I’m amazed by this man’s ability. How did such a mind arise: from matter or a greater mind? In fact, how did any mind arise?
I think that atheists and theists can agree on at least one thing– this site, assembled by atheists, is a valuable resource for those interested in atheist vs. theist debates. Over 400 debates are listed there! Many of them can be viewed or heard on line.
For those who are serious about investigating atheism vs. theism further, I have one word of caution: don’t rely on debates to give you the whole truth. Most debates provide only 20 minutes for each debater to make his/her case, and rhetorical skills can sometimes obscure the truth. If you are seriously looking for truth, watch the debates and then read the books of the debaters. You’ll learn a lot more.
Thanks to Christopher for a second opportunity to debate. The question of this debate is “What Best Explains Reality: Atheism or Theism?” Recorded at the College of New Jersey! (Also available to view on line here. If you’d like to order a DVD of this debate, click here).
Frank Turek vs. Christopher Hitchens: What Best Explains Reality? from Andrew Ketchum on Vimeo.
As you know, our ministry addresses the fact that 75% of Christian youth leave the church after leaving the home. One reason for this is the fact that Christians are not equipped with the arguments for Christianity before they arrive in the generally anti-Christian environment known as the college campus. Salvo magazine is one tool you can use to equip Christian students. For the next week you can download a free copy of this edgy and informative magazine at the blog of our ministry partner Stand to Reason. Look for the July 31, 2009 entry called “Salvo Free Offer.”
In it you’ll find articles such as:
10 INDOCTRINATION 101
A new orthodoxy has a stranglehold on American
colleges and universities
by Mark Linville
26 PICK YOUR POISON
Academic bias is ubiquitous, but choosing the
right college can minimize the damage
by Les Sillars and John Basie
46 STATE OF THE U
Just how bad is the indoctrination at American
universities? We ask David Horowitz
by Marcia Segelstein
63 QUAD PRO QUO
“Here’s your money,” say today’s college students,
“Now give us our degrees!”
by Marcia Segelstei
and other topics including Hate Crimes, Naturalism vs. Supernaturalism, and Intelligent Design. While I’ve only had a chance to read a couple of the articles so far, this publication looks extremely intelligently designed! And right now the price is right.
As our great country accelerates its slide into economic and moral Hell, be careful whom you blame. The present boldness of liberals and timidity of conservatives are only the secondary causes. Much of the blame can be placed at the foot of the church.
When I say the church, I don’t mean an institution like the Roman Catholic church, but the entire body of believers—those from all denominations who believe that the Bible is true, that people are sinners, that God sent the perfect God-man, Jesus Christ, to redeem us from our sins, and that we are charged with spreading that message and reforming society.
Believers are God’s ambassadors here on earth, called to be salt and light in the world and to the world. When we follow our calling, individuals are transformed and societies with them. Our country is failing because too many believers have abandoned this calling.
They began abandoning it in earnest in the 1920’s. That’s when an anti-intellectual movement called fundamentalism led believers to separate from society rather than reform it, and to bifurcate life into two separate spheres—the sacred and secular. Reason was given up for emotionalism, and only activities that directly saved souls were deemed sacred. Everything else was considered secular. Careers in clergy and missions were glorified at the expense of everything else. That led too many believers to leave public education, the media, law, and politics in the hands of the unbelievers. Is it any wonder why those areas of our culture now seem so Godless? Take the influence of God out, and that’s what you get.
Secularizing public education has been the key to our nation’s moral demise. Once public education went secular, the rest of society eventually did, especially when the products of that system became our leaders. As Abraham Lincoln once observed, “The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.”
The philosophy of the schoolroom is atheistic. The question of God’s existence—the most important question regarding how we should live—is not studied or debated in our public schools. Atheism is just assumed to be true and with it moral relativism. That’s a major reason why immorality dominates our schools and why our kids know more about political correctness than truth. It’s also why we have a new generation of voters more enamored with “hope and change” than defending our changeless rights from an overreaching government. G. K. Chesterton’s observation about Russia has come true here, “Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God.”
How did this happen? In the early 1960’s, the Supreme Court, consisting of newly trained secularists, banned devotional Bible reading in our schools (apparently, for the 180 years before that, people just didn’t understand the Constitution!). That decision, and several others, has stifled virtually any mention of God or the Bible in our public schools. In effect, the most influential book in the history of the world is ignored in our educational system. What kind of a quality education is that? It’s certainly not what the folks who settled this land had in mind for public education. In fact, the first public school in the new world began as a result of the “Old Deluder Satan Law.” That 1647 Massachusetts law established the school to teach kids how to read the Bible so that old deluder Satan could not deceive them.
Likewise, most of our first universities were established to teach and propagate a complete Christian worldview. Harvard’s charter read, “Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning.”
The founders of Harvard knew that all truth is God’s truth. There is no bifurcation between the sacred and the secular. According to the Bible, every vocation, every discipline, and every person is sacred. Nothing is secular. In sharp contrast, those running our country now say that everything is secular. That’s a long way from our founding.
“So what?” you say. “Who cares about morality and God?”
That’s exactly the problem: Who does care? When the church separates from society, it takes its moral influence with it. But respect for the moral principles upon which out nation was founded—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—is essential to its survival. Our founders knew this.
Following the Constitutional convention, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government he and his fellow founding fathers created for the nation. Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Franklin knew that freedom must always be defended; that the unalienable rights for which our founding fathers pledged “their lives, fortunes and sacred honor,” were never secure unless an informed electorate held their representatives accountable to uphold those moral rights.
Recognizing that only a religious and moral people will maintain a good government, George Washington declared in his farewell address, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports.” His successor, John Adams, wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” In other words, even the best Constitution cannot prevent immoral people or politicians from destroying a nation. That’s why the church cannot abandon its calling. But it has.
So if you’re a believer who is upset that life is not being protected; that marriage is being subverted; that judges routinely usurp your will; that our immigration laws are being ignored; that radical laws are passed but never read; that mentioning God in school (unless he’s Allah) results in lawsuits; that school curriculums promote political correctness and sexual deviance as students fail at basic academics; that unimaginable debt is being piled on your children while leftist organizations like Planned Parenthood and ACORN receive your tax dollars; and that your religion and free speech rights are about to be eroded by “hate” crimes legislation that can punish you for quoting the Bible; then go look in the mirror and take your share of the blame because we have not obeyed our calling.
Then start over. Reengage at every level of society. Treat every job and every person as sacred. Be a beacon for Christ and truth in whatever you do and wherever you are. There is hope if you act. After all, we believe in redemption.
Make sure you share: Country a Mess? Blame the Church
“Atheist” is a translation of the Greek: atheos using the alpha privative “a” and the term for God “theos.” It does not merge the alpha private with the ENGLISH TERM “theist.” Rather “atheist” as a whole word is a translation of “atheos,” the whole word. Were the original meaning drawn entirely from etymology it would mean simply “godless,” “ungodly,” or “without God.” And this indeed is one of the definitions we find for the term in its Ancient sources. In that time, it also had the definition of “denying God/gods” which followed by implication from the notion of “godless;” if a person truly believed in a grand judge over all the universe he would not live/teach/think as if no such being existed.
However the idea of withholding/refraining belief about some God, though present in ancient Greece and Rome, tended to be subsumed under terms like “skepticism” (gk: skepticos) or “materialism” or “atomism” (a form of materialism). “Atheos” however was used to describe a different phenomenon. Thus the effective meaning of “atheos” is something like, “godless” or “disbelief in God.”Were someone to translate ancient and classical uses of “atheos” into “no belief in God” they would do an injustice to the text since that is simply not how Greeks and Romans were using the term when they first coined it, nor when they continued using it over the years.
Etymology (study of word origins, and composite meaning from word parts) is only one way that words take on meaning. When we apply etymology to the English word “atheism,” we have “athe” (from atheos “no God/Godless”) + “-ism” (belief). Belief then characterizes the “no God” hence we have, “Belief in no God.” And the alpha privative, as always, characterizes the word to which its affixed. So the belief is positive, the object of belief in negative. It is “belief in no God” or “belief in Godless[ness].” For etymology to achieve the negative definition of atheism, a popular definition today, from the term would have to be something like, “theos-a-ism” or, “No belief [in a] God.” The etymology argument then is not a friend but a foe of the negative definition of atheism.
In ancient Rome we find the positive form of atheism exercised when Christians were being persecuted and martyred for being “atheists.” They did not simply lack belief in the Roman Gods; rather they consciously rejected all God’s but one. Compared to the plethora of Gods in the Roman Pantheon, rejecting all but one is practically equivalent to atheism. Hence Christians were accused of atheism. Even ambivalence could have been tolerated among the Romans as they did with many agnostic philosophers (though the term “agnostic” had not be invented yet). But conscious rejection of the Roman Gods was seen as an intolerable affront to the State. As we can expect from ideas that are deeply rooted in human nature and the human psyche, the idea of “atheism” survived for centuries with both connotations intact: “godless” and “disbelief in God.”
However in recent times, the definition has come under question by atheist themselves. Three motivating factors can be identified. First, in debates, it is generally the better strategy to rebut the opponent’s case rather than to have to defend one’s one case. A softened definition of atheism allows for this. With negative atheism, the atheist doesn’t carry any burden of proof since that burden is on the participant/s making a positive case of some sort: “God exists” or “God does not exists.” But to claim, “I have no belief about God” is not a positive case, and therefore requires no defense in contemporary debate formats.
Second, Antony Flew’s important article “The Presumption of Atheism” argues that the default or neutral position for humanity is atheism. Building on the point just made, Flew argues that the burden of proof is on the theism to demonstrate that “belief in God” is reasonable. Essentially, Flew is arguing that negative/soft/weak atheism is man’s natural disposition, or if it is not, it is the intellectually justified default position. It is up to the theist to make a positive case for theism.
A third factor which might have played a part in this redefinition is the onset of British positivism, like that of A.J. Ayer. Ayer, among others, suggested that claims must be empirically verifiable or analytically (by-definition) true if they are to be linguistically meaningful. Theology, for Ayer, is not true, but nor is it even false. It is without meaning since its reference to God lacks analytic veracity and empirical testibility the notion cannot even be entertained as a proposition. It is like trying to argue “I believe in ‘ouch'” or “I don’t believe in ‘um.'” These terms “ouch” and “um” are emotive/gibberish terms that defy cognitive belief or disbelief. “Truth” and “falsity” do not apply to them, and, according to Ayer, nor does it apply to any God-talk. Ayer’s positivism was all the rage for a while, but today, few people are conscious advocates of this “logical positivism,” even though its scope and influence is incredibly widespread.
Understanding these three possible influences together: 1) The strategic advantage of donning a negative definition of atheism (“no belief in a God”), 2) combined with the argument of “The Presumption of Atheism,” and 3) a positivistic disposition–it makes complete sense why many contemporary atheists want to define their own camp in negative terms as “without theism, no belief in a God” instead of the historic and traditional usage of atheism as the positive position of “disbelief in God.” Addressing the complexity of the issue we find in the modern era. The term “agnostic” was coined by Thomas Huxley in 1889 with reference to his own conviction that knowledge about God’s existence or non-existence is impossible. He did not consider himself an atheist but found himself being called one.
Not surprisingly, the borders between “atheism” and “agnosticism” are often blurry or invisible. So for atheism to be distinct, defensible, and publically viable, it needs the help of some categorical distinctions since atheists are widely diverse and do not necessarily hold a party line when they don the moniker “atheist.” Somewhere in the Modern era, there seems to have been a division then in both Agnosticism and Atheism, rendering four categories from the previous two.
Negative/Weak/Soft Atheism–“no belief in God.”
Positive/Strong/Hard Atheism–“belief in no God.”
Weak Agnosticism–“knowledge of God does not exist.”
Strong Agnosticism–“knowledge of God is impossible.”
These categories are used by Michael Martin, Antony Flew, and William Rowe. I use these categories myself and find them quite helpful in clarifying some of the subtleties that arise in these debates. However, these are not standardized, and do not necessarily reflect the long history or widescale contemporary usage of “agnostic” and “atheist.” I recommend these categories for clarity of usage, but we should be careful not to follow, unthinking, the contemporary popular usage of “atheist” and “atheism” as being weak agnosticism. Etymology, history, and much contemporary standard sources defy that definition. Don’t believe me? Check some of the sources listed below. The latest entry is by atheist Kai Nielsen. William Rowe is also atheist. And I think Paul Edwards is too.
(historic usage) http://www.investigatingatheism.info/definition.html
(1942) Ferm, Vergilius. “Atheism” in Dictionary of Philosophy. Edited by Dagobert D. Runes. New Jersey: Littlefield, Adams & Co. Philosophical Library.
(1951) http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/e_haldeman julius/meaning_of_atheism.html
(1967) Edwards, Paul “Atheism” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 1. Collier-MacMillan, 1967. p. 175.
(1973) Edwards, Paul, ed., “Atheism” The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 1973
(1998) Rowe, William L. “Atheism” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward Craig. Routledge, 1998. (2009) Nielsen, Kai. “Atheism.” Encyclopædia Britannica.
Yesterday I got a call from my friend Bob Cornuke who is a Christian Indiana Jones. He had big news. Three years ago, Bob led me along with an expeditionary team into Iran to look for remnants of Noah’s Ark. In addition to Noah’s Ark, Bob has been looking for other major biblical archaeological finds including the real Mount Sinai (it’s in Saudi Arabia, not the Sinai Peninsula), and the Ark of Covenant—the golden chest in which the Israelites carried the actual stone Ten Commandments Moses received on Mount Sinai (yes, the Ark that was the subject of Raiders of the Lost Ark).
Here’s why Bob called. For years Bob has taken trips to Axum Ethiopia to the church where he, and others, have long-believed the real Ark has been kept. According to a report here, their beliefs are going to be confirmed today, June 26. 2009. Those supposedly in control of the ark for over 2,500 years are in Rome today after meeting with the Pope. They say they are going to reveal the Ark to the world and put it in a new museum in Axum. When will it be available for inspection? We don’t know. Bob thinks it might take a year to get the museum built. Hopefully more details will be revealed today. Bob is heading to Axum in a couple of weeks and again in January. Lord willing, I may join him for the January trip.
Who knows if this is the real deal, but it sure is interesting. If this report is true and it turns out to be the real Ark (we don’t know at this point), we won’t open it because we don’t want our faces to melt!
I’ll keep you informed of any developments from the inside. In the meantime, keep an eye on the news today, and read more about the Ark and Bob’s adventures here: www.BaseInstitute.org.
Here is an UPDATE for FRIDAY Evening: Nothing revealed from the Ethiopian official today. Click here for the story and more details on theories about the Ark. If an announcement is made, I’ll report it here.
(Author’s note: This is the fourth and last installment in a series discussing why Christians worship God. On this blog, the first installment may be found here, the second here, and the third here. On the author’s blog, the first installment can be found here, the second, here, and the third, here.)
Intimate Worship: Our Response To God As Companion
It was very difficult to write this last installment about intimate worship. Imagine trying to explain, after 30 years of marriage, exactly why you love your wife. It’s hard to say, exactly; and then, you can’t express it without exposing a part of yourself that’s usually reserved only for her. Worse, you feel certain that some who don’t understand will belittle your description, because it will be difficult for them to understand how such a relationship is even possible. That’s what I’m facing here. I’m exposing an intimate part of my soul with the expectation that it will be despised. Worse, I know my expression is going to fall far, far short of the reality, because it simply can’t be expressed in words. This is not easy.
There is far too little written of the individual Christian’s relationship with God. So little is written, and it’s often so vague, that people who have not experienced it have little idea what we even mean by it. Not only that, but I have only a small idea that what I mean by it is similar to what someone else means by it. I know there are elements I have in common with other believers, because I hear them speak of it from time to time — answers to prayer, conviction about particular weaknesses, encouragement in various forms. But there seem to be some parts of my relationship with God that not all other believers experience; and likewise, there are some things others say about their relationships with God that go deeper than what I experience. It seems that because everyone is different, God addresses each of us individually. It seems that some parts of our relationship depend on our willingness to go there.
And yet, this is the central fact of Christianity — that each of us may draw close to God through the agency of Christ, and become His friend, confidante, and disciple.
All of us Christians have in common that God addresses our character, and changes it dramatically. He arranges the combination of events and information in such a way as to identify changes we must make to our character, and He causes us to change by way of circumstances. This is a long-term process; it begins on the first day one becomes a Christian, and continues unabated for decades; or at least, that’s what has happened to me.
God also provides encouragement at intervals along the way, letting us know how He feels about us. It’s not just information that we apply to our particular circumstances; reminders of particular lessons arrive at the moment when they’re most needed, and we become aware that God knows how we’re feeling, and knows precisely what we need to hear. He sends friends to us when we need them, and assistance. The man who has the skills to repair our stove appears just when we need him; a job comes open at just the right time; we hear a chance word that settles the secret worry of our heart. Most Christians that I know experience this providential timing of events, and divine provision for their needs.
Underneath all this, we learn general truth from reading the scriptures, and from interacting with other believers, and come to understand the framework within which we live in Christ. There are moments when what we read is precisely the thing we needed to remember, but most times we’re just building gradually on an existing foundation of truth and understanding.
And then, there are individual quirks regarding how God gets our attention and communicates, and these are different for everybody. My wife, for example, sees significance in colors. When God has something to say to her, she notices a particular color that stands out, and over the years she’s come to associate specific colors with specific meanings. Also, when God wants to get her attention, she loses something; she might misplace her car keys, for example, and whenever she finds them, the location where she finds them and the nature of how she misplaced them will give her insight into some problem she’s facing at the moment. I don’t experience either of those things, although because I know her, I pay attention when she loses something. I know God’s trying to get my attention when I hear the same phrase several times during the same day, and the phrase usually indicates the general tenor of the message. I had a friend a while back who was a pastor, who used to know he was supposed to call a specific individual if he heard that individual’s name three times on the same day. As soon as the man’s name came up the third time, this fellow would drop what he was doing, pick up the phone, and call; invariably, the answer he’d get would include “How did you know I needed to talk to you?” A lot of Christians tell me of this sort of interaction between them and God in their lives, but it’s different for every individual, and some do not experience anything like this.
All of the interaction I’ve described goes on subtly, without fanfare. God is seldom ostentatious; He does what He needs to do to get His point across with a bare minimum of disturbance, and He leaves no tracks. Nature is the stationery on which He writes His notes to us and the pen with which He writes them, so communication almost always occurs as something about which one could say “It’s just a normal event” or “It’s just a coincidence,” and it never comes with an audit trail. So those who never experience it, think we’re just making fanciful illusions about ordinary events; and yet, for those who do experience it, God’s communication is constant, persistent, unmistakable, undeniable, and always, always deeply meaningful.
In all of these things, the Christian life is like a marriage. God is present at all times. One learns to speak to Him constantly, and in turn, He speaks periodically to specific items that need adjustment. The constant interplay of prayer and answer gradually becomes a backdrop to life that is very much like the companionship of a spouse or a beloved friend. One becomes used to a constant undercurrent of conversation with God. One comes to rely on it. One falls in love with Him.
Beyond this, one develops a deeply seated sense of gratitude, because God is so constantly meeting our needs in such profound ways. This affects different people differently, but their expressions about it all have a ring to them that’s similar to all the other expressions. In my own case, I have a strong sense of what my life would have been like without His intervention. I’m a recovering sex addict; I doubt that I would have lived as long as I have, or else I would have become a hopeless pervert and ruined myself and others. I can’t think about this without tears of gratitude, so I keep it in the background most of the time.
Those who have not known God, or those whose experience of the Church has been completely about practicing religion and religious habit, have no idea what I’m talking about. For those of us who have experienced God in significant degree, though, our love for God is very much like our love for our parents, or for our spouse, or for a lifelong friend; only, coupled with those feelings is the additional feeling of gratitude, because this friend, this spouse, this parent, is infallible. He’s always right, always accepting, always trustworthy, and always profound. We owe everything to Him.
To speak of commanding our love is absurd. For the Christian who has learned to love God, there’s no question of command. We offer our love and gratitude unstintingly. How could we do otherwise? He’s our whole life. What else is there?
It is this constant, inner gratitude and affection for God that constitutes the last sort of worship I’m going to write about; this is the intimate communication and devotion between God and His beloved. To know and to adore are the very center of God’s being, the thing that identifies Him most accurately, the thing that He does simply because it’s who He is. Those who come to know Him, adore Him back in like manner. To know fully, even as we are fully known; this is heaven, and the eternal life, and true worship.
(Author’s note: This is the third installment in a series discussing why Christians worship God. The first installment can be found here, and the second, here.)
Battle Worship: Our Cooperation With God As Liberator
There’s a fascinating scene in The Two Towers, the movie based on the second book of JRR Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, in which Frodo and Sam are being led through the Dead Marshes by Gollum. There’s a narrow path through the marsh that only Gollum knows, but there are ghostly men in the water all around them, giving off ghostly lights that entice and entrap. Gollum advises them sternly, “Don’t follow the lights.” But Frodo, enchanted by the cursed ring he’s carrying to its destruction, allows himself to be distracted by the lights, and finds himself falling into the water beside the path and seeing the dead as though they’d come to life. Gollum, seeing him fall, hauls him out of the water and exhorts him, “Don’t follow the lights!”
Christianity posits Earth as enemy-occupied territory in a celestial war. Humans, once granted dominion over the planet, invited demonic domination by sinning, and surrendered the planet into the hands of spirits rebelling against the reign of God. Every place in history where God intervened in the affairs of men constitutes a beachhead where God’s dominion has been re-established in some measure. Around those beachheads — the kingdom of Judah under righteous kings, the prophets, the Son of God and all those places where the Son’s followers obey Him — hover the unclean spirits as an occupying army, deceiving and destroying the souls who are their captives.
In ancient times, those who would follow and obey the true God and escape the influence of the occupying demons were given a task similar to Frodo and Sam’s journey through the Dead Marsh: don’t leave the path, keep your focus on God. This is the first of the Ten Commandments:
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
You shall have no other gods before Me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.
You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me,
but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
Exodus 20:2-6
The Ten Commandments, as the opening instructions in the Law of Moses, were commands to an ancient people in the peculiar position of being God’s first major beachhead on the occupied planet. There’s a metaphor here that’s particular to their situation — “a jealous God” — aimed at emphasizing the central importance of keeping their practices free of distracting elements. They didn’t realize how different they were, but God insisted on their unified focus to the exclusion of other gods for their own protection; every glance at other gods constituted a breach of their martial perimeter. (Imagining that God is literally jealous in the manner of ancient deities is like imagining, upon reading in the Psalms that God “will enfold you under His wings,” that God is a giant chicken. It’s a metaphor.)
It’s as though ancient Israel was Frodo’s and Sam’s fellowship in The Two Towers. Worship is the natural impulse of the soul, as we discovered in Part I. With the eyes of the soul fixed on the Almighty, one consistently remains on the path through the marsh. There are distractions to either side, but those distractions are demonic, like the souls of dead men in the Dead Marsh, and to be distracted by them is fatal. Don’t follow the lights; keep your focus on God, and on God alone. Unless you do this, you will eventually become unable to obey the other rules, as you become increasingly dominated by demonic influences.
When one’s focus shifts to some object of worship other than God, says the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, one worships demons (see I Corinthians 10:20). Paul was not speaking by analogy, but explaining truth as understood by Jewish theology. This explains why when humans worship lesser objects — statues of earthly objects and animals, heavenly bodies like the sun, moon, and stars, or imaginary beasts — they tend toward horrible practices, beginning with mindless, OCD-like repetitions, but at the extremities leading to the sacrificing of human beings, the drinking of human blood, burning children in the fire, and so forth.
With the coming of Christianity, the role of worship shifted. Whereas under Judaism the focus was simply keeping a besieging army at bay and protecting a tiny beachhead, under Christianity the task was invasion and re-occupation. The intent of Christianity was to push the demonic influences off the planet altogether, and establish the dominion of the Kingdom of God. In our Lord of the Rings analogy, it’s as though Christianity came to the Dead Marshes intending to drain them and clear them for building. Never mind “don’t follow the lights;” extinguish the lights. Bury the dead out of sight. Make the whole thing safe.
Here in the West, the sorts of demonic practices that usually characterize the worship of other gods died out a long time ago. It’s easy to take it for granted that such things are artifacts of a less enlightened past, but that’s just a Western conceit. Those practices died out in the West specifically because Christianity, the religion of the West, abhors them. They still go on in other places less influenced by the West, and as the West increasingly abandons the Christianity that built her, those sorts of practices will gradually reassert themselves.
This is why Christians denounce practices like Wicca. Wiccan rites seem relatively harmless, as the worship of false gods goes, but that’s because they were formulated in a culture still influenced by the habits of Christianity. As the Western knowledge of God recedes, the practices of those who worship other gods will become less and less harmless, and more and more demonic. They’re ceding ground to a vanquished army. They’re permitting a wedge that will become a breach.
I call the worship of God aimed at keeping us out of the demonic traps “battle worship,” recalling the fact that as servants of God, we’re engaged in recapturing the planet from the demonic warlords that occupy her. Wherever the worship of Christ displaces the worship of other things, God has influence to establish righteous behavior. It’s not an accident that the civilization built by Christianity is the one that abolished human slavery and introduced universal literacy and self-government. The knowledge of God pushes back the influence of the demonic; and while all Christian practices have the effect of establishing God’s influence here on earth, the first and foremost weapon for achieving God’s dominion is the worship of God. Worship has impact in the unseen world of spirits, pushing back the dark influences. Once the means by which humans could remain on a narrow path — “don’t follow the lights” — worship is now one of the primary tools for establishing God’s presence.
The following citation describes the heroic efforts of Petty Officer Monsoor who sacrificed himself to save his fellow Navy SEALs.
Summary of Action
Petty Officer Second Class (SEAL) Michael A. Monsoor
For actions on Sept. 29, 2006
“Petty Officer Michael A. Monsoor, United States Navy, distinguished himself through conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as a Combat Advisor and Automatic Weapons Gunner for Naval Special Warfare Task Group Arabian Peninsula in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom on 29 September 2006. He displayed great personal courage and exceptional bravery while conducting operations in enemy held territory at Ar Ramadi Iraq.
During Operation Kentucky Jumper, a combined Coalition battalion clearance and isolation operation in southern Ar Ramadi, he served as automatic weapons gunner in a combined SEAL and Iraqi Army (IA) sniper overwatch element positioned on a residential rooftop in a violent sector and historical stronghold for insurgents. In the morning, his team observed four enemy fighters armed with AK-47s reconnoitering from roads in the sector to conduct follow-on attacks. SEAL snipers from his roof engaged two of them which resulted in one enemy wounded in action and one enemy killed in action. A mutually supporting SEAL/IA position also killed an enemy fighter during the morning hours. After the engagements, the local populace blocked off the roads in the area with rocks to keep civilians away and to warn insurgents of the presence of his Coalition sniper element. Additionally, a nearby mosque called insurgents to arms to fight Coalition Forces.
In the early afternoon, enemy fighters attacked his position with automatic weapons fire from a moving vehicle. The SEALs fired back and stood their ground. Shortly thereafter, an enemy fighter shot a rocket-propelled grenade at his building. Though well-acquainted with enemy tactics in Ar Ramadi, and keenly aware that the enemy would continue to attack, the SEALs remained on the battlefield in order to carry out the mission of guarding the western flank of the main effort.
Due to expected enemy action, the officer in charge repositioned him with his automatic heavy machine gun in the direction of the enemy’s most likely avenue of approach. He placed him in a small, confined sniper hide-sight between two SEAL snipers on an outcropping of the roof, which allowed the three SEALs maximum coverage of the area. He was located closest to the egress route out of the sniper hide-sight watching for enemy activity through a tactical periscope over the parapet wall. While vigilantly watching for enemy activity, an enemy fighter hurled a hand grenade onto the roof from an unseen location. The grenade hit him in the chest and bounced onto the deck. He immediately leapt to his feet and yelled “grenade” to alert his teammates of impending danger, but they could not evacuate the sniper hide-sight in time to escape harm. Without hesitation and showing no regard for his own life, he threw himself onto the grenade, smothering it to protect his teammates who were lying in close proximity. The grenade detonated as he came down on top of it, mortally wounding him.
Petty Officer Monsoor’s actions could not have been more selfless or clearly intentional. Of the three SEALs on that rooftop corner, he had the only avenue of escape away from the blast, and if he had so chosen, he could have easily escaped. Instead, Monsoor chose to protect his comrades by the sacrifice of his own life. By his courageous and selfless actions, he saved the lives of his two fellow SEALs and he is the most deserving of the special recognition afforded by awarding the Medal of Honor.”
Many SEALs on the West Coast attended his funeral. As they filed past his coffin, they pressed their golden Trident pins into the wooden lid, turning the simple box into a gold-plated memorial. Petty Officer Monsoor was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously by a tearful President Bush on April 8, 2008.
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