15 January 2010

replacing god

Every time that the world witnesses a catastrophic disaster it doesn't take long for a religious leader of some sort to come out and make a connection to either 1) divine retribution, 2) supposed end-times sequencing, or 3) both. But simply noting the context of these voices reveals much - they typically come from Westernized evangelical cultures where suffering rarely happens and major tragedies seldom impact. And, in the wake of the crisis in Haiti, we have witnessed lame sympathies and shocking explanations that are supposedly based upon the gospel of the kingdom. I can't help noticing that they convey the same hallow wisdom that Job's four idiot friends give him in the midst of his suffering.

It has become clear, then, that these voices continue to replace God with some other theology which they have concocted on their own. Their own perception of the world, and their own eisegetical reading of Scripture enable them to say outlandish things which do not convey the true message of God's grace, love and (yes) judgment. That is to say, it is quite easy to misread judgment into our world by only seeing the specks in the eyes of everyone else.

But now there is a new piece being folded into this fabric of lunacy. Today it is being reported that a certain actor (those are his only qualifications, someone who makes money playing make-believe) has said that the crisis in Haiti is 'retribution' from the failure of the Copenhagen global-warming-mythology summit. This is quite interesting. If there is a retribution at work, then that would require some sort of external force to the cosmos - one that would have moral standards of right and wrong.

The thing is, these leftists and statists who ram anthropogenic climate change down our necks do not believe in God - or any sort of being that has any type of morality that can be made standard from one person to another. What has happened? Another replacing of God. Those who deny God do not live a life without commitment to something external, they simply replace God with whatever is most important to their own well-being. This could be (as in case number one) a God who is modeled after human desire or (as in this second case) something inanimate, such as the earth.

In the words of G. K. Chesterton, "Somehow one can never manage to be an atheist."

In the end, something has been further revealed which many of us have known for a long time: Anthropogenic global warming is a god for many of those who hold to it, replacing the rightful Creator of the universe (who also knows it is a perpetuated hoax and continues to be unintimidated by the arrogance of humanity).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That quote by Chesterton definitely rings true. It leads back to the argument about how people deny there is a God, basically comes down to there is no one greater than themselves, so ultimately they are 'god'. So, they still have a god in their midst.

Just a beginning thought from your post...