Man-Made Religion Always Ends in Disaster

[HKHaugan]

Before I go on let me remind us that we are on a journey through nouns that describe a God-word separated from Him and made into a manmade system of belief. How more basic is the word human (Gk. anthropos, root of anthropology, the study of man in society) which has become humanism, a philosophy intentionally separating mankind from God? Take community, commune, communion; all having to do with persons being and sharing together. The idea is core to God’s plan for humanity to live in relationship with God and one another as directed by God. That’s what we were created for. But separated from God the idea can become a politicized religion as we see in Communism. How well has that worked out? 40,000,000 killed under Josef Stalin if you’re in the counting mood. Most every ‘ism’ is a detached-from-God concept.

Return with me for a moment to atheism, the ‘no-belief’ belief religion. It means ‘no God’, a=no and theos=God, no God. If we consider all the ‘no-God’ movements we wouldn’t have room in books to describe them but we can see them as denominations of atheism. Liken it to our common religious history; atheism is the orthodox substance of anti-God religion. All the rest succeeding it are its militant expressions. We have already mentioned humanism and communism. In our own recent history we have experienced National Socialism (Hitlerism and Nazism), Pol Pot’s rule in Cambodia, blended Communism and Socialism in Eastern Europe, the anti-God political regime in China and, what’s worse, the religious anti-God terrorist movements that dot the entire globe. We are talking about millions of deaths and incalculable suffering as well. Again, how well is that working out for all of us?

Here in America we are experiencing the rise of another denominational brand springing from atheistic religion. It’s called secularism. We are seeing its anti-Christian polemic unleashed in education from grade school into the most volatile incubator of all, the university system. Its shock troops promote abortion, homosexuality, same sex marriage, anti-Israel sentiment while legislators and business leaders conspire to maintain political and economic power by self-defined tolerance and assumed intellectual superiority. Secularism is the banner flown by those who hold the state as superior to God and His Word while mouthing pious words lifted from the Bible. This is exactly the stance recorded in the Bible as it names Pharisees and Sadducees among the ‘white-washed sepulchers’ parading as religious and socio-political leadership. It’s a sad day for a country whose foundation was built on Christian morality when a former President, the present Secretary of State, the Vice President and the President do their own brand of ‘coming out’ as they proclaim their support for homosexual marriage.
But more to the point are the religious denominational leaders who have compromised with these secular forces and betrayed their people, the people committed to their care, the people who look up to them for spiritual guidance only to find they have been given stones for bread. Shame on the leaders in the Episcopal, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Catholic, Congregational, American Baptist, United Church of Christ and other traditional denominations that now have to answer before the throne of God for their activity. It is not the denominations as concepts that have failed us. It is the human leadership within them. Their arrogant impetuosity has opened the door for the decline of a once mighty moral nation. It is through weak anti-Bible reasoning that these leaders have brought us to the brink of disaster that has only one end, our fall. It is not unbelievers and secularists that are at fault. It is the failed spiritual leaders of God’s people who have left the Lord Jesus, His Bible and its heritage.

More than just a concept is the behavioral experience arising out of man-made religion that begins to act as an ego inspiration. In other words sin takes over and personal experience defines truth. It is this slip and slide away from God that degenerates from relationship into religion. Sin does that. You take a quality God has given man and the capability to use it as God ordained, isolate the quality and capability from God and another self-made belief system is born. Karl Marx, Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard, Mary Baker Eddy, Sun Yung Moon, David Koresh, Jim Jones are just a few clear recent examples. If you go back in history every time a man or a woman exalts the self, mistake mediates more mistakes, malicious mischief, mounted mayhem, mellifluous malpractice and murder multiplies misery.

Can we now see why the Bible, unlike other religious documents which glorify their founders, holds up such honest admission of its leaders’ character flaws? The Bible is the first to show that humanity is flawed by sin and needs God (Ps.14:1-3). Not one of the kings in biblical history was without vanity, self-centeredness and fear. Its greatest figures confessed their inadequacies and sins. Even the prophets bewailed their condition. Look at the ‘heroic’ disciples of Jesus, one betrayed Him, another denied Him and the rest just melted. Paul in 1Tim.1:15 declares himself the worst of sinners. Someone has to come from outside man’s condition to rescue him. This is why the Bible lifts up the idea of a sent Messianic figure from the spiritual dimension, a perfect and truth bearing Savior, God in the flesh, a fully human man who was just as fully God. Only God could do what no man had done before and that is to reveal His intention for a perfect human existence. Jesus was that revelation. There is only one true and perfect spiritual moral hero, Jesus the Christ.

The question remaining is this, what led to this weakening in leadership? That is for the next posting.