Secular Humanism’s Creeping Subversion of Culture

I'm going to give a little different kind of sermon today. It's a subject that I covered about four years ago on a Beyond Today program. And actually, next week we're producing another program on this subject, and it's had me thinking about it. I did this Bible study. It was a three or four-part Bible study with the young adults here last year, and a number of them asked me, would you give that as a sermon? Other people need to hear it. And I put it off and put it off, and other things kept coming up. But I started to realize, no, I do need to cover this.

To help all of us get a focus of what's happening in our world, to get a focus of what's actually happening in society. Let me tell you two things here, and they're going to seem disconnected. But I'm going to show you how they are connected. One is between 1968 and 1975, the United States Postal Service issued a set of postage stamps that had pictures of different people on them, and it was called Prominent Americans. You know, if we don't think much about postage stamps, a lot of us don't even use them anymore. I still send out enough letters. I have to go buy postage stamps every once in a while. My wife always says, oh, get the ones with the flowers. You know, I like the ones with the race cars and stuff. But these stamps commemorated Americans who had contributed to society. They weren't all of them weren't really super famous people. There are a couple presidents. John F. Kennedy was on there. You know, Benjamin Franklin. But they were people like Albert Einstein, Frederick Douglass, the famous abolitionist. There were people like Frank Lloyd Wright, the great architect, which I've always been fascinated with his architecture. So you have these different people, and they are their pictures on the stamp. And you know, so people would go look up what they contributed to American society. Henry Ford. They had, whatever was Henry Ford. The man on the 30 cent stamp, and I still remember this. I mean, 68 was a long time ago. I was a kid, but the reason I remember it is because 30 cents for a stamp seemed absolutely unbelievable. I mean, this was a stamp you used on a big package.

And the picture of the man on that stamp was John Dewey. How many of you know who John Dewey is? My wife raised her hand. She just heard the sermon this morning. Okay, one, two, we got one, we got a couple. Okay, we got one. No, you heard it this morning, too. This is a fair. So, okay, and I've actually mentioned John Dewey every once in a while in his sermon, but there's no reference point. So why would you even remember that?

John Dewey was commemorated because in the first half of the 20th century, though he had died by 1968, you know, most people don't realize the United States will only put a person's picture on a stamp if they've been dead for five years. Okay, so he had died before 19, 16 or 1975. Well, actually, 68. He was one of the first ones. And John Dewey was commemorated because of his great contributions to American education, American philosophy, the philosophy of what America is. And psychiatry. He was a psychiatrist.

His contributions in those three areas of American life were so great, they put him on a post-it stamp. Now, not a lot of people get their picture on a post-it stamp, right? This man did.

So we have to understand the importance of who this man was and the such impact he had on the first 50 years of the last century on American society. The second thing I want to talk about, then I'm going to bring these two things together, is something in the newest Pew Research. You know, Pew Research Company does research that you see on the news all the time. Companies use them. And they're doing research on all different kinds of things in U.S.

society. And this particular research they were doing was about, do people believe in the God of the Bible? Do people believe in the God of the Bible? What they found out is, if you take people 50 to above, so the two generations, you know, 50 up to about 80, the people that they polled, two-thirds of them believe in the God of the Bible.

So two out of three believe in the God of the Bible. Now, what's interesting is, if you go back to say 1930, that number was probably 90 percent. It was a lot higher. But one out of three doesn't believe in the God of the Bible. Two out of three do. Now, the one-third that doesn't believe in the God of the Bible, that doesn't mean that their Hindus, very few were, or Muslims, or even atheists. It means they believe in a higher power.

They believe something's there, but they don't know what it is. When you get into the age group of 30 to 49, less than half of all Americans believe in the God of the Bible. Less than half of everybody between the age of 30 and 49 believe in the God as described in the Bible. I didn't say they weren't Christians, by the way. I didn't say they weren't Christians.

I think they don't believe in the God of the Bible. When you get to 18 to 29 age group, only four out of ten believe in the God of the Bible. And many more of them believe in a higher power, but it's not the God in this book. They say, well, okay, what does that have to do with John Dewey? I want to show you how there was a major trend. There's a number of major trends. We'll actually talk about a couple of them, but I'm zeroing on one today. Major trends that have happened in the United States over the last 100 years that's helped produce the society we're in.

How many times did you hear people say, what happened? It's like you woke up one day and the United States has changed. No, it hasn't. It changed little by little by little by little for a long time. I can remember a friend I had, she died a few years ago down in San Antonio. She was born in the early part of the 20th century, and I remember sitting with a group of men that were talking about what they had done in World War II.

She sat there and she was listening and smiling. She said, oh, I remember when the war was over. They all looked at her, you know, and everybody, they're all being overly polite. Oh, that's nice. She says, no, I mean World War I. Oh, you know, yeah, I remember World War I, she said. But you know, she remembered seeing her first biplane and watching the man walk on the moon. Now there was like 60 to 70 years between those two events, but she remembered them and all the things that happened in between that gets from here to here. We didn't go from biplane to man on the moon overnight, right? Well, what's happened in our society just didn't happen.

It's been a slow change. What I want to look at is one of the factors that created the change, which will help us understand more the world we live in. And we'll look at a scripture or two at the end.

That's all we're going to do. Look at a scripture or two that deals with this, but we have to understand how we got here or we live in confusion. Who did this? Why did this happen? Let's find a person to blame. Well, you can't even blame John Dewey, but he had a lot to do with it.

John Dewey was part of a group of men who got together. Oh, by the way, you know, what's amazing about those figures I just gave is how the generational shift, how each generation's belief in the God of the Bible gets smaller and smaller. That's a dramatic shift, and that's 75 years. That is a dramatic shift. How did that shift take place? John Dewey was a group of men who got together in 1933 and created what is called secular humanism. They created a document called the secular humanist manifesto. Now, I'm not going to talk to you about a conspiracy theory, okay? This is not a conspiracy theory. What they did was they planned it, they announced it to everyone, they printed it, it was published, and then they did it. Now, I should understand, this isn't a conspiracy theory. If it was a conspiracy, how in the world did one of the men who really motivated this, who developed it, end up on a postage stamp if it's hidden? You see what I mean? He's being honored for what he did. So this isn't hidden. It's just you and I didn't understand what was happening all along. They understand what was happening all along.

Now, if you see secular humanist writers today, they will stand up for a number of things. Things that I would agree with. Separation of church and state, racial equality, the rights of all people to be free from starvation and lack of shelter, the care of the elderly and the handicapped. Those are issues they're always in the forefront of, always in the forefront of, because it's part of their agenda, part of what they want to achieve. But what we have to understand is what's happening underneath that those actions is a much wider set of concepts.

So I want to go back to 1933 and look at a few of... I'm not going to read the whole document. I printed out all these papers. I printed out every major humanist document that was issued since 1973 up until the present time, even once from Europe. Okay, I got them from all over. There's different humanist organizations. They all have a slightly different viewpoint of things, and humanism is changing all the time. As we read through this, you'll see why. It has to change.

It has to change. There are no absolutes. Of course, the moment you say there are no absolutes, you're illogical because you just said an absolute. I'm sorry, I can't argue with there are no absolutes because you just said an absolute. I won't go there. Humanists have a viewpoint of a utopian society, and it is a democracy. But the reason they formed... you've got to remember, they formed in the middle of the Great Depression. They were watching communism form and Nazism form, which they were deadly against. They were watching the United States collapse. People did not think the United States was going to survive the Great Depression. And they're saying, because of how evil the world is, we have to look at things differently. We have to create a new kind of democracy. And the only way to create that democracy is to create a unified public education where we teach everybody how to vote. So it's a democratic viewpoint. It's a democracy viewpoint. Everybody votes. And if everybody votes, they have to receive the same education. That way, we bring everybody into equality. Now you reason that. You think, okay, that makes for... if you were a person who was really in... since we're into the kingdom of God, we're not as interested in democracy. But I mean, democracy would work better if everybody's educated.

The problem is they came up with how the education has to work. Now I'm going to give you another first 15 stated goals of secular humanism. I'm only going to read a few of them. First one. Well, let me tell you one other introduction. It's a long introduction. Just read a couple sentences. The time has come for widespread recognition of the radical changes in religious beliefs throughout the modern world. The time has passed for mere revision of traditional attitudes. Science and economic change have disrupted the old beliefs. In fact, at this point, they even called themselves, some of them, religious humanists.

They believed that for the world to truly change, some of them thought you had to do away with religion. Many of them did not. They just said you have to redefine it so that all religions have the same goal, which is love and unity of humanity. If we have all religions teaching love and unity of humanity, we can educate everybody to be good voters and everybody to understand science and everybody understand mathematics. And we can get them, everybody taught. And this viewpoint, then, will create the perfect democracy, this utopia.

Today, man's larger understanding of the universe, his scientific achievements, and his deeper appreciation of brotherhood have created a situation which requires a new statement of the means and purpose of religion. It's an educational goal that the goal of public education is to redefine religion. First goal, secular humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created. At the core of secular humanism is you have to truly believe in evolution. And if you don't, it's okay. It just shows you're not educated. There's just the educated and the really sort of non-educated lower people. But that's okay. We love you anyways. But it's at the heart and core of it. The second humanist belief, humanism believes that man is part of nature. He has emerged as a result of continual process. In other words, we are just, they want people to understand and be enlightened that you're just another higher form of animal.

These are the two first statements. John Dewey's books are required today at many colleges if you're going to go on and get a teaching degree. They are required reading in many colleges and universities in Europe.

I've had many teachers tell me over the years, I know what's happened. Our curriculum has changed and changed and changed until evolution must now be taught. It must be taught. It has to be taught.

And it has to be taught as fact. I want to say here, I don't want you to think I'm against education. But I tell you what, you know, all three of my kids, my, our older daughter has a degree from University of Wisconsin. Our middle daughter has, it's an architect, which is the equivalent of a doctor's degree, doctorate, from University of Texas. And our son has a associate's degree from University of Texas. So we encouraged them to be educated. But we also tried to prepare them for what they were going to have to face. And I can remember my older daughter one time saying, yeah, because by this time she was older, she was married. It didn't bother. She had class, they had some moral discussion and argument, and I was the only person who took the right view.

Even the professor was wrong. Didn't seem to bother, you know.

Actually, our middle daughter, before she became an architect, decided to be a teacher. But what was she, what she was taught at University of Texas is the curriculum. She says, I cannot teach that. Now, not every university is the same yet, yet. Not every school system is the same yet. But we've reached a tipping point where this is now the majority. Once that tipping point happens, everything in society changes. Understand. Once the tipping point happens, everything changes. We're at that tipping point where this has now become a majority. The fifth point. Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe, depicted by modern science, makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values. They go on to explain what they mean by that. We can't look to a god or a deity to give us values of morality. Morality must be based on human values. 7. Religion consists of actions that are humanly significant. What's that mean? Here's how they define religion. It's not just church. It's labor, art, science, philosophy, love, friendship, and recreation. 10. It follows that there will be no uniquely religious emotions and attitudes of the kind associated with the belief in the supernatural. What does that mean? Have you ever had someone say to you, I am not religious, I am spiritual? You ever heard that? Okay, that's secular humanism. Or, I know what the truth is because I feel it. You see, spiritual and emotion become synonyms.

I've had a spiritual experience. And I'll give you an example.

Back after the breakup of the worldwide church of God, and a friend of mine told me this because he was just devastated by it, there was a woman in the worldwide church of God who had kept the Sabbath or her life, or most of her life, and then she had given it up. She stopped keeping the Sabbath. And she told him, I am so glad I gave up the Sabbath because I had the most intensely spiritual experience of my life the other day. He said, well, what did you do? He said, well, the church was having a fundraiser. We went to a football game on Friday night, and we sold hot dogs or something. And here we were all working together, selling this food to make money for our youth program or whatever it was. And everybody screaming and hollering and having a good time. And there was such electricity in the air. She says, I never had that intense a spiritual experience keeping the Sabbath. And she defined the excitement of a football game as spiritual. See, that doesn't surprise me because this started in 1933, and it changed little by little by little, even definition of words. It was done through the educational system. Once again, against education, you have to realize you have a stated goal of the most powerful educator of the century. And the power he had for 40, 50 years was immense, or not power, influence. Now, it's true that they believe that the only way you can achieve this is through one world government. But you sector humanists don't believe in tyranny. I want to explain that. They don't believe in tyranny. They lack the ability to understand that what they create will create tyranny.

Because the idea that you can get everybody to give up what they believe to come into one group and sing Kumbaya never works. Eventually, someone says, you're not with the program. I'm going to put you in an educational facility. Or as the USSR used to call it, a gulag. Now, they're not communist. They believe in a sense of a type of socialism, but they're not communist. But their ideas will work. We're going to explain why biblically. But we also have to understand how they've affected Christianity. Because we have to be real careful. Because we live in this culture. We can be affected by it. In 1973, they issued a second statement where they had to redefine a few things. They did want to make such dramatic statements against religion. So the first point of the 1973 manifesto, you can see this is all on the internet. You go to, you know, sector humanism, sector humanist, sector humanist manifesto. You can find all this. It's all there. None of this is hidden. It never was. First, in the best sense, religion may inspire dedication to the highest ethical ideals. The cultivation of moral devotion and creative imagination is an expression of genuine spiritual experience and aspiration. Oh, good! You know, religious is good.

The next statement. We believe, however, that traditional dogmatic or authoritarian religions, okay, that do this. These are bad religions. They place revelation, revelation, God, ritual, or creed above human needs. Oh, wait a minute. If you place God above humans, yeah, that's a bad religion. We have to redefine your religion.

That's why so many humanists who aren't secular humanists, but religious humanists, believe in deism. There's a being out there. Did you notice when I went through how many, the Pew report, every generation has a larger group of people who don't believe in the God of the Bible, but in a higher power. We can't really describe it, but there's a power there. There's something out there. It's in my heart. What does that mean? I don't know. It's just there. I feel it. That's why I'm spiritual, not religious. Okay. How many have heard someone say, I'm not religious, I'm spiritual? Yeah. Of course, I've heard it lots of times.

Another thing that they state in the 1973 version is promises of immortal salvation or fear of eternal damnation are illusory and harmful. Oh man, wow. Now that's a strong statement against religion, right? Any belief that you can have immortality or that you're punished by God is harmful. That's a harmful religion. But there's something they really had to add in 1973. Now, once again, we look at 1933 is in the middle of the Great Depression. 1973 is right in the full power of the sexual revolution, right? That started in the 1960s. So now they have to add something to the secular humanist ideals. In the area of sexuality, we believe that intolerant attitudes, often cultivated by orthodox religions and paranical cultures, unduly repress sexual conduct. The right to birth control, abortion, and divorce should be reconciled. While we do not approve of exploitive, denigrating forms of sexual expression, neither do we wish to prohibit by law or social sanction sexual behavior between consenting adults. How many times have you heard someone say sexual behavior is okay as long as there's two consenting adults?

All right, you see, everybody's got it. Yeah! Well, you know, before 1973, well, in 1933, that was not an argument because that society didn't even accept that. The original founders of secular humanism didn't even think that way, yet.

Secular humanism keeps evolving—of course, there's no absolutes—it keeps evolving with a culture that keeps using secular humanism to break down the next set of walls.

So now their utopia has to include total sexual freedom, except with children. They go on and say that. You know, that wouldn't be correct, but anything except that.

Well, I'm going to stop. He goes on and on and on. And some of them we'd agree with.

Like I said, older people need to be taken care of. Oh, by the way, it says in this one, of course, we do support euthanasia. Elderly people need to be taken care of and valued in our society. And that's why we support euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Now, I don't think they would—I think euthanasia would be, in their minds, like an Alzheimer's person when they wrote this. I don't want to put something there that I don't think they believe. They didn't believe you should just go kill everybody over 70, okay? Because that's not what it says. It says we believe they should live dignified lives.

What they were saying is, if you have a person who is beyond saving and they're an elderly person and they're sick, just kill them so that it's peaceful and there's no pain involved. Okay, that's what they would say. So I don't want to make you believe something they didn't mean, but that's what they would have meant. Just put them to sleep. Let them die.

Abortion, of course, is a major issue. There was something that was issued in—this was not actually issued by the Secular Humanist Society, but this was issued by two other groups. The Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism and the Council for Secular Humanism in 1980. All these groups worked together. There was something hidden in this that shocked me. No, it didn't.

Because if you believe public education is the solution to all problems, you have to come to this conclusion. We do not think that it is moral. Remember? Morality, what is ethical morality, is a big part of what they go through. What is ethical morality if you have a vague belief in God or no belief in God at all and you reject all religions.

We do not think it is moral to baptize infants, or to confirm adolescents.

Confirmation of most of the churches that do that is that teenagers have to go through a learning process about their religion and then they're confirmed. No, you are not to teach teenagers about religion. They are now in the public school where they're being educated. It goes on to say, these young minds should not be indoctrinated in a faith before they are mature enough to evaluate the merits for themselves.

So you actually have a thought process that says we want freedom of religion. In fact, secular humanist groups have actually fought for freedom of religion. They actually have. But everybody gets to choose it and nobody should be able to choose it until they literally are at the age of consent, which I think that's 18. So churches literally, if this was carried through, we could not have Sabbath school until somebody was 18.

Now they've never tried to enforce that, but that's part of the thought process, you see, because public education teaches you how to be a citizen, which is the most important thing. Religion is just that part of your secret life, your private life, and that should not be really taught to you until you're old enough to look at it and say, I believe that. It is fascinating that many Protestant churches have been going through just a, I mean, a crisis over the last 10 years. It's reversed itself a little bit lately, and that almost all Protestant young people who went to university at age 18 were non-Christians by age 22. I mean, the overwhelming number. I understand. I mean, I remember the first year I went to Penn State University. After one year of college, my mom couldn't stand me because I was sure I was a whole lot smarter than her. I'm 64 now, and think, how could I be so dumb? I'm 64 and I don't know anything.

But, you know, in 19, I mean, I just taken two classes from a doctor, I don't know, in psychology. I don't remember his name, a Jewish fellow. For some reason, I was scared to death of him. Now I understood how everybody thought, right? I could psychoanalyze anybody.

My mom had been a nurse. I mean, she knew a little bit about scientific thought, okay? She thought I was ridiculous, which I was.

In 1980, the secular humanist society came up with a new manifesto in which they had changed the wording of some of their goals a little bit. If you read them, they're the same goals. They didn't want to say, well, we're against religion. Now they say, we're working with religions, okay? They started to realize a couple things that happened. First of all, people said, well, you can't take my religion. But they found out something else. They could not take away from most human beings their need for something higher than themselves. So you and I are designed to have a relationship with God. They just see that as some kind of animalistic instinct. They can understand it. Why human beings need this. If we all just loved each other, that would become our spiritual feeling, you see, is loving each other. Why do you need something greater? So they couldn't do away with religion. So now they're changing the meanings of it. And we're going to show you that. Once again, who determines this criterion? Actually, it's not like some big conspiracy of people. Once you get the secular humanist mindset into teachers, they do it themselves. Administrators of schools are doing it themselves. No one's telling them to do it. It's a philosophy. Give an example. I used this in that program four years ago. A girl, a little girl, she was 12, 13 years old. She's a young girl. She was brought into the school principal and told she had to confess for her crime. She refused to confess. She wasn't even sure what she had done. Four times she's brought in to confess for her crime. Finally, the parents are called. Seems her crime was she was handing out little flyers to all the little teenage girls to come to some Bible study her church was having for teenagers. She had actually committed a crime and they were trying to get her to confess.

Now, I have to say, most leaders of secular humanism, if you read their articles, they would say, nah, that's not what we're about. But the philosophy leads people to this. That's what they don't seem to understand. How much is this permeated our society? You know, every major company, every major social organization, every major church has a set of missions and values, right? The United Church of God has missions of values where you can go on and read their missions of value statements. I just pulled a few of them here that in the 1930s, if these groups were out, what some of them were, would not have had this as a mission statement at all. And I, this isn't everything they say, I just pulled out a couple things to show you how society has changed. The mission is to promise an inclusive community for LGBTQ plus employees and their allies. The group will strive to support diversity across the organization.

Okay, that could be any organization, right? Who do you think that is? Well, some of you are going to say Target, yeah. Disney, yeah. It's the Boy Scouts of America. Now, the Boy Scouts of America is facing possible financial collapse right now because the amount of suits they're going through because of pedophiles that are in the organization. This organization affirms its belief in the glorious ability of God to create in any manner. And in this affirmation, affirmation reject the rigid dogmatism of the creationist movement. In other words, basically, we affirm how great God is, so evolution is the explanation for creation because they reject the creationist movement. Any idea who that is? The Episcopal Church of the United States. One of the oldest Protestant churches in the world.

This next group upholds the right of men and women to have access to adequately funded family planning services and to safe legal abortions as one option among others. Not only the support of abortion, but it should be funded. What do you think that is?

Plan? No, that's the easy one. See? I pick people you would never think.

That's the United Church of Christ.

A very large Protestant denomination. How about this one? We disrupt the Western prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and villages. We foster a queer-affirming network with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking. Anyone know who that is? Black Lives Matter.

See, it's in everything. Remember, the secular humanist will support certain things we all agree in. We all agree in racial equality. We all agree that elderly people should be taken care of. We all agree in these things. We all agree in separation of the church and state, right? We don't want the state telling us what to do as far as our religion. But underneath that is a whole other agenda. A whole other agenda. And it permeates everything. It permeates everything. I watched an African-American, I think he was a Baptist minister, give a whole sermon. I watched the whole thing because it was so fascinating because it was very logical. He said, Black Lives Matter is a great statement, and I agree with it. I do, too. But the organization is not Christian, and that's what we have to understand. But, you see, we get hooked. We get hooked.

If I believe in creationism, I can't be an Episcopalian.

Well, you can, because there are enough secular humanism ideas in Episcopal Church that, well, we realize you're not as spiritual as us, but we'll accept you anyways. We don't care what you believe. Just come and worship the deity God, him, her, us, whatever you want to call it. Let's just worship together.

I'm not sure John Dewey would even understand what he had created. And this wasn't his goal. His goal wasn't good, by the way, but it was utopia.

And, of course, his methods, his ideas, and, of course, one of the things that really drove him was the belief that human nature is good.

If we could just convert everybody through education, we will create a nation that is so wonderful without crime, without hatred, all goodness.

They didn't believe in communism. They didn't believe in capitalism, either. With some socialist system they went to set up, and it would be such the absolute pinnacle of what the world could be that the whole rest of the world would be become like us. And, of course, it's not going to happen. The secular humanism is already failing. I mean, why is it after 90 years there's more violence? Why is it after 90 years all that so many of these issues haven't even begun to be fixed? Why is it after 90 years that we're now looking at the possible collapse of the United States of America, which is very possible? Why? Because that's not what they wanted, but they're actually helping produce it through a philosophy that has failed. A philosophy has failed.

Now, secular humanism isn't the only problem. It's changed society, and I say changed society. In 1933, I'm not saying the United States was some great, wonderful Christian nation in 1933, because it wasn't. It just had some more fundamental values, that's all. It was already in trouble. I mean, Christianity has been in trouble since John wrote the book of Revelation. It's been in trouble a long time. But we're watching it morph. It's gone through different stages of morphing from one thing to another. And we're watching the United States morph. And it's already happened in Europe, where Christianity is morphed into something that's not quite what it used to be. One of the reasons is democracy itself.

I mean, if politicians have to please their constituents, it means eventually they're always going to have to be going to the lowest common denominator, right? Whatever my constituents want, I have to go fight for. I have to go get for them. And that's a real problem. Also, it's Christianity itself. Because what's happened is, and this is the problem with Christianity ever since the first century, is it adapts to culture, and then a culture adapts to it, and it becomes a cultural Christianity. And I'll give you a perfect example. I want you to think about this. Perfect example of a cultural Christianity issue. Christmas. In the United States of America, everybody keeps Christmas. I mean, Muslims keep Christmas, Jews keep Christmas, atheists keep Christmas, everybody keeps Christmas. And most Christians know Jesus wasn't born on December 25th. I mean, they figured that much out. What's it really have to do with Jesus? Not much. Not a lot, right? And let's face it, the entire retail economy in the United States depends upon Christmas. I know when I saw advertising, a lot of retailers said, if I don't have a good Christmas, I won't last till the next one. A lot of times, what happened in October, November, December, October, November, December, decided whether they existed till the next October.

The entire retail economy is based on this, what, secular thing, religious thing? What is it? It's a cultural Christianity. Really has nothing to do with Christ. It used to bug me when I would sell advertising, and I'd get this call, come on in. They were always furniture dealers for some reason. Come on in, I got this. I really want to do something great for you. I got a new sale coming up. Okay, I'd go in, you know, to write the ads and everything and sell them the advertising. And they'd say, what I want to do is Christmas in July. How many have seen Christmas in July, right? So now we're going to take Christ's Mass, a service to honor Christ, that's what it means, and we're going to use it to sell furniture. You know, I would not do... I produced a lot of commercials. I would not put my voice on any commercial that advertised Christmas or Easter or Christmas in July. I just wouldn't do it. I just wouldn't put my voice on it.

I just... there's just certain things I won't do.

Which my boss one day, because I always made him feel guilty, he says, well, you know, with my religion, I don't believe in drinking, so I'm going to have you handle all the beer accounts. Man, did I make money off of that!

I remember one time, a huge beer truck. I mean, I'd never seen a truck this big. It showed up in the parking lot. Guy comes out and he says, there's a guy here named Gary Betty. And I said, yeah, he says, I don't know what this is, but it's from the brewery, from the main office. They said they'd give this to you. Opened it up, and it was like a belt buckle and hat and all this stuff just for me. And then this started to come on a regular basis. I had every hat, every beer belt buckle. I had everything. You know, he made me lots of money.

I didn't mean to get off on that. Okay, the New Age movement is also an issue, but I'm not going to go there. That's actually a sermon in itself, because we have to be careful not to become affected and corrupted by New Age. Have you ever heard anybody say something bad happens? You say, well, that's just karma? How many have heard that? That's just karma. Oh, yeah. Welcome to the New Age. Actually, it's Hinduism, but New Age is basically Hinduism. Well, it's changed a little bit, but that's what it is. Okay, so let's look at this cultural Christianity. In the time we have left, I want to go through just a few points of cultural Christianity. I will be up here afterwards if somebody wants to ask some questions about this. Although secular humanism isn't hard to research, because it never was hidden. Never. It's all author. Of course, evolution is a big issue. That's why I think you and I need to find those scientists that have very good arguments against evolution. It's only like 10% now, scientists. Well, it depends on the scientist. Okay, it depends on what their field is. But, because some do say no, evolution isn't true. But the majority do accept evolution. But there are scientists that have incredible arguments against evolution. Credible arguments, scientific arguments. And let's face it, well, disprove evolution. Well, Genesis 1-1, that doesn't disprove it. You have to believe in the Bible for that to make sense, right? So, to go to someone and say, just move it there, or just read it, that made it true. Okay, you read some book written thousands of years ago that's filled with myths. And I just did this study by 500 top scientists to say it is true. So, you're not going to...that argument doesn't work. You have to have some scientific argument. And there are good ones out there. Our children need to know that. Our children need to know that there are science...there is scientific arguments. Just...well, believe me, they're stronger than the evolutionary arguments. The problem with sector humanism, once it becomes part of the school system, it is factual. And to say it's not factual means you're not educated. And what's one of the worst things someone can say to another person in our society? Well, you're just not educated. You just like the education, understand? One of the worst things someone can say to you.

Also, human nature is basically good. Here's our message. Here's the answer. You want the answer to human nature is basically good. So, if we can just all work together and stop all these religions. Okay, let me tell you what I believe. I believe that there is a creator, a god who created everything. And that's why there's this incredible mystery we live in. That's why this is wondrous. That's why science can't explain much of anything after a certain point. And this great creator created this, and human beings decided not to do things his way. And because of that, this human nature is corrupted. And that's why your world's messed up. And that's why my world's messed up. Every human being is messed up. Because, you know what? Inside, everybody knows it's messed up. So, you go right to the core of who they are. Now, they may get mad at you at this point, and you say, okay, we won't talk. Because the difference between us and secular humanism is we don't hate you if you don't agree with us. Like, we're not allowed to hate you. Our worldview won't let us hate you. We can get angry with you. That's okay, but we can't hate you.

And we say, look, you're messed up. I'm messed up. That creator, God, has an answer to that. That answer is in Jesus Christ. His life and death and resurrection, and He can show us how to live, and God can give us the power to change. What we're looking for is a world of love, a world without violence, a world without crime, a world of equality, a world without poverty. We all want that, and only God can create that. And that's how I live my life. Because I believe Jesus Christ is coming back, and I want to be part of it. You go right to the core of what the problem is. Now, if they don't accept that, that's fine. But a lot of times it's like, yeah, I don't have that kind of hope.

Like Stephen Covey one time was sitting with a group of, you know, he's a man who wrote seven habits of highly effective people. This was years ago. He was in a group of young people in college, and like all young people in college, they're smarter than anybody else. And one man got up and he says he was belligerent, and he says, I literally thought the group was going to rush me and attack me. And he said, there are no absolutes. It's so wrong for you to say that there are absolutes. And he was shouting him down and shouting him down. He says, okay, I will stop talking. I'm just going to ask you a question and give you some time to think about it. If there are no absolutes, was Nazism the Holocaust at World War II, as generated by the Germans, was it right or wrong? Absolutely right or absolutely wrong? What was it? Well, it's neat. What is it then? Was it wrong? Can you say it was wrong? And he said he stood there until it got uncomfortable. He just stood there for the longest time. Then he looked at the man and said, what do you think? He said, the young man said, I don't know. So we have to take people into the reality of who they are. That's what this is. Arguing the philosophy is arguing philosophy. Who they are, God designed in people a need for God. We got to take them there. No, they may not go there. That's fine. Okay. Well, see you next week when we play basketball, right? But we have to take them there. We have to engage them there. But you know what? We have to be there. You can't engage somebody there if you're not there. We have to engage them with the gospel. Engage them with the Sabbath. Doesn't mean anything, does it? Being engaged with all kinds of things doesn't mean anything to them.

You have to engage them there. Another thing is the denying of the inspiration of scriptures or parts of it. You hear this all the time. A loving God would not kill people. Therefore, God did not kill the people in Sodom. Therefore, it is a myth. Or I've seen secular humanists say, I would never worship the God of the Bible. If that's God, He's evil. I've actually read blogs by secular humanists to say that. If that's God, He's evil. I mean, to tell the Israelites to kill everybody in Jericho, that's called genocide. No God would perpetrate genocide. But see, if you don't have a full understanding of good and evil, you don't understand that there's evil, a level of evil, where God says, I will not accept it. There's a level of evil that's so horrible, I will not accept it.

Or God actually said, it did not enter my mind they would sacrifice their children.

I wonder if God wept. I mean, I know God isn't physical, but I mean, whatever spirit beings do when they grieve, I wonder if He wept.

So what we have is that it's idea that you have to redefine all the scriptures. You're still a Christian. You have to redefine the scriptures to fit your secular humanist philosophy, that we just love each other, we accept each other. It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter what you really believe or how you live your life, as long as you don't harm anybody. That's it. Morality is you don't harm anybody. And in some cases, you can't harm any other species, since we're all just a species of evolution. So it's really, that's why some people are, you're a secular humanist, become vegans. Not eating meat is not sin, but they have a reason for doing it, which is I can't hurt that animal because it's another species just like me.

You know, I might have mentioned this. I did this in a program recently, too.

I read a blog about a person who said, it was a minister, that you have to really read between the lines where Jesus went to the Canaanite woman, and the Canaanite woman asked to have her child healed. And remember what happened? Jesus said, no, he wouldn't do it. He says, I'm supposed to go to the children of Israel. And then he made a reference to her as a little dog. And she said, but yeah, but even the little dogs hit the crumbs from crawl from the table. And he says, that is great faith. And he goes ahead and heals the child. And the minister said, what we see here is the realization that Jesus was a sexist and a racist. And God took him to the Canaanite woman to teach him to stop being a sexist and a racist. I understand that. I actually understand that that interpretation. It's a secular humanist interpretation. Because if you believe in secular humanism, Jesus is a sexist and a racist by those comments. Because they don't see him as the son of God. They don't see him as God. He could call all of us a bunch of dogs. We'd have to say yes, sir. Right? There's sovereignty to God. They don't see that. Without that, boy, he just, he's just a sexist. They're redefining Scripture now. Now, I say now? This has been going on for a long time.

I mean, the denial of Jesus is the only way. Billy Graham, clear back, it must have been in, I don't know, it was later in his life. I can't remember when. The greatest televangelist of all time said, he started preaching that there are many people in all religions who are Christians, they don't know it because Jesus is in their heart. They just don't know it. So they may be Hindu, but they already have received salvation. Jesus is already in their heart. They just don't know he's in their heart. He didn't teach that early in his career. Why did he change? Because he couldn't figure out what to do with God hates everybody because everybody's going to hell. So, secular unionism gave him an answer. Everybody goes to God. Everybody. It's the same path. We're all on the same, well, it's the same journey. We're just on different paths. We all get to God, which we define. We get to create God in our own image. Either God is real, which means he is who he is, and he defines himself, or we define God. We make him in our own image, which means we're just idolaters. We're just worshiping ourselves. You see how cultural Christianity has changed so that we don't talk about Jesus' teachings about sin. We just talk about his love. Now, we should talk about his love. In fact, I'm going to bring that up in a minute. We can never back down and understand that the love of God is a core message. But at the same time, we can't say, God loves us so nothing matters. God accepts me just the way I am. Actually, he doesn't. Oh, I know that's smart because that's taught by the overwhelming number of evangelicals. God accepts me just the way I am. No, he doesn't.

He wants to change you to what you're supposed to be. Your incredible potential.

There's also the health and wealth gospel. Let me mention that. That's come out of this too. And that is pay your tithes to the church, pray the right prayers, visualize the right things, and God will give you wealth. Oh, yeah? The real Jesus, someone came to him and said, I would like to follow you. And he said, why? I'm like a fox running around through the field. I don't even have a place to put my head to do his ministry. He gave up everything. Is that what you really want to do? That's what he asked the guy, basically. Is that what you really want to do? You want to give up everything to come follow me? That's the real Jesus.

More and more when people come to me, I want to talk about, you know, where do I start in the Bible? I used to take them to different places because they had some religious background to go with. I say, do you believe in Jesus Christ? Yes. Okay, good. That's where we'll start. Read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Because you're going to find out that's not the Jesus you think he is. You're going to find out that's not the Jesus you actually worship. And I think I mentioned a while back, I actually read an article by a minister who was going through a… I tried to keep up with what's going on in the religious world, but he was going through a dramatic problem, dramatic problem, just trauma. Because for the first time, he'd go through seminary, he'd been a preacher for decades, he actually sat down and read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and said, I don't know that Jesus. That's not the Jesus I've worshiped all my life. And I have to decide between the Jesus I know and the Jesus in the Bible. Well, the Jesus you know, dude, is made up. It's in your head. It's not real. So I have to decide now between the Jesus I made up or the Jesus in the Bible. And it was all, he was just going through trauma. Yeah, when we used to talk to people, I remember visiting people years ago. First questions were things like, so why should I keep the Sabbath? I mean, I've gone to church all my life one Sunday. So why should I not keep Easter? Wasn't Jesus resurrected on Easter? Now it's like, well, let me explain to you who Jesus is. A whole new starting point because they have a totally different wrong idea of Jesus.

So secular humanism is just one of the issues. I'm going to read one scripture. Romans chapter one. Romans is not talking about secular humanism. They did not have secular humanism. Right? Just like I did the BT program recently. It was Jesus, a capitalist or a socialist. And I proved that he was neither because neither capitalism or socialism existed in the first century. Okay, so because I was shocked how many people are using Jesus was a capitalist, so vote for this party. Jesus was a socialist, so vote for this party. Well, he was neither. It's a bizarre argument. And there were people using scriptures on both sides, sometimes the same scriptures, which I thought was rather strange. So I used those scriptures and I did a whole program on it. And Roku refused the latest advertising.

They refused the latest advertising. I still can't. I know I've mentioned that before. I just can't get over it. We're paying you money. Oh no, that's too controversial. Wait a minute. We're saying that Jesus was neither. Okay, how's that controversial? Well, I just made everybody mad.

It's not like I'm picking one side here. I just made everybody mad.

Let's get back to Romans. Romans is not talking about secular humanism. It didn't exist. He's talking about the Roman society. But the Roman society had some similarities. Now they believed in paganism, which we'll see, but they really used the natural world as their religion. The gods were vague and sort of, you know, we don't know what they do, but we have to, we do know that they're pretty, you know, arbitrary. So we have to do the right dance and the right sacrifice and the right buildings and the right statues. And if we do all this physical stuff right, somehow we'll get something good out of this. Their society was also, and he's going to give a whole list of what their society had become and see if you find any similarities. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. This is verse 18. Against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness. Now secular humanists would say right there, okay, that verse has got to go. You are putting down other people.

No religion can put down somebody else's wrong.

You can only state what you believe, but you can't call somebody else wicked. Okay, I'm not doing this. Paul's doing this. Because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. Now understand, he's talking about the Roman world. He's looking at Roman pagan priests. He's looking at the government, the secular government of Rome. He's looking at their society. He says God has shown them who He is. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. This is what God says to the brilliant, and I use that word not as a put-down, but I mean, I'm not being sarcastic. I'm being absolutely brilliant scientists, brilliant scientists who believe in evolution. He says, what you're looking at through that microscope should tell you about me. What you study all the time is me. What excuse do you have? It's all there. I'm here in all this. I made all this. But you won't. You don't want it. You don't want it.

Because although they knew God, the point is they could see what God's doing, and they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened, professing to be wise, professing to be educated. Remember in the Roman world, if you were anybody, even lower middle class, if you could afford it, you got a slave from Greece, and you brought him over to teach your children to be educated because they were superior. And they were. They could read, they could write, they could do the mathematics, they knew philosophy, they exercised, they were in better shape than everybody else. That's what it meant to be educated because that's what the Greeks did.

He said, but he says, in all that, you think you're wise, but you're futile in your thoughts. He says, they became fools. In other words, the foolishness is that they're fools to God, and change the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.

Our world doesn't have idols like that. We just have, circular humanism worships man as God.

Over and over again, they'll say, the only real power is human beings. The only real determinant of what is good and evil are human beings. The only real determinative ethics and morality are human beings. And if we all love each other, we'll work it out.

Secular humanism creates the worship of humanity. That's what it creates. So in some ways, this still applies. Therefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lusts of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who was blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise, also the men leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lusts for one another, men and women committing what is shameful and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error, which was due. Now, religious humanists who don't deny Jesus and believe in part of the Bible, they have an interesting explanation for this. And that is, the problem with Paul is, he only knows what Judaism teaches him. He doesn't know science because they didn't understand these things then. Science now proves to us this is all genetic, so therefore it can't be a sin, therefore don't be too hard on Paul for being a homophobe. You have to understand, he couldn't have known any better. He wasn't educated. He didn't have the science. I'm not against education. I'm only using the word because they use the word. Okay. I don't want people to think, oh, he wants us all to be dumb. And that's not the point I'm making. I teach college classes all the time. You know the great courses, college classes. I've taken from Notre Dame, Yale. Okay, I take college classes all the time. I don't get credit for them, but take them all the time.

Somebody gets education, but I also watch it think, whoa, you pick through what your worldview accepts and what your worldview doesn't accept. Then we get into this last part here. But even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, secular humanists deny God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind to do those things which are not fitting. Being filled with all unrighteousness, here's what happens with a debased mind. Sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness. They are whispers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, and vendors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, and unmerciful.

That is the direction we're going in. And it's not because men like John Dewey wanted that. It's because they based their work on wrong premises. Everything was based on a wrong premise. Evolution and human nature is good, and let's get rid of Christianity.

I just want to stress that because he wasn't a totalitarian. That wasn't his viewpoint. And it wasn't their original viewpoint.

Now, here's what God says. Who, knowing the righteous judgment of God. I want to stress this. This is God's judgment that your judgment of God is. Your judgment of my judgment. Knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, and not only who do the same, but also approve of those who practice them.

So, okay, I don't believe in abortion, but I support your right to have an abortion. That's the very democratic thing to say, and a secular humanist would say, you're an ethical person. What would God say? Now, does that mean you and I can go around and condemn everybody to death? Of course not. Of course not. Getting up and shouting from the rooftop, your condemned to death, isn't going to do a lot of good. You know what we're back to? How do we fight this? Because you're going to have to. You can hide from it. I'm afraid you can only... unless you just live by yourself, unless it's just you and your family living your house out in the woods someplace and don't come in contact with the other people, you're going to have to come in contact with this. Much of it you'll have to ignore because there's no use talking about it, right? Yeah, you know, you just realize there's no use talking to this person. You just smile. And then there's time to stand up. And what do you stand up with? You stand up with the gospel. You go right at their heart.

I believe in a creator God, and I believe we're all messed up, and I believe that's the problem, and only Christ can fix that. And God's going to have to change you because if you don't change you in nature, you're going to end up with the same problem. Just look at the world you're creating. Have you solved anything? Have you stopped violence? Have you stopped poverty among children? Have you stopped? No! Nothing stopped. It just keeps getting worse.

But they believe they can achieve it.

They believe they can achieve it. All they eventually will create is chaos. They'll create chaos.

And you know what happens out of chaos?

Totalitarian governments that end up killing secular humanists that don't go along with them. That's what happens, along with religious people, and everybody else that doesn't go along with them.

Yeah, so in the great martyrdom before the tribul... at the beginning of the tribulation, if you happened to be there and I happened to be there, I wouldn't be surprised if next to me is a Baptist and next to me is a secular humanist who wouldn't go along with the totalitarian government saying, well we had a better way. Yeah, you shut up. Your way didn't work.

Your way didn't work. When I'm about to go to a better way, I'll see you there. Oh, I'm going to hell. No, no, no. Got to work this out.

The gospel is the foundation of the Christian worldview.

Oh, secular humanism is a worldview. Islam is a worldview. It's how you see reality. That's the foundation of our worldview. And to really understand it, if you're going to share it, if someday you're going to sit and you're going to stand and say this to somebody and maybe God uses to change your lives, then it's absolutely imperative that every day of your life you live it.