The
World's Second
Oldest Religion [1]
by K. J. Kushdoony
| "Humanism is the world's second oldest religion. It began in history when the tempter declared. "Yea, hath God said. . .? Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing [or determining for yourself] good and evil" (Gen. 3:1, 4-5). |
|
Contents of the Article:
1 - The issue of lordship or
sovereignty
2 - Humanism sees man as the property of man or the state
3 - The source of law in any philosophy or religion is the good of that
system
4 - Man's
experience, reason, authority or will as foundation
5 - Humanism believes in
self-justification
6 - Man seeks to remake the world in his own word
7 - The government shall be
upon man's shoulders.
The Unseen Warfare
Humanism
is the worship or recognition of man's claim to sovereignty and lordship.
Ø
Humanism
does not always deny the existence of God. In fact, the tempter,
the founder of humanism, made no attempt to deny the reality of God.
Ø
Instead, he held that God seeks to prevent man’s self-realization; man must be his own lord or
sovereign, choosing, knowing or determining for himself what constitutes good and evil in terms of his own
self-interest.
James 2:19 tell us that the devils all believe in God “and tremble,” but this does
not make them Christians.
The Churches today are Full of Humanists.
They believe in God as a great
resource but not
as Lord.
Ø
They go
to God for help, as to a fire of life insurance agent. They like to use
God as a man uses spare tire - something to be used in an emergency, but not with any pleasure.
Humanists within the churches place sovereignty or lordship in
man.
Ø
They
depend for their
religious confidence, not
on God’s justification and grace, but on their religious experience or their intellectual grasp
of sound doctrine.
Salvation does not rest in head
religion nor in
heart religion but in the saving, atoning, justifying work of Jesus Christ,
imputed to us. He is the Lord.
Humanism as Religion
Many
people fail to see humanism as a religion.
Ø
The
modern leaders of this religion,
somewhere around 1860, changed their name from: the Religion of Humanity to HUMANISM.
Ø
It
was easier to infiltrate the churches when their teaching were presented, not as a religion, but
as a philosophy and as humanitarianism.
“Religion” and Faith in God - Many people also fail to recognize humanism as a
religion because they equate
religion with a belief in God.
Ø
Most of
the world’s religions, however, have no god, although incorrect translations
often term their spirit-beings as gods.
Godless
religions, other than humanism include
-
Buddhism,
-
Shintoism,
-
Hinduism.
-
Animism,
-
Jainism, and many more.
Failure to recognize humanism as
a religion has led to syncretism.
Syncretism
Syncretism is the attempt to
combine two alien faiths and make them one.
Ø
From the very beginning, the religion of
Israel, the Northern Kingdom, was syncretistic. Jeroboam, the son of Nebat
who caused Israel to sin, took two golden calves and identified them with
Jehovah (1 King 12:28), so that confusion was wrought. Elijah called this syncretism "halting between two opinions"
an challenged Israel, saying,
-
"How long halt ye between two opinions?
if the Lord be God, follow him: but
if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word"
(1 King 18:21).
Ø
When Israel was divided into two kingdoms,
Judah and Israel, Israel pursued syncretism to the last, and the Lord destroyed them as a result.
Syncretism is a form of lukewarmness. and our Lord condemns it most sharply (Rev. 3:14-16).
Ø
Judah was often apostate (rather
than syncretistic) and could thus be recalled to the fait and restored from
captivity.
Ø
In apostasy, the difference between God
and Satan is at least recognized;
in syncretism, all attempts to recognize the difference are denied and
opposed.
Principles of Humanism
Humanism today, like Baal worship of old, has
entered into churches masquerading as biblical religion.
Ø
To condemn humanism arouses strong hostility in many quarters from the syncretists, who are proud
of their compromise and their lukewarmness (which they see as a sweet
reasonableness).
Principles of humanism – It is important for us to touch briefly on some of the main
principles of humanism.
1.
First, there is the issue of
lordship or sovereignty.
-
The biblical word “lord,”
kurios, means sovereign, absolute property owner, and
God.
-
There are today a variety of humanistic
doctrines of lordship.
-
The anarchists believe that sovereignty resides ill the individual, so that no human,
natural or supernatural power has any legal rights or power over man. Man is the lord, his own god, law, and source
of morality.
Statist
humanists believe that the state is sovereign and that ultimate power and authority must reside in
the state.
-
The growing
persecution of Christian Schools is
a manifestation of the state's claim to
sovereignty. The state claims the right
to govern all things as the true lord
over all.
-
Statist humanism
can view either the nation-state or a world-state as sovereign, but in either
case it sees, in terms of Hegel's philosophy, the state as god walking on earth.
2.
Second, humanism sees man as the
property of man or the state, whereas Scripture tells us that we are God's property by virtue of
creation, and doubly His possession by re-creation, so that we are not our own.
Ø
We have been bought with a price, and so
Paul says, "therefore glorify God in your
body, and in your spirit, which are God's (1Cor. 6:19-20).
Ø
To be God's property means that we have no rights against the Lord: we are His possession in all our being, together with our families
and money, to be used at His command through His word.
Ø
To become the state's property means that we, and all that we have and are, become the state's possession
to use as the state sees fit.
Every
day the humanistic state demands more and more of its
properties - its people.
3.
Third, the source of law in any
philosophy or religion is the
god of that system.
-
If its god as in
humanism, is man or
the state, then its source of law is man or the state.
-
If the Lord God of Scripture is our God, then biblical law is our law.
-
The Puritans sought,
against the opposition of the crown of England, to make biblical law -
the Bible as the whole - the law of the land.
-
Now men seek to make man's word the law. The U.S. Supreme court in legalizing abortion went to ancient pagan humanism for its justification and bypassed the Bible. They said in effect
concerning God the Son, "we will not have this man to reign over us"
(Lk 19:14).
Our
Laws today are not biblical law: they are antichristian
to the core.
Ø
We may legislate against stealing, but this means nothing to the Lord if our view of theft is
humanistic, i.e., as a violation of man's property and man's
rights rather than a violation of God's word. We have then robbed God of His rightful place as our lawgiver and
Lord.
Ø
Moreover, if man
determines that it is wrong for me to rob you, man can tomorrow decide if it
is right to rob you to dive to the rich, the poor or the state.
Ø
If man enacts the laws of the Bible as his
own law-word, he still robs God of His glory.
God is the law-giver. Man, in church, state,
family, school, society and work - simply administers God’s law-word.
è God is the Lord, not man.
4.
Fourth, as we
have already noted, humanism stresses man's experience,
reason, authority or will - not
the Lord and His word.
-
One vicious cult which claims to be
Christian actually has girls working as prostitutes, “hookers for Jesus."
-
When we stress many aspects of man as more
important than God’s word, we become antinomians and humanists. As Isaiah says,
-
"To the law and to the testimony: if
they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in
them" (Is. 8:20).
5.
Fifth, humanism believes in
self-justification – justification by the
works of man, not by God's justifying grace.
-
Our humanistic politics in the United
states and all over the world offer plans of salvation by works of statist
law, and candidates run for office promising humanistic plans of social
salvation.
-
Humanistic laws represent a plan of
salvation.
When
the tempter confronted Jesus in the wilderness, he
challenged our Lord's claim to be the Savior and Lord.
-
To be truly the promised one for
mankind, he held, it is necessary to deal with
world hunger and poverty. How can
you preach salvation to hungry people without first solving their economic
crisis and problems? Therefore,
"command that these stones be made bread'' (Mt.
4:3).
-
To have the power to work a miracle which would solve the world's economic crisis and to fail to use that power was wrong in Satan's sight.
-
Next, Satan
demanded that Jesus end this nonsense of walking by faith. How could a
poor, hungry people be expected to believe in a God who neither fed them nor
demonstrated His saving power by miracles of preservation? Therefore,
"Cast thyself down: for it is written, He
shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall
bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone"
(Mt. 4:6).
-
Finally, Satan demanded that Jesus fall
down and worship him, recognizing the rightness of
the creature's rebellion against God, and his claim to independence. Only by
beginning on that foundation of Satan's program, he claimed, could Jesus be a
true savior and redeem man for God.
But
in each case our Lord answered, "It is written…."
-
God the Son, stood on the ground of
God's Word and God's lordship.
-
Salvation is of the Lord, not from
Satan nor from man.
However,
the humanistic philosopher Walter Kaufmann looks to
the tempter's words in Genesis 3:1-5 for man's
charter of freedom.
Ø
Moreover, in Without Guilt and Justice (1973),
he goes on to argue that, having abolished God from
our thinking, we need to
Ø
abolish all ideas of good and evil, guilt and justice, as relics of biblical faith which are invalid
for humanism.
Dr.
Lars Ullerstam of Sweden, in The-Erotic Minorities (1966),
argued in defence of the "rights" of every kind
of sexual perversion.
Ø
If the true and binding word is man’s
word, then man's will and man's way is always right.
Ø
We have then the same situation as in
Judges, when God was rejected as King or Lord. "In those days there was no
king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes" (Jud.
21:25).
Under
these circumstances, a man's wish and a man's way is his self justification.
6.
Sixth, in humanism man as lord SEEKS TO REMAKE
THE WORLD IN terms of HIS OWN WORD.
Ø
The Los Angeles Times, Tuesday,
October 3, 1978, reported a sign which read simply, “Reality
is Man-Made,"
Ø
This has been the gist of modern philosophy
since Kant, as I point out in The Word of Flux and The
One and the Many.
Ø
The humanist wants a man-made world and a man-made man. He works to remake all things in terms of
man's word and image.
Ø
We read increasingly of the attempts
(vastly exaggerated in their claims) by scientists to create life and to
redesign man.
All these rest on a religious premise: reality must be man-made.
7.
Seventh,
Scripture tells
us of Jesus Christ that
"the government shall be upon his shoulder. . . Of the
increase of his government and peace there shall be no end" (Is.
9:6-7).
-
Humanism
is determined that the government shall be upon man's shoulders, individual man or the state.
-
The
statist application of this faith by humanists is leading
now to what Revelation 13:16-17 predicts:
“And he causeth all, both
small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their
right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save
he that had the mark,
or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.”
Much more can be said, but it is sufficient to say that HUMANISM is clearly not only a religion but the summation of all antichristianity.
Ø We are at war with an antichristian religion which masquerades as something other than a religion.
The Unseen Warfare
Humanism is waging a
dishonest and veiled war.
Ø
In the U.S.S.R., the constitution guarantees freedom of
religion. That "freedom," however, is totally subject to state
controls, permits, licensure, taxation, and regulation. As a
result, freedom is nonexistent.
Ø
Existing, open churches are
KGB-controlled churches, a sham to impress tourists.
In the United States, the
goal is the same: to preserve the façade of freedom
of religion while making it totally subject to statist permits and
regulations.
Ø
One official told me that freedom of
religion means the right of a priest, minister, rabbi or
like person, to preach the articles of his religion,
and to expound the Scriptures thereof, from
a given physical pulpit in a physical building.
Ø
But the right of that pulpit or to
exist is totally subject to state permission and
control. This was the same position of the Soviet Union.
Unless Christians resist
every form of control over Christ's churches,
schools, and missionary and other agencies, they will
soon have no freedom at all, except that of a prison cell.
Ø
Today, our state-supported “public”
schools are humanistic schools. Actually, they are
religious institutions teaching with public funds, an alien faith.
Ø
The public schools are an
establishment of religion: the religion of humanism.
On that basis, they plainly violate the First Amendment.
Ø
No Christian child should be required to
attend a public school. We and our children are God's property; our children
must be given to the Lord, and this requires, among other things, that they be
in Christian schools and that we establish, support and develop such
schools.
Our courts and the various
agencies of civil government also
represent establishments of humanism. As such, they are hostile to
biblical faith and work to undermine it.
Ø
There is a great
need for Christian men in civil office who will wage
war against this growing anti-Christianity.
At this point, it is very
important for us to recognize that, while we can (and
should] have a separation of church and state,
Ø
we cannot have a separation of religion
and state.
Ø
Every civil government is a system of laws, agencies and authority for the enforcement of a form
of social order.
Ø
That system is a religion in
action because all law is simply enacted morality, and all
law and morality represent a religious faith.
Every religion has its own
system of law. Thus, we can have
è
a Buddhist state,
è
a Shinto state,
è
an Islamic state,
è
a humanistic state,
è
a Christian state, and so on.
Humanism in the U.S. - The United states began
with a dedication to separate
church and state but to establish a CHRISTIAN
STATE.
Ø
The
Bible was seen as the common law of the land. [2]
Ø
The
state can be neutral about
churches, but
it cannot be neutral about religions because it cannot exist without law. Whatever system of laws it
has will reveal its religious faith.
The humanists, however, have promoted the myth of neutrality as a façade for the elimination of Christianity.
Ø
No man can be neutral to religion, nor can
any state. Every man and every state in all their ways reveal a religious
faith. More and more,
Ø
our humanistic civil officers on federal and state levels are working to remove all marks of
Christianity from civil government and to replace
biblical faith with HUMANISM.
è A total war is being waged, and no man can escape it.
One of the reasons for the
stepped-up action of the humanists has been the dramatic
growth of the Christian school movement. Every day, two or three new
schools are being established.
Ø
There are no accurate figures available on
their enrollment since many Christian
schools do not report their statistics to any state agency. Estimates range
from 15-30% of all grade school children in non-public schools, to 10-15% of
high school students: Very few of these are in secular private schools; most
are in Christian schools.
Ø
This is bad news for humanists. By and large, even the weaker Christian schools, when standard achievement tests are used with the
children, are two years ahead of state schools. (In one instance,
the tests were ordered by a court.)
Ø
Clearly, the leadership of the future is
coming from Christian schools. They will provide the better college and
university students and the leaders of tomorrow.
Moreover, at the rate of
the growth of Christian schools, it is clear that they
will be educating virtually all children by the end of this century, not too
far distant.
Ø
We will then have, not a humanistic state,
but a Christian America.
This fact appalls the humanists and spells their death. They are determined at all cost to prevent this
from happening. As a result,
Ø
every attempt is being made to control
and kill Christian schools.
Ø
Alan N. Grover, in his excellent study, Ohio's Trojan
Horse (Bob Jones University Press, Greenville, SC, 1977) gives an able and
intensely interesting account of such efforts in Ohio.
Ø
The Federal Government through the Internal Revenue Service, the Labor Department, the National Labor
Relations Board, and other agencies is also actively at
war against Christian schools.
We thus face a battle
comparable to that waged against our faith by
the Roman Empire and the French and Russian revolutions.
Ø
We must not be misled by the fact that the battle is less open and is disguised
as a concern for public welfare. It is in fact a more
self-conscious and total war.
Ø
The press does not carry stories of the
hundreds of legal battles, nor of the ministers
arrested.
It was the urgency of this situation which led
one major state association of Christian schools to have a workshop at its
October, 1977, convention, conducted by Attorney David Gibbs and the Rev. Roy
Thompson of the Christian Law Association, on "what to Do When the Sheriff
Comes to Arrest You." It will not do to turn our backs on this situation,
lest our Lord turn His back on us. He declares:
“Whosoever,
therefore, shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my
Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I
also deny before my Father which is in heaven” (Mt. 10:32-33).
There
is a war on and, like it or not, you are in it.
Ø The only question is this: on whose side do you stand
- with the Lord, or with the great humanist, the
tempter?
Who is your
lord and owner? Will you say with Joshua,
"as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord"? Josh.
24:15)
Or will you blindly follow the
majority?
Ø "O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord"
(Jer. 22:29).