The Paganization of America

The open military conflicts around the world, especially in Ukraine and the Middle East, distract us from the very real if invisible spiritual-ideological struggle taking place in America and other western countries. The idea of freedom or liberty has become an absolute replacing God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The notion that every person including the smallest child should be free to choose one's own way of life has permeated our society so thoroughly that you are scorned and ridiculed if you dare to speak out and say there are objective standards of right and wrong, good and evil, truth and falsehood. Making liberty the absolute, the highest value in society, leads only to debauchery and bondage, as St. Peter wrote:

For, uttering great swelling words of emptiness, they entice in the lusts of the flesh, by licentiousness, those who are indeed escaping from those who live in error; promising them liberty, while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a man is overcome, by the same is he also brought into bondage. For if, after they have escaped the defilement of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the last state has become worse with them than the first. For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. (2 Peter 2 18-21)

As the Apostle Peter wrote, it would be better if those people had never lived in a culture permeated with Christian values where the Gospel has been openly preached for centuries, than after being exposed to it, to reject it and turn back to paganism. Their last state of these neopagans will be worse than the state of the old pre-Christian pagans. How did all this come about?

The Declaration of Independence clearly states - "All men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," which in some of the earliest manuscripts ends with a comma, not with a period: it goes on to denounce the tyranny of an earthly ruler who trampled on their rights and exacted burdensome taxes from the colonists. So instead of making "the pursuit of happiness" an end it itself, it actually was contrasting tyranny with tranquility, the ability to live one's life in peace.

The earliest British settlers that survived in America were the Pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower in 1620, among them my ancestor Edward Doty. The Pilgrims definitely believed in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in right and wrong, good and evil, truth and falsehood. They sought to establish a colony where they could freely practice their religious faith. But the following waves of settlers included more and more people who simply sought free land and economic opportunity.

About this same time the ideology of capitalism and the free market economy was coming into vogue. Adam Smith published his groundbreaking book, The Wealth of Nations, in 1776, the same year that the British colonies of North America declared their independence. In this book the author describes how an "invisible hand" guided all men's economic choices so that what each chose for his own "enlightened self-interest" turned out to be for the well-being of all. What most people are ignorant of, however, is that the author was not "Mr. Adam Smith" but rather "Rev. Adam Smith" - a clergyman and moral philosopher, that the "invisible hand" was the hand of God, and that "enlightened self-interest" came from the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit.

Thus it did not take long for people to transform "the pursuit of happiness" into the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, and "enlightened self-interest" informed by the Holy Spirit into selfishness and greed. Rev. Adam Smith included in his book a great deal of concern for the betterment of the poor, but modern capitalists often have little or no concern for the poor or anything other than increasing their return on investment (ROI) and paying bigger dividends to stockholders.

So what began as a movement of religious dissidents seeking freedom to worship and live according to their faith gradually devolved into self-seeking adventurers pursuing pleasure and profit above all. Freedom and liberty have been transformed into the bondage of debauchery and lust. We are now at the point where those who strive to worship and live according to their faith are publicly ridiculed by the media, or even accused of discrimination and "hate crimes" by the state. We hear a greater outcry against the accidental killing of a collared lion than over the deliberate murder of sixty million unborn babies sacrificed on the altar of pleasure and lust, and the sale of their body parts for profit.

In conclusion, freedom and toleration of various beliefs must never become absolutes, ends in themselves. They are limited and relative to the true absolute: "Jesus therefore said to those Jews who had believed Him, 'If you remain in My word, then you are truly My disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.'" (John 8:31-32) And "Thomas said to Him, 'Lord, we don't know where You are going. How can we know the way?' Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through Me." (John 14:5-6)

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 15 Aug. 2015.)