How Organized Religion becomes the Oppressor of People
A NOTE FROM S.R. SHEARER:
D.R. McConnell, in his book, A Different Gospel, writes:
"It is a strange curiosity that those Christians who are most adamant that our's is the generation that will see the Lord's return - and the endtime deception and apostasy associated with his return - look for signs of this deception outside the church, in such conspiracies as the New Age movement, and in such cults as Mormonism, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and Christian Science.
"Admittedly, these movements pose potential threats to the church, but perhaps we would do better to look for the deception of the end-times where Jesus and the New Testament predicted it would occur: within the church, within groups that call themselves 'Christian' but which actually preach a different gospel."
We agree. The apostasy that the Bible says will occur in the "end of days" is not something that is going to take place OUTSIDE the church; rather it is something that is going to take place INSIDE it. But how? - that's the question. To understand the dynamic at work here we must put what is happening to the church in a larger context. Too many people try to understand "last things" from only the perspective of RELIGION. But that's not possible.
There are other dynamics at work - political, economic and military dynamics - and all of them one way or another impinge on the church and the apostasy that is at work within it, transforming what we know as the ORGANIZED church into the monster the Scriptures say it will become. And one needs to be clear here: IT WILL OCCUR - as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and NOTHING will stop it! The Bible says:
"Let no man deceive you by any means: for THAT DAY (i.e., the day of Christ's return, cf vs. 2) shall not come, except there come (first) a falling away (i.e., Gk., apostasia - or the apostasy of the church) first, and that MAN OF SIN BE REVEALED, the son of perdition;
"Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." (2 Thess. 2:3-4)
OUTSIDE DYNAMICS THAT
IMPINGE ON APOSTASY
One of these dynamics is the increasing speed at which REAL democracy is disappearing in the world today - contrary to what one hears being trumpeted from the mainline press. The fact is, the world is not becoming more democratic, but less - and it is being driven forward in this process by the ever quickening pace of globalization and the inexorable division of the world into a small elite of wealthy "worthies" and a huge population of indigent "worker-serfs" - a division that follows in the wake of the globalization process as surely as water flows downhill.
And it is important to note here that the division of the earth's population in this fashion is occurring not only in the so-called "Developing World," but in the so-called "Developed World" as well - so that now the meaning behind that mysterious lyric in Rev. 6:6 becomes understandable:
"A measure of wheat for a penny [literally - denarius, a Greek coin which represented a WHOLE DAYS wages], and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine." (Rev. 6:6)
The meaning of this lyric is that the condition of man during this era (i.e., the "end of days") will be reduced to such that he will have to labor a whole day simply to buy a loaf of bread or three measures of barley. But the second part of the lyric [i.e., "... and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine ..."] means that the "hard times" of this period will not extend to the elites. This is the common interpretation - the one subscribed to by Ryrie, Pentecost, Ironside, Gaebelein, etc.
OBVIOUSLY, UNDER THE IMPRESS OF THIS KIND OF MALIGNANT DYNAMIC, DEMOCRACY IS NOT WORKABLE. Why? - because in societies where people are ground into the dirt by the crush of the powerful, those responsible cannot then expect those they have beaten down to endorse what they have done through the so-called "democratic process."
In other words, when the elites force the poor into what are for all practical purposes "slave-labor camps" in countries like Thailand, Indonesia, El Salvador, Haiti, etc. - and when they lock the gates to keep the workers in - forcing them to make Armani shirts for 80 cents a day at the rate of more than 100 shirts an hour in twelve hour shifts that run seven days a week, they cannot then expect these workers to endorse this kind of brutality through the ballot box. Democracy - REAL democracy - is not something the elites would want to endorse in this kind of situation.
It's tantamount to giving the whip to the slaves and expecting the slaves to willingly give it back so that they can be beaten all the more! At best, in such situations democracy must be reduced to a sham - the way it was in the South during the era of Jim Crow where blacks (and the poor in general) were "limited" in their access to the "democratic process."
LEGITIMIZING ELITE POWER
If the elites, then, are unable to derive their legitimacy as a result of a REAL appeal to the "will of the people," how then can they derive it? After all, ALL authority must be legitimized. Ultimately, naked force is not enough, as the recent collapse of Communism in the old Soviet Union and Eastern Europe clearly demonstrates. No one group - especially a small minority (i.e., the rich) - can assert to any great degree and over any great length of time its superiority and right to rule based simply on brute force.
AND IT IS PRECISELY HERE THAT RELIGION PRESENTS ITSELF AS A USEFUL TOOL IN THE HANDS OF THE RICH!! In those societies where an appeal to the "will of the people" is not possible on any kind of meaningful basis, religion gives sanction to the rule of the privileged minority over and against the oppressed majority.
And not only that, it puts at ease the sometimes tortured souls of those who must exercise brute power in the name of the state - in other words, those who must do the elites' dirty work; it allows them to believe the lie that what they are doing, they are doing in the name of God and as His servants; that they hold their power as a result of "divine right" - Gott mit uns ("God is with us"), as the belt buckles on the uniforms of the SS read.
This is what sustained the army officers in the Argentine military who were responsible for dumping leftist political prisoners (men, women and children - some barely into their teens) alive over the Atlantic from the bellies of Argentine naval planes in the late 1970s and early '80s: Accompanying each of the death flights were Protestant pastors and / or Catholic priests whose job it was to "comfort" NOT the victims but the occasionally squeamish death squad functionary with various Scriptures from the Bible about the necessity of "separating the wheat from the chaff" - i.e., the Junta's enemies from the Junta's friends.
RELIGION HELPS TO LEGITIMIZE
UNDEMOCRATIC STATES
The truth is, until the relatively recent advent of broad based democratic institutions and their concomitant appeal to "the people" as a basis of legitimacy, religion formed the foundation for most social and state authority - and this was as true for the nations of Western Civilization as it was for the civilizations of Asia, Africa, the Near East and Central and South America. As a result, the state has historically been bound up with religion either explicitly or implicitly.
RELIGION LEGITIMIZES STATE POWER IN SOCIETIES THAT ARE ESSENTIALLY UNDEMOCRATIC AND CANNOT, AS A RESULT, RELY ON THE "WILL OF THE PEOPLE" AS THE SOURCE OF THEIR LEGITIMACY. And it should be remarked here that religion is important to the state in INVERSE proportion to the state's brutality. The more brutal the state, the greater the need for its rulers to undergird it by a resort to religion.
Historically, then, religion has operated as an INSTRUMENT OF OPPRESSION - A MEANS THROUGH WHICH THE RICH CAN OPPRESS THE POOR. Religion, when it operates in this capacity, has NOTHING TO DO WITH COMPASSION, TENDERNESS AND MERCY, AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH THE EXERCISE OF BRUTE POWER - and this is why the poor and the dispossessed have always hated STATE-sanctioned religion.
APOSTASY
When Christianity operates in this capacity; when it serves the interests of the elites of this world, when it becomes the servant of the state; when it becomes an instrument of the rich to oppress the poor - IT HAS BECOME APOSTATE. That is what apostasy is all about! - AT LEAST IN THE FIRST INSTANCE!!
That's where it begins! The false doctrine that inevitably follows this condition of things - i.e., apostasy - is made necessary to mold the church to its new reality as a servant to the rich rather than to the poor; as a servant to the elites rather than to the downtrodden; as a servant to the state rather than to the kingdom of heaven.
After all, what do the elites want with a religion whose Originator says:
"LAY NOT UP FOR YOURSELVES TREASURES UPON THE EARTH, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
" But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
" For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Matt. 6:19-21)
Or what good is a religion to the elites that would tell the rich -
"... If thou wilt be perfect, GO SELL (ALL) THAT THOU HAST, AND GIVE IT TO THE POOR, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me." (Matt. 19:21) ?
D.R. McConnell, in his book, A Different Gospel, writes:
"It is a strange curiosity that those Christians who are most adamant that our's is the generation that will see the Lord's return - and the endtime deception and apostasy associated with his return - look for signs of this deception outside the church, in such conspiracies as the New Age movement, and in such cults as Mormonism, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and Christian Science.
"Admittedly, these movements pose potential threats to the church, but perhaps we would do better to look for the deception of the end-times where Jesus and the New Testament predicted it would occur: within the church, within groups that call themselves 'Christian' but which actually preach a different gospel."
We agree. The apostasy that the Bible says will occur in the "end of days" is not something that is going to take place OUTSIDE the church; rather it is something that is going to take place INSIDE it. But how? - that's the question. To understand the dynamic at work here we must put what is happening to the church in a larger context. Too many people try to understand "last things" from only the perspective of RELIGION. But that's not possible.
There are other dynamics at work - political, economic and military dynamics - and all of them one way or another impinge on the church and the apostasy that is at work within it, transforming what we know as the ORGANIZED church into the monster the Scriptures say it will become. And one needs to be clear here: IT WILL OCCUR - as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and NOTHING will stop it! The Bible says:
"Let no man deceive you by any means: for THAT DAY (i.e., the day of Christ's return, cf vs. 2) shall not come, except there come (first) a falling away (i.e., Gk., apostasia - or the apostasy of the church) first, and that MAN OF SIN BE REVEALED, the son of perdition;
"Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." (2 Thess. 2:3-4)
OUTSIDE DYNAMICS THAT
IMPINGE ON APOSTASY
One of these dynamics is the increasing speed at which REAL democracy is disappearing in the world today - contrary to what one hears being trumpeted from the mainline press. The fact is, the world is not becoming more democratic, but less - and it is being driven forward in this process by the ever quickening pace of globalization and the inexorable division of the world into a small elite of wealthy "worthies" and a huge population of indigent "worker-serfs" - a division that follows in the wake of the globalization process as surely as water flows downhill.
And it is important to note here that the division of the earth's population in this fashion is occurring not only in the so-called "Developing World," but in the so-called "Developed World" as well - so that now the meaning behind that mysterious lyric in Rev. 6:6 becomes understandable:
"A measure of wheat for a penny [literally - denarius, a Greek coin which represented a WHOLE DAYS wages], and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine." (Rev. 6:6)
The meaning of this lyric is that the condition of man during this era (i.e., the "end of days") will be reduced to such that he will have to labor a whole day simply to buy a loaf of bread or three measures of barley. But the second part of the lyric [i.e., "... and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine ..."] means that the "hard times" of this period will not extend to the elites. This is the common interpretation - the one subscribed to by Ryrie, Pentecost, Ironside, Gaebelein, etc.
OBVIOUSLY, UNDER THE IMPRESS OF THIS KIND OF MALIGNANT DYNAMIC, DEMOCRACY IS NOT WORKABLE. Why? - because in societies where people are ground into the dirt by the crush of the powerful, those responsible cannot then expect those they have beaten down to endorse what they have done through the so-called "democratic process."
In other words, when the elites force the poor into what are for all practical purposes "slave-labor camps" in countries like Thailand, Indonesia, El Salvador, Haiti, etc. - and when they lock the gates to keep the workers in - forcing them to make Armani shirts for 80 cents a day at the rate of more than 100 shirts an hour in twelve hour shifts that run seven days a week, they cannot then expect these workers to endorse this kind of brutality through the ballot box. Democracy - REAL democracy - is not something the elites would want to endorse in this kind of situation.
It's tantamount to giving the whip to the slaves and expecting the slaves to willingly give it back so that they can be beaten all the more! At best, in such situations democracy must be reduced to a sham - the way it was in the South during the era of Jim Crow where blacks (and the poor in general) were "limited" in their access to the "democratic process."
LEGITIMIZING ELITE POWER
If the elites, then, are unable to derive their legitimacy as a result of a REAL appeal to the "will of the people," how then can they derive it? After all, ALL authority must be legitimized. Ultimately, naked force is not enough, as the recent collapse of Communism in the old Soviet Union and Eastern Europe clearly demonstrates. No one group - especially a small minority (i.e., the rich) - can assert to any great degree and over any great length of time its superiority and right to rule based simply on brute force.
AND IT IS PRECISELY HERE THAT RELIGION PRESENTS ITSELF AS A USEFUL TOOL IN THE HANDS OF THE RICH!! In those societies where an appeal to the "will of the people" is not possible on any kind of meaningful basis, religion gives sanction to the rule of the privileged minority over and against the oppressed majority.
And not only that, it puts at ease the sometimes tortured souls of those who must exercise brute power in the name of the state - in other words, those who must do the elites' dirty work; it allows them to believe the lie that what they are doing, they are doing in the name of God and as His servants; that they hold their power as a result of "divine right" - Gott mit uns ("God is with us"), as the belt buckles on the uniforms of the SS read.
This is what sustained the army officers in the Argentine military who were responsible for dumping leftist political prisoners (men, women and children - some barely into their teens) alive over the Atlantic from the bellies of Argentine naval planes in the late 1970s and early '80s: Accompanying each of the death flights were Protestant pastors and / or Catholic priests whose job it was to "comfort" NOT the victims but the occasionally squeamish death squad functionary with various Scriptures from the Bible about the necessity of "separating the wheat from the chaff" - i.e., the Junta's enemies from the Junta's friends.
RELIGION HELPS TO LEGITIMIZE
UNDEMOCRATIC STATES
The truth is, until the relatively recent advent of broad based democratic institutions and their concomitant appeal to "the people" as a basis of legitimacy, religion formed the foundation for most social and state authority - and this was as true for the nations of Western Civilization as it was for the civilizations of Asia, Africa, the Near East and Central and South America. As a result, the state has historically been bound up with religion either explicitly or implicitly.
RELIGION LEGITIMIZES STATE POWER IN SOCIETIES THAT ARE ESSENTIALLY UNDEMOCRATIC AND CANNOT, AS A RESULT, RELY ON THE "WILL OF THE PEOPLE" AS THE SOURCE OF THEIR LEGITIMACY. And it should be remarked here that religion is important to the state in INVERSE proportion to the state's brutality. The more brutal the state, the greater the need for its rulers to undergird it by a resort to religion.
Historically, then, religion has operated as an INSTRUMENT OF OPPRESSION - A MEANS THROUGH WHICH THE RICH CAN OPPRESS THE POOR. Religion, when it operates in this capacity, has NOTHING TO DO WITH COMPASSION, TENDERNESS AND MERCY, AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH THE EXERCISE OF BRUTE POWER - and this is why the poor and the dispossessed have always hated STATE-sanctioned religion.
APOSTASY
When Christianity operates in this capacity; when it serves the interests of the elites of this world, when it becomes the servant of the state; when it becomes an instrument of the rich to oppress the poor - IT HAS BECOME APOSTATE. That is what apostasy is all about! - AT LEAST IN THE FIRST INSTANCE!!
That's where it begins! The false doctrine that inevitably follows this condition of things - i.e., apostasy - is made necessary to mold the church to its new reality as a servant to the rich rather than to the poor; as a servant to the elites rather than to the downtrodden; as a servant to the state rather than to the kingdom of heaven.
After all, what do the elites want with a religion whose Originator says:
"LAY NOT UP FOR YOURSELVES TREASURES UPON THE EARTH, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
" But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
" For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Matt. 6:19-21)
Or what good is a religion to the elites that would tell the rich -
"... If thou wilt be perfect, GO SELL (ALL) THAT THOU HAST, AND GIVE IT TO THE POOR, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me." (Matt. 19:21) ?
posted by Sigurd Throan at 12:11 PM
1 Comments:
I’m amazed that someone who knows anything about religion would call Christian Science a cult. It seems that all religions had a beginning and someone had to put tenets in place….so are they automatically worshipped and called a cult? Mary Baker discovered and founded Christian Science. She is not worshipped by Christian Scientists and she specifically went to great lengths to discourage anyone from worshipping her. She did this in her writings and through recorded verbal instructions. In a world that is struggling mightily to become more understanding, labeling is not an indication of equality or respect.
Thoughtful Christians in many denominations reject the assumption that any group of people has a right to label as a “Cult” any denomination that disagrees with that group’s definition of true Christianity.
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