Welcome back to Defender’s Voice. This is Paul Kattupalli. I woke up this morning to the news that Dr.Billy Graham went to be with the Lord. He was 99 years old. I remember the days when the media used to advertise the lar ge crusades conducted by Dr. Billy Graham. They used to ask people to pray for the crusades. Now, things have changed. The word ‘crusade’ has been removed from our lexicon. The mainstream media went through a secular transformation and has been targeting anyone who takes a stand for Biblical truth.
This past week we have seen Mike Pence pounded by Secular Left. From Olympic athletes to media figures like Joy Behar, many people attacked Mike Pence viciously. Pence is an ideal Christian. He served in the United States House of Representatives, then as the Governor of Indiana and now as the Vice President of the United States. He describes himself as ‘a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order’. I like that. Your faith should come first. It should form your worldview. From the worldview, you create your ideology. From that ideology, you should practice your politics. Sadly, many Christians start with politics and bend their faith to suit their politics. That’s not right. We should start with the Word of God and Christian faith. Everything should spring from that foundation.
Mike Pence has been committed to Christian morality. That kept him in the crosshairs of secular left throughout his political career.
Secular left believes that government should be big. Pence believes that government should be small. So, the secularists oppose his small government policies.
Secular left believes all you need to have sex is to get consent, Pence believes sex should be limited to marriage. So, the secularists attacked his sex education programs.
Secular left believes only evolution must be taught in schools. Pence believes in Special creation. So, the secularists think he should not hold a political office.
Secular left believes that unborn babies have no rights. Pence believes that unborn human life is sacred. So, the secularists oppose his anti-abortion stance.
Secular left believes the gender is fluid. Pence believes God decides the gender before a person’s birth. So, the secularists oppose his views on gender identity.
So, there is battle of worldviews here. The secular left has a grand strategy. Put as many people on government welfare, educate as many people in public schools, marinate as many people as possible in secular ideology, take over the government, and implement your policies. The secular left does not like any Bible believing Christians like Mike Pence. They are angry that he came this far in the government. They are angry that he became the Vice President of the United States, just a heartbeat away from the Presidency of the most powerful nation in the world.
Gus Kenworthy is a freestyle skier. He is openly gay. He went to South Korea to compete in Winter Olympics. Mike Pence also went to South Korea to lead the US delegation at the Winter Olympics. Gus Kenworthy tweeted – ‘Broke my thumb yesterday in practice. It won’t stop me from competing (obvi) but it does prevent me from shaking Pence’s hand so…Silver linings!…’
So this guy went to South Korea. He should have focused on his game. He should respect the Vice President of the United States. But he politicized the games. When he broke his thumb, he wanted to use the injury to poke at Mike Pence.
Mike Pence has been honoring the Word of God, that sexuality should be between a man and a woman united in marriage. He is not against homosexuals. He is not a homophobe. He is just upholding a truth he learnt from the Bible. But that is not how the secular left views him. Unless you hug them and say, ‘God bless your gay marriage’, you will become the target of their animosity. By default, you are homophobe, a bigot, a joyless soul, a neanderthal never evolved past your religious narrow mindedness.
John Shore of the Not All Like That Christians Project wrote at the Huffington Post, “If you vote against gay marriage or gay rights you are a bigot, as surely as anyone who voted against civil rights in the ‘60s was a bigot. If you preach against gay rights, you are a bigot….If, in private, you intimate to your dearest friend that you don’t think gay people should be allowed to get married, you are bigot” (Kirsten Powers)
The secular left only goes after Bible believing Christians. They don’t go after Islam. Islam not only forbids homosexuality, but sharia law recommends physical punishments for engaging in homosexual acts. I find it curious that secular left has no problem with Islamic orthodoxy. We don’t hear Joy Behar or Chris Matthews cracking jokes on Islam. In fact, it gets interesting.
Kirsten Powers is a columnist for USA Today and a political analyst at CNN. She wrote a book entitled, The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech, “To the illiberal left Islam cannot be criticized without recourse to bigotry; on the other hand, the illiberal left seems to regard Christianity as the very definition of bigotry”
If you criticize Islam, you are a bigot by default. On the other hand, Christianity itself is the very definition of bigotry. In the olden days, liberals used to uphold freedom of speech and freedom of expression in the marketplace of ideas. Not anymore, anyone who disagrees with them is a bigot. They are the worst of all human beings. Paul Krugman is a columnist for The New York Times. He is an economist, awarded Nobel Prize in Economics in 2008. He is a disciple of John Maynard Keynes, a British economist who believed in big government spending to address every problem in the society. Paul Krugman wrote,
‘In any case, let’s be clear: America in 2018 is not a place where we can disagree without being disagreeable, where there are good people and good ideas on both sides, or whatever other bipartisan homily you want to recite. We are, instead, living in a kakistocracy, a nation ruled by the worst, and we need to face up to that unpleasant reality.’
We are living in kakistocracy? What in the world is kakistocracy? A nation ruled by the worst! These people believe in God, Bible, human responsibility and all that stuff. They are the worst.
They think Mike Pence belongs to kakistocracy. CNN, MSNBC, ABC, Huffington Post, Salon..they are all angry at this man of God because he holds views derived from the Bible.
Now let me talk about two women who went after Mike Pence last week. First, Omarosa Newman. She is a former White House aide. Talking on the TV show Celebrity Big Brother, she said, ‘As bad as y’all think Trump is, you would be worried about Pence…..I’m just going to say that. So everybody that’s wishing for impeachment, might want to reconsider their life. We would be begging for days of Trump back if Pence became president, that’s all I’m saying”.
Hey guys, you are worried about Trump. You want him get impeached. You have no idea what you are asking for. Pence is worse than Trump. Why is Pence more dangerous than Trump?’
Omarosa said, “I am Christian. I love Jesus, but he thinks Jesus tells him to say things. And I’m like, ‘Jesus ain’t say that. He’s scary’.
Mike Pence is so scary because he thinks Jesus tells him to say things. Then we got Joy Behar on ABC Television show The View. Joy Behar said, ‘It’s one thing to talk to Jesus. It’s another thing when Jesus talks to you….that’s called mental illness’
If you want to follow the Word of God, if you think God speaks to you, that’s called mental illness. Mike Pence responded with these words, ‘To have ABC maintain a broadcast forum that compared Christianity to mental illness is just wrong. It is simply wrong for ABC to have a television program that expresses that kind of religious intolerance”
Omarosa and Joy Behar. These two women represent two groups of people. Omarosa represents people who attack Biblical Christianity from inside the Church, while Joy Behar represents people who attack Christianity from outside the church.
Omarosa says, ‘I am a Christian, I love Jesus’. If you really love Jesus, you don’t make fun of a fellow Christian like she did. We have many people in the church who call themselves Christians. But they don’t think the Bible should determine our beliefs and our worldview. So, they say, ‘I love Jesus’ and turn around and mock believers who take God’s word seriously.
Then we have Joy Behars. They are secular people. They attack Christian faith as a mental illness. Your faith is not just another worldview, it is a mental illness that must be treated. French Philosopher Paul Riccoeur coined the phrase ‘Hermeneutics of suspicion’. He called Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud as the masters of the school of suspicion. There is a reductionism in this school of thought.
In the Marxian reductionism, man is reduced to economy.
In the Nietzschean reductionism, man is reduced to nihilism.
In the Freudian reductionism, man is reduced to sexual instinct.
In hermeneutics of suspicion, I don’t treat your faith neutrally. I suspect it is a mental problem.
If you think about God, if you are craving for God, your problem is not spiritual. Your problem is economic. Karl Marx wrote,
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature,
the heart of a heartless world,
and the soul of soulless conditions.
It is the opium of the people’.
In the past it used to be, ‘I don’t believe in God, but if you believe in God, that’s ok’. Now, ‘I don’t believe in God, but if you believe in God, that is not ok. You have a mental problem’.
Karl Marx described religious faith as neurosis. Secular leftists in our society are walking in the footsteps of Marx.
BIll Maher says religion is a ‘neurological disorder’
Keith Olbermann calls pro-lifers ‘Christian jihadists’
Katie Couric calls Christian values ‘repugnant’
Christopher Hitchens calls God ‘a psycho’
Chris Matthews says Sarah Palin’s faith is not ‘normal’
In a speech he gave in San Francisco on the campaign trail, Obama said, ‘You go into these small town in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for twenty-five years and nothing’s replaced them. And it’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations’
Their jobs are gone, so they are bitter and they cling to their religion. That’s Marxian view of religion in the mouth of President Obama. The secular left has taken over the mainstream media. A journalist should report truth. Truth is what is connected to reality. For modern journalism, truth is what is consistent with your own ideology. They see religion as neurosis that must be oppressed or removed.
S.E. Cupp is a political commentator. She wrote a book entitled Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity. In this book she describes the media as revolutionaries.
“The revolutionaries are not in the White House, nor are they in the state house, though they often work in concert and toward similar goals. The revolutionaries are people you see and hear every day. They are people you trust. They are the people you rely on to tell you what to wear, what to buy, what to drive, what to watch, what to listen to, what to read, where to live, where to visit, where to eat, whom to like, whom to hate, whom to help, when to go outside, when to stay indoors, when to shop, when to save, what to think, what to believe. The revolutionaries are in the media.
The people you trust to be fair, accurate, objective, and insightful, the so-called watchdogs of the states, protectors of truth, gatekeepers and guardians of freedom, are the very revolutionaries out to shame, mock, subvert, pervert, corrupt, debase, and extinguish your beliefs, the beliefs of the vast majority of Americans, and the values upon which this country was founded. They’re doing one thing they are never supposed to do: They’re taking sides.”
S.E. Cupp describes herself as an atheist. But even she is outraged by the secular left’s attacks on the Christians and their values. They are trying to ‘extinguish your beliefs, the beliefs of the vast majority of Americans, and the values upon which this country was founded. They’re doing one thing they are never supposed to do: They’re taking sides.’
America is a nation founded upon Christian values. Even foreign visitors recognized the Christian influence on America. Alexis de Tocqueville was a French aristocrat and statesman. His life was between 1805 and 1859. He visited the United States in 1831. After his visit, between 1835 and 1840, Tocqueville published the two-volume work Democracy in America. This book became a classic work in social sciences.
Tocqueville was a liberal. He believed in the equality before the law. He believed in democracy. But unlike today’s liberals, Tocqueville affirmed the influence of Christian faith on America. He wrote these words in Democracy in America,
‘There is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth’
Consider George Washington, the first President. At his first inauguration on April 30, 1789, Washington put his right hand on the Bible. He added, ‘so help me God’ to his oath. He bent forward and kissed the Bible. Washington ranks among the greatest generals in the history of the world. Yet, he was humble and respectful of God and the Bible. We don’t see such humility among our leaders in our time.
‘So, help me God’: it was a prayer of supplication. After a tragedy, if we say, ‘let us pray’, the media is mocking such gestures. The secular left is mocking prayer because in their worldview, there is no God. So prayer makes no sense. In Darwinian worldview, we are like walking apes. Government is like a big monkey. If a school shooting or some other tragedy happens, they say, ‘where is government’? Big monkey, where are you? Come and help us. We have to help each other, or big monkey should help with more legislation and more regulations. There is no God above big monkey. That’s why they mock prayer.
Washington in his inaugural address said these words:
“It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States, a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge”
You can see Christian worldview in those words: God of the universe to God of the individual.
‘Almighty Being who rules over the universe,
who presides in the councils of nations,
and whose providential aids can supply every human defect,
that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States’
Abraham Lincoln, in his second inaugural address, made fourteen references to God and four Bible verses. You can still see them in Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. In the near future, we can predict that the secular left and ACLU might want to remove all references to God from national monuments.
ACLU wants to remove God using court system. The Pledge of Allegiance was adopted by the Congress in 1954. It was signed by President Eisenhower. It was supported by 91 percent of American people. The atheists ever since, have been hating the phrase ‘under God’.
Under God? Remove that phrase. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the phrase ‘under God’ is unconstitutional in 2002. That 91 percent would like to see America as ‘under God’ did not matter to that court.
The Supreme Court overruled the Ninth Circuit. Listen to what Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said about ‘under God’.
“Even if taken literally, the phrase is merely descriptive; it purports only to identify the United States as a Nation subject to divine authority. This cannot be seen as a serious invocation of God or an as expression of individual submission to divine authority….Any religious freight the words may have been meant to carry has long since been lost.”
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, appointed by Ronald Reagan, says, Under God, ‘cannot be seen as a serious invocation of God or an as expression of individual submission to divine authority’
Her argument is, let ‘Under God’ stay because we don’t take it seriously anyway. Let ‘under God’ stay because we don’t really mean it.
Madame Justice, have you ever read George Washington inaugural speech?
Have you ever read Washington’s farewell speech?
Have you ever read Gettysburg Address?
Have you ever read Lincoln’s second inaugural address?
Under God is not a ceremonial phrase. Washington and Lincoln did not use those words ceremonially. There is a concrete, Christian worldview in those words. They made God of the Bible the very foundation of government and democracy.
It is God who gave us liberty. Secular left does not recognize that. As Cornelius Van TIl said, they sit in God’s lap in order to slap him in the face. They want to remove all references to God from public square.
They want to remove all religious symbols. In April 2009, President Obama gave a speech at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. White House asked the school to cover all religious symbols especially a monogram symbolizing Jesus’s name in Gaston Hall, where Obama was to speak. They made a Catholic school to cover Jesus with a piece of black-painted plywood. Can they do that to a Muslim university? Cover all Quran verses with a black sheet?
Your liberty to mock God in the West today is a gift of God of the Bible. Try cracking jokes on Allah in Saudi Arabia or Iran or Pakistan. Try cracking jokes on Krishna or Hinduism in India.
What should we do?
Secular left takes Darwinism seriously. They question every politician about what they believe about the origins. Chris Matthews of MSNBC asked Mike Pence, ‘Do you believe in evolution?’ Mike Pence said, ‘I believe with all my heart that God created the heavens and the earth, the seas and all that is in them. How he did that, I’ll ask him about some day’.’
Secular left knows that once a person says he or she believes that God created humanity, they espouse a Christian worldview. If man evolved accidentally, they follow humanism. The secularists take atheism seriously. As S.E. Cupp wrote, they are systematically taking over public schools, universities, Hollywood, all three branches of government like a a revolution.
What can we learn from them? As Christians, we should take our Christian faith seriously. We should work to protect our Christian heritage.
Read about First Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening. They brought great spiritual revival to America and also helped many social movements like abolition of slavery, women’s rights, education for all, programs for alcoholism etc etc.
Justice O’Connor said, ‘Any religious freight the words may have been meant to carry has long since been lost.”
That is our main problem today. Many words like God, Jesus, church lost their biblical meaning. We gave our own pluralistic, pantheistic, materialistic meanings to these words.
We should get back to our fundamentals in the Bible and then honor God in our lives, both in private and public square. May God give us courage in this endeavor.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, people mocked you, insulted you, and crucified you. So, we are not surprised when we get mocked, insulted and persecuted when we stand for your name. We pray that you give us the power of your Holy Spirit to stand for you firmly in our calling. Help us stand for you in the public square. In your precious name, we pray, Amen.
References
The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech
By Kirsten Powers
Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity
By S. E. Cupp
Rediscovering God in America: Reflections on the Role of Faith in Our Nation …
By Newt Gingrich