Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson Red Bluff Daily News   12/23/2014

            God alone makes a good world

If there was one time of the year, one column, to devote to things spiritual, Christmas would be the time and this would be the column. It would be refreshing to go without the predictable derogatory sentiments from the secular (atheist) left at Christmas (or any other) time. To this day, crosses erected by Christian patriots and veterans, non-controversially revered for decades, have inspired antireligious fanatics and their legal warriors to seek their obliteration from public view. Such crosses require no one to bow before them, and yet their existence requires convoluted ownership transfers, by defenders of our nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage, in order to escape the judicial harpies and their destructive designs.

Remember, everyone effectively “worships” something. In “Ph.D.s and Other False Gods,” Jewish conservative radio host and writer Dennis Prager explains, “Why the worship of God alone is the basis for a good world.” He has a series of eleven 5-minute video courses at www.prageru.com on the 10 commandments (one for each commandment and an introduction).

I’ve watched the introductory video; it reinforced, in my mind, basic and irrefutable points about the inherent benefits to even unbelievers from the God-based nature of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Anyone who is an atheist or agnostic by “faith” is accorded the rights, protections and freedoms contained in those documents. Because the Framers and Founders held them to be “God given,” rather than humanly derived, the prohibition against infringing others’ rights and freedoms cannot be rationalized away.

That is the theory, constantly under assault, as practiced in America under our founding documents; all other nations have chosen rather to trust the force of human agreement and codification in law. Obviously, what human majorities agree to and legally codify can be disagreed with by a different majority and removed from law—with no, repeat no, recourse to higher, i.e. divine, authority.

Prager prefaces the series with “The Ten Commandments—Still the Best Moral Code,” asserting “Humanity has everything it needs to create a good world. We’ve had it for 3,000 years; ten basic, yet profound instructions for how to lead a moral life. If everyone followed the Ten Commandments, we would not need armies or police; marriages and families would be stronger; truth would be a paramount value. (They) led to the creation of Western Civilization and remain relevant to your life today.”

“We need a fixed moral anchor to solve the problem of evil; nothing is as effective as the Ten Commandments.” The First Commandment is translated: “You shall have no other gods before me.” It is easy to entertain images of idol worshipping from “The Ten Commandments,” starring Charlton Heston as Moses, when Hebrew tribes unfaithfully waited for Moses to return from the mountain with God’s delivered wisdom. Moreover, no one today worships “gods such as the ancient pagan gods of rain, of fertility, all the other nature gods, and chief gods such as the Roman Jupiter, and the Greek Zeus.”

Absent those and other historical objects of worship, what could today be substitute divinities, god-like entities, or beliefs that people place above themselves and others? A limited list might include: Money, materialism, power, race, flag; the cult of personality (entertainment, culture, sports or politics); human technology and/or achievement; and certainly addictions to all manner of things malign or benign. Drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, rage, jealousy, manipulation, hatred; even shopping and mindless acquisition can all take over one’s free will and undermine one’s best interests and the plight of one’s fellow humans.

Rationalism and the elevation of the human intellect (i.e. Ph.D.s) are among the most deceptive of self-induced idols, particularly when combined with the boundless confidence and enthusiasm of utopian ideals or scholarly accomplishments. Such prideful arrogance is often inclined towards deciding how everyone ought to do (or refrain from doing) something, while ordering their lives for the “good of all.” Such extremism is invariably couched in terms of the dire consequences to society associated with some current behavioral trend or lack thereof.

As Prager writes, “one God means one human race. Only if we all have the same Creator, or Father, as it were, are we are all brothers and sisters [which] means that no person is intrinsically more valuable than any other.” Mark Levin’s book, “Liberty and Tyranny,” examined grand utopian and visionary writings, and efforts to ideally order society throughout history. To this day, societies supposedly designed by enlightened philosophy—also known as socialism or collectivism—abuse, murder, and imprison individuals, destroying free will and abundance. Environmentalists and climate change fanatics demand compliance and punishment.

The failure and evil of (atheist inspired) communism and socialism is explained away, even defended, by some of the most educated people in the West. Education, divorced from the higher ends of God and goodness, often leads to evil. “Some of the best educated people in Germany supported Hitler and the Nazis. And almost all of the Western world’s supporters of the genocidal regimes of Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao in China were highly educated. Education is morally useful when it is a means to the higher ends of God and goodness.”

I pray for freedom and wisdom in Jesus Christ to all. Merry Christmas.