The Choice Before Us

The Choice Before Us

When they drafted the Democrat platform for 2012, Democratic leaders decided to remove any references to God as well as to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In other words, they decided to remove God from the political equation.

The decision by top Democrat leaders was a pronouncement that the rule of Man would transcend the rule of God when it came to earthly matters. It made what the Democratic Party stands for completely transparent. It made it clear what anyone who votes for a Democrat is voting for -- namely, for the supremacy of Man rather than God.

Further, the decision made the great division of thinking which has characterized the modern Western world crystal clear: what Man thinks of the world is the only thought that matters. The mind of God is not to be consulted; nor is the rule of God in the affairs of men to be acknowledged. Faith in Man is the only legitimate faith; politics is the means by which faith in Man’s vision is actualized; and the almighty State is the Church of Man, the institution by which the world is changed for the betterment of all humanity. At the head of the Church of State are the high priests of progressivism, an enlightened elite who know what is best for all, and before whom every knee must bow. The progressive faith is to reign supreme.

The crisis of faith is the crisis of our age and of the current election. Whom will we choose to serve? God or Man?

As the Whittaker Chambers put it in his “Letter to My Children,” the preface to his book, Witness:

“The crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God. It exists to the degree in which the Western world actually shares Communism’s materialist vision, is so dazzled by the logic of the materialist interpretation of history, politics and economics, that it fails to grasp that, for it, the only possible answer to the Communist challenge: Faith in God or Faith in Man? is the challenge: Faith in God.”

What is it that people who believe in the rule of God, increasingly few in numbers, increasingly sapped by incessant attacks and increasingly disinclined to vote at all, are up against when they go to the voting booths this coming Tuesday? Like Chambers, they are up against the powerful forces of this country that are committed to a draconian and relentless vision that includes belief in fundamentally transforming this world according to the visions of progressivism, not matter what it costs.

Has that much changed since Chambers wrote his gut-wrenching letter, except that matters are even worse than they were in 1952? He wrote:

“Against me was an almost solid lineup of the most powerful groups and men in the country, the bitterly hostile reaction of much of the press, the smiling skepticism of much of the public, the venomous calumnies of the Hiss forces, the all but universal failure to understand the real meaning of the Case or my real purpose.  A sense of the enormous futility of my effort, and my own inadequacy, drowned me […] I was alone against the world; my longing was to be left completely alone, or not to be at all.  It was the death of the will which Communism, with great cunning, always tries to induce in its victims.” 

The paralysis of America’s people of faith in the face of grave danger to the Church and to the nation indicates a death of will to fight even at the ballot box.  Like victims of the Stockholm syndrome, the Church by and large has accepted being taken hostage by the State and has capitulated to being subservient to its master. It has accepted life without ransom in the basement of culture.

There, virtually blind in the dark, it has created a subculture that reinforces its paralysis and that vitiates the all-encompassing redemptive power of the Gospel it once proclaimed with great force. The incense that may sometimes be lit in the basement doesn’t even waft to the first floor of the church of the State, which continues to permeate the whole house of society with smoke and to decorate it with mirrors -- both the cheap spiritual goods of progressivism.

Meanwhile, poisoned by its own smoke screens and deluded by the comforting liturgy of the prosperity gospel and the soothing mantras of a gutted god of its own creation, the Church remains nearly comatose.

Enfeebled, what fight the Church has left is often spent fighting old battles of the past, rehearsing again and again such battles as those against Arminianism, much as play actors representing the North and the South rehearse the battle of Gettysburg or Chancellorsville. It is safe to “fight” when the fight is over.

But where is the Church in the fight that matters today? Where is it when it comes to standing up against the culture of death? Where is it in the fight against the heresies of the Church of State? Where is she when the State attempts to murder God? Do her people even have enough fight left within them to go to the ballot box?

The many-headed cobra of totalitarianism of the State is poised to strike and who is there who will cut off its heads? Who will have the courage of Martin Luther, who like Chambers faced the powers of his day virtually alone and friendless. Who among people of faith will rise up and say as Luther did, “I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.”

President Ronald Reagan, who found Chambers’ book a spiritual touchstone in his own political conversion, gave Chambers the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984. The citation reads:

“At a critical moment in our Nation's history, Whittaker Chambers stood alone against the brooding terrors of our age. Consummate intellectual, writer of moving majestic prose, and witness to the truth, he became the focus of a momentous controversy in American history that symbolized our century's epic struggle between freedom and totalitarianism, a controversy in which the solitary figure of Whittaker Chambers personified the mystery of human redemption in the face of evil and suffering. As long as humanity speaks of virtue and dreams of freedom, the life and writings of Whittaker Chambers will ennoble and inspire. The words of Arthur Koestler are his epitaph: 'The witness is gone; the testimony will stand.'”

Yes, The Testimony will always stand because it is based on Truth, who is a Person. 

Democrat leaders may attempt to murder that Person, but those who believe they have the capacity to murder God will find He keeps coming back to life in the minds and hearts of humans, where his image is irrevocably stamped. There, in the hearts of men, lives the voice of conscience, an insistent reminder of the life of God within the soul.

The battle for the soul of Mankind is at stake right here in our own country.

As Chambers put it, what must be torn apart not only at the ballot box, but in other bastions of progressivism throughout our great land is “the whole web of the materialist modern mind -- the luminous shroud which it has spun about the spirit of man, paralyzing in the name of rationalism the instinct of his soul for God, denying in the name of knowledge the reality of the soul and its birthright in that mystery on which mere knowledge falters and shatters at every step.”

What must be put to death, even though it is a many-headed Lernaean Hydra, is “…the modern intellectual mood which gives birth to communism, and denies the soul in the name of the mind, and the soul’s salvation in suffering in the name of man’s salvation in the here and now[…] ‘Man cannot organize the world for himself without God; without God man can only organize the world against man.’ The gas ovens of Buchenwald and the Communist execution cellars exist first within our minds. ‘Man without mysticism is a monster.’’

The question for people of faith, then, as this critical election looms, is this: 

In which faith do you believe?  Faith in God or Faith in Man?

Fay Voshell holds a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, which awarded her its prize for excellence in systematic theology. She is a frequent contributor to FREEDOM OR ANARCHY,Campaign of Conscience. American Thinker and many other online publications.  She may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com.