In today’s culture, there is a strong leaning towards the worship of self, also known as Humanism. This worship of self originates straight from the lie of the serpent when he told Eve, “…you shall be like God…”
The face of Humanism takes many outlets, and many can be seen in todays political climate. Marxism (and it’s insidious offspring socialism) were born from this false religion of Humanism. The liberal left (even many so called “conservatives”) maintain many humanistic beliefs that skewer their perceptions and drive political discourse today.
Once humanity is elevated to the place of deity, humans are left without any absolutes beyond themselves with which to judge themselves or their actions. The result is a subjective pragmatism that becomes the center for the humanists decisions. And without any external law guiding human decisions, the result is disaster. Herbert Schlossberg spells this out in Idols for Destruction:
As Neibuhr recognized in other contexts, our capacity for self-deception and self-justification is almost infinite. That is the reason sentiment as an ethical principle must lead to disaster. The law of God is the only hedge against that. “Now if I do what I do not want, ” wrote the apostle, “I agree that the law is good” (Rom. 7:16). That is, if he recognizes that he has no self-righteousness, that the humanist delusion is fradulent, then he needs the law to identify and restrain the evil that he might do. But the law of God only serves such a purpose if statutory law and the citizens recognize it. If lawmaking, however, is considered an expression of human autonomy, it will be idolatrous and eventually tyrannous. Statutory law then will be used to justify anything.
Today it seems that our laws are being used to justify many attrocities, and lawmakers make themselves out to be little gods, deciding what is best for us on the basis of sentiment. And, with such an arbitrary judge as sentiment, it won’t be long before we see religious and civil rights disappear in the whim of humanist sentimentality.
