Common Sense Has Left the Building

When 5-year-olds are expelled from class for pointing, school bus drivers refuse to intercede while teenagers pummel and bully children, and the Pledge of Allegiance and patriotic assemblies are banished from schools, it’s time to ask, “Whatever happened to common sense?”

The answer is political correctness. Imposed by forces totally out of step with America’s traditions, political correctness has emerged as the promised “transformation” of the nation.

A revolution is raging. What was revered historically as common sense is gone, and there is a reason why. America’s social awareness and rules of conduct were based on the Christian values the Founding Fathers wove into the fabric of the republic. The Ten Commandments, truth, respect for others, and a love of God and country undergirded the governing system that rose among the nations as a spectacular exception to the oppressive cultures immigrants fled to breathe the free air of America, the land of endless opportunity.

Today most Americans share a nearly universal lack of awareness concerning the seriousness and consequences of the attacks on their country’s way of life. Some, however, have connected the dots and are demonstrating the courage to say so.

One such person is David Horowitz, the 75-year-old founder and president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and editor-publisher of FrontPage Magazine (frontpagemag.com). In Horowitz’s words, “I was born…into a family of high school teachers who were members of the Communist Party, and therefore were actually part of a vast conspiracy dedicated to the destruction of this country, although they never would have looked at it that way.”

In a speech titled “The Threat We Face,” delivered at a conference in October 2013, Horowitz articulated the objectives and defining features of current liberals (they prefer the term progressives) in America:

The first of these features is their alienation from country: If you ask progressives about their patriotic feeling, they will tell you that they don’t think of themselves first as Americans but as “citizens of the world.”…They are, in fact, so profoundly alienated from their country as to be in some sense foreigners to it. They are hostile to its history and to its core values, which they see as reflections of a society that has been guilty of racism and oppression on an epic scale. And they are fundamentally opposed to its constitutional arrangements which the framers specifically designed to thwart what they deemed “wicked projects” to redistribute income and share individual wealth….

Progressives are on a mission to create the kingdom of heaven on earth by redistributing income and using the state to enforce politically correct attitudes and practices in everyone’s life. They want to control what you do, and who you are, and even what you eat. For your own good, of course.

The fact that they see themselves as saving the world—or “saving the planet” as they would prefer—…explains why they are so rude and nasty when you disagree with them or resist their panaceas….That is why the politics of personal destruction is their favorite variety, why they are verbal assassins and go directly for the jugular, and why they think nothing of destroying the reputations of their opponents and burying them permanently. And that is why they can perform their character assassinations without regrets.¹

An example of this imposed big-brotherism was on display in West Virginia months ago. A frustrated official of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, previously called the Federal Food Stamp Program) complained when mountain people refused to accept government assistance. The official said the big challenge is to break down “mountain pride.” In other words, the “problem” is having tenacity in wanting to take care of yourself and your family without help from the government—not a good thing in the eyes of those on a quest for universal dependency based on a supreme socialist ideology.

Christianity in the Crosshairs
However, the major hindrance to the progressives is the church: Bible-believing followers of Jesus whose faith is the touchstone of a life of purpose and commitment to divine truth. Christianity’s message, morals, and mission diametrically oppose their secular “heaven on Earth” new creation. To them, Christianity is an intolerable obstacle that must be destroyed. One tactic is to ridicule it relentlessly until everyone and everything associated with the name of Jesus Christ is delegitimized and disqualified for a place in society.

Socially acceptable Christianity is that which disassociates itself from the staples of historic Christian orthodoxy, such as evangelism and obedience to God’s Word, and refuses to view Scripture as the inerrant, impeccable guide to faith and practice. This path of compromise allows one to “fit in” and be accepted as “relevant” participants in “social progress,” godless though it may be.

All of which explains why some evangelical circles have morphed into social-gospel fraternities reminiscent of the liberal Progressive Movement of the early 20th century, which repudiated belief in the inerrancy of Scripture and reduced the Bible to stories written by men. In his book A Guide to Understanding the Bible, prominent liberal minister Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) claimed writers of the biblical texts drew from ancient Hebrew beliefs that were essentially pagan. He said the Hebrew concept of “monotheism, taken morally in earnest, mingled with old ideas involved in tribal deities, racial prejudices, religious bigotries, and national hatreds.”²

Belief in the literal return of Christ was, in Fosdick’s view, a myth. That conviction induced a strong anti-Zionist sentiment. He and his “progressives” much preferred to humanize Christ, marginalize God, and deify man—whom they credited with possessing an ever-evolving “divine spark.”

During the years of the fundamentalist/Modernist controversy, liberals painted Bible believers as intellectual and spiritual has-beens clinging to traditional myths and legends. After all, they reasoned, the great advances in science and critical scholarship were refining theology, liberating humanity from antiquated beliefs, and demanding new ways of interpreting and practicing faith. In addition, Darwinism birthed a new religion founded on evolution that has been force-fed to the nation’s offspring as the replacement for Christianity.

The trouble is that heaven has not come to Earth through liberal enlightenment. Humanity has not evolved. In fact, its devolution is more the confirmed reality. There is no universal divine spark in man. And sin still drives the mainframe of the human anatomy.

The Pandora Process
In Greek mythology, Pandora’s box was a gift that, when opened, released all the evils of the world. Today the term refers to something that appears innocent but creates far-reaching, irreversible, corrupting consequences.

Progressive, liberal theology, designed to liberate, has produced a hailstorm of doubt, disillusionment, division, religious futility, and frustration. The blessed hope became the banished hope, with nothing to answer the need for real redemption or an eternal relationship with the God who stooped down to pick us up, save us, sustain us, and usher us into eternal glory when we die as true believers in Christ.

In the wake of this spiritual void and hopelessness come the inevitable, fatal consequences. For whenever a vacuum appears, someone or something will surely fill it. Enter false teachers. Masked in sheep’s clothing, they are spiritual wolves who prey on the disoriented, innocent, susceptible flock. Scripture describes these charlatans: “But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction” (2 Pet. 2:1).

These false teachers will:

• Lie, being purveyors of “deceptive words” (v. 3).
• Exploit “by covetousness” and deceit (v. 3).  
• Condone immorality, “enticing unstable souls” (v. 14).
• Create personality cults using “great swelling words of emptiness” (v. 18).
• Deliver people into bondage while promising “liberty” (v. 19).
• Scoff at the truth and deny Christ’s promised return, “saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming?’” (3:3–4).

The final reference predicts the onslaught of attacks on the conservative interpretation of end-times prophecy, including the persistent anti-Zionism of early progressives and their current theological descendants. Theological anti-Zionism and militant aggression against historical, grammatical application of biblical truth are seeding the soil of the prophesied, coming apostasy.

When a society abandons the moral, spiritual, and intellectual standards instilled through divine authority, it forfeits its common sense as well. Allowing every person to concoct his or her own standards, using self as the supreme relevant factor, is a prescription for disaster.

Thankfully, that isn’t the way the world was designed to work. And for that reason, Jesus has promised to return and set things right. How do we know? It’s in the Bible. And that is the only Book with standards that will endure forever.

ENDNOTES

1. “David Horowitz, “The Threat We Face,” October 10, 2013 <frontpagemag.com/2013/david-horowitz/the-threat-we-face-2/>.
2. Harry Emerson Fosdick, A Guide to Understanding the Bible <www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=545&C=649>.