Equality and Coercion: The Antipodes of Humanism

“You will know them by their fruits”, so says Jesus.[1] This is a wonderful piece of advice and one which every Christian should learn to put into practice. In essence, Jesus is telling us that if you want to understand what makes a man tick, look at the fruit of his ideas. If someone comes to you selling “sweetness and light”, but behind him there is a trail of stench and darkness, then you would rightly question the intrinsic nature of the salesman’s product. In such a scenario, the terms ‘witchdoctor’ and ‘snake oil’ would readily spring to mind.

As Christians in the year 2015, we have many witchdoctors peddling much snake oil, but it all comes packaged as “sweetness and light” or, more specifically, Religious Freedom and Equality. Yes, the packaging sells the product well. It is bright and shiny. It makes some wonderful claims that just warm the cockles of your heart. It’s calorie free. It can be consumed at any time. It will add volume to your hair and … you get the picture. Yes, it seems laudable and the racketeers, oh, sorry, marketers, do a fine job in pushing their product. However, have you stopped to look at the fruit of their wares? When you look at our culture, are people healthy, thin, and sporting voluminous bouffants or are they ailing, squidgy around the middle, and balding?

Brethren, what fruit do you see about you today?

This challenge is necessary precisely because the common place mantra in the Church today is “Do not judge; do not judge!” Consequently, when we as Christians are confronted with fruit that is rancid or which looks highly questionable, we tend to be duped or coerced into believing the packaging and its claims. Thus, we quote the mantra, breathe deeply, and take a bite, rather than dispose of the rotten fruit — pledging never to buy from that retailer ever again!

Two such pieces of ugly fruit, being mass marketed as we speak, are Religious Freedom and Equality. Yet, both are rotten to the core. They are so because they are anti-God and as such contravene explicit commands that God has given. As such, one would think that the average Christian would give these products wide birth. However, it still seems that Christians are willing to believe the promises of the racketeers, rather than the Word of God.

Reformation Ministries, Salt Shakers, and other Christian organisations, expend much energy on warning people, Christians in particular, about the dangers of Humanism and electing governments whose explicit agendas run contrary to God’s Word. Today, we place upon your table the fruit of Humanism’s hollow promises, garnished with a real life example of Humanism’s hypocrisy.

We are all aware of the terms Religious Freedom and Equality. Both are pushed by the Humanists. Both are said to mean that any and every man will be free to believe what he will and act in accordance with his own conscience. This sounds good to many, but it is in fact the first false step. Man was created in God’s image and for His glory.[2]  As such, Man’s beliefs and conscience are inextricably tied to the Law and revelation of God as opened to us in the Bible.[3] In short, Man is not autonomous, he is Theonomic. Man is not “I” centred (anthropocentric), but “God” centred (Theocentric).

Applying this Biblical truth means that Man is neither free to follow any religion he likes or invents nor able to demand equality for every practice. By this we mean that Man must worship God, through Jesus Christ, as God has specified in Scripture and that Man’s acceptable behaviour is that, and only that, which God in His Word countenances.[4] This means that bowing to a golden image is as wrong today as it was in Daniel’s time. It means that the wicked are not equal with the righteous or the murderer with the innocent.

Thus, Religious Freedom and Equality are usurpations of God’s rule and authority and they are a manifestation of Man’s desire to ascend to the throne of God.

That this is so can be seen in the case of Barronelle Stutzman, which comes to us from the USA.[5] This 70 year old, a Christian florist, has fallen foul of the State authorities for refusing to supply flowers for a homosexual union – what is termed as ‘gay marriage’. In looking at this case, we see that the Humanist veil has completely fallen off, displaying their bigotry, bias, and hostility to Christ and His own.

The cut down version of the story is that a long time customer of Mrs. Stutzman took advantage of perverse marriage laws[6] and decided to unite with his homosexual partner. Mrs. Stutzman was in turn asked to provide flowers for the event. After careful consideration, she politely declined the invitation. From this seemingly amicable declining of an invitation, the story, carried by the great evil of social media, began to circulate. At this point, Washington State’s Attorney General, Bob Ferguson, having viewed the social media, stepped in and sued Mrs. Stutzman. That’s right. The Attorney General, without a complaint from the man involved launched a suit against Mrs. Stutzman. Bob Ferguson’s rationale is this: “My primary goal has always been to bring about an end to the defendant’s unlawful conduct and to make clear that I[7] will not tolerate discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.”[8]

Here, we enter upon the conundrum. We subtitled this article, The Antipodes of Humanism, and we did so for this reason – Humanism cannot reconcile its two great mantras!

When Christians defend the faith, they can be criticised for being biased – which we are happily; biased toward God and His Word – and people can use that bias to disbelieve the message.[9] However, the above story, giving voice to the Humanist agenda, shows that the fruit of Humanist philosophy is rancid, unpalatable, and poisonous. It does so precisely because it proves that the two great Humanist mantras of Religious Freedom and Equality are completely incompatible. It proves that Humanism cannot guarantee everybody’s freedom. At some point, a person’s ideology (religion) is going to clash with another’s ideology as the fruits of that ideology (actions) are put on display.

Let’s make it simple. Your religion will dictate your practice. Your religion specifies your morals; your morals are worked out through your fingertips, so to speak. Now the fallacy of Humanism, and its outright hypocrisy, is that it tries to pretend that all actions and, therefore, all religions are equal. However, this simply cannot be true and the above story proves it to be so. A Christian operating on her religious convictions refuses a service to another person based on the fact that the other person’s religion and practice conflicts with her own. At this point, Humanism should be delighted. Both parties have expressed their conviction and have practiced their religion accordingly. Yet what we see is that Humanism is decidedly unhappy. Mr. Ferguson, wielding the power of the State, is incensed and feels that action is warranted.

Naturally, he must favour the Christian. After all, she holds to tenets that have been cherished and believed for thousands of years. She believes as the founders of America believed – in a Law giving God who proscribed homosexuality as an abomination. Hers is the established religion of centuries. The judges of America sit beneath the Ten Commandments. Surely, hers is the right! No. Not so.

You see, the new god dictates who is right and who is wrong. The worshippers of this new god know that Equality is a fallacy precisely because not all religions agree on every tenet and disagreement must mean a difference in practice.[10] Yet, they continue with their mantra hoping to blind as many people as possible.

The key lesson here is that Humanism is itself a religion and one that is, at present, far more destructive than the threat posed by Islam. Please do not be fooled by Humanism’s rhetoric of either Freedom or Equality; neither be fooled by Humanism’s claim to be neutral. All are lies. When a stalemate occurs, as in the above story, the servants of the new god become the umpires and they will always side with that which promotes their religion and their god.

This said, there are other disturbing elements to this story. For example, Mrs. Stutzman is not only being sued as a business, but also as a person. She has now also had lawsuits brought against her by the ACLU and the person involved. Then there are the homosexual activists who are now sending more requests to Mrs. Stutzman for flowers at their union ceremonies, knowing she will refuse and thereby increase fines and so on.

These elements are wrong and true justice is mocked. For example, how many times can a person be sued for one action? If the Attorney General proceeds first, in the name of the State, on what basis are these other suits presented. In essence, any person in America aggrieved at this lady’s action could sue her![11] Then we have to ask as to the rights of a business owner to refuse service to a person. How is refusing service to a homosexual any different to refusing service to a person with an inappropriate dress code or who is drunk?[12] Both these later examples are acceptable, with one being required by law. Hence, we can only conclude that discrimination is acceptable, it is simply a matter of whom you choose to discriminate against and on what basis.

This then leads us to a clarion statement: Christian, the persecuted Church no longer exists in Communist, Islamic, and Third World countries. It exists right here, in the so-called Christian West! America calls itself a Christian nation, yet She actively persecutes true Christians. Do not be fooled, the same is happening here in Australia. It may be less noticeable, but it is here. It is not different in nature, only in degree.

Hence, we, as God’s people, must take action whilst we are still able. Dear friends, this is why we ask you to join us in our stand against these false standards. This call is issued because, sadly, the Christian populace has largely embraced these false ideas of Freedom and Equality, either naively thinking that they were good or they have been coerced by law and threats of litigation.

In essence, Freedom of Religion and Equality are the Secular Humanist’s values enshrined in law and the means by which they will discriminate against all those who hold to a different religion. In the end, the question is not, “Will there be discrimination in our society?” but “Who is to be discriminated against and by what standard?”

We ask, therefore, that you might join in rejecting all forms of the Humanist agenda and thereby become an integral part of the Church Militant instead of the Church compliant.

[1] Matthew 7:20.

[2] Genesis 1:26-28.

[3] Question and answer 3 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism highlight this: “What do the scriptures principally teach? The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man. (2 Tim. 1:13, 2 Tim. 3:16)”

[4] The perfect example of this pattern is to be seen in the Ten Commandments. The first four deal with God and His worship, the following six with how man should relate to man. God therefore loves the one who worships correctly and hates the one who presents false worship. God deplores the thief and the adulterer, but has regard for the one who honours his parents. In God’s eyes, not all religions are valid or all actions acceptable. God, as the perfect Sovereign, determines these things. Not Man!

[5] http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/gay-marriage/florist-barronelle-stutzman-refuses-to-pay-fine-for-refusing-to-provide-flowers-for-a-gay-marriage-on-religious-grounds/story-fnizhakg-1227236997936. We are citing this case because the USA is further advanced in capitulating to the homosexual agenda and it is hoped that the ramifications seen there might awaken us to action before we begin to see and experience the same here.

[6] This is of course an imposition of the Humanist god. The One living and true God says that marriage is a covenant between one man and one woman and that for life. God does not recognise homosexual unions as legitimate. They are viewed as rebellion.

[7] It is an interesting use of the personal pronoun at this point.

[8] If all discrimination is wrong, then open the jails. In fact, one must destroy all law. Any law, any compulsion, is intrinsically an act of discrimination or, at the very least, holds the potential to be discriminatory. Similarly, if Mr. Ferguson wants to remove “discrimination the basis of sexual orientation” and genuinely wants to be fair to all, why then does he only stand up for that which is Biblically and historically aberrant behaviour?

[9] Of course, the Humanists admit no such bias. They would have you believe that they were born in a vacuum and remain untouched by the world of ideas around them.

[10] A man whose religion sates that he is bound to obey a God who has revealed His will is going to have a very different set of practices to the man that sets himself up as god and believes that he rightly determines his own actions.

[11] It must be said that in Biblical justice the person wronged must be the complainant, unless that person is incapable of doing so. The Bible knows nothing of the State benefitting from cases of justice; the beneficiary must be the person wronged.

[12] We could even turn the question around and ask, “At what point will a customer be compelled to shop in a particular store against their will?” If the owner of a business is compelled to deal with everyone, when will he be able to compel everyone?