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National NewsConservative News
The Separation of Truth and State
By Mike Scruggs
Posted on: April 11, 2005
The American people have been bamboozled for more than a generation now that their government can safely ignore God and his moral standards. The principal underlying presumption in this is that the God of the Bible is irrelevant. The presumption is that there is not really a God at all, or if there is a God, he is either too impotent or too distant to be concerned with the affairs of men. This humanist philosophy presumes that the wisdom of man is the standard of all things. There is no fear of a God that is all-powerful, all-wise, sovereign over all of nature and the affairs of men, and who is himself the one and absolute standard of truth, good and right.
But what if there is a God? What if God is the God of the Bible? Can men or governments safely ignore his teachings? Would it not be the epitome of arrogant stupidity to ignore him and his teachings? Are we not presuming on his patience to continue our self-centered delusion? These are questions that must be asked of those who have foisted a mandate for godless government on the American people. More importantly, these are searching questions for those who know better, but have acquiesced to throwing God out of the affairs of men.
One of the chief means of foisting this arrogant presumption on the American people has been the groundless proposition that the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution commands a “separation of church and state.” People who actually read the First Amendment will search in vain for any such words. They are not there. People who take a bit of time to study the history of that amendment and the Constitution as a whole will find that what is prohibited is for the federal government to establish an official denomination, such as Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, or Roman Catholic. Also prohibited to the federal government is preventing the free exercise of religion. It might also be argued that even the word, “religion,” as seen in the First Amendment meant to the founders the religion of the Bible. Those who have not been blinded to truth by the all pervasive secularist propaganda of our times will see that the whole United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence presume that the God of the Bible is the standard of all truth, wisdom, and justice. The First Amendment emphatically does not insist on the silly and dangerous idea that government and justice should be based on the humanist, agnostic, and atheistic religion of modern liberalism. To throw God out of government, our schools, and the courts is an insane distortion of the Constitution by those who would have no God besides themselves. But those who know better and acquiesce to this distortion will not be held guiltless.
It is true according even to the Bible that government and the organized Church in its various denominations have quite different functions and spheres of influence. The Church may preach salvation and righteousness and admonish against sin, but it does not make or enforce civil law. It may rebuke or sever a person from its privileges and membership, but it is not given the power of the sword. It cannot enforce the moral law by physical force, incarceration, or fine. Government may make and enforce civil law, and it may use physical force, incarceration and fines to do so, but it cannot dabble in the realm of the Church. Meddling with the teachings, worship, and government of the Church is off limits to civil government. When Thomas Jefferson used the phrase “a wall of separation” between church and government, he was attempting to assure Baptists that the federal government would not meddle in their teachings, government, and form of worship. Our religious freedom is not freedom from God. It is freedom from government in the sphere of religion.
It is very important to point out here that although both the Church and civil government have different spheres of influence and different functions; both the Church and civil government are under the sovereignty of God and are accountable to him. Hence there can be no separation of God and state, only a separation of the functions of Church and state. Governments, judges, legislators, public officials, the Church, and the people are all accountable to God, and it is his moral law to which they are held accountable. Yet we have government officials, judges, and legislators in this country who mistakenly believe they are the supreme arbitrators of moral law. The God of the Bible has been dismissed as irrelevant. The irrelevance of God is much applauded in the media and our educational institutions. Unfortunately we now also have a people that have been misled, browbeat and bullied into accepting such humanist arrogance. The gurus of modern liberalism presume in error, and the people protest too little. Again, the underlying presumption is that either there is no God, or that he is a relatively powerless and morally indifferent deity we can safely ignore. Or shall we make the theory of evolution the basis of our laws?
Look at nature. Is it safe to presume that all the life and beauty you see is the result of random evolution?
Can random winds assemble all the parts of a Boeing 747 simply as a matter of the passing of time? No, assembling Boeing 747’s is a purposeful undertaking requiring intelligent design and direction. Does not the incredible complexity and interdependence of all life require even more intelligent design and purpose? All nature shouts that there must be a Designer. There must be a purpose. Can we safely ignore that voice? Should we not ask the nature of the Designer? Is this designer the God of the Bible? The question remains. If there is no God, there is not meaning or purpose in life beyond survival for a brief time. If there is no God there is no hope of justice, no meaning in beauty or love, only relentless indifference and brute force. But if there is a God, we cannot safely ignore him. We dare not establish our notion of justice and government without consulting him. If there is a God, the God of the Bible, he is not only the God of creation, love, truth, beauty, and mercy, but also of justice, and of judgment.
We were once a nation that acknowledged the God of the Bible as the basis of all truth and justice. Now we are becoming a nation based on the dangerous proposition that God either does not exist or can be safely ignored. We have repeatedly thrown the God of justice and mercy out of our courts, the God of truth and wisdom out of our schools, and the God of love, who in the Bible commands obedience to his teachings, out of our government and out of our lives.
It is not only in the courts and halls of government that God is being dethroned. This is the culmination of decades of propaganda by journalistic and educational media dominated by the humanistic and man-glorifying philosophies of modern liberalism. To this coalition has in recent years been added the influence and power of the increasingly politically correct corporate engines of commerce. Many lemmings follow in their course. Even many of our churches have essentially thrown the Bible out of church and replaced its teachings with forms of humanism more in fashion with the times. Modern Biblical literacy is so decrepit that even most evangelical Christians cannot discern the difference between humanism and Biblical Christianity. But there is a difference, and God will not likely be patient for long with those who would adulterate his teachings in the cause of popular fashion. Nor is it possible that he will surrender his throne. He may give the perpetrators of his removal a little more rope to hang themselves, but to God alone will remain all power and judgment.
It is not just that we are becoming a nation that has forgotten the God of the Bible. More and more one sees actual government hostility to the Church and all things spiritual and moral that derive from the Bible.
The liberal, humanist philosophy that is wrapping its tentacles around our culture and society will have no other gods but man and man’s government. Or at least it will have no serious contenders for the loyalty of its subjects. Believers in the God of the Bible do not make sufficiently pliable servants of the state. Theirs is a different moral compass skeptical of the innate goodness of man, uncomfortable with liberal ambitions to engineer and control every aspect of society, and misaligned with the idolatry of government. Big government does not view kindly even small eruptions of courage and truth outside its own regulation. They are a threat to the state and must be suppressed or marginalized, if the enlightened objectives of a supreme state and its anointed managers are to be realized.
In addition, the Biblical concept of sin is an uncomfortable concept for liberals. They prefer to define righteousness for themselves. Modern liberalism, based as it is on humanist or man-centered reason, defines its own moral code in defiance of the God who has spoken through the Bible. Thus it is by definition self-righteous. Self-righteousness is the most deadly moral poison of all. Alexander Solzhenitsyn once wrote that “in order for men to do great evil, they must first believe they are doing good.” Hence self-righteousness is a very slippery slope leading to tyranny and horrendous evil not even recognized by its perpetrators. As always self-righteousness bears a gnawing grudge against the righteousness of God. Self-righteousness is largely blind to evil, and under its dull eyes evil multiplies and escalates exponentially. It may be like a hidden cancer at first, but it will eventually manifest itself and consume a people. This is the price, as Solzhenitsyn, said of “forgetting God.”
Will God suffer such arrogant rebellion and indifference and continue to bless a nation that denies his significance and even his existence? The God of the Bible is a God of justice. Patient and loving, he may be, but ultimately he must bring to judgment all violation of truth and righteousness. We must ask ourselves some important questions, if we continue on our present course of minimizing and insulting the sovereign God of the universe. Those of us who believe in the God of the Bible, but acquiesce to ignoring him, must ask the same. How quick will his judgment come? Will it be final or corrective? If corrective, how severe must it be to get our attention?
How dare we separate government from the God of all truth and justice? What depravity, ignorance, insanity, and bull-headed stupidity can be the cause of our incredible arrogance?
“Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows on them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.” Isaiah 40: 21-24. ESV
Can the God who raises up nations and princes and brings nations and princes to the dust be ignored in a nation’s courts, its legislatures, or by its people and their elected governors and representatives? How secure are our freedoms, our liberties, and our prosperity if we declare that God is not significant in the affairs of men and nations? Should not the God of the Bible, the absolute sovereign of the universe, our maker, and sustainer be First in all our deliberations both public and private? Our answers to these questions will have profound consequences.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Psalm 111: 10a. ESV
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