Essentials of Faith

021

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021 Worldviews Impact On Culture: The Family

We are at war!  And like most wars, this war deals in the life or death of its participants.  It is a war of two worldviews: the humanistic worldview against the biblical worldview.  Unfortunately, many participants are unaware that they are engaged in a struggle of life or death.  We saw the influence of this battle, on how we understand life and creation, in our culture in our last session (020 Worldviews Impact on Culture: Human Life).  Today we will look at the affect of this titanic battle on the family and marriage.  

Nowhere is the cost of the war of worldviews greater than in the family. The importance of the family has been recognized by almost every civilization since the beginning of history.  The focus of attacks by the forces arrayed against a biblical worldview has been on many fronts.  Assaults are launched from multiple sources: Literature, television, movies, music, education, local governments, federal government, and the United Nations, to name a few.  The success of these attacks against the family lies at the root of the social chaos we see in our culture today.

As we move from the person and his choices, the next unit of civilization is the family. It is the family and the close relations that are fostered in and by family that is the point of attack.  The importance of the family, as a unit, has been recognized by almost every civilization since the beginning of history.  The primary force in the family has been marriage.  Marriage is the significant relationship between a man and a woman that, has produced, supported, shepherded, and grown the family.   Marriage has been a highly regarded social institution, inspiring moral belief, which encourage and protect it. A strong family has been the foundation of all great civilizations.  A strong family inspires other positive relationships and contributes to a stable social environment.

Nowhere, in our time, has the clash of worlds views become more visible and dangerous than in the relationships of the family. The results are shaking the foundations of our culture. We are in danger of losing the battle of worldviews because the Church has not been active in making our culture realize the underlying assumptions of a humanistic worldview.

The following passage provides a glimpse of the battleground.  Do you recall who said it?

    Right now the failure of our families is hurting America deeply. When families fall, society falls. The anarchy and lack of structure in our inner cities are a testament to how quickly civilization falls apart when the family foundation cracks. Children need love and discipline. A welfare check is not a husband. The state is not a father. It is from parents that children come to understand values, to see themselves as men and women, mothers and fathers.

    And for those concerned about children growing up in poverty, we should know         this: marriage is probably the best antipoverty program of them all. Among families headed by married couples today, there is a poverty rate of 5.7 percent. But 33.4 percent of families are headed by a single mother are in poverty today.

    Nature abhors a vacuum. Where there are no mature, responsible men around to teach boys how to become good men, gangs serve in their place. In fact, gangs have become a surrogate family for much of a generation of inner-city boys. I recently visited with some former gang members in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In a private meeting they told me why they had joined gangs. These teenage boys said that gangs gave them a sense of security. They made them feel wanted, and useful. They got support from their friends. And, they said, "It was like having a family." "Like family" - unfortunately, that says it all.

    The system perpetuates itself as these young men father children whom they have no intention of caring for, by women whose welfare checks support them. Teenage girls, mired in the same hopelessness, lack sufficient motive to say no to this trap.

    Answers to our problems won't be easy. We can start by dismantling a welfare system that encourages dependency and subsidizes broken families. We can attach conditions - such as school attendance, or work - to welfare. We can limit the time a recipient gets benefits. We can stop penalizing marriage for welfare mothers. We can enforce child support payment.

    Ultimately, however, marriage is a moral issue that requires cultural consensus, and the use of social sanctions. Bearing babies irresponsibly is, simply, wrong. Failure to support children one has fathered is wrong. We must be unequivocal about this.

Ring a bell? Agree or disagree?  Here is the rest of this quote.

    It doesn't help matters when prime time TV has Murphy Brown - a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman - mocking the importance of a father, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another "lifestyle choice."

    I know it is not fashionable to talk about moral values, but we need to do it. Even though our cultural leaders in Hollywood, network TV, the national newspapers routinely jeer at them, I think that most of us in this room know that some things are good, and other things are wrong. Now it's time to make the discussion public.

    It's time to talk again about family, hard work, integrity and personal responsibility. We cannot be embarrassed out of out belief that two parents, married to each other, are better in most cases for children than one. That honest work is better than hand-outs - or crime. That we are our brother's keepers. That it's worth making an effort, even when rewards aren't immediate.

    So I think the time has come to renew our public commitment to our Judeo-Christian values - in our churches and synagogues, our civic organizations and our schools. We are, as our children recite each morning, "one nation under God." That's a useful framework for acknowledging a duty and an authority higher than our own pleasures and personal ambitions.

These remarks sparked a tempest of indignation, jokes, and ridicule of the speaker, who was Dan Quayle, then the vice president of the United States in 1992.  Sadly, few were willing to stand beside Mr. Quayle in his defense of the family.  For the principal character of the television show “Murphy Brown” and the show’s many viewers, there is no normative definition of family.  Murphy Brown says all that is important is “commitment, love, and caring.”  The speech and the response to the speech are a clear example of the conflict between a humanistic worldview (Murphy Brown) and the biblical worldview held by vice president Quayle.

In our culture, the word liberty means a person has the “perfect liberty” to think or feel or just do as one wants.  What we choose is not important but the fact that we have absolutely free choice is.  Our sense of dignity is expressed in our right of choice.  Now here is the caveat–we have the right to choose anything we want if we do not deny others the right to choose what they want.  Sounds good but what does this right of choice mean?  The right of choice means that we have the right to choose whatever value we want if we do not claim that what we choose is based on an absolute, that is a normative standard of truth or behavior, that applies to everyone. If Dan Quayle had just expressed his private, subjective opinion would his words generate such a response? No!  What caused the outrage was that Dan Quayle had the audacity to speak not his opinion but he spoke these views as “objective moral truths.”  Whoa! This goes to the heart of most moral disagreements in our culture. 

There are many people in our culture who hold views similar to a biblical worldview but they hold it for the wrong reason–they see it as personal choice, and there are many people like this in the church.  You may agree that abortion is wrong but you defend another person’s right to choose for themselves.  How many times have you heard the statement made by  political candidates:  “I oppose abortion but I believe in the right of each person to choose for themselves.”  We no longer understand that there is a distinction between beliefs and objective truths.  We live in a culture that only recognizes the existence of subjective truth.  Where has objective truth gone?  Whatever happened to absolutes? 

Marriage, today, is largely understood as a social construct, something one can define based on their preferences.  Gone are the days when marriage was understood as a moral commitment founded on objective truths that placed demands on us despite our preferences.  Most of our grandparents would be at loss to understand what we meant when we tell them we are getting a divorce because now we love someone else, or that we are not happy, or that it is interfering with our career, yet are these not valid reasons for divorce today?  They are, if you understand marriage as a social contract that can be broken on a whim and not a joining of a man and woman before God.  Do you believe for a moment that if we had to go before God and obtain, His permission to dissolve a marriage, He would accept most reasons given for getting a divorce? 

The biblical worldview teaches that God created man and woman to live in relationship.  The way man and woman were made by God established intercourse and marital relationship and the family.  These relationships came with divinely created objective truths.  Allowing for latitude in cultural expression, when we enter into a covenant of marriage and family before God, we agree that we will submit ourselves to God’s absolutes in His structure.  Nowhere are we given the right to choose to make these institutions what we want without grave penalties.  Today, we are beginning to experience something of what those penalties are.

The humanistic worldview sees man as autonomous and free to choose his social constructs.  What man wants to do is his choice.  Man’s right to choose is the foundational rule of a humanistic worldview.  This belief is summarized succinctly by the French philosopher Pierre Manent: “no individual can have an obligation to which he has not consented.”  Marriage and the family then can be altered as we see fit.  All choices that we may make are morally equivalent and as such there is no basis for saying one is better than another, it is only one’s preference.  Woe unto anyone, like a Dan Quayle, who has the audacity to suggest that personal choice must give way to an objective truth.  If there are no wrong choices, then no way of life can be criticized, then there is no sin and without sin there is no guilt.  This is “paradise,” the right to do what you want without ever suffering guilt.  No wonder humanists are willing to fight and is there any doubt why they have so many willing participants?  Yet, this paradise does not come to us without cost.

Man, as the biblical head of the family, was to be a husband, a father, a provider, a protector, a mentor, a companion, a leader--responsible for his family.  In our culture, the man is no longer seen as the head of the family, he is often absent, physically as well as emotionally.  Man has gone from protector to predator.  He is understood to be driven by an insatiable lust need to indulge his unending desires for  sex, material wealth, and power.  Man has become the problem and not the solution in many corners of our culture.  Unfortunately, there is a hint of truth in this description. Many men have deserted their families, they have forsaken their responsibilities perhaps to be what so many people expect them to be-–an unencumbered man, free from the weight of obligations and responsibilities, free from those items that prevent him from “enjoying the pleasures” of life.  In this realm the breakdown of the family is understood as a good thing--it is the liberation from the tyranny of “roles and rules.”  One no longer has to do what is expected but is now free to be only concerned with things that provide him pleasure.

Woman, as the biblical partner of man, is the “crown of her husband,” mother, the administrator of the household, nurturer, an encourager, a protector, a companion, leader–responsible for her family.  In our culture, the woman has become many things but rarely will you ever find the woman described as the “crown of her husband.”  She is expected to be a career person, unlike the man who is “driven,” she is seeking “fulfillment, ” “completion,” looking for the means to overthrow the oppression of man who has unjustly forced her to repress her “natural self.”  She is seeking liberation from the tyranny of “roles and rules.”

Looking at the humanist’s modern man and woman, is it any wonder that the family, the biblical family is bordering on extinction.  Dad, mom, children, have become nothing more than “rights-bearing people.”  The government has become intrusive, looking to dictate how and what family is and how children should be raised.  Perhaps government has done so well managing the country that it believes that it is right for it to step in and raise our next generation.  The novel “1984," did not become reality in 1984, but what about 2014 or 2024?

What about divorce? Divorce has become our culture’s “fix-all” solution for the problems of marriage.  The most popular solution to fix problems in a marriage, divorce,  is the greatest cause of broken marriages.   Gone are the days of working out problems, that takes too much time and trouble, get a divorce.  Perhaps with every marriage we should provide a “Get out of marriage free card.”  Marriages are no longer thought to be “made in heaven” and the way things are going it will not be long before marriages are no longer made anywhere.

Our “family friendly” government taxes marriages unfairly.  Many government social policies do not see marriage as a social good.  The day is coming when you can marry whomever or whatever you please, or as many as you please–it’s your choice.  It would be funny if it were not so serious.  You may choose to ignore the following but do you realize that 80 to 85 percent of criminals come from homes where the father was not physically or emotionally present. Among male homosexuals, the numbers are almost identical.  Children from broken families are likely poorer, less educated, more likely to have children out of wedlock, be on welfare, have substance abuse problems, illnesses, accidents, be abused, have multiple sex partners, be depressed, and commit suicide.  Why does our culture think divorce is such a great idea–can we say selfish?  There are circumstances where divorce is justified, but not at the today’s rate.  Do you realize that the divorce rate is almost identical to the death rate in the United States, with the divorce rate tracking a fraction higher?  The divorce rate and the death rate are both are much higher than they should be and both are destructive.  We cannot avoid death but the same is not true of divorce.

The divorce rate among those who “should” hold a biblical worldview is as high, if not higher, than those of a humanistic worldview.  Why? The only conclusion that makes sense is that many who claim the biblical worldview are lying to themselves, in part if not in whole.  Are we not to be in the world but not of the world? In John 17.16 Jesus, praying to God, says of His followers: “They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.”  Let me ask again: “Why are so many Christians getting divorces?”

The biblical worldview explains that we are made in His image, male and female. This would suggest that if we are a male, then the role of a father, husband, brother, single or married, are roles that are part of who we are and not something from which we need to be liberated.  This also suggests that if we are a female, the role of a mother, wife, sister, single or married, are roles are part of who we are and not something from which we need to be liberated.  The roles and relationships are expressions of who we are, they are part of our identity. A man, a woman, joined as husband and wife, form a family.  The family is the primal institution of human society, it is the basis for all society. The family is where we teach and learn the fundamental relationships between people, it is where we learn to care, love, protect, and encourage each other, it is through the eyes of our family that we first learn to see ourselves. 

Marriage, the bonding agent of the family, is not necessarily all about satisfying your wildest sexual fantasies, about fulfilling yourself, about being happy or complete.  Marriage is about learning to put others before yourself, it is about teaching, and practicing servant leadership, it is about respecting and loving one’s family, it is about mirroring God’s relationship with us in our relationships with others, it is about being faithful to one’s God, one’s spouse and one’s child, it is about be willing to make the hard choices and do the right things because they are the right things to do, it is all about realizing why God created marriage for us and learning to live in His created order.

Church, we are all called to the mission field, we are all called to be witnesses to those near us, of the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ–we are called to begin in our families.  How can we change the culture if we can’t have an affect on our families?  How can we ask God to give us a ministry, if we ignore the ministry opportunities, He has placed before us in our families?  How can we be a light to the world if we cannot cast a shadow in our families? How can we be holy, as He is holy, if we ignore, put down, or dishonor those He has given us to love, obey, respect and honor?

The problems we have in our culture begin at home, in the family.  Some of the problems in the home we have brought on ourselves, other problems have been brought into our homes by our government, by our schools and yes even our churches.  The only way to drive the problems out of our families is a return to a biblical family. A family where a man and a woman created in God’s image, make God the head of the house and together strive to be holy as God is holy and raise their children to do the same.  If you want to understand the problems confronting our culture, look no further than the family.  If you want to know how to correct those problems, look no further than the family.  As the family goes, so goes our culture.  We had better tread carefully.

020 Worldviews Impact On Culture: Human Life

What is the impact of worldview on our culture and our society?  Are we alarmists to suggest that we are engaged in a war between two worldviews–Christianity and Humanism that may determine the fate of our lives on earth and for many, in their lives to come?  A worldview assumes statements about where we came from, what is wrong with our world, and what needs to be done to fix it, to be true. These two worldviews provide antithetical answers to these questions.  Today, in the United States and in many Western world countries, the humanistic worldview has the upper hand.

Worldview influences our day to day living.  Francis Schaeffer has communicated the point throughout our study that “people function on the basis of their worldview more consistently than even they themselves may realize.  The problem is not outward things.  The problem is having, and then acting upon, the right worldview--the worldview which gives men and women the truth of what is.”   The effects of worldview spread throughout society.  To understand the practical consequences of worldview on our culture and society we will consider its force on the value we place on human life, the family and morality.  In this session we will look at the consequences of worldview on human life. 

What is the meaning of life?  What is the meaning of human existence?  What is the value of human life?  These are among some of the most difficult and perplexing questions that our culture struggles to answer.  Consider the key problems of our time that revolve around these questions of the value of human life.  Abortion, euthanasia, genetic engineers, cloning, assisted suicide, are difficulties whose answers will depend on the value one gives to a human life.  These answers will depend on how one answers the question of where we came from. 

From the perspective of Christianity and Judaism, life is a miracle, a sacred gift from God.  Man and woman created in the image of God.  If life is a gift from God, then, He, as our creator, establishes the boundaries of when we live and when we die. 

Humanism suggests several possible answers to where life came from and none these answers consider God. A chance biological accident, a big bang, millions of years spent evolving from a little germ to become a big germ, or nothing created from nothing  becoming something.   Today, millions accept the Humanist view of where we came from, that man and life, is an accident.

How we understand, the origin of life is crucial in determining what we believe about whom we are, the value of life and the reason for man’s existence.  What we understand about the origin of life has become the “defining debate of our age.”  The Christian’s conviction about the worth of life is driven by the biblical revelation of man’s origins.  Realize that one does not have to be a Christian or a Jew to hold to this belief.  For centuries, those raised in a culture of Judeo-Christian traditions, understood life to have value because all life was made in the image of God.  However, today, we are now living in a culture of death rather than a culture of life.

At the foot of the culture of death is the belief that man is an accident, a machine that has a useful purpose but when he can no longer fill that useful purpose that his life is no longer worthwhile–destroy it.  From the womb with the unborn to the bed of the old, the sick, the dying, the disabled, the weak, and the defenseless, by denying the value of life that has been created in the image of God, we now follow the path of pragmatism and utilitarianism and destroy life when it becomes a practical matter to do so.  How else can one understand how assisted suicide (euthanasia) is a protected constitutional right in one state and paid for occasionally by the state’s Medicaid program?  Infanticide is now being openly advocated and practiced by many doctors around the world. 

If man is the judge of all truth and not God, as Rene’ Descartes believed, God is irrelevant and if God is irrelevant, the morality and social order that are based on a belief in God are irrelevant as well.  The “death of God” brings the “death of morality.”  Whether it is the utopia promised by Sigmund Freud when man learned to release his “impulses” or the drug culture of the 60's, or the absolute freedom from biblical values, the disposing of life has come to have no ethical consequence in our culture.  Schaeffer uses Roe versus Wade (1973) as an example of the results of culture that no longer sees life but “choice” as important.  How else can we explain that the Supreme Court arrived at the conclusion that a “human fetus” is not a person?  The Court had to argue that although the fetus is biologically human, it is not a person.  Does this remind you of the parsing of the word “is” by the prominent linguist “who shall not be named?”

It did not take long to go from the living fetus in the womb to the living baby outside the womb, as we moved from abortion to infanticide.  The following is taken from a New York Times article published July 10, 2005. 

    A famous test case occurred in 1982 in Indiana, when an infant known as Baby Doe was born with Down syndrome. Children with Down syndrome typically suffer some retardation and other difficulties; while presenting a great challenge to their parents and families, they often live joyful and relatively independent lives. As it happened, Baby Doe also had an improperly formed esophagus, which meant that food put into his mouth could not reach his stomach. Surgery might have remedied this problem, but his parents and physician decided against it, opting for painkillers instead. Within a few days, Baby Doe starved to death. The Reagan administration responded to the case by drafting the ‘Baby Doe guidelines,' which mandated life-sustaining care for such handicapped newborns. But the guidelines were opposed by the American Medical Association and were eventually struck down by the Supreme Court.

It appears, in this case, the baby was murdered because it was retarded.

Peter Singer of Princeton University argues that infanticide should be seen as an ethical  option and an essential part of a woman's reproductive choice. Singer argues that parents may have a responsibility to terminate the life of a child born with serious genetic abnormalities or physical disabilities. According to Singer, human dignity is not inherent in every human, but is achieved when one demonstrates specific human abilities such as the capacity to communicate and to relate to others. In a book coauthored by Singer in 1985, he says:  "We think that some infants with severe disability should be killed." How, does a professor, who holds one of the most respected chairs in bioethics at one of our leading universities, have such a cavalier attitude about taking the life of a fellow human being?

Yet it is not just a problem in the United States. In 2006 it was reported that the government of the Netherlands is now considering what many think to be unthinkable--the creation of legal standards for pediatric euthanasia.  According to the London Times, a committee will soon be set up to regulate the practice, which doctors have quietly been performing for years in the Netherlands.

The London Times article suggests that the Netherlands would likely issue regulations similar to the Groningen Protocol, a document drawn up in 2004 by the Groningen University Medical Center to establish internal guidelines for its euthanasia program that ended the lives of 22 disabled newborns from 1997 to 2004.

According to Colleen Campbell, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Groningen Protocol declared a newborn subject to euthanasia if "his diagnosis and prognosis are certain," his suffering is "hopeless and unbearable," and his quality of life is "very poor," according to the child's parents and "at least one independent doctor."  What do we do when the “quality of life” used in considering to let a baby die includes things like race, ethnicity, and family income?

Return for a moment to Professor Singer, who advocates allowing parents to kill disabled babies because they are “nonpersons.”  Professor Singer believes that one is a nonperson until they are rational and self-conscious. Singer does not stop here, he goes on to advocate the killing of any people, of any age, who are deemed incompetent, if their families decide that their lives are not worth living. What do you think will happen to a culture that popularizes such beliefs?

The battle being fought here is not abortion or infanticide or euthanasia, the battle is about worldview.  A worldview that believes in God and the sanctity of life versus a worldview that believes in the autonomy of man, the individual’s right to do as they see fit.  The argument for the autonomy of man is couched in terms like compassion, patients’ rights, and there are few voices willing to stand and defend the defenseless.  We are in a rush to get the defenseless, the unborn, the unproductive, the infirm, the disabled and the aged out of our way so we can get back to living life as it was meant to be lived without all these useless lives being in our way or draining our resources.  Is it not ironic that “a supposedly exalted view of human reason has led to a degraded view of life?”  The Christian worldview remains rooted in the “imago Dei,” the image of God in us.  It is by the biblical doctrine of creation that the Christian understands that life has value, that life has a worth that is not to be traded for convenience.  Life does have meaning and value.

An example, of what our future world might be like, is given us in a strangely prophetic novel written in 1932 by Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (BNW).  Brave New World touches on much that we have spoken of in Francis Schaeffer’s How Should We Then Live?  BNW stresses the State’s control over new and powerful technologies.  The State uses its rigid control over sexual mores and reproductive rights to control society. Reproductive rights are controlled through an authoritarian system which, sterilizes about two-thirds of women, requires the rest to use contraceptives, and surgically removes ovaries when it needs to produce new humans. The act of sex is controlled by a system of social rewards for promiscuity and lack of commitment. The process is to ensure a perfect species capable of living in perfect harmony.  It promotes a society that is free from all the encumbrances of family and child rearing as those are handled by the state.  By using an all-purpose drug and free sex, the State strives to provide an environment where the pursuit of happiness is virtually guaranteed.  Life is perpetual bliss and when life becomes a burden or inconvenient, it is ended. 

Today, we live in our own BNW.  Genetic engineering has almost reached the point that we can create people without defects–this is the final expression of man’s autonomy. By developing artificial wombs to house fertilized eggs, we have come perilously close to attaining the moment when our capabilities exceed our moral and ethical reach.  Most of us would support assisted reproduction if it were used to aid in restoring a natural function but what about when it involves something that goes way beyond natural function.  How do we deal with the capability of a woman being impregnated by her son-in-law and gives birth to her daughter’s child?  How should we handle the disposal of fertilized eggs that could become fetuses?  How should we deal with surrogate parenthood?

The future of the world does not lie in the test tube or artificial wombs.  The future of the world does not lie in a government focused on providing complete happiness for its citizens.  The future of the world does not lie in removing the infirm, the aged, the ugly, the disabled, the dying.  The future of mankind lies in the simple truth that mankind was created in the image of God and that life was and is a gift from God–not man.  Life has worth, value, meaning, only because we are created in God’s image.  Woes be on us when the day comes and man is created in his own image.

The Groningen Protocol — Euthanasia in Severely Ill Newborns

 The Groningen Protocol — Euthanasia in Severely Ill Newborns

020 Worldviews Impact On Culture: Human Life

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019 Final Choices

We have reached the final session in Francis Schaeffer’s video series “How Should We Then Live?”  We will add two more sessions related to this film series to tie up some loose ends.  As you will note, unlike most fairy tales we read, this series does not end with “and they lived happily ever after.”  Schaeffer, as he has done throughout “How Should We Then Live?”, challenges us to decide amid desperate times that will certainly change the course of our lives, if not the course of our nation and finally mankind.

With the loss of the biblical foundations and Christian principles of society, there is a need to fill that loss with something and that something will come as an elite authoritarian state. When we toss around the word authoritarian, names like Hitler, Stalin, Mao immediately comes to mind.  While it is certainly possible for a figure like them to appear it is more likely that today we will see the rise “of a manipulative authoritarian government.”  Manipulation has been with us since Adam and Eve, but the tools to manipulate people, masses of people, both in a single moment as well as over an extended period has never been greater than it is right now. With science and technology as handmaidens, governments have never been better positioned to manipulate their people than they are today. The consequences of such manipulation would make the novel 1984 a history book.

When we look at Humanism, authoritarianism is the only “social” choice.  It is either one man or an elite group of persons giving authoritative arbitrary absolutes. If there are no absolutes in society, then society is the only absolute.  But society needs to be led and the leader will be an individual or a group of individuals, who believe that they are the only ones qualified to lead.  Men, such as John Kenneth Galbraith, Robert Theobald, and Daniel Bell, believe that society has to be led by an elite.  Bell, one of the leading sociologists of our day, writing in his book The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, speaks of a coming technocracy which will be the determining influence in society.  Schaeffer, speaking of the technocracy, states that: “They are the only ones who know how to run the complicated machinery of society and they will then, in collusion with government elite, have the power necessary to manage it.”  Bell knew the ethical implications stating: “A post-industrial society cannot provide a transcendent ethic (no absolutes) . . . The lack of a rooted moral belief system is the cultural contradiction of the society, the deepest challenge to its survival.” 

One of the greatest threats of manipulation comes with genetic engineering. 1962 Nobel Prize’s recipient in Physiology and Medicine, Francis Crick, calls for “full genetic engineering.” Crick advocated there should be a group of people deciding who would be the parents of the next generation and who should be born.  In answer to the question “What kind of people do we want?”, Crick recommended that a group of people should determine what types of people they want in the future and then set out genetically to make them.  Once man is no longer seen as created in God’s image, there is no reason not to “tinker” with man genetically. 

Francis Crick, in his article “Why I Study Biology?”, states:

     We all know, I think, or are beginning to realize, that the future is in our own hands, that we can, to some extent, do what we want.

    Now what is happening at the moment?  What is happening is that we know that with technology we can make life easier for human beings; we can make changes.  What we are really doing is learning to tinker with the system.  But there is very little thinking at the fundamental level as to what sort of people we would like to have.  In the long term that is the question you are bound to come up with.

Crick continues:

    It’s going to be the people now between fifteen and twenty-five who are going to have to face it, so they may as well start thinking about it now. . .
    We’ve just seen that the discussion as to how many people there should be in the world has now, as it were, become quite acceptable.  It is not acceptable, at the moment, to discuss who should be the parents of the next generation, who should be born, and who should have children.  There’s a general feeling that if we are all nice to each other and if everybody has 2.3 children, everything will pan out.  I don’t think that is true.  For good genetic reasons, even though you have more medical care, transplantation of organs, and all these things, it would be an unhealthy biological situation.  Some group of people should decide that some people should have more children and some should have fewer. You have to decide who is to be born.

Without absolutes, knowledge, wisdom, the ability to do things that might even be good in themselves, only moves us closer to losing our humanness.  “Modern man has no real boundary condition for what he should do; he is left only with what he can do.  Moral ‘oughts’ are only what is sociologically acceptable at the moment.”

One of the high costs of living in a modern society is that the government under which you live has an “almost endless means of manipulation.” Schaeffer uses the example of a subliminal message.  Television can flash a message on a television so fast that  the watcher is unaware of it, yet the message carries a subliminal impact. There is ample evidence this type of manipulation does work.  In fact, subliminal messaging’s success has caused it to be “banned by law in Western countries.”  What about in totalitarian states? Can it, should it, has it been used?  Those who live in the West should recognize that it could be used on them–it is only a change of law away.  And that change of law could be coming soon.   “We must not forget the drift in law toward that which is considered the sociological good at that moment.”

Inherent with television is the capability of manipulating its viewers.  Audiences “seem to assume that when they have seen something on TV, they have seen it with their own eyes.” Many will ignore the reality of the world and substitute it for the reality of television. If it is on TV, it must be true. The reality is we see on TV what someone wishes us to see.  This means that the content of TV has been edited for our viewing.  Schaeffer explains: “The physical limitations of the camera dictate that only one aspect of the total situation is given.  If the camera were aimed ten feet to the left or ten feet to the right, an entirely different ‘objective story’ might come across.”  Combining the physical limits of the camera with the viewpoint of the person or persons doing the editing of the scene, we might ask a basic question--Is what we see on TV actual or is it what someone would like us to see?

What would happen if “an elite providing the arbitrary absolutes” had the same worldview as the worldview of the mass media outlet?  Then, TV and “the general apparatus of the mass media can be a vehicle for manipulation.  There is no need for collusion or a plot.  All that is needed is that the worldview of the elite and the worldview of the central news media coincide.”  If those who are in the most prominent centers of influence and those who decide what news we hear and see, have the same modern, humanist worldview, the point of view presented is going to have a distinctly humanist slant or bias. It is their worldview that determines what we see and hear, it “determines their presentation.” No collusion is necessary if the views of the elite and the newspapers coincide. 

While the media may not be monolithic, total control is not needed to achieve the manipulation of society.  In fact not all the media would need to be involved to “for manipulation to be effective.”  As in many groups, organizations, businesses, and governments, there are centers of influence, people or groups of people wielding the ability to affect the course of events.  These centers of influence, these news makers, are “news organizations, newspapers, news magazines, wire services, and TV broadcasts which have the ability to generate news.”  Their views, their stories, make news.  “This ability to generate news rests upon a kind of syndrome or psychology or mind-set, not only in the journalistic fraternity but also in influential circles comprising congressmen, other government officials, and professors.”  Their influence is based on their reputation with the right people.

News makers make news.  When a news maker publishes a story, or says something on TV or radio, it doesn’t get “lost in the shuffle.”  News makers often “slant” the stories they produce based on their worldview. This slant is done “by starting off with what is called a ‘hard lead,’ the first sentence of a news article which is supposed to sum up the story in an eye-catching (or ear-catching) way.”  The slant sets the tone for the entire story and “it becomes the stained-glass window through which that story and perhaps even related stories are comprehended.”

Slanted news is not objective.  As we saw with sociological science and sociological law and now with sociological news, people are more concerned with their agendas than they are with accuracy of the science, the rightness of law, or the objectiveness of the story. Many newspapers, TV and radio stations may proclaim that they are objective in their reporting of the news, it has become almost impossible to tell the difference between a news story and an editorial–that is news with an agenda.  When the worldview of the elite or authoritarian/totalitarian leader coincides with the worldview of the media, then the media are easily used for manipulative authoritarianism.

What form would authoritarianism take in the United States?  Schaeffer points out a manipulating authoritarian form of government could come from any of the three branches of government that we have.  It certainly could come from the Executive or administrative branch yet it is difficult to see that happening with the “balance of powers” given to the legislative and judiciary branches.  Perhaps it could come from the Legislative branch but it would be a major job getting them to all to agree.  If we have a manipulating authoritarian government, it would likely come from the Judicial branch.  With the Supreme Court apparently granted the right to make law, and having the final say in “regard to administrative and legislative actions, and with the concept of variable law the judicial side could become more and more the center of power.”  Much of the government structure and certainly our legal system was established on a Christian foundation.  If we remove the foundation and leave the freedoms that the foundation engendered, we will be left with chaos.  The court would become “the imperial judiciary.”  If the court is “cut away from its true foundation, the power of the Court is nothing more than the instrument of unlimited power.” 

If we have an authoritarian government, it will make no difference, if it is left or right–it will be just two roads leading to the same end.  With the loss of Christian Consensus, there is no reason for the young or old committed to apathy not to give in to the authoritarian government, if they are promised personal peace and affluence.  In fact if there are large spread fears of an economic breakdown, large scale acts of random violence or terrorism, a threat of war, food shortages, or a dramatic change in the distribution of wealth or resources in the world, then, as in the time of Caesar Augustus, people would willingly accept an authoritarian government even if it meant the loss of their freedoms.  “As the memory of the Christian consensus, which gave us freedom within the biblical form, increasingly is forgotten, manipulating authoritarianism will tend to fill the vacuum.”

The message of the Bible is that all peoples may approach God through the work of Christ. It was also the Bible which created the unusual and wide freedoms which  Christianity “gave to countries where it supplied the consensus.  When these freedoms are separated from the Christian base, however, they become a force of destruction leading to chaos.”  Eric Hoffer is prophetic when he says: “When freedom destroys order, the yearning for order will destroy freedom.”  Today, in the United States and in other Reformation countries there are only two choices: 1) An imposed order; 2) Affirm the principles of a biblical foundation.  Which will we choose?

019 Final Choices

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013 HSWTL The Reformation

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012 HSWTL The Renaissance

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011 HSWTL The Middle Ages

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