By Gerald Harris, Georgia Christian Index Editor
During the current legislative session under the Gold Dome, Georgia Baptists will coalesce with a myriad of other groups to attempt to get a strong anti-discrimination Religious Liberty bill passed. This kind of legislation has come to be known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), because many of them are patterned after the federal RFRA that was passed by Congress in 1993 and signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton.
In my estimation there are several enemies of religious liberty in America. First there is secular humanism. Although those who espouse this ideology would probably deny it, secular humanism is a religion – a religion that deifies man and humanizes God. Secular humanism puts man at the center of the universe and everything revolves around him.
The humanists would embrace with appreciation and affirmation the words of William Ernest Henley, the author of Invictus, who penned, “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”
Secular humanism is supported and facilitated by the ACLU, the Atheist Alliance of America, the National Organization of Women, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Freethought Society, Center for Inquiry, and most of the secular, state-run institutions of learning from the first grade through college.
Many of these institutions and organizations promote secular dogmas that undermine belief in God, the Bible, and Jesus Christ. Most secularists would agree with Karl Marx, who said, “Religion is the opiate of the masses, thus making religion a controlled substance which free practicing citizens feed off of.”
The second enemy of religious liberty is evolution. John D. Clark, Department of History of the University of California in Riverside, stated, “Evolution is not a scientific theory, but a comprehensive metaphysical world view that implicitly and explicitly has frightening implications in all of the most important categories of human existence, including (1) the possibility of discovering truth, (2) epistemology, the search for an adequate basis for knowing, (3) the meaning of ethics and human dignity, and (4) the existence of human freedom.”
In other words, those who believe they evolved from some primordial scum will likely not believe in God or will have a very low, uninspired view of God. The sovereignty of self, the sexual revolution, and survival of the fittest are all products of the people or society that holds to the cosmogenic myth of evolution.
The sovereignty of self, which is also the essence of secular humanism, suggests that the individual has the right and autonomy to determine his own moral standards. When that happens he sets himself over God, the Bible, the law of the land, and the government. When that happens to a society it is much closer to anarchy than liberty.
Ken Ham, CEO and president of Answers in Genesis, writes: “In this fallen world the battle being fought is one of authority. Will we look to God’s Word for answers? Or will we look to man and his changing fallible opinions as the highest authority?”
The evolutionary dogma has saddle society with the devastating consequences of humanity proclaiming themselves sovereigns of the universe. Humanity’s perception of autonomy has led to sacrificing truth on the altar of subjectivism. Ethics and morals are no longer determined on the basis of objective standards but rather by the size and strength of the latest lobbying group.
The third enemy of freedom is abortion on demand. The pro-abortion movement flies in the face of the opening words of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
We have killed off over 58 million American children since abortion was legalized almost 43 years ago. The number of babies slaughtered due to the results of this holocaust have been devastating to our way of life in America. Those 58 million children is the equivalent of our 80 largest cities: and they aren’t here to pay Social security, or to vote, or to be in the military. We are becoming a nation of aging hippies with so few young people that there aren’t enough of them to prop up our way of life.
Evangelist Steve Hale, in his book Truth Decay, written in 2011, declares, “Abortion is the silent thief that has created the Social Security and Medicare crisis. For example, in 1940 we had 145 people in the workforce for every person on Social Security. By 1952, the ratio had dropped to 16 to 1. Currently, it is 3.1 to 1. In less than 20 years it will be only 2 to 1. And we think it is bad now.”
When a nation kills off thirty percent of the babies over a 43-year period of time it reveals the value that nation ascribes to both life and liberty.
The fourth enemy of freedom is the Islam religion. Muslims are not going to stop having children and they aren’t going to have abortions. By their sheer growth through births and immigration their percentage of the population will continue to grow.
Carol Brown, writing for The American Thinker, explains, “Even when Muslims are a minority population they can and do transform whole cultures and societies. And not for the better.
“Why? Because their holy book is a totalitarian ideology founded on submission and world domination. And toward that end, Islam is on the march. Meanwhile, the West remains mired in cowardice and complicity. Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in Europe, which is on the fast track to join the Caliphate.
“Not to be outdone by Europe’s madness, the United States is traveling down the same bloody path, importing large number of Muslims from Islamic countries thanks to the Islamophile sitting in the Oval Office and a nation full of dhimmis.
“War has been waged against America in the name of Islam and we’ve opened our doors ever-wider to those who adhere to the very ideology that mandates our destruction.”
The fifth enemy of liberty is apathy. We live in a culture that has developed a “live and let live” philosophy where open-mindedness and tolerance seem to be valued above all else. Today it appears that most Christians are of the opinion that they should keep their opinions to themselves, especially when it comes to voting.
Slums may be breeding grounds of crime, universities may be the seedbed of liberalism, the halls of government may be the source of self-serving legislation, but middle class suburbs and churches are often the incubators of apathy.
As Christians we should awake from the deep sleep of apathy and realize our moral obligation – first to the Lord, to stand for righteousness, and then to our families and their future and to our nation. Statistics prove that if Christians voted and exercised their influence in legislative issues we could determine the outcome of every political race in this country and every legislative decision in this country. But, alas, most people who call themselves Christian seem to prefer their present comfort to the cause of liberty and its attendant blessings.
