30. THE LESSONS OF HISTORY
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| WHY THIS MATTER OF GOD IS SO IMPORTANT |
We call this philosophy of life "existentialism," although
this same understanding of life applies to other closely-related
ideologies as well (such as the "Religious Humanism" of the 1933 Humanist Manifesto
... or its contemporary cousin, "Secular Humanism") – all of which see
life "scientifically," meaning, simply as a mechanical process for
which there is ultimately no particularly sentimental purpose behind it
all. Life just is. So get over your ridiculously superstitious
search for grand purpose and just do the best you can with what is in
front of you. Simply being practical about life will save you a lot of
unnecessary heartbreak.
These laws directing the character and behavior of the
universe are awesome beyond belief. Man discovers these universal
laws as one of his greatest enterprises ("science"). But he
certainly did not create those laws. They were there in operation
long, long ago – long before man began to study and understand them.
But where did these laws come from? They obviously were
no accident. They are incredibly "rational" – so rational that
rational man himself has discovered that by simply employing man's own
powers of reasoning these laws are discoverable ... and enormously
useful.
You would think therefore that those who focus their lives on
these very laws (the scientific community) would be, of all people, the
most awestruck about the Source of such rationality that commands this
universe, a Source of Reason that stands before and above the universe
itself, before and above all existence itself, a Source of creative
power simply summed up as "God." Certainly that is exactly what
developed among such great thinkers as Einstein, Schrödinger, Bohr.
They were awestruck when they considered the very nature of what
Einstein called der Herr Gott (the Lord God).
On a simpler plane: why have they forbidden the teaching in
the public schools of what is known popularly as "creationism"? Our
grand universe designed by a supernatural Cosmic Mind should make much
more sense to these individuals of "common sense" than the notion that
somehow the universe and the laws that direct its very existence just
stumbled into place over billions of years as if it all was merely some
kind of grand Darwinian accident. Why do the lesser intellectuals
hold so dearly, so religiously, to the latter – immensely
unsophisticated – explanation of life itself?
The answer today is the same that it always has been: they want to play the role of that very God themselves.
A life of praise and glory to the Creator and his Creation.
Consider the other wonder of creation: we humans! Where else in
all of Creation have we found creatures able to celebrate – even just
be aware of – the existence of this great creation itself. As far
as we know, it is only on this tiny, otherwise totally insignificant,
planet that such self-awareness of God's Creation exists at all.
In other words, Creation itself does not know of its own
existence. But we humans do.
It seems that in all creation we are the only audience able to
enjoy with the Creator himself the very glory of such an awesome
existence. We have the conscious powers, the rational facilities,
able to observe, even work with, Creation itself. We are even
able to live in loving harmony with its very existence – and in loving
harmony with the One behind this glorious creation and on-going
existence.
Long-standing Judeo-Christianity has for thousands of years
made it very clear that we humans in fact were made for just this very
artistic, very emotional, very creative purpose ourselves. We
were created to live in praise of the glory of it all, in worship of
both Creation and the Creator.
But lesser human souls balk at this calling, this grand
opportunity, to rise to such grand purpose. They choose to live
with their noses to the ground, going around in life on a basis limited
to their ability to "control" the events in their lives. Little
wonder that such souls find a rather shallow purpose to their own
existence.
Christians have always understood that we humans were called
by the Creator himself to join with him in some kind of cosmic dance
with our Heavenly Father, finding delight in being alive – alive with
God, but also alive with each other. Jesus was clearly placed
among us to show the power that we humans had to live to greater
purpose and character – if we would just put aside our pretentions to
have life under the control of our own plans and laws. Jesus
showed us instead the importance of sharing with each other (regardless
of our human social status or level of social "perfection") in common
love and celebration of God – and each other – and the power God thus
also in return granted us to then live this life to the specific
purpose that he himself called each and every one of us to take up.
This is what the Puritans understood they were all about – and
thus covenanted with God to put into play with their new community in
New England. This was the idea on which they planned to construct
a new society – one designed to show the world by personal example how
it was that our Creator intended for all humans to live.
[2]Jesus,
in his "Sermon on the Mount" told his followers "You are the light of
the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid." He goes on to say (same
verse): "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your
good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." Matthew
5:14 pretty much sums up the whole deal!
[3]Jesus's
Great Commission to his followers: "Go therefore and make disciples of
all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son,
and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have
commanded you. And thus I am with you always, even to the very end of
the age." Matthew 28:19-20.
Jesus himself made it clear that those so elected or "called"
were to serve as apostles (Greek for "ones sent out") or missionaries –
to use the more modern term. Christianity was not just a
privilege for themselves alone. It was a call to greater service,
to help bring all human life to have a successful "internship" in this
life – and thus to find "salvation."[3]
| HUMAN REASON v. GODLY OR DIVINE REASON |
This tendency to want to plan and control is particularly
obsessive among those who have made it their life-work to live by their
powers of reason alone: intellectuals, seated at their desks,
rationally planning out their lives, and, if possible, the lives of
others as well. They not only want to get their own lives planned
and controlled by reason (their reason, of course), they typically want
to bring the rest of society along in support of this same endeavor:
to have others also live by way of their rational planning.
Having others following their lead validates everything they see
themselves as being: wise, noble, important.
Thus the "man of reason" does not like to hear anything about
a God who lives beyond man's measured world, beyond his pleasant
intellectual bubble that he has placed himself in – while trying to
bring others with him into that same bubble. To him, the very
notion of God stands as some kind of threat to his well-reasoned plans
for life. Thus he wants the idea of a presiding God eliminated from his
world.
But God, thankfully (or hopefully), is not done with the human
race, and from time to time, through the prophets of old, Jesus
himself, the Christian saints of history, the religious reformers, and
more recently the voices of the various Awakenings, God has shaken a
self-blinded human race to the core, putting it back on the path that
he originally destined humankind to go down.
The call for America to understand this was what so strongly motived Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address.
This is what the ultimate practical-philosopher Franklin
understood – as the Framers in 1787 attempted to put together a new
Constitution through solely a purely rational process. Franklin
reminded them that it was to God that they were to look in overcoming
the multiple roadblocks they found themselves facing in the process,
not to human reason. He asked them if they had so soon forgotten
how it was to God that they looked repeatedly, during the recent war
with England when the dark days offered little logic as to how they
were to move forward?
The challenge over the past fifty years of Human Reason to the Covenant.
And so things went, back in the 1960s and 1970s in Vietnam. And
so things went, in the early 2000s in Afghanistan and Iraq. And so
things went, more recently in Libya and Syria. And so it has also
gone on so many of the streets of America itself. Rational (and
extremely expensive) social programming by the experts has not made a
dent in solving the many social problems facing America since the
1960s, either at home or abroad. Compassion, not plans, should
have been employed – a moral challenge that moral leadership should
have focused on instead of all that ideologically-inspired "rational"
social planning.
It has been a long and disappointing fifty years since
Rational (or Secular) America began to move away from the longer
Christian moral-spiritual tradition – the very moral-spiritual
tradition that had just brought the country to unprecedented
greatness. Almost immediately after having in the late 1940s and
1950s achieved superpower status – and a highly respected Christian
model to place before much of the democracy-aspiring world – America
began in the 1960s its move away from that very traditional Christian
moral-spiritual order ... in order to head down the alluring but highly
deceptive Secular road of Human Reason.
America was not quite perfect. But there were those
power-brokers and their intellectual advisors who were certain they
understood the rational process by which to bring America to
perfection. Indeed, it was this very idea of rational social
engineering that formed the core of Johnson's Great Society Program.
It was also the basis for the Vietnam program Johnson attempted
to put into play at the same time.
[4]The
name of the small group that, from behind the walls of Moscow's Kremlin
citadel, "rationally" governed the lives of the citizens of the former
Soviet Union – and of the captive countries of Communist Eastern Europe
as well.
announcing the outline of
his "Great Society" Program LBJ Library – University
of Texas
Lawyers are, by training and professional calling, defenders
of someone's need for reason, that is, reason in support of their
client's personal and social interests. Lawyers are hired to
develop reasonable lines of personal or social defense, ones then
presented usually in a court of law – against someone else's interests,
the adversaries also reasonably defended by a countering lawyer!
How a judge or jury is supposed to find the Truth behind very
skilled but intensely conflicting rational arguments offered by
opposing lawyers is always a wonder. Legal skill rather than
simple truth is designed to always be the winner in a dynamic such as
this!
In short, reason and truth are not the same things. Anyone can
reason – and we all do, constantly. But finding truth is actually
a very different endeavor. But try to get the world to understand that!
Try just to get a clever six-year-old to understand that!
We start to use reason rather skillfully in support of
self-interest at a very early age!
This beautiful world of human reason can be found especially
at the pinnacle of America's legal world. No, not Congress.
The federal courts! And at the summit of that world of federal
courts is found the ultimate citadel of Reason, the U.S. Supreme Court.
Americans presume that black-robed Supreme Court justices see
truth above mere personal political interest. 
In short, the Supreme Court has made itself the Central Committee, the Politburo[4] of American democracy.
Go on to the next section:
Key Components of an Excellent Social Order
Miles
H. Hodges
