Religious narrow minds caused an enormous delay on mankind's progress
Andy Fehler
Someone who is known only as "interceptor" has presented a non-Christian belief that we are to examine. Interceptor hacked into our church members website sending an email to all its subscribers.
The email set out their manifesto as follows:
MANIFESTO: Religious narrow minds caused an enormous delay on Mankind's progress. If you want to continue living under the power of an illusion be my guest but do not try to spread your dogmas. The religious plague will end and Human intelligence will prevail.
My brief is to consider this manifesto and look at the beliefs behind it. I think this is a tough call, not because what they say is a dangerous attack at the heart of Christianity, but because there are so many ways in which I could put forward a critique of it!
I could point to all the scientists who have progressed society from Galileo to Copernicus, from Kepler to Newton, from Boyle to Mendel. All had firm beliefs in a God of order who created the universe. It was due to their belief in God that led them to study the world, with the result that they have changed the way we think and live today.
I could point to all the examples of Christians who have made life better for the needy and downtrodden, from Lord Shaftsbury to William Wilberforce, from Florence Nightingale to Martin Luther King.
I could consider whether it is really a straightforward choice between living under an illusion or human intelligence. I have already suggested that Christians have not closed their eyes to the truth, but are willing to look at evidence and reason, are willing to challenge views and beliefs. Some would go as far as saying that those who look at the world around us and say it was made through chance are really the ones living under an illusion (anyone who has seen the BBC film "The Blue Planet" will know what I mean).
But what I want to do is consider the direction we would head if what our hacker wanted really happened. What would society be like without religion?
"Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do, nothing to
kill or die for, no religion too, imagine all the people living
life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one, I hope some
day you'll join us, and the world will live as one."
Imagine by John Lennon
You will recognise John Lennon's famous words. Wouldn't it be brilliant if it were that easy? Get rid of religion, possessions, and countries; then we could just work together. It was a dream Jean Jacques Rousseau shared. In 1749 he was walking on the road from Paris to Vincennes, when he had a trance like awakening - he became convinced that man is naturally good and that it is our institutions that make us wicked. But after trying one social structure after another - one means of educating after another we still seem no closer to seeing this real goodness of mankind.
This optimistic humanism (which our hacker subscribes to) just isn't seen in human experience. The tide of war, crime, inhumanity, self-centredness and greed does not seem to have been altered by better education, better housing, more democratic structures or access to the courts. The idea that humans are innately good has been seen to be the fraud it always was!
Communism was a brilliant attempt at making this world fair, of uniting the people, it was a rejection of religion to carry out what Lennon longed for, the bringing about of a perfect fair state for all. But the reality was a diabolical failure! Why? Is it that we need to tweak it a bit more? No, man is too selfish to make it work.
Imagine being shipwrecked on an island and being able to set up the society as you like - would we get it right? Well deep down I reckon we all know that the reality would be less like paradise and more like "Lord of the Flies" or Alex Garland's "The Beach" (although probably without Leonardo DeCaprio). Any semblance of society would fall apart and we would descend into a brutal barbarism of each man to his own. Even the American TV series "Lost", shows the savage, suspicious & selfish behaviour of a group of people following a plane crash.
In the 1980s the comedian Ben Elton wrote a novel called "Stark". The book considers some of the consequences of mankind treating the earth like one giant dustbin. In his book Elton imagines a consortium of people (under the title of Stark) who have given up on this planet and joined together to build a spaceship so they can go someplace else, to start afresh there and get it right this time.
In the last paragraph of the book, as the spaceship set of into space Ben Elton comments:
And the pioneers of Stark? Their lives were hell...
They had created Hell in Heaven. They had escaped pollution on
earth, only to discover that they had carried with them another
pollution, a pollution that they could not escape. The pollution in
their own souls.
Stark, by Ben Elton, Orbit books p.452
My hunch is if we are all honest we are all aware of that pollution in our hearts. The Bible has a word for it - sin. It's simplistic but one of the main features of sin is that it has an "I" in the middle. Sin says "Me, me, me, I want, I need, I don't care about other people and the consequences!" This is why we will never make utopia here on earth.
Jesus puts it like this in Mark 7:15 "There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him." So Jean Jacques Rousseau was wrong it isn't about getting education or society right. The problem is internal!
This is the real plague we should be worried about - and as Paul the apostle explains this plague infects us all:
"None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one."
Romans 3:10b-12
Even if we could get rid of the so-called "religious plague" tomorrow, people would continue being selfish and greedy, they wouldn't work for the good of others but for themselves. Suffering from this plague, you could place any one of us in paradise or in utopia and we would just wreck it! The sad news for our hacker friend, and any other optimistic humanists out there, is that we will never get it right on our own! The only way of paradise being attained is if that pollution of our souls can be dealt with, if that sin (using the Bible word) can be dealt with.
The great news is that there is a way of dealing with sin. It has nothing to do with religions, or ignoring the facts, of closing our minds to what we know is actually the truth, it's not about living under the power of an illusion. It is all about one man and what he has done in history for us. Jesus came to Earth to reveal to us once and for all that there is a God and what He is like, so we don't need to make up what we like about him. He also revealed that we have rejected God and that is the source of all the evil in this world. By dying on the cross Jesus opened the way for people like you and me to have that heart pollution dealt with forever.
He himself didn't suffer from this soul pollution - but he took the consequences of that pollution on himself. It's a bit like someone finding a seagull that has ended up in an oil slick - by taking that pollution away and dealing with it the seagull can live - without the pollution being dealt with it will die. It is the same with us - unless Jesus deals with the sin pollution in our lives - our selfishness and rebellion against God - we will die and never see paradise, but instead face God's punishment for our sin. With it dealt with and cleaned up by Jesus we can look forward to eternity in paradise. Not some utopia here on earth that we would just ruin, but paradise where we have all been made as self-less as Jesus. It will work.
I know that's true - I am not just living under an illusion. That's why I can't do what the hacker wants and stop spreading my beliefs, because at the end of the day belief in Jesus is the only thing that will lead to real progress for mankind!