defined their culture. Hinduism, for example, is inextricably linked to Indian culture and one cannot really become a Hindu without acknowledging the superiority of that culture. To go against that god, gods or goddess, however profane, is to go against the religious community. Religious humanism now says that true evil is protesting outside of an abortion clinic, whereas the killing of the unborn babies within it is good and liberating. As Isaiah said, “Yes, truth is lacking; and he who turns aside from evil makes himself a prey” – Isaiah 59:15 But this is the backwards doctrine of religious humanism.
Our current battle is not with secular humanism but it is rather with religious humanism. Secular (nonreligious) humanism in America grew out of Darwinism and Marxism in the 19th century. Its heyday was in the 20th century beginning in the progressive era and peaking in the 1960s. Against secular humanism the churches fought back poorly as they always do by relying on their religion as a defense , rather than reason as an offense against the foolishness of these two philosophies. They began the long and continuous retreat into their religious communities rather than advancing into their enemy’s territory of “The Origin of Species”, “science”, and Marxist economics. The last gasp of true evangelicalism, that being engaging with the world in order to win the lost and advance truth, was in the late 70s and early 80s during the last real revival in this country. By the late 80s the church began retreating into itself and escaping from the world.
And so the effort of secular humanism in the 19th -20th century was to conquer religion and marginalize it, so that the religious Christians and Jews would retreat into their “reservations”, so to speak; willingly separating themselves and escaping the evil secular society around them; where they were allowed, for a time, to practice their religion. Contrary to this, the children of Israel by God’s providence and power were to drive out the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite , all with their respective demonic religious practices, from the land. They were commanded to tear down their altars and smash their sacred pillars and cut down their Asherim -which are wooden symbols of a female deity. There is nothing “secular” about any of this; it is all faith based, demonic carnal religion. This too was a religious war. God commanded, “for you shall not worship any other God, for the Lord , whose name is jealous, is a jealous God. -Exodus 34:11-14. The “secular” humanists then, after driving the religious back on to their “reservations”, and having laid claim to the country once again, are now celebrating their own religion and practicing their sacred rites of child sacrifice (abortion), sorcery (Pharmakeia), sexual anarchy and animal worship (evolution), and earth worship (environmentalism).
The churches once again were dumbfounded, tricked by the devil, never recognizing fully what was going on. It is so much easier not to fight and claim that God is Love and “it’s all good!” and “all things work together for the good…” -nevermind the rest of the verse.
So the church has been marginalized and neutered by the former secular humanists who are now at liberty, the liberty they boisterously proclaim, to pursue and cram down society’s throat their woke, atheistic, nonsecular, and thoroughly irrational religion. But don’t worry, they still need the church to do their religious duty to support their Marxist agenda of transferring wealth to the poor and tending to their never-ending need. This is the assigned job of the marginalized church in the religious humanist’s dystopia. It is a job they willingly accept having been convinced by the world that this gospel of Judas is the true gospel of Christ. The religious humanists are perfectly happy with the church that plays the role of the social humanitarian church portrayed most starkly in the dystopian movie “Soylent Green”. It is a picture of a church which does nothing but desperately try to feed and heal the permanently impoverished and sick masses who were made that way by the very social justice Marxist ideology they followed. From it’s inception, this was the stated purpose of Marxism. In this feudal dystopia, the Israelites (the religious church) become the slaves of the Amorites, the Canaanites,…the Covidites…. The Jebusites, and they gradually accept their religious practices and in the end worship and idolize their gods.
But you say that the churches are filled with good people, are they not? Yes there are many good people but most are remaining children in their faith, and that is what makes this so difficult. As Bob Dylan wrote in his song ‘It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” – but I mean no harm nor put fault on anyone who lives in a vault. But as the apostle Paul wrote; “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things.” -1 Corinth 13:11″ In my personal relationship with God, I discover almost on a daily basis how the God of the Bible is very much different than the God that is spoken of in the typical evangelical church. I’m trying to wake the church up to what is going on outside their religious walls.