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17. THE LESSONS OF HISTORY

GOD AND MAN

CONTENTS

Why this matter of God is so important

Human Reason v. Godly or Divine Reason

The textual material on this webpage is drawn directly from my work
        America's Story – A Spiritual Journey © 2021, pages 498-504.
WHY THIS MATTER OF GOD IS SO IMPORTANT

Existentialism.  As those who chose to live solely by "Human Reason" see things, it is easy enough to view life as simply something that just happens. One minute you are born, another minute you die. And in between those two events you just exist.  So it's up to you (or better yet, up to a well-planned social order) to make of life what you can, for as long as you can.  It's as simple as that – at least to the many people who believe themselves to be so very wise about life and its ultimate meaning.

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.

Creationism.  But for a moment consider the very existence of the universe itself. It is immense beyond human understanding. And yet it works very precisely according to very exact laws such as we find in the field of physics and chemistry.  Yes, we do realize that the universe is "in process," expanding, developing, changing constantly.  Yet the laws that direct that very dynamic have been there since the beginning of time. They did not themselves just gradually develop or "evolve" so as to finally arrive at the complex existence that we are able to study today.  The laws of physics for example have always been the laws of physics, the same at the beginning of time as they are today.  The very same laws were literally there at the foundation of the universe.

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).

So then why does this same thing not happen with the lesser intellectual luminaries, those who nonetheless consider themselves to be "intellectuals"?  Why do they spend so much time and effort to disprove the existence of a Great Mind, a Grand Creator, a Sustainer of it all?

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.

The Call to be a City on a Hill, a Light to the Nations.[2] This was why the New England colonies understood themselves to be a City on a Hill / a Light to the Nations.  To their clear understanding, Christianity was always more than just a personal path to greatness ... and eternal life for the person of faith. For those who had been "elected" by God to a life of such Christian faith, they had also been commissioned by God to show others the way to the same sonship and daughtership that they enjoyed with God as their Father.

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]

[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.

HUMAN REASON v. GODLY OR DIVINE REASON

Man's insatiable desire to play God.  But holding to that critical piece of Puritan wisdom or insight has not been easy for America (much as it was difficult for the ancient Israelites).  Since the Fall of Adam and Eve, man has wanted to play God himself, has wanted to plan and control outcomes in life.  God's gift of human reason – given to help man not only take joy in life itself but also find ways to greet challenges placed in front of him on a virtually daily basis – man has instead used to try to redesign life itself so that he hopefully did not have to deal with the complexities of the immediate problems he was facing, so that he would not have to leave up to God the matter of determining what life was ultimately all about and where it all was headed.

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.

This tendency is not new.  It is certainly not just American. It is a tendency that all of us struggle with.  And, if allowed to continue to develop as a rational process, it will always find itself increasingly hard to be put aside (like alcohol and drugs).  And ultimately, it will come to curse and destroy such a world – and those who attempted to design it. The 20th century alone has borne witness to this tragic reality, repeatedly.

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?

Tragically, soon after this (the early 1790s), the French would ultimately prove what should have been understood without a shadow of a doubt because of the American example just put before them – that planning to rebuild society on nothing more that human reason was a program destined for devastating failure.

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.

Evaluating the grand engineers of Human Reason. Not surprisingly, behind this new momentum were those with the highest and most prestigious educations, especially in the legal field.

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.  Actually, these justices are just as political, just as ideological, in their reasoned approach to the law as any other American lawyer.  And they are highly political, because they are highly powerful.  It is no wonder that life-time appointments to this small but unrestricted or absolute source of American political authority are now fought over with such intensity.

In short, the Supreme Court has made itself the Central Committee, the Politburo[4] of American democracy.

[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.



Go on to the next section:  Key Components of an Excellent Social Order

  Miles H. Hodges