Posted by
ValiantForTruth on Friday, October 23, 2009 12:11:02 AM
The Reformation in Northern Europe not only brought forth a clear preaching of the gospel, but also brought forth distinctive governmental and social results. Among these was a form-freedom balance in government with its series of checks and balances. There was great freedom without pounding the order of the society to pieces because it was contained by the Christian consensus.
In the middle of the 19th century, groups began to enter the United States in increasing number which did not have the Reformation base. These enjoyed the freedom, though their base would not have produced it.
The greatest shift came with the rise of the material-energy, chance view of final reality. This view was completely contrary to that which had produced the form-freedom balance in the United States with its resulting freedom. This mistaken view of what final reality is leaves no room for meaning, purpose, or values in the universe and it gives no base for law. This view brings forth its natural results in all fields, and these results are the opposite of the natural results of the final reality being the personal God.
The humanistically based view of final reality began to be influential in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. Its control of the consensus has become overwhelmingly dominant since the middle of the 20th century. The shift has affected all parts of society and culture, but most importantly it has come largely to control government and law. These, then, have become the vehicle for forcing this view (with its natural results) on the public. This has been true in many areas—including, especially, the way it has been forced on students in the schools. Media which almost entirely hold the same world view have added to all this.
The world view which produced the founding of the United States in the first place is increasingly now not allowed to exert its influence in government, in the schools, or in the public means of information.
The result of the original base in the United States gave the possibility of “liberty and justice for all.” And while it was always far from perfect, it did result in liberty. This included liberty to those who hold other views—views which would not give the freedom. The material-energy, chance view has taken advantage of that liberty, supplanted the consensus, and resulted in an intolerance that gives less and less freedom in courts and schools for the view which originally gave the freedoms. Having no base for law, those who hold the humanist view make binding law whatever they personally think is good for society at the moment. This leads increasingly to arbitrary law and rulings which produce chaos in society and which then naturally and increasingly tend to lead to some form of authoritarianism. At that point what the country had in the first place is lost and dead.
[Francis Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, 1982]