We live in a world where many voices shout for our attention and many causes contend for our allegiance. The philosophies of men which were like small streams flowing through society have, in our day, become flood-like, moving with irresistible force and sweeping away all opposition and all the standards of a previous generation.
These world-views are not simply philosophies. Make no mistake in understanding their force. They are new religions to which many adhere. Each has its devoted disciples who avidly absorb each new tenet and idea. There are the apostles who preach with evangelistic fervor the “truth” of their position. Each is marked by an almost rabid fanaticism which has no other attraction than “the unthinkable alternative.” God and His truth with all its dread implications, must be excluded!
We have advanced from Pope’s idea that the proper study of man is man, to where we now believe that the proper worship of man is man! The environmentalist worships “mother earth,” the pantheist worships nature, and some worship their own bodies.
What should our stand as believers be amidst such a world as ours? How can we “serve the will of God in our generation?”
There is a danger in knowing too much about these new world-views. Some, in attempting to understand the nuances and logic of eastern religions and other philosophies, have been overcome by the very teachings they sought to refute. Once the writings and thoughts of men are allowed an equal footing with the Scriptures, we are on enemy territory without any defense.
But there is an even greater danger in being ignorant of this teaching as well. We should be aware of the thinking of the world around us, not to be able to argue and confront the unbeliever, but to avoid its pernicious and insidious infiltration into our own thinking. We do not realize how much the thinking pattern of the world has invaded our own standards. It is only when we see the strategy of the enemy and we bring everything back to Scripture that we can be preserved. Ignorance is fraught with incalculable danger.
The article on Humanism in our magazine this month forcibly underlines what has become the dominant philosophical teaching of our age. Its offspring and aberrations are many, but it continues to hold sway in the most influential sphere in our world – education.
A needed warning note is raised in this excellent article to which we would all do well to harken. If it has invaded our schools and our thinking, will it be long before it invades our assembly life?
Other articles which will follow in this series will deal with other world-views which surround us in secular society. It is our fervent prayer that these writings will be used to preserve us and bring about a moral readjustment in our thinking.
AJH
