Allen Jackson - The Shadow of Paganism - Part 1
This session I've titled "The Shadow of Paganism" because I believe that the shadow of paganism has fallen over the contemporary American church, but I would put this discussion in a little larger context of Christianity pelagianism and paganism. Pelagianism is one of the fundamental heresies that has plagued the church since the 5th century, and the essence of that... it's fancy word, you can look it up and get books about it, but the essence of it was the notion that the grace of God was so overwhelming that humanity, if you left us alone, we would work it out. That we're just inherently good enough we'll work it out. It's a false gospel.
That's why we call it a heresy. We are sinners and we need a Savior. And human beings left to themselves will not end up in a better place. We will destroy one another. There's a long history of civilization that supports that idea. And right now the American church is deeply under the influence, it seems to me, of some very destructive spirits. And the best description I know is to say that the shadow of paganism has fallen across American Christianity. Repentance is no longer fashionable. I mean, somebody needs to repent, but it isn't us. In fact, it's often seen or portrayed as beneath our sophisticated dignity. We're just a little too sophisticated to take repentance very seriously any longer. It doesn't require tears or any show of emotion or any heartfelt change.
I mean, if we get caught, if somebody misinterprets our behavior or misunderstands what we said, I mean, we might be sorry that you understand it that way, but true repentance seems long far from us. Sin is presented really as something that's arbitrary, subjective, and typically just personal. Faith is a laudable complement to our success portfolio, but it's not really essential, and it shouldn't be too intrusive. You want a little faith in there, it's a good part of your diversity plan, but you don't want so much of it that it intrudes on who you are and what you want to do. Well, we just need a reminder because most of us aren't aware, but throughout history, throughout the course of human civilization, paganism has consistently been a savage, demonic influence.
And I chose those words very intentionally. It demeans people. It destroys people. The rise of paganism, the specter of paganism amongst us leads to savage behavior of human beings towards one another. It's driven by demons. And if you remove Christianity from the public square and the public school and the public university and you replace it with a fancier label, but beneath the labeling, paganism, savagery will emerge. We see it on our college campuses. Throughout history, the labels have changed, the names of the gods have been different, but paganism has consistently led to the offering of our children as sacrifices to appease those demonic idols. Gee, that couldn't happen in the 21st century, I mean, other than the 3,000 or so children a day that we're sacrificing right now.
Christianity, as it emerged and wherever it is taken root, has changed the way that human beings were valued. Christianity has established boundaries for persons, for families, for society. It isn't just a theology that flourishes in the midst of a service on a weekend in a special building, on a special location. The spread of Christianity has consistently across history improved human condition.
Now, for full disclosure, it's never been without fault or flaw. Human beings are involved, and therefore you can find some glaring weaknesses that about just any chapter of history you want to open. I'm not arguing that Christians are perfect the story of Christianity is, but I would argue that the value we've brought to every human life, the elevation of the treatment of women, the elevation of the treatment of children, the moral authority for the abolition of slavery, all of those things came from a Judeo-Christian ethic. So we turn on the Olympics and men are boxing with women, I hope you're spiritually aware enough to understand that's not an Olympic decision, that's not an international decision, that is a spiritual value being played out in front of you.
A Christian world view conveys principles which shape our lives in the society in which we live. Now, we don't always live up to the standards, but the sense of right and wrong, our sense of justice calls us to strive to grow until we do. If we ignore the principles of Christian life or we seek to redefine them to allow us to continue our deviation from the truth, what we are in essence doing is walking away from our faith. We're not allowed to redefine it, tragically. And I say that because it is a tragedy that's unfolding before us. We are witnessing a tremendous movement away from a Christian worldview. And in many cases, the voices encouraging this apostasy are coming from within the established church.
People who sit in churches are casually affiliated with the Christian faith and they hardly notice, as they are herded into the principles of paganism. This isn't something that's going to happen in the future, folks. I'm not talking about the book of Revelation. It's happening today in large numbers. The lack of familiarity with Scripture and the lack of interest in honoring God are fueling this change. So the outcome of all of this is that we awaken somewhat from our sleepwalk into the darkness and find ourselves in a place that scarcely resembles Christianity. In the language of the apostle Paul, we have a form of Godliness, but we deny its power. You should know, we should know, we should remind one another this is not always been our story.
We are a people with a Christian heritage. It has deeply shaped the unfolding story of this nation. I'm not arguing that God is an American or that he speaks English. That's nonsense. This just happens to be the place God planted me. I would find the stories of faith wherever God planted me if I were trying to encourage the people. But in the early 1900s, I've told this story before, but I did a little more work on it, and I think it's worth repeating a portion of it. You see, there were times in our history where Christianity was far more a part of the public discussion. There was a time when the primary means of communicating the news was the published newspaper and the habit in that season at the peak of the newspaper's influence was on Monday morning. The sermon from the leading pulpits in the city would be published on the front page of the newspaper. That's hard to imagine, isn't it?
Well, in the 1900s, the earlier night, there was a 16-year-old young man by the name of William Borden who graduated from a Chicago high school. He was heir to the Borden fortune. Before he began his Ivy League education at Yale, his parents sent him on a trip around the world as a graduation present. Well, he had come to Christ through the ministry of D.L. Moody before he began that trip. And while he was circumnavigating the world, something happened that no one expected. As he traveled through Asia and the Middle East and Europe, he felt a growing burden for the world's hurting people. So he wrote a letter to his parents and informed them that he wanted to spend the remainder of his life being a missionary. And when the news spread, one of his friends remarked that he would be throwing his life away as a missionary.
When he returned from his trip, he went to Yale University and he graduated, and then he studied and graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary. When he'd finished his Ivy League education, he boarded a ship for China to serve as a missionary. Due to the passion to reach the Muslim people, he stopped in Egypt to learn the Arabic language. And while he was in Egypt, the 25-year-old Borden contracted spinal meningitis. Within a month, he was dead. When the news of Borden's death was cabled back to the US, nearly every major American newspaper reported on it. Imagine that, reporting the journey of a missionary. As it stated in his biography, a wave of sorrow went around the world. He not only gave up his fortune but himself to be a missionary. Borden had walked away from his wealthy fortune to take the gospel of Jesus to the nations of the world. Most regarded as a tragedy.
However, God took the tragedy and did something far greater than Borden could have ever done himself. Thousands of young men and women heard his story in the newspapers of America and it inspired them to leave the courses they had chosen and give their lives to reach the nations of the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. You know I hoped that for decades the United States led the mission movement to the world. And it wasn't primarily a denominational exercise or the lunatic fringe, they were oftentimes the young men and women from the finest families in our communities. There was a time when parents had aspirations that their children, the highest achievement they could imagine for their children would be they would serve the Lord.
But when Borden's parents were given his Bible, they found the following in his Bible. Just after he'd renounced his fortune to go to missions work, he wrote the words "No reserves". His father had told him he would always have a job in his company, but at a later point, he told him he would never let him work in the company again. At that time, Borden wrote two more words in his Bible, "No retreat". And they discovered in his Bible, when his mother found it, she went to collect the body, two more words written shortly before his death in Egypt, "No regret".
So his legacy became no reserve, no retreat, and no regret. See, Christianity is intended to be something more than a public service that we visit occasionally. It's a transformational influence in our lives. And if we don't like the condition of our culture or the value that's being attached to children or to marriage or to families or to whole host of other values that we had considered to be a far part of the fabric of the culture where we lived, the problem isn't the ungodly, it's that those of us that imagine ourselves to be Christians have taken those values and treated them so shabbily that they're no longer held up in the public square.
Again, we are witnesses to the rapid movement away from a Christian worldview. In the plainest of language, it would be a descent into paganism. If it continues, I assure you the world in which we live, our cities, our schools and our universities will become increasingly savage places. We maintain a form of Christian tradition, but we increasingly deny the power of our faith. A Christian worldview conveys principles which shape our lives and the society in which we live. Let me give you an example, not intentionally desiring to offend anyone. If we take the topic of marriage, it gets a lot of discussion these days, it isn't an idea that began with our government or begins with us. It didn't begin with social media or bridal magazines.
In Genesis chapter 2, which is very near the beginning of the book, says, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh". In Matthew 19, Jesus picks up the idea. He said, "Haven't you read that at the beginning the Creator", Jesus believed in a creator God. Oh, just oh by the way. "God made them male and female". Jesus established the categories, folks. I'm willing to count him as an authoritative voice. Then he said, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh so that they're no longer two but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate".
Jesus is quoting from the Hebrew Bible, but he's pulled it into the New Testament. So it's not some idea from antiquity. It made it into the message that Jesus delivered to the world. It's still authoritative. In 1996, the idea of marriage had come under enough assault that there was a movement that it'd be institutionalized in our nation again. It hadn't seemed necessary to institutionalize it prior to that. It was so much a part of the fabric of how we lived. There weren't serious challenges to the concept, but there were enough serious challenges, and the churches had failed to the extent that we were looking to the government to codify something that clearly is a biblical principle. It's not a political idea.
So in 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act, it's a federal law in the United States, was passed by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. No irony in that. The Defense of Marriage Act banned federal recognition of same-sex marriage by limiting the definition of marriage to the union of one man and one woman and it further allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages granted under the laws of other states. That was 1996. That's not ancient history. We had electricity and indoor plumbing, amazing conveniences in '96. Well, in 2022, the Respect for Marriage Act was passed by a 61-to-36 vote in our senate. Before final passage, the senate rejected three amendments to protect religious freedom proposed by Senators Rubio, Lankford, and Lee.
Utah's senator Mike Lee urged his 12 Republican colleagues who voted for the act to reverse course and add a proposed amendment to the bill, but the amendment failed by a vote of 48-to-49. What you may not remember is the respect for Marriage Act language can be so manipulative. The respect for Marriage Act not only repealed the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act but it also obliges those, and I quote, "acting under the color of state law," end quote, to recognize same sex marriages. And the time all that was happening, churches had very little to say and candidly they've had very little to say since then, but long before it was voted on in congress, again, marriage is a biblical idea. It's a spiritual principle, a man and a woman making a covenant in the sight of God for the inviting God's blessing upon their union in the remainder of their days.
How did we get to a place where it needed to be institutionalized as a law and how did we rapidly move to a place where we would no longer even allow a law that honored a biblical worldview to stay in place in our nation? Certainly the politicians that advocated for that understood that their goal is simply to maintain the votes. So they thought there was more than enough popular support that they could sustain their position with such an ungodly view. Well, I think I can walk you through a downward progression that might help us imagine this. Long before it was voted on in congress, weddings are a part of my professional job. I've been doing weddings for little bit, and it became common.
In fact, I had to put a personal boundary in place that I wouldn't do wedding vows that the persons coming to be married wrote themselves because it was very commonplace that the man and woman being married wanted to write their own vows. There was a great deal of chafing and discomfort. I was perceived as very old-fashioned. In fact, more than one couple didn't want me to preside over their wedding if I insisted on things like honoring and obeying. We just felt that was too constraining. And it wasn't too long ago that the overwhelming majority of weddings took place in churches. They were after all biblical functions with the primary motivation being spiritual, at least by a nod to that, and weddings took place in churches, but somewhere along the journeys, wedding locations moved far away from churches.
We needed some place unique. And with the help of social media and a whole host of other things, weddings became somewhat competitive. I mean, we can blame the Kardashians, but we were way down this road before we could spell Kardashian. Wedding priorities changed, the flowers, the dresses, the food, the guest list, the destination for the wedding or the honeymoon. All of those things quickly superseded whatever the covenant being discussed was. Weddings became an opportunity for princess for a day. And parents and grandparents dreamt of that far before the little girls that entered their world were dreaming of it. We had to coach them towards that. We lost our balance. And in the midst of all of those priorities going somewhat askew, we were introduced to a whole new form of wedding tantrums.
Weddings are the most stressful thing we help families do, far more stressful than memorial services. And it's not usually the bride and the groom, it's the family. More than one wedding, there have been angry shouts from the back of the room. "We're not doing that or we won't do this or..." We're trying to orchestrate a covenant before the Lord, a covenant established between a man and a woman in the sight of God. You see, the reason it became an issue in the halls of congress is it had long ago ceased to be an issue of faithfulness around our kitchen tables. We lost our balance. We see it expressed in some other ways these days with gender roles. We're told they're confusing. The people telling us they're so confusing, they're not confused. They want to do what they want to do. They're not going to be driven by any outside opinion and they're certainly not accepting of any objective truth.
Nothing is confining as God created us male and female. In Deuteronomy 22:5, you have it. God said a man must not wear women's clothing... or, "A woman must not wear men's clothing," I guess it works the other way, "or a man wear women's clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this". In 1 Peter chapter 3, I can, this is really... my goal is to offend everybody equally. So just hang on. If I haven't gotten to you yet, I'm coming your way. 1 Peter 3 said, "Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them don't believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. Your beauty shouldn't come from outward adornment, such as braided hair or the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight".
Now, my objective in this particular talk is not to explore all the biblical commentary on male and female. We will do that in another time. Men have some very lofty assignments given to them by God. But it's very clear in Scripture that men and women are different. Not greater or lesser, different. This particular passage has been misused in so many ways through the years. I've had friends who participated in segments of the Christian church who would take that passage and say it said there seems to be some sort of a commentary on the wearing of jewelry and they say, "See, jewelry is wicked. You wear jewelry, you're ungodly".
You know, we export our ideas. I've been places in the world where I would gather with the Christian community, and they would be very offended if the women that were in the group with us wore any jewelry. We export not just music. I would point out to even the casual reader in the same passage that seems to offer some prohibition onto thinking that jewelry is what makes you beautiful, also has a prohibition on clothing. So if your jewelry is ungodly, you got to do something about your clothing too 'cause it seems to be... I think it's a misinterpretation. I don't think jewelry makes you worldly, I think your heart does that. But my anti-jewelry people weren't usually pro-nakedness. So it's just a little bit of an exegetical problem.
And we are living through a season of tremendous change. It's getting to be unsettling at the least. It can be frightening, but I don't think that's the appropriate response. I believe God is moving. And if we'll turn our hearts to him, we'll see the purposes of God break forth in our generation. Let's pray:
Father, I thank you for what we see you doing. Lord, we see the destruction, but we also see the promises of your presence, and we ask you to intervene. Lord, awaken the hearts of your people. Turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the children to their fathers. Pour out your Spirit on our generation in Jesus's name. Amen.