January/February 2003

The War Against God

by Greg Albrecht

If God is dead, then everything is permitted

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Crime and Punishment

Perhaps the court is right. Perhaps we are no longer a nation under God. Perhaps we have become an amorphous multi-cultural pluralistic political entity composed of many nations under many gods, held together only by the glue of economic self interest. Perhaps the court was officially recognizing that many decades of efforts to do away with God are succeeding. Perhaps judges were simply validating popular, crude, barbaric immorality that insidiously undermines all that is sacred and divine.

What happened to God, America, baseball and apple pie? What happened to one nation under one God?

Religious Freedom

Freedom of religion (misunderstood by many today as freedom from religion) is a unique concept in human history, made possible in this country by a Christian majority who founded America because of the repression of religion they had experienced elsewhere. Some estimate that 95-98 percent of the original citizens of the United States were at least nominally Christian. As it was founded, the United States was one nation under one God -- the God of the Bible.

Patrick Henry, one of those original Christian founders, noted, "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this reason people of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity and freedom of worship here."

The tolerance and freedom on which our nation is based flows from the Christianity of our founders. As Americans we can thank God that our nation's commitment to freedom of religion is also a declaration against bigotry, prejudice and racial intolerance. Today it is not legally permissible to publicly condemn or discriminate against any minority group in America -- whether they are American Indians, Italian-Americans, homosexuals, women, Muslims or Jews.

We do not encourage or allow discrimination against any group. With the exception, it seems, of Christians.

Is God the Enemy?

Make no mistake. There is a war being fought against the one God of the Bible, and against Christianity. The war is being fought on all fronts, and in all countries. And it is, believe it or not, being fought within our borders, in our schools, courtrooms and legislatures.

The war on God has been, and continues to be, waged by humans who have been convinced that human innovation, ability and society is the one true god that alone can deliver prosperity, health, comfort and ease.

The end product of humans reconstructing God in their own image is devastating. Moral relativism, that claims all right and wrong depends upon circumstances (situation ethics), eventually results in self-destructive behavior. The fruits of our rejection of God are obvious: A high rate of crime, an incredible percentage of our citizens incarcerated, an AIDS epidemic along with a divorce rate that threatens the destruction of the family as we know it.

When self-centered people are convinced that they are the only moral authority, like spoiled and out-of-control children, they do exactly what they want when they want. Their lives become unstable and dysfunctional, and eventually many turn to self-medication, through abuse of alcohol and controlled substances. Sales of anti-depressants, even for children, are at an all-time high. Drug companies and their shareholders have become rich because of the new morality -- a morality that claims that there are no absolutes that apply to everyone, but instead we must all decide what is right and wrong for ourselves.

Attacking Christianity

A sin-sick culture that worships itself then attacks Christians, stereotyping followers of Jesus Christ as the enemies of a tolerant and permissive culture that accepts everyone without prejudice or criticism. Christian-bashing is becoming fair game, engaged in, ironically, by those who enjoy the freedoms of a nation founded upon Christian values.

There is no question that Christians are not perfect. It is true that there are those who masquerade as Christians, seeking to hide behind the skirts of the Bible as they spew forth hatred and every kind of vile accusation against anyone who is not of the same color, creed or religion as themselves. It is true that some Christians cross biblical boundaries, seemingly condemning individuals who behave outside of their interpretation of biblical moral codes rather than being content to simply advocate and live their own lives of Christian morality based upon the Bible.

It is true that there have been times when biblical Christianity has been turned into religion, with Crusades, slavery, abuse, witch hunts and holy wars as a part of our history. We should admit to that history, without attempting to revise it.

We Christians should learn from that history. When human religion subverts biblical Christianity there will always be pain, abuse and perhaps bloodshed. But the world at large would do well to remember another side of Christianity -- the contributions that have come from Christianity.

The positive legacy of Christianity is profound: Education, universities, science, charity, art, music, hospitals, a high regard for human life, freedom and dignity afforded to other religions and cultures, the elimination of slavery, the elevation of women, along with the civilization of many primitive cultures through missionaries who selflessly gave their lives so that others might come to know God.

But the distrust of Christianity and the hatred for the God of the Bible refuses to acknowledge the positive contributions of Christianity, choosing instead to lay the blame for many contemporary problems at the door of those who express allegiance to Jesus Christ.

The Cancer of Moral Relativism

Our multi-cultural, pluralistic, morally relative society has virtually outlawed absolutism in any form. The great god of political correctness has decreed Christians, who are stereotyped as illiterate, right-wing, judgmental buffoons, to be incapable of having logical and worthwhile opinions.

The cancer of moral relativism seems to be eroding our common sense -- our ability to come to sound and rational decisions, when we are given clear and obvious facts. When God is abandoned, we are left without a moral compass and our common sense is also in jeopardy.

In the wake of September 11, 2001, our country struggled to respond to the unspeakable evil that motivated this act of cowardly terrorism. Many could not bring themselves to condemn any group, and insisted that the terrorists must have acted alone -- or at least virtually alone. Many appeared to have been bewildered by moral relativism and thus confused those being murdered with those doing the murdering.

But we were, and still are, faced with the fact that the terrorists were all Arab, and that they were all Muslim, even if they were extremists within the community of Islam. But the teachings of moral relativism are so compelling -- even as the United States went to war against forces of terror around the world, some continued in a state of denial and confusion about admitting that there was an evil worth condemning.

And when Christians dared to point out the hatred for Americans and Jews that is taught in Islamic schools (even Islamic schools in North America) a chorus of boos was heard from soft-headed libertines who apparently tolerate virtually any behavior and consequently do not recognize any kind of evil.

Good and Evil; Right and Wrong

Moral relativism turns right and wrong upside down, and blinds those who follow its permissive teachings to the fact that there is a moral difference between terrorism and the response it provokes. There is a difference between extending sympathy to the victims of terrorism and the soft-headed justifications that terrorists are butchering and maiming because they are victims of poverty and political oppression. Murder is murder -- whether the murderer is poor or rich, male or female, Muslim, Jew or Christian.

The vast majority of Christians are not issuing a call to hate Muslims. But Christians, Jews and Americans in general are within their moral and political rights to acknowledge and condemn the specific murderous hatred that is spread by many Muslims, perhaps even a majority of Muslims.

When an Egyptian Muslim attacked El Al customers at Los Angeles International Airport in early July, 2002, state and federal officials were not certain whether to classify the crime as terrorism, a hate crime or simply an act of personal anger. Ten months after the dastardly terrorism of September 11, American officials found it difficult to define why, on the Fourth of July, an Egyptian Muslim killed Americans and Israelis who were flying to Israel, from an American airport, using the national airline of Israel?

Turning Our Back on God?

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a young boy during the Communist Revolution in Russia. He recalls the slaughter of millions of Russians being discussed by two peasants. One of the men insisted that all of this evil was being unleashed upon Russia "because we have forgotten God!" In his famous 1978 commencement address at Harvard, Solzhenitsyn, who spent eight years as a prisoner in a Russian gulag, warned of the self-destruction of the Western world that he believed to be intent upon self-indulgence and permissiveness. Solzhenitsyn, a Christian thinker whose warnings were reminiscent of an Old Testament prophet, explained that the decadence of the West is a direct result of our rejection of God.

The rejection of God in our culture comes at great expense -- and we should reflect upon the moral bankruptcy that has been produced by the new morality in recent decades. What is the product of moral relativism, situation ethics and pluralistic political correctness? Connect the dots. Permissiveness. Crime. Divorce. Watergate. The AIDS epidemic. Clintongate. Enron. Worldcom. 21st century America -- where criminals commonly receive better treatment than their victims. 21st century America -- where God is an uninvited and unwelcome guest.

The war against God within our borders is not as open and overt as in other countries. Christian-bashing here in North America is more subversive, with relentless stealth-bombing of Christian values, virtues and morals taking place in the media and in our schools. Ruthless and non-stop devaluing, demeaning and lampooning of Christians are part of the campaign of terror against Christians and the God of the Bible.

One of the first tactics against a race, culture or religion is to wage a public relations war. Dehumanize the people group or religion. Depict the foe as hated, evil, narrow-minded. Attribute major societal defects and failings to the enemy. Use the media to paint a stereotype, so that eventually the public at large will be convinced that all members of that race, religion or culture have victimized the rest of us.

Don't think it could happen? Don't think it is happening? Thankfully, there are still history books that have not been revised to fit the rosy picture that moral relativism paints. Thankfully, we can still remember what happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany. Long before any Jew was sent to a death camp, an intense propaganda campaign was waged, a campaign of dehumanizing the Jews, a campaign claiming that they were responsible for all of the ills affecting the nation of Germany at the time. Slowly, but surely, the Jews were marginalized, denied basic freedoms given to other citizens of Germany, forced into ghettos in order to worship their God, and finally they were exterminated with the "final solution" of the Holocaust.

But the picture is not entirely grim. Not all is lost in 21st century America. It's still legal to be a Christian. In spite of intellectual posturing, self serving morality and energetic litigation, God has not been eliminated from our courthouses, currency or our Pledge of Allegiance. It has often been noted that many of the humans who have declared God to be dead are themselves now dead -- but God still exists. God created the universe, and he will not be declared dead by mere mortals. 

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