Category: Progressivism

Liberalism And Christianity

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Liberalism, Progressivism

Liberalism And Christianity

“Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jer 6:16

Before talking about some of the contrast between liberalism and Christianity we need to note some of the basic characteristics of liberalism. The first carnal doctrine of liberalism is the autonomy of the individual. It’s therefore, humanistic and not theistic because it begins with man and not God.  Its roots go deep in the soil of the atheistic enlightenment and surprisingly the Christian religion.  It makes the individual and Reason the ultimate authority and not God. It is a convoluted belief system that contains many religious and secular ideas that cannot possibly be reconciled In the real world if taken to their logical conclusions.[1] In the end liberalism because of its lack of authority always leads to making the state God. One of the fathers of the enlightenment Charles Hobbs said, “the state is God walking on the earth”. Ultimately, his remarks reflect the liberal view in general. If there is no God, raw power becomes the only authority.

Of course, like all ideologies and religions, there are various degrees in which people embrace this belief system of liberalism. First, there is the advanced liberals which are the furthest left and often embrace socialism or communism and are often hostile towards religion and traditional culture. They represent the liberalism of the French revolution. Whose mantra was “No king, no God”. In other words no authority. The other most common form or degree of liberalism is the classic view which is less hostile towards religion and may embraces capitalism to varying degrees. I think it would be fair to say that liberalism is the secular religion of western culture. A religion that has influenced all of us to some degree. However, like all false religions, its problems begin to surface at the extremes.  Two of these extremes are radical individualism and radical egalitarianism. Both of which will lead to the total collapse of all authority except for an authority forced on the populace by the state[2].

What about the failures of Christianity? The failures of Christianity were and are that it was not truly practiced. The failure of liberalism is and was that it is practiced too much. The madness going on in our culture is the result of the fruit of advanced liberalism and the chaos will only worsen until the state comes in and takes control. Liberalism dogma of unlimited human freedom and its propensity to want to fix the world at any cost will always lead to an authoritative and ill-liberal State.

Three other myths that have been created by liberalism is its faith in the goodness of humanity and its unfounded belief in continuous progress and the ultimate perfecting of the world in some future utopia, a belief it has inherited from a misunderstanding of Christian eschatology. The Christia message nowhere teaches that the world can or should be fixed by humanity. The best we can do is attempt to fix ourselves. And even that is near impossible. We need the help of God. If we have not learned that, it’s probably because we have not attempted to fix much of yourself.

I’m old and I have seen a lot of world fixers in my lifetime. Most of them have screwed up the world more than fixing it. It seems that all the world fixers that have ever existed all imagine themselves to be more intelligent and reasonable than everybody else. If true, you would think the world would be paradise. Unfortunately, there are large numbers of Christians that believe that the purpose of Jesus coming into the world was somehow to fix and perfect the world. when this happens  Jesus is usually reduced to nothing more than a moral teacher.

However, the world does have a system baked into it that is self-correcting to some degree. It is called death. Moreover, sometimes God intervenes and fixes things. Sometimes, He uses men to fixes a few things. Sometimes; he leaves things broken to remind us to look up.

[1] The greatest problem with liberalism is it’s a failure to deal with the rights of the individual and the rights of sociality to protect itself against the individual. Mills’s book on liberty fails to resolve the question and actually adds to the problem.[2] Like all atheistic systems, Mills’s had a hard time answering the question “By who’s authority”. Ultimately, he has nothing but the state and the deification of human reason.

Conspiracy, Conspiracy, Conspiracy

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Christ and Culture, Government, Progressivism

The latest way for the left to reject the truth is to  call it a conspiracy. Then they simply pass off all evidence as a far right conspiracy. Once the label is applied they cease their inquiry into the evidence. However, the following video should give them pause for it is evident that Kennedy believed in a conspiracy against the country that was going on in  secret and in high places. After viewing the video and giving it some thought, take a look at George Soros and his army of useful idiots that are undermining our country. He has given $100 million to the DNC and has funded millions more to them through his shadow organizations. Watch the video on him after Kennedy’s on lyleduell.me. Hit below link.

The Cornerstone of Liberalism

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Christ and Culture, Liberalism, Progressivism

The Cornerstone of Liberalism

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me!  John 8:43-45 NIV.

The foundation of Liberalism[1] is made up of many stones.  However, the cornerstone of the philosophy is the autonomy of the individual.  What do we mean by the autonomy of the individual?  It simply means that the individual is self-governing and to some degree is self-directed.

It may surprise you to hear that the Bible has quite a bit to say about this doctrine of the autonomy of the individual.  In the story found in the book of Genesis, God created man free to make a choice and he also warned man that if he made the wrong choice there would be consequences.  The choices were to governor one’s self and be independent of God (autonomous) or to choose to be self – denying and allow God to govern one’s life.

If we look at the liberal faith through the lens of the story.  Liberalism is nothing more than an organized rebellion against God[2].  Like Adam in the story liberals do not believe God, of course in our age it’s not a matter of believing God, but rather not believing IN God.  However, no matter how you word it, it’s the same old story.  Man , wanting to be independent and free from the authority of God.  In the story Satan deceived man in two ways.  He first convinced man that God’s word was not true and then that God did not mean what he said.  Both of his arguments were attacks on the truth of God’s word.  Based on what I’ve all already said, it only follows that the liberal faith would be attacking God’s word today and even setting themselves up as the judges of God and his Word.  Well, that exactly what we find.

It is the liberal faith that has embraced relativism (the denial that there is any absolute truth) and has led the attack on scripture and on the living word who is Jesus Christ.[3]  In fact, liberals and their siblings[4] despise any authority, but especially anything or anyone that represents the authority of God.  Like their father they hate God and everything that pertains to the true God.  Like their father they know how to subvert language and appear as angles of light to naïve and gullible men.  The apostle Paul says of them “And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness” 2 Cor. 11:14-15.  Still to this day we have liberals masquerading as Christians for their own purpose or the purpose of their father.

Even from a utilitarian point of view, liberalism has a number of problems, if every person is self-governing and self-directed, what happens when people begin to go in different directions and they then begin to disagree on whom and what should govern?  The liberal answer is that a man’s freedom or self-governing ends where any others man’s freedom begins.  But does this really take care of the problem or does it just raise more questions?  For example who will determine where one man’s freedom ends and any other man’s begins?  The state?[5]  If the state is to determine this, is the individual really free?  What happens if the state defines freedom differently than the individual?  Maybe we should toss a coin?  No, the one with the most power wins and in the modern world that means the state.  Liberalism therefore will always look to the state to determine where freedom begins and ends.  The state then judges the difference between good and evil.  In other word the state begins to determine morality.  Could this be the source of political correctness?  It surely is the beginning of a totalitarian state.

In the story, God creates man and then gives him freedom.  In the liberal system it is the state that defines and gives freedom to the individual, of course, if the state gives freedom, the state can take it away.  If the deity gives freedom no government would have the right to take that freedom away.  This was the thinking of the founding fathers when they said that men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” and government was created to protect those rights.  It is quite obvious that the founding fathers were not liberals.  This is the reason why liberals are not extremely fond of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.  They simply don’t believe them.

There is any problem with the liberal faith, which is, who has the authority to define the concept of freedom?  Freedom is one of those elusive concepts that could be defined in a numbers ways.  For the atheist it could be defined simply by the expression “Freedom is doing what I what to do or simply being left alone by the authorities”.  For the Christian freedom would be defined “as being free from self to serve God and others.”

Now liberals, will respond by saying that the state should stay out of defining freedom or liberty.  But if this true, why then do they use the public school to push their liberal faith?  In fact, every time they have a change, liberals use the government and the court system to impose their liberal faith on the American people.  They get away with this because the American people do not recognize liberalism for what it is, a godless religion that is against all other religions.

In the story when man sinned something happened to his nature.  Before the fall his will was directed toward God, after the fall his will was directed to himself.  His will was directed to satisfying his lower nature.  He then began to live not for God, but rather to satisfy his lower nature’s appetites.  The story therefore depicts liberalism, perfectly, for liberalism is nothing more than a high form of hedonism (living for pleasure).  Even, discipline and self-restraint is practiced primarily to extend the ego.

The conclusion is this; liberalism is nothing more than an organized rebellion against the living God.  It is a religion or a philosophy that denies and subverts God’s word.  Therefore, it is sinful for Christians to be involved in liberalism or to support any group or politic party that supports it.

[1] Liberalism is not being nice or compassionate. It is a philosophy that competes and stands in contradiction to the Christian faith. The advanced liberals which often call themselves progressives are liberals who have embraced the liberal philosophy and have taken it to its end, which is anarchy.

[2] The symbol and the height of the liberal move is the French Revolution with its motto “No king and no God”.

[3] Liberals have used the methodology of higher criticism to deny the authority of scripture and to deny the Lordship of Jesus. Note Eta Linnemann Book  “Historical Criticism of the Bible” with the sub-title “Methodology or Ideology? Reflections of a Bultmannian turned evangelical”. Also note Jude 8-16

Harry Blamires book “The Christian Mind” saved me from embracing a liberal view of the Bible.

[4] The two siblings of liberalism are atheism and libertarianism. Atheism is the ultimate distortion of the image of God in man and libertarianism is a secular counterfeit of the Christian faith which in its true state lives above the law.

[5] In the end for the liberal the state becomes God walking on the earth. A good example of this that the state in the abortion controversy ended up determining what is life or non-life. In this Secular liberalism is nothing more than man playing God.

The One True Heaven

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Christ and Culture, Liberalism, Progressivism

The One True Heaven

Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth. “But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.  Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”  So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel–because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. Gen 11:3-9

The intellectuals of the Renaissance were made up basically of  two groups of thinkers, those which were atheists who rejected the idea of God and organized religion and those that maintain their faith in God and yet rejected the corrupted forms of religion.  The former evolved into what we call the enlightenment and the latter evolved into the Reformation movement.  Looking back on these developments, we see these two movements traveling along through time side-by-side yet with an increasingly greater gulf growing between them.

In the beginning of the Renaissance, there was an emphasis placed on a return to reason and freedom. In order to accomplish this goal the old authorities of dogma, tradition and church had to be overthrown and replaced with the concepts of reason and freedom.  However, the two different branches of the Renaissance, the enlightenment and Reformation would develop these two concepts of reason and freedom differently.  The enlightenment side would enshrine reason and human knowledge as the ultimate authority, reason and science would become God and bring heaven down to earth.  Man would be free from all authority and be self-directed.  Out of this, thinking came the later systems of  philosophies known as humanism, liberalism and communism.

The other branch of the Renaissance, the Reformation, believed that there were limits to reason and knowledge and that in order for man to be truly human he must live within those limits. They believed, without limits mans freedom would generate into chaos and the loss of freedom to his uncontrolled passions and his own finiteness.  They believe that those limits were set forth in the revelation of God in Christ.  The Reformation, therefore, believed that there were limits to the development of culture and that any attempts to bring heaven to earth would only end in misery.  They were skeptical about the enlightenment’s blind faith in progress and in human goodness.  In this, they rejected the twin myths of unlimited progress and the innate goodness of humanity; myths that still shape the vision of liberals and progressives to this very day.

After hundreds of years, we can clearly see the movement of both  groups. The reformation group has lost its hold on Europe, symbolized by the French revolution that had its slogan “No God No king” which could be interpreted as no authority other than the individual.  The failure of the Reformation in Europe could be largely contributed to its association with the ruling class and its failure to follow through on its attempt to reform organized religion and the culture.  Its failures allowed the men of the enlightenment to hold out a secular hope to the people and actually create a brand-new faith, a faith in progress (heaven on earth) and human knowledge (science).  The populace which had already lost their faith in religion were eager to accept this new faith even though there was no historical grounds or empirical evidence for it.

The question arises, How did the enlightenment thinkers believe they would  accomplish bringing heaven down to earth?  Well, it’s not a hard question, they simply had to bring God down to earth. That is exactly what the thinkers of the enlightenment did. They created the modern state.  As one of them said,” the state is God walking on the earth.”  This idea was set forth in varying degrees by a number of enlightenment thinkers and perfected in the writings of Karl Marx.  In Marx, you see the state exalted to the place of God and the animosity of the enlightenment towards religion and any moral authority other than the state (human authority).  For in the new heaven, no other authority can exist but that of the state which is nothing more than a human oligarch of authority.  Of course, that authority should be based on reason alone and science, the two demon gods of the enlightenment.  However, we also see in this system of unbelief a denial of free will and of human dignity.  Man is nothing more than an animal predetermined by biological forces; life is not scared but is expendable for the higher good. Of course, the state is the higher good.

We now know that reason is never alone, and that science is limited and controlled by many things other than reason, such as money and the ideological taint.   We also know from experience that the state never really promotes individual freedom, but rather it oppresses freedom.  Though history has shown us the failure of the secular movement; those that have placed their faith in it continually are on the same course today, just as their ancestors of the enlightenment did. How do you explain this blind faith?  I personally believe that it all comes back to their first presupposition of unbelief.  Once you get on the road of unbelief, there is nowhere to go other than statism (God walking on the earth).

It only takes a glimpse of the last century to see what this new heaven on earth looks like.  It looks like Russia and communist China.  Where 100,000,000 people have been killed, and untold numbers persecuted for not bowing down to the new God of the state.  Could it be that the materialist of the enlightenment promised one thing (heaven) and created the very opposite on earth?  If we are the heirs of the enlightenment, what do we have to look forward to?  It seems, if we continue on the same course of the enlightenment, there can only be one end; the ultimate state, a one-world government and George Orwell’s 1984.