Relativistic Religion

The pagans sacrificed to their myths with an instinctual sense of unworthiness. They wanted to obtain their desires, but felt undeserving to obtain them apart from oblation. As we go further down the road of degeneration from mere feelings of guilt, there is a mode of being, which is seen in the one who stands up and says, “I am worthy.” This one sacrifices—perhaps like Cain—out of insane pride, as if he has something to give the gods, which the gods did not first of all give to him.

This is very similar to Aristotle’s idea of the ideal man—completely self-reliant. In his world, the gods—if they exist at all—are like helpless women on welfare, and he is magnanimously generous in showing them pity. This low estate is the habitat of the agnostic relativist. That he even gives God recognition enough to dismiss Him is freely giving homage, in his way of seeing things. Naturally, this is mostly (if not completely) subconscious.

The average pagan has, at least, a healthy sense of guilt. He panders to the gods because he is confused and confounded. In the Malayan jungles, where my Aunt and Uncle were first missionaries, the natives (known as the Sakai) cut themselves to appease the gods whenever they heard thunder. If the thunder did not stop soon enough, they would sacrifice one of their own. Whether or not the Sakai were glad to believe such senselessness one can’t know. One can say, however, that they were very glad to hear the truth of the gospel. But the relativist, strangely, is not. It is as if he lives in the darkness because he likes it…because he has, deep down, chosen it. Like cockroaches fleeing light, relativists run from reality.

In his book, The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton says the philosophers, if anything, were rivals to the priests. The philosopher who claims to be enlightened has abandoned the search for truth upon his arrival—his conclusion—of atheism. There is the wondering seeker, wandering and searching for truth; and there is the static dogmatist, having arrived at his own, concocted destination. Since this one’s thoughts originate with him, they end with him; he is the alpha and omega of his own delusion.

While our American society was mainly built upon the solid foundations of scripture, the unhinged ideals of Homer and Plato (pagan Greek thinkers) have crept in to masquerade as “reason” and “enlightenment.” Along with The Republic, Homer’s The Iliad is seen as the cornerstone of Western Culture. When it comes down to it, The Iliad is essentially about obtaining one's desire through sacrificing to the gods: self-seeking. The Republic teaches people to question and doubt absolutes through the deductive reasoning of Socrates. The “religious” ideas put forth in The Iliad combined with the “secular” ideas of The Republic serve as foundational elements in both pagan religion and pagan philosophy. This is not to say Homer and Plato have nothing good to convey. It's just that their good is too intertwined with evil to swallow the pill whole. When reading their works one must exercise discernment between right and wrong, holy and profane.

That Plato should blaspheme the mythical gods of ancient Greece is understandable. One should not live in superstitious fear of displeasing Athena, or any other mythical being. Nonetheless, the obvious fact that Athena was make-believe should not cancel out the reality of God any more than plastic flowers or faux fur nullify the genuine articles they seek to copy. Illegitimate articles do not abrogate legitimate ones.

The pagan reasoning of Plato, allied with the superstition and selfish gain of Homeric religion, is a deadly combination. In reality, these ideals have always been combined. They are two aspects of the same, forbidden tree. They are at once sectarian and the same.

Our society is being eaten by pagan religion and pagan philosophy. Schools and Governments alike have drunk the poison of humanism. Institutions of higher learning are among the most infected with the venom of unbelief. Islam, of all things, is growing at an astounding rate. Buddhism, despite its many contradictions, continues to expand. Christian education is now more important than ever!

Relativism

It seems the one absolute to the relativists is that there are no absolutes. That this is a contradiction will at once be obvious to the logician, but to the philosophical magician, it escapes notice in the same way he might make his assistant disappear. When told by a relativist on an airplane that there are no absolutes, my wife's uncle calmly replied, “Are you absolutely sure?” Saying there are absolutely no absolutes is like saying the one law of the jungle is that there is no jungle.

Relativism is essentially the same animal as secularism. Most of the differences between the two approaches are purely technical. Whereas the ideals of secularism can be traced back to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, relativism in the Western World is believed to have originated with the Sophists.

Known for their clever thought, the Sophists predate Socrates in fifth century Greece. Plato acknowledged Protagoras as the first professional sophist (i.e. teacher of virtue). Sophists were traveling philosophers who noticed wide variations in customs and beliefs between the many cultures they visited. From their observations, they concluded that everything is subjective to people’s experiences: all is relative.

In certain ways, the Sophists were right. It is that they made relativity an “ism” which made them wrong, essentially. Sophists of today might say, “It’s all good.” There is a universalism about them, which embraces everything from Totem Worship to Environmentalism, Atheism to Zoroastrianism, and nearly everything in between. The only absolute the relativist seems to embrace is that there is neither one God, nor one way.

It is interesting to make a side-note at this juncture, which relates to relativism from the scientific angle. It concerns "The Theory of Relativity.” Einstein was actually not happy with that appellation, because he thought it sounded as if “anything goes.” Moreover, though The Theory of Special Relativity (E=MC2) shows that everything is relative to light, it has been taken by scientists and philosophers (in a kind of sophistry) to mean that everything is relative to the way individuals see things.

Socrates, Plato and Aristotle rightly argued against the Sophists, but neither are they quite right themselves. Aristotle held that through the proper employment of reason, one could know truth objectively. This is a reasonable idea, indeed, and a great improvement on the ethereal ideas of Socrates and Plato. The problem all of them had was akin to the problem a man missing his limbs has, or that of a woman missing her sight. They were not altogether incorrect, but their theories were incomplete.

Socrates’ conflicting beliefs that one can know “nothing,” but can know himself, were merely the reverse of relativism; that Plato leaned on his own understanding did not make him un-relativistic, it merely made his scope smaller. The secularist’s world is smaller than the relativist’s, but it is relativistic, nonetheless.

Rather than a universal relativism, secularism holds that all is relative to itself. The philosopher is, after all, superior to the common man. It is not every tribe which knows best, it is the secularist who knows best. By employing one’s own understanding, one can decide which god is real, if any, and which culture is right. Relativism and secularism are alike. Secularism does not leave a blank spot where God should be in the equation; it doesn’t merely pull out Buddha, Mohammed or Zeus. It seats self on the throne as an absolute ruler, deciding between good and evil, right and wrong, according to its own philosophy. And its philosophy is usually built around its particular emotional and cultural habitat. It is no secret that many in Christendom have misguided philosophies as well, but that topic is too big for the present discussion.

One can embrace almost everything, and at the same time embrace nothing, if in all one’s embracing one does not embrace I AM. Embracing the ideas of all religions, all philosophy and anything one can imagine, in the end, is to embrace nothing. It is to embrace figments and thoughts, and figments of thoughts. To embrace I AM is to be more truly universal than the universalist. Apart from the Light of I AM, human reasoning is fallible at best. God's Light alone rightly enlightens.

A Brief History of Modern Secularism

The American Heritage Dictionary defines secularism as: “The view that religious considerations should be excluded from civil affairs or public education.” The word secularism was coined (1846) by George Jacob Holyoake to denote "a form of opinion which concerns itself only with questions, the issues of which can be tested by the experience of this life."

"Secularism is a code of duty pertaining to this life founded on considerations purely human, and intended mainly for those who find theology indefinite or inadequate, unreliable or unbelievable. Its essential principles are three: 1) The improvement of this life by material means. 2) That science is the available providence of man. 3) That it is good to do good. Whether there be other good or not, the good of the present life is good, and it is good to seek that good" (English Secularism, page 35).

Holyoake fought to abolish oaths required by law, to disestablish the Church, and to secularize public education. He advocated socialism, and widely published the propaganda of “free thought” through magazines and books. Holyoake was an agnostic, and presided as President over the London Secular Society. His successor in that society, Charles Bradlaugh, was a member of the British House of Commons. He had become an atheist as a result of his conclusion that the articles of the Church of England and the four Gospels differed. Holyoake “held that secularism is based simply on the study of nature and has nothing to do with religion, while Bradlaugh claimed that secularism should start with the disproof of religion.”

The ideas of Secularism are obviously not new. A Godless universe, or even a cosmos independent of God, are things that thinkers have speculated about for all of recorded history. One such thinker, Ibn Rushd (1126—1198), otherwise known as Averroes, was a philosopher and scientist. He was born an Andalusian-Arab in Cordoba Spain, and is believed by many to be the father of secular thought in Western Europe. Besides writing original works of his own, Averroes commented extensively on the works of Aristotle and Plato, including The Republic, which is deemed to be one of the cornerstones of Western Thought.

Siger of Brabant (1240—1280’s) was the main torchbearer of Averroes’ teachings in his time. He taught Aristotelianism in its original form, not reconciling it to Christian understanding. Siger essentially said one thing could be true through reason, while the exact opposite could be true through faith; this “double truth” suggested hard facts are reached through science and philosophy, whereas religious truth is reached through faith. In Siger’s view, faith might just as well have been based on J.M. Barrie’s "Neverland" (in his play called Peter Pan), than in the spiritual reality called Heaven.

Siger’s two realms of truth are incongruous; this recycled philosophy of his became known as Averroism. The ideas of Averroism (separation of science and philosophy from religion) influenced the idea of secularism that we have today. Important to note is that the Hebrews had no such dichotomy of secular and spiritual. They did, however, differentiate between the clean and the unclean (Ezekiel 44:23).

Freethinkers developed theses from Siger’s views, which concluded philosophers (such as themselves) are superior to common people. In a very arrogant sense, these secularists hold to the belief that the philosopher, or even the philosophical scientist, is purely objective. While most men do not know what to think for themselves, they know. While one misunderstands his own experience, it is understood and categorized by them. In their view, the secular philosopher/scientist is able, more than any other, to decide what is true or false. The common man might believe the witness of the stars; he may believe the testimony of spring and autumn, but the secularist will know better.

In reality, however, to become secular is to turn off the lights; it is to try to study microscopic organisms with no microscope, and practice astronomy without a telescope. Worse than this, it is to speculate about what one sees, and make fabrications about what one doesn’t. Secular education is a travesty. It is to insist the earth is flat, to demand belief in bottled-up genies, and to reject the idea that the grass is green, or that it is even grass. It is to silence nature by stopping one’s ears and gouging out one’s eyes. It is to forgo the bread by plugging one’s nose to the bakery.

Two Plus Two Equals Five. Or At Least They Think So.

Aristotle said man is body and soul, and he was right, but not altogether right. He was missing one major part of the person—the spirit. A missing part, after all, can be a big deal. The person with ears and nose, but no eyes, is hardly the person one wants to drive him on his next outing. The blind person may be good at a great many things, but the loss of sight is an impairment. Physical wholeness is taken for granted by so many of us. Yet, wholeness in education is too-often overlooked. It is as if philosophical blindness is just what we have come to expect at schools; we accept it as the norm. Worse, we often don’t even notice the blindness...as if we are blind ourselves. Secular education is misguided because of its incompleteness: it has gone askew because it is blind.

G.K. Chesterton noted, “Falsehood is never so false as when it is very nearly true.” Two plus two isn’t actually five, but it is close. The danger in Godless education is not that the secularists teach algebra and astronomy; it is that their overarching philosophy—godlessness—is a kind of defiling thing. It is a blend of fact and fiction, myth and reality. A false equation only has to be missing the tiniest detail to be wrong, but secularism misses the biggest part. Replace manure for chocolate in a batch of brownies and see how edible they are. The one foul ingredient defiles all the rest. It is like committing adultery with a prostitute while declaring fidelity to one’s wife; Light and darkness are incompatible.

Secular education cannot include God, because belief in Him would contradict its teachings. Thus, the truth is suppressed in unrighteousness. God is subtracted from the equation and replaced with the ideology of humanism. Christian education, on the other hand, can include subjects like science and astronomy, because these teachings do not contradict the existence of God.

Cosmos or Chaos?

When one begins to explain an apparently simple object, such as an egg or a mushroom—anything to do with life—one finds the task to be more complex than it would seem. To say that an egg is oval is to describe the surface of the thing; to say it contains trillions of protons, neutrons and electrons and everything needful to sustain life (molecules, atoms and DNA) is to go a bit deeper. To explain something as simple as a beam of light could seem easy enough, but even Einstein spent most of his life pondering this simple yet complicated element of nature.

In a similar way, it would prove deficient to classify everything into categories of good and bad, or even good and evil, for the matter goes much deeper than it would seem. God’s division between life and death, the clean and the unclean, is not an easy equation for the human mind to grasp on its own. It is no wonder that mystics and pagan philosophers do not see the whole. Without the all-encompassing perspective of Christ, everything is but a jumbled mess of fragments and shards.

The word “philosophy” means the love of wisdom. To the Christian, philosophy is the love of Christ, for He is Wisdom. His Light alone rightly enlightens. “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3) was the first command. God brought order to the chaos by speaking; it was the Holy Spirit brooding over the surface of the deep Who brought God’s commands to fruition.

Later, God spoke to Adam and Eve; He forbade them to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil…because He was protecting them from chaos, darkness and death. The man and woman, sadly, refused God’s instruction. They listened to the serpent’s lie and became the first students of knowledge without God. Secular education is nothing new.

Christ-Centered Education: A Holistic Approach

Many people think Christian education only has to do with God, the Bible and faith, and in a way it does. Since everything is ultimately related to these, Christian education is not relegated to mere theology in the commonly known sense of the word. One could say that the arts and sciences are every bit as theological as the study of sacred text; from architecture to zoology, everything, at the core, is the study of God. Tangible nature displays His glory, and if we want to know Him better, the world of creation can help us. Truly, everything can be a form of theology (not to say that everything is God, as pantheists believe).

G.K. Chesterton wisely says:

“That ‘God looked on all things and saw that they were good’ contains a subtlety… It is the thesis that there are no bad things, but only bad uses of things. If you will, there are no bad things, but only bad thoughts; and especially bad intentions. It is possible to have bad intentions about good things; and good things, like the world and the flesh, have been twisted by a bad intention called the devil. But he cannot make things bad.”

One might add that things are good so long as they are in their proper place. To name a couple of examples, sex outside of marriage is not good; perfectly good cells, when out of order, can turn into cancer. The misuse and malformation of good things causes the evil of chaos.

Historian, Will Durant, said, “If knowledge became too great for communication, it would degenerate into scholasticism.” Durant rightly conveys the idea that factualism does not engender wisdom and understanding. Knowledge is good as long as it fits neatly within God's cosmos.