WHERE'S THE SECULAR WORLD AND ALSO
RELIGION TODAY?
Religion and the secular realm increasingly overlap today. For example, Bible prophecies indicate trouble to come in the secular realm. People question whether great storms and other disasters are "sent by God." The two fields are no longer considered to be as separate as in recent decades. Even science and religion have been saying hello on the borders of each.
In religion, everything is being reexamined. Direct worship is steadily taking the place of intermedial. A new frontier - - an era of Christian overcoming - - looms, in which divine healing and related benefits will become much more commonplace. Even today, power-Christianity at a level far in excess of what was expected of entire churches, church doctrines and clergies of only 50 years ago, is in the hands of ordinary people in the pews. Yet despite miracles everywhere, we know little of how effects are obtained. (Changes today won't break up churches any more than changes - - such as acceptance of divine healing and other Bible phenomena - - broke them up yesterday.)
Continuing exodus
What's happening? We can see for sure that the spiritual quest of the millennias is relentlessly coming to a head in the West as the "continuing exodus" moves towards a spiritual promised land - - the biblical Kingdom. Amidst this, however, the secular West is dropping away. (As for the East, the religious as usual, hazes out and is not coming to a head - - but in the secular East, we see an immense force rising among the billions in China and India.
Butting heads
We face many difficult questions as the religious and secular butt heads over genetics, abortion, and other controversial activities breaking new ground in human thought. We see other difficult areas in the relationship of secular governments to churches.
Can the secular make a better man than Adam?
If secular improvements and new models are taking us beyond Adam, what does this mean to religion?
Where's the old Western movie morality play? Booooring!
In this age which is breaking all boundaries, consider that our entertainment is often into hyper-imagination of extremely death-centered themes, instead of the Bible's "putting down imaginations" of the type that make evil seem superior to everything else. The entertainment genre of even recent times was once the victory of good over evil, whereas the new is the awesome superior power of evil - - even of God doing terrible things, killing, abandoning, and so on - - and this is called, in effect, good. These mental gymnastics unsettle our thought.
In searching for the biblical end of all evil, we have to consider that if evil is in God, it will always be there, and we will always believe it is the power of last resort.
Still in the realm of imagination, we're 24/7 into vicarious living in sporting events, teams and figures, a zillion other demigoddess and demigod celebrities such as music and other entertainment idols, even products, branded clothing, and so on. We're seeking our identity in imaginary relationships with these exterior things instead of finding our identity and place in God.
More gods, goddesses, idols than in all history
We have more mythological gods, goddesses, idols and powerful fake-based influences in the U.S. today than in Rome, Greece, the primitive pagans and all history combined. To all this, we can add our absurd cartoon "super-heroes" and their fake ambiences. Our celebrity craze is incomprehensible. Recently, on the 7 a.m. morning news shows, all three major networks led off the world news with speculation that some U.S. actor in France was maybe getting engaged or maybe even married. Meanwhile, we have a war on, also there are incredible problems in Africa.... These news shows did not touch difficult subjects at all on that particular morning. "Nothing"-type news is crowding out what we need to be deeply informed about, and thinking about.
The U.S. "enclave"
We're "enclaving" in a phony comfort zone of our own making. Where do we go for serious news, in-depth interviews, trenchant analysis, good advice? We don't go, because those things are uncomfortable, analysts say. Networks say people switch stations if the news doesn't entertain - - and the number of "eyeballs" fastened to their screen equate to what they can charge for commercials.
Are we going to be dreaming in front of TV sets while our government changes from democracy (in a God-ordained land with a spiritual mission), to a rule-from-the-top corporate type of government - - a "corpocracy" - - permanently installed controlling everything? Or when a nuke goes off in a port, waking us up from considering which new car to buy when we don't even need a new car? As individuals, we're going to need effective Spirit-based identity in a world gone nuts.
Not starry nights contemplating God
Our constant entertainment, and occupation with distraction, is the opposite of quiet direct communication with God on the Judean hills at night, as the Bible figures had. Yet today we should increase our communication with God beyond the ancient times, because today we are facing drastic end-time situations not a lifetime with the sheep. (That "end-time" is only the end of all evil as in Revelation 21:4, 7 - - but evil is not going to go quietly.)
Wild and crazy "sex"
The sexual situations of II Timothy 3:1-7 are here, as are those of Romans 1:26-27.
Chance
We're wildly into games of chance (all based on another's misfortune) instead of relying on God's certainty and blessings for all, and making the proof of spiritual water right where the material rock forbids it, which is related to the great wave of divine healing and other glimpses of the Kingdom and its effects in the secular.
Rushing about
We have more knowledge than sense. We rush to and fro frantically, go faster and faster, move continually to avoid the impending spike of doom, while having no still, quiet, confident place of knowing God, from which to overcome the adverse forces that would rule us.
A dark side to everything
All of our wonderful new material products and procedures have a dark side.
The pyramid vs. the divine city
We're pyramidal instead of in the city foursquare. To find a place, or hold ours, we have to fight, negate and exclude others. We need death at the bottom to cleanse the pyramid - - the scapegoat-related dumping system which apparently is also built into our human nature (a nature we might well instead be cleaning up and changing in front of the Lord instead of indulging). God won't harm ya - - the divine helps you clean house.
We live amidst constant gladiatorial one-left-standing pyramidal contests in progress or concluding at any given time. We're addicted to drugs including our own adrenaline from constant "edge" type excitement - - and now we need not only one murder and shock per "good show," but many per "body-bag" show. Our video games for young people and movies for everyone teach problem-resolution by killing. We want "fear factor" in everything. We want Survivor. We want desperation and one-left-standing, the "glory" of this concept, and tough luck for everyone else.
Homogenizinggood and evil
Everywhere, we've homogenized good and evil to the point where we don't seem to know the difference, and have given to evil, "rights." Is the eventual separating - - which is definitely going to come, and which is certain to be difficult - - one meaning of the "tribulation"? A "tribulum" is a threshing instrument.
No penalty?
We seem to be in a period of "no penalty." But few can deny that the civilization in America is sliding down when compared with its higher concepts of 50 or so years ago. The problem with the easy, even pleasant-seeming slide downward is that when we suddenly have to turn around, we're way too low, debauched, and in a pit with slippery walls. Arghh.
Religion, facing all this, does a lot of good, but is far behind a world that is on the edge of being beyond control.
We think God sends the earthquake, storm and flood, but these are convulsions of the biblical carnal mind. God says fly along my beam, or you will surely die. So we wander off, hit a mountain, then say God hit us with the mountain! God says stay out of the swamp, but we go in, get eaten or bitten by the alligators, then say God sent the alligators. But in Psalms 139:7-10 and Romans 8:38-39 KJV, "even there" and even in "hell," God is willing to help.
Are we ignoring the world's difficulties where half of six billion don't have reliable water or decent sanitation? Sure we are. We're diverted by entertainment, saturated in debt, living instant gratification with cheap products bought with borrowed money (personal debt plus the trade deficits to buy oil that we burn up, and cheap products that have short lives, plus the government's budget deficit) when the borrowing well is about dry. We import more than half our oil, yet only one or two baby nukes (3 KT backpack types compared to Hiroshima's 18 KT) in the Middle East could destroy key infrastructure there, make that location unusable for years due to nuclear contamination, and create world havoc. Europe is 80 percent dependent on Mideast oil. (The U.S. has spread its dependency around, but would still go into convulsions and besides, couldn't stand by and let Europe collapse.)
Mild to medium megalomania - - "large" mania
Despite obvious facts, we accept anything the government says or "spins." We're "safely" (we think) inside an enclave" of belief in our supremacy - - a syndrome known as megalomania - - when we're less than 5 percent of the world's population.
Hitler asked his staff, the joke goes, "What's this great big place over here on the right side of the map?" "Why, that's Russia," a general replied. "And what's this big place over the other way, across the ocean?" "Why that's the United States, my Fuehrer." "Well, then what's this little place here in the middle?" "Why that's our mighty Reich, my Fuehrer." Well, we could rephrase all that in terms of populations not land, by asking, "What's this three billion people over here, and what's this other three billion people over there?" And, "What's this little 300 million - - a small piece of only a single billion, and only about four percent of the world's population - - here in the middle?" I'll let you answer that.
Population also bears on the situation of world Christianity. Christians - - only one-third of the world's population of six and a half billion - - have the reality of facing, talking with, and relating to Muslims, Hindus, and other great blocs of worshipers, outnumbering Christians 2 to 1, most "east of Suez."
We control the seas, now that Russia's missile submarines are inoperable and rusting. But it only takes one, with 20 multiple-warhead missiles on board.
We have the weapons at the moment.
But we don't control the great land masses. And are we antagonizing the immense populations there?
Explosives (or arrows) don't kill evil - - it appears again
We currently seem to believe that weapons will kill evil (and often our approach commits evil in the name of getting rid of evil). However, although evil people die and historic evil empires fall, evil itself - - untouched - - moves into other forms, times, nations, organizations, people. Some Bible interpreters say that all evil empires (those that oppressed Israel) will be represented in the end. Their evil and evils were never destroyed, just their outward forms.
We have to learn to defeat evil itself.
Some think God will out-evil evil - - destroy unrighteous earthly evil with higher, righteous evil. (The trouble with that is that it leaves us still with evil - - and in God.)
The Bible speaks of a higher form of warfare - - even harmless and bloodless. "We do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds…)" (II Cor. 10:4.) I go into this in other papers on my related websites. And as always, I'll be glad to hear from you via e-mail, see LH column or below.
Religion has more capabilities than it currently exercises, but to find and exercise these, it must move forward out of rigid positions, up the Highway. It must get on the field, and show results greater than in the past. And so must I. The Bible is progressive, moving toward the end of evil. Is religion on board? Jesus said believers would do his works. Are we on board?
Will Christians "get outta here," as many believe, and thus avoid the secular problems? Indeed it's predicted they will be "with the Lord," but the Lord's coming here. I rather think the verses in I Thessalonians 4:16-17 simply mean they'll rise in consciousness, awareness, new information and great spiritual empowerment, but remain "with the Lord" right here, working as the "labourers" Jesus said he needed for his harvest - - not off somewhere escaping the part of the job we humans have to do. We can't do much from some remote location.
© 2008 Karl Roebling. All rights reserved.
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