Recently, I read an article on CNN.com explaining the benefits of atheism and the flaws of God. The list includes the following: God is a Bad Parent and Role Model, God is Not Logical, God is Not Fair, God Does Not Protect the Innocent, God is Not Present, God Does Not Teach Children to Be Good, and God Teaches Narcissism, as headings.
I also recently saw a telling quote from Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas):
"There is evil prowling in the world - it shows up in our movies, video games and online fascinations, and finds its way into vulnerable hearts and minds. As a free people, let us choose what kind of people we will be. Laws, the only redoubt of secularism, will not suffice. Let us all return to our places of worship and pray for help. Above all, let us pray for our children."
People might call God by different names or sometimes they call him nothing at all. But they all believe. Society holds science in the position that religion held in the past. Advocates of “scientism” often use politics to enforce their doctrine. Like the false religions of the past, many people blindly follow. Instead of going to a religious leader or to God for answers to such questions, as “why am I here?” and “where am I going when I die?”, people today look to science. They believe that science and politics will cure the world’s ills. Political power also holds a place of god-like importance to many people. The problem is science and politics have not cured the world of evil. Since sin entered the world mankind has not been good, and without the one true God mankind can’t be good.
Things such as science and politics often take the place of God in people’s lives because people know that they need help. Science and politics perform many functions similar to religions. Science predicts the future, including forecasting both global cooling and global warming, and people trust in those predictions and act on them through politics. Science has experimented on the elderly, infirm, and children with the aid of government force. Science has made wild and fantastic claims regarding the cure of disease through embryonic stem cells and politicians provide money for it. Science has taught us that “survival of the fittest” is what caused the progression of evolution which some politicians then used to justify genocide and eugenics.
Politics has long been held forth by those with power as the means of curing the world of evil. Violence can be stopped with more laws, politicians claim. Hunger and poverty will be eliminated. Education will be universal. Even the oceans will be moved at the election of some leaders. Of course, utopian promises have turned into horror for many. Politicians and scientists often lie and steal from the very people who look to them for leadership. Yet, we still vote for and follow them almost reverentially.
As Gov. Rick Perry said, the only real force a secularist can appeal to in curbing evil is the political power of the state. So, it is no surprise that the twin gods of politics and science appeal to laws for the solution of man’s problems. There is no other place to go.
When secularists see tragedy and human pain, they turn to the things that they view as higher than themselves--government and science. The problem is they forget government and science are made up of flawed people. And the years have proven that the hope of man lies not in man itself. Any standard based in man is flawed and is not a valid basis for truth. God is a separate, perfect, and unchanging standard. Anything less than that is subjective and flawed.
Is God exactly like science and politics and false religion? Is He really like mankind? No, because God is separate from His creation, though He is involved directly in it. He is the Truth and outside of Him there is not value or meaning. Gulags, concentration camps, and death have been the benevolent gifts of some political and scientific saviors. The evil in the world is not a result of God doing nothing; it is the result of rebellion of man against God. The evil inNewtownwas not a result of Congress doing nothing; it was a result of Adam Lanza’s evil choices.
Laws do not stop people from doing anything. They merely specify punishments for particular behavior. God specified the punishment for sin: Death. We have all sinned and death will come. But because the judgment for sin does not come swiftly some indict God for injustice. The truth is that it is the mercy of God on all of us that we are still alive. We have rebelled against God and deserve death but He sent His son to taste death for us and now we can live through His resurrection. If we try to reduce our conception of God to human terms we will make a god in our own image. Often that image is horrible. Let us remember as one of our founders did “that God is good and that His justice will not sleep forever.” But, oh the mercy that lets His justice sleep for a time! How rich it is, and how it beckons for the weary sinner to come, taste and see that the Lord is good! Do not reject God because of evil, run to Him as the only source of good and know that His justice will only sleep for a time.