Subject: Humanism Date: 29 Nov 1997 To: keith@zbh.com
You blame humanistic thought for drug problems, highway violence, illicit sex and overindulgence in everything evil, I imagine.
I am a humanist. I have never touched drugs, I am patient and courteous on the road, have never engaged in dangerous/exploitive sex. I am healthy, happy, own my own home, have an excellent job, do charity work and have no intention of taking advantage of anyone because "there is no god."
Your views are the result of a severe lack of education and certainly a lack of personal observation of self proclaimed humanists. If you truly understand and know many humanists as friends and neighbors, including myself, you would not have come to the conclusions you have and attempt to force Revelations verses to fit your own biases.
Already you have swiftly come to the conclusion that I am doomed to hell. So be it. If people like you are going to heaven, I don't want to go there. Too many angry, prejudiced "souls."
I answered her with the following:
Hi
We may have different definitions of Humanism. The leaders of the humanism movement have misrepresented it to the masses, so many think they are humanistic when they are not.
Real humanism sets man up as god and it's core characteristic is selfishness. It even teaches no one ever does anything for non-selfish reasons. It always attaches conditions to love.
The Bible teaches that the love of God is a totally self sacrificing, unconditional kind of love. As you describe yourself, you have a lot of love that is not a humanistic kind - it appears to be the unconditional love that only comes from God. Whether you are a Christian or not, God is still the only source of true love.
And I still say the source of the evils of our time are the selfish actions and attitudes like Humanism teaches.
Keep hanging onto the love that comes from God.
Yours in Christ, Keith Howard
I received this answer:
Already you are attempting to mold me into what you want to see me as, which is a bad idea. The true teaching of humanism is not selfishness. Humanism seeks solutions not thru god but thru self. My love is not god derived although I am sure it gives you satisfaction and a sense of power to attempt to redefine it as it suits you and to virtually claim I am a Christian because of your interpretation of the source of this love.
I also support abortion, gay and lesbian rights and the legalization of drugs. I also approve of extra marital sex. I fight to keep the bible and god out of public schools.
The love of god is totally self sacrificing? Is that why 76% of the world population will end up in hell for being nonbelievers? What a sacrifice..real impressive.
I Answered Again:
Hi,
You are right, most people will end up in Hell, not because God is punishing them, but because they made that their choice. God simply will honor their choice. You did say you are pro-choice didn't you?
The only source of sacrificing love is God. In fact it is His very nature. That does not mean all people who have a portion of this love are Christians.
Good and bad, selfishness and unselfishness, are all in this world. It is here to give us a taste of what it will be after death. We can choose selfishness and the bad or unselfishness and the good.
Whether we are Christians or not depends on whether we, individually, accepted the payment Jesus made on the Cross for our sins. If we did we become part of God's family. If we didn't we remain separate from God.
The choice is ours. No one can make it for us.
Yours in Christ, Keith Howard
One last answer:
Let's end this discussion, I prefer to deal with intellectuals.
Thank you,
God is Pro-Choice.
He gives each person the opportunity and responsibility of choosing whether or not to obey Him. God is not pro-choice about abortion. That is one person taking the life of another. The person killing their child should be exercising more self-discipline over their own actions and desires.
Deu 30:15-20, "Now listen! Today I am giving you a choice between prosperity and disaster, between life and death. {16} I have commanded you today to love the LORD your God and to keep his commands, laws, and regulations by walking in his ways. If you do this, you will live and become a great nation, and the LORD your God will bless you and the land you are about to enter and occupy. {17} But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods, {18} then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live a long, good life in the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy. {19} "Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, that you and your descendants might live! {20} Choose to love the LORD your God and to obey him and commit yourself to him, for he is your life. Then you will live long in the land the LORD swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."
We are to Teach our Children to choose
Prov 22:6, Teach your children to choose the right path, and when they are older, they will remain upon it.
Some think they have obeyed this Scripture because they have taught their children the right path. But did they teach them how to choose? In the end the choice belongs to each of us. No one can make it for us, but they can teach us how to make good choices.
Few will enter God's Kingdom
Mat 7:13-14, "You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose the easy way. {14} But the gateway to life is small, and the road is narrow, and only a few ever find it.
We cannot walk through the narrow gate while we are being tossed back and forth by the actions of others. If we let others make the choices for us we will never find peace and direction in our lives. God will lead us (often through the advice of others) to make our own choices.
We can Choose Sin or Obedience to God
Rom 6:16-23, Don’t you realize that whatever you choose to obey becomes your master? You can choose sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God and receive his approval. {17} Thank God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now you have obeyed with all your heart the new teaching God has given you. {18} Now you are free from sin, your old master, and you have become slaves to your new master, righteousness. {19} I speak this way, using the illustration of slaves and masters, because it is easy to understand. Before, you let yourselves be slaves of impurity and lawlessness. Now you must choose to be slaves of righteousness so that you will become holy. {20} In those days, when you were slaves of sin, you weren’t concerned with doing what was right. {21} And what was the result? It was not good, since now you are ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom. {22} But now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. {23} For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Dr. Victor Frankl, the bold, courageous Jew who became a prisoner during the Holocaust, endured years of indignity and humiliation by the Nazis before he was finally liberated. At the beginning of his ordeal, he was marched into a Gestapo courtroom. His captors had taken away his home and family, his cherished freedom, his possessions, even his watch and wedding ring. They had shaved his head and stripped his clothing off his body. There he stood before the German high command, under the glaring lights being interrogated and falsely accused. He was destitute, a helpless pawn in the hands of brutal, prejudiced, sadistic men. He had nothing. No, that isn't true. He suddenly realized there was one thing no one could ever take from him -- just one. Do you know what it was?
Dr. Frankl realized he still had the power to choose his own attitude. No matter what anyone would ever do to him, regardless of what the future held for him, the attitude choice was his to make. Bitterness or forgiveness. To give up or to go on. Hatred or hope. Determination to endure or the paralysis of self-pity.
God Gives us all we need to make the choices
Rom 1:20-32, From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky and all that God made. They can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God. {21} Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. The result was that their minds became dark and confused. {22} Claiming to be wise, they became utter fools instead. {23} And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people, or birds and animals and snakes. {24} So God let them go ahead and do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. {25} Instead of believing what they knew was the truth about God, they deliberately chose to believe lies. So they worshiped the things God made but not the Creator himself, who is to be praised forever. Amen. {26} That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. {27} And the men, instead of having normal sexual relationships with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men and, as a result, suffered within themselves the penalty they so richly deserved. {28} When they refused to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their evil minds and let them do things that should never be done. {29} Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, fighting, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. {30} They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They are forever inventing new ways of sinning and are disobedient to their parents. {31} They refuse to understand, break their promises, and are heartless and unforgiving. {32} They are fully aware of God’s death penalty for those who do these things, yet they go right ahead and do them anyway. And, worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.
We may at times at first choose the wrong path through ignorance, but the Lord will guide us and often the results of wrong choices will reveal the true way.
When we reach the end and look back over our life, we will not be able to truly say we never knew what we should have done to be saved. We will have made that choice.
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