The Highly Criminal Yet Highly Religious USA

RELIGION IN THE NEWS

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from the Jewish World Review of March 29, 2000 with a headline: “Sin Anyone?”Americans are the most religious people in the developed world.More than 90% tell pollsters that they believe in God, 43% say they attend religious services at least once a week, and 58% report that religion is very important in their lives.But what does it really mean?When every one from Hilary Clinton to Ralph Reed professes to be motivated by religious values, can those values have any identifiable content?And when the society at large enshrines tolerance and reluctance to make moral judgments as the highest virtues, what can they be hearing at those weekly services?James Davison Hunter answers that question in the spring edition of The Public Interest and he concludes that at this moment in history the secular world view is influencing the churches far more than the churches are influencing the surrounding society. In particular, Hunter examines the moral education curricula at churches and synagogues around the nation.And he finds that the old categories of sin, repentance and redemption are out and the therapeutic language of self esteem and self love are in.Hunter cites Dr. James Dobson head of Focus on the Family as well as a professional psychologist as an example of this melding of psychological beliefs into Christian moral education.As Christian educators go, Dobson is quite orthodox.Pre-marital sex for example is a no, no.Nor does Dobson slight the traditional teachings on marriage, fidelity, honesty and so on.But the very first reason Dobson offers for refraining from pre-marital sex is the risk of venereal disease and he instructs adolescents that the primary task of their developing years is to acquire “good” self-esteem.Another popular evangelical writer, Kenneth Erickson is even more in sync with popular psychology.While emphasizing God’s love, Erickson focuses most of his attention on building self-esteem, understanding one’s inner child and eschewing perfectionism and shame-based morality.Hunter explains while he writes of the importance of forgiveness, the problem of sin is all but absent. The Rabbi at a large reform congregation in Manhattan was asked whether theological concepts like sin are used to instruct the young.“Sin isn’t one of our issues,” he replied.My guess is that in 12 years of religious school, our kids will never hear the word.The principal of a Catholic school in San Antonio, Texas expressed a similar view on sin, “Oh no, that kind of language would not relate to them anyway.When I was growing up, I might have personally responded to someone if they said hey, this is a sin.Today though, I don’t think young people would respond to that.The most you could say to them is: ‘That is not allowed.’”The triumph of the therapeutic has left millions of Americans without the mental equipment to make moral choices and when sin does rear its ugly head; our national response both secular and religious is to call in the shrinks.

Tom:

Dave, this as Gary mentioned is from the Jewish World Review and this is Mona Sharon indicting in some cases evangelicals, but particularly the religious and she’s right on target.

Dave:

Yes, I would have to agree with her.It’s a sad commentary and what is happening, you know we referred to it a little bit earlier.I am spiritual, but not religious by religious meaning, and some people would even say I’m religious, but it means we don’t conform to any dogmas now.Now that’s fine.Don’t conform to the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church, or the Mormons or of anybody else.But God has some rules.And He has laid it out very clearly, but the tragedy is that we have this idea of being broadminded.We’ve got to build up self esteem and it’s tragic that Dr. Dobson for example, (this is accurate what this person says that we abstain from pre-marital sex, pre-sex, or what ever, the major reason is to avoid the disease—

Tom:

The consequences of sin.

Dave:

—we might contact rather than moral obedience to the God who created us and to His laws and to His Word.But, people are not moved by that, so maybe Dr. Dobson realizes we’ve got to be strategic in the way we present these things because as the—was it a Jewish person later on who said that we might have been moved by that when I was a boy, but not anymore.

Tom:

That was the principal of the Catholic school.The Rabbi said my guess is that in 12 years of religious school our kids will never hear the word.

Dave:

Yes, so now we’ve got to, we’ve become so—I love that last paragraph—it’s so accurate.We’ve become so psychotherapeutically oriented that this is the way we now appeal to people.But that is not the way God appeals to people and we know that psychotherapy doesn’t work anyway.There has to be some fear of God and of eternal hell as the consequence, not just some disease that we might get in this life and this is what is missing, tragically in our society and in our churches.

Tom:

Dave this article seems to be to me a reflection of 2 Timothy 3.First of all, that’s the only place that I know of that self esteem is mentioned in the Word of God and mark my words in the last days there shall come perilous times, men will be lovers of themselves and then a little later it talks about having a form of godliness but denying the power there of.This is what this is all about.

Dave:

The Bible is an amazing book isn’t it.It lays it all out ahead of time and Tom, once again it brings us back to the very title of our program and the very purpose that we have: search the Scriptures daily.We are not trying to put our ideas over, we are not trying to present the latest philosophy, we are not trying to present the latest from the academic world or even from the scientific world.Man has not changed since the Garden of Eden and the basic problem is still man’s relationship with God.We’re rebels against God, so we’re not trying to offer our ideas.If man is to be made right; if God really created him, which we believe and the Bible says and if the problem is man’s relationship with God, then only God can solve this problem and He is the one we must heed when He tells us the solution and that solution is only through Jesus Christ, who is God and became a man, who paid the penalty for our sins on the cross.That’s the message that we’ve got to preach.Paul said to Timothy, preach the Word.Instead of that we are preaching the latest psychotherapeutic techniques because we think that will appeal to people today, modern man or modern children more than the Word of God and that is a mistake.

Tom:

Dave, twice I believe in Proverbs we have the Scripture: “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end there of are the ways of death.”We pick and choose all these things that have to do with man’s ways or seducing spirits or doctrines of demons and it’s destructive at best.

Dave:

A lot of ways that lead to death.We are all taking different roads to get to the same place, they say.But there’s only one way that leads to life.Jesus Christ is THE way.