Re-emergent Paganism On te Rise

Fay Voshell has a very powerful article today in the American Thinker entitled State Enforced Paganism in America. Go read the whole thing, because as usual with Ms. Voshell, it is very good, but also because while I may be referring to it, you can not get the ideas presented in the piece from my meager ramblings alone. You must go to the source and drink it all in. But don't stop there. No, you ultimately must go to the real source of Ms. Voshell's faith, the Bible.

I don't know precisely when it started.  My Pastor thinks it has always been with us, but we find ourselves living in a cultural milieu not unlike that described by the Apostle Paul in Corinth.  Christians turn out to be a small minority, surrounded by pagans of various stripes.  Some were more tolerant, others wanted to persecute the Christians because these people showed them up for the self worshiping human debris they were.  But I date the beginnings of the modern era of paganism to the Supreme Court rulings in 1962 and 63 in Engle v. Vitale and Abington School District v. Schempp. The later of which featured the infamous Madalyn Murray O'Hair.

O'Hair was a tortured soul, as many people are who try to live life on their own own terms rather than following God's terms.  God doesn't make up rules arbitrarily.  God's laws are designed so we can life abundant lives, though we will inevitably hard times and tragedy because man is a sinful creature.

In any case, many main line church bodies have come to incorporate some of the new paganism into their liturgies and social statements.  These include for example, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America now ordains homosexual pastors.  Now, I recognize that all have sinned and fallen short, pastors included.  But Luther said that the life of a Christian was one of constant repentance.  However, if someone is a  homosexual living in a committed relationship, he can not be repentant, can he?  For if he believes that he was "born that way" then there is no need to repent.  And if he knows it is wrong, but he does it anyway, then he is defying God, and thus is not attempting to repent.

The Christian Church must respond vigorously or sink into paganism itself, as is already happening in some Main Line churches that are creating liturgies to bless bodily mutilation as spiritually transformative and as a way of attaining self-salvation. The Church must reject the new barbarism and its tyrannous assault on Christianity or find itself overwhelmed by the avid worshippers of the new gods. For when the God of Christianity is rejected, new and far, far worse gods arise to demand worship.

Ms. Voshell cites the so called "transgender" movement, the coming pedophilia, and bestiality movements, as well as abortion and euthanasia, which are well established as yet other instances of paganism. Indeed, all of these were common in the ancient world before the birth of Christ. After Jesus death and resurrection, everything began to change. Homosexuality, Pedophilia, and bestiality, abortion and euthanasia were outlawed. Hospitals were established, universities were established, and education for a greater number of people became common.  If you study history, you will begin to realize that while man generally gets in his own way, just enough of us have done just enough, that the world is actually a better place than it was 100, 200, 1000, of 5000 years ago.  We owe this to our God, and his Son who died for our sins and rose again to proclaim a new covenant with man.

Ms. Voshell is right in this too: that to be a true Christian, one must believe that Christ has done it all.  There is no need for us to DO anything.  There is nothing you can do to merit salvation.  Even the act of "Taking Jesus into your heart" is too much.  All that is required is that you do not actively reject the salvation so mercifully given to we undeserving sinners.  In other words, there is no such thing as "self salvation."  To add anything to that is not Christian.

The time is coming when we will have to declare on whose side we stand, whether we stand with the Creator of the universe, or whether we will follow our own path to destruction.  God will force this by letting evil re-emerge, until those who follow him, who are willing to take the abuse and persecution for following him, are all that is left from among the many pretenders who just go along to get along.