The Godless Christianity Movement

This post deals with the cause of judgment on the United States. If you are interested in understanding how this post relates to "The Harbinger" by Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, click the following link to begin that explanation in mini-series form: The Cause of The Harbinger.

We have seen from the first two posts on this blog:

The post moderns have questions and no answers.

The traditionalists pretend to have answers and attack those who have better answers FOR having answers...which makes them the hypocrites because they are the same as the post moderns that they demonize.

Don’t we want to break the cycle? Don’t we want to truly help people make progress? Do we REALLY want answers?


This month, we are covering a seemingly simple concept that has powerful, revelatory, and wide ranging applications: Right-Right vs Right-Wrong.

This week's story is in five parts and covers almost fifty years of the latest church history. This is the fourth part of this story. Please make sure you have read the previous parts of this week's story. The first post in this week's story was: Always AND Completely.

In the previous post we saw that:

Most Christians believe God can have the Right WHAT AND have the Wrong HOW/WHY...they actively focus on it and argue for it! Why? Because THEY want to NOT feel guilty about having the Right WHAT by doing it the Wrong way (HOW) or for the Wrong Reason (WHY)! They want to make God in THEIR image!

The pastor who wrote the refutation of "Modeling God" is convinced that even though we both state the same WHAT, he is right and I am wrong BECAUSE I state a HOW and WHY, while he refuses to state a HOW and WHY...or uses a Wrong HOW and WHY to do damage to me and others!

Basically, this wildest of rationalizations is that: it is Wrong to state the HOW and WHY supporting our Christian beliefs (WHAT)...otherwise, he would state his HOW and WHY!

(For example, "The Nicene Creed" is the critical Right WHAT for Christians. However, most believers can't state the Right HOW/WHY for this critical Right WHAT. These believers actually have a Wrong HOW/WHY for their Right WHAT. We have been calling this "Right-Wrong"...Right WHAT for the Wrong HOW/WHY. "Modeling God" gives the Right HOW/WHY for this critical Right WHAT...it is Right-Right. For more examples, please read the previous posts.)

WHY are MOST Christians convinced they have to be right AND NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT they believe?

WHY are MOST Christians convinced it is Wrong to understand the HOW and WHY supporting their WHAT?

Today, we will see that in April 2009 we got the answer to WHY most Christians embrace this wildest rationalization...


THE GODLESS CHRISTIANITY MOVEMENT
In April 2009, Newsweek's cover story was: "The End of Christian America"

Basically, Newsweek stated that people are fleeing the church because it isn't ACTUALLY making a difference in peoples' lives.

Here is a key excerpt from the article:

The term was popularized during what scholars call the "death of God" movement of the mid-1960s—a movement that is, in its way, still in motion. Drawing from Nietzsche's 19th-century declaration that "God is dead," a group of Protestant theologians held that, essentially, Christianity would have to survive without an orthodox understanding of God. Tom Altizer, a religion professor at Emory University, was a key member of the Godless Christianity movement, and he traces its intellectual roots first to Kierkegaard and then to Nietzsche. For Altizer, a post-Christian era is one in which "both Christianity and religion itself are unshackled from their previous historical grounds." In 1992 the critic Harold Bloom published a book titled "The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation." In it he cites William James's definition of religion in "The Varieties of Religious Experience": "Religion … shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they consider the divine."


Remember our two questions:

WHY are MOST Christians convinced they have to be right AND NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT they believe?

WHY are MOST Christians convinced it is Wrong to understand the HOW and WHY supporting their WHAT?

The answer to both questions is:
In the 1960's, Christian leaders decided to take Christianity in a direction that would go WITHOUT an orthodox UNDERSTANDING of God. It was an intentional choice to embrace the wildest rationalization: it is Wrong to state the HOW and WHY supporting our Christian beliefs (WHAT).

This is WHY I wrote "Modeling God"!

"Modeling God" presents an understanding of God (HOW/WHY)...which is the OPPOSITE of the strategy embraced for the last forty years by "Christian leaders"!

The Newsweek excerpt references the "God is dead" movement...


GOD IS DEAD
On April 8, 1966, Time Magazine's cover asked: Is God Dead?

The title of the cover story was "Toward a Hidden God". By 1966, atheists were making a convincing argument that God either never existed or doesn't currently exist. Their argument is fairly simple: If God exists then why is there evil in the world?

When ANYONE attempts to give an explanation to this question, they immediately must deal with two issues:
-If God is all-powerful, why is there evil? Is it because God wants bad things to happen?
-What is God's Nature? If your explanation is contradictory, then God doesn't exist.

Church leadership couldn't answer these questions without stating God is less powerful than evil OR that God doesn't exist (because they couldn't give a non-contradictory definition for God).

Forty years ago, church leadership made a conscious decision to respond by stating that Christians will go without an orthodox understanding (logical explanation) for God! In fact, this was the cause of the "Jesus Movement". Churches began focusing people on Jesus instead of God the Father. (Remember, the critical Doctrine concerning Jesus is that He is fully man and Fully God...which not only STILL requires a definition for "God", but additionally requires a definition for man!) Churches began talking almost exclusively about Jesus and ignoring any discussion about God the Father...which means, the church was moving "towards a hidden God"!

THIS IS THE BIRTH OF THE WILDEST RATIONALIZATION!

"It is Right to NOT be able to state the HOW and WHY supporting our Christian beliefs (WHAT)"...which eventually becomes: "It is Wrong to state the HOW and WHY supporting our Christian beliefs (WHAT)".

Is this the first time the Christian church had decided NOT to state the definition for God...that is, "What God is like?"

Apparently not! Look at what AW Tozer wrote in "The Knowledge Of The Holy" (1961), five years before the "Is God Dead?" Time magazine cover:

"Before the Christian church goes into eclipse anywhere, there must first be the corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simply gets a wrong answer to the question, “What is God like?” Though she may continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, her practical working creed has become false. The masses of her adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresey of the most insidious and deadly kind."

Tozer warned us of this in 1961. The "God is Dead" movement reached national prominence five years later...and church leadership created "The Godless Christianity Movement" forty years ago.

What are the effects of this forty year old curse?

Today, there is NO STATISTICAL DIFFERENCE between people who attend church and people who don't attend church.

Today, around 90% of the kids who attend church will choose to stop going to church once they graduate high school.

Knowing this, would you WANT your child to attend church? Should church carry a child WARNING label?

WARNING: Church may be hazardous to your child's desire to attend church as a legal adult!

Today, the divorce rate among couples who attend church is the same as couples who don't attend church.

Notice, the church currently has a "divorce ban". People who work for the church are told they will be fired if they get divorced. People who are leaders in the church are told they will be removed from leadership positions if they get divorced. Some people who attend church are told they will be shunned if they get divorced!

Think about this: What would the divorce statistic be in the church if this "divorce ban" were lifted? The rate of divorce would be higher in the church than outside the church!

WARNING: Attending church has been shown to be hazardous to marriages!

Just twenty years ago, these statistics weren't true! The church is reaping the effects of embracing The Godless Christianity Movement! If your church is unable to give a non-contradictory definition for God, they have embraced The Godless Christianity Movement.

Another area that has recently experienced a drastic change inside the church is the rise of Calvinism. In fact, this year Time Magazine did a cover story on "The Ten Ideas Changing the World Right Now". Guess what is #3? The New Calvinism!

If you talk to anyone who went to seminary more than twenty years ago, they would tell you there was little to NO mention of Calvinism. Today, it is THE MAIN DOCTRINE of the church!

Sovereignty - God can do anything (WHAT)
Predestination - God already knows everything (WHAT) we are going to do ahead of time.

Basically, God is Right in WHAT He does...and we can't understand the HOW or the WHY. This is THE WILDEST RATIONALIZATION!

Calvinism attempts to explain God's Will: HOW and WHY God does the Right WHAT.

However, if a person doesn't have a non-contradictory definition for God, there is NO WAY for him to have a non-contradictory definition for God's Will.

"Modeling God" presented the non-contradictory definition for God. Part I of "Modeling God's Wills" presents the non-contradictory explanation for HOW and WHY God does the Right WHAT.

Calvinism is Right-Wrong...it states the Right WHAT and the Wrong HOW/WHY. (Remember, NO explanation of the HOW/WHY is the same as the Wrong explanation of the HOW/WHY.)

"Modeling God's Wills" is Right-Right....it states the same Right WHAT as Calvinism, however it also states the Right HOW/WHY.

Everyone of us is unable to do ANYTHING without a word and a non-contradictory definition in our brain. You cannot drink a glass of water without the words and definitions: glass, right/left, hand, lift, etc.

Everyone of us is unable to effectively communicate with others without understanding the other person's definitions for the words the other person uses.

Likewise, it is impossible to understand what God meant in the Bible without knowing God's definitions for the words God used. The Godless Christianity Movement accelerated the process of obscuring God's definitions for the words God used in the Bible which has made His Word of NONE EFFECT.


SUMMARY
In 1961, AW Tozer warned the church not to "go into eclipse" by having the wrong answer to "What is God like?" Five years later, the "God is Dead" movement challenged the church to explain "What is God like?" Forty years ago, the church's response was THE WILDEST RATIONALIZATION:

"It is Right to NOT be able to state the HOW and WHY supporting our Christian beliefs (WHAT)"

...which eventually becomes: "It is Wrong to state the HOW and WHY supporting our Christian beliefs (WHAT)".

Forty years ago, the church consciously chose to embrace The Godless Christianity Movement.

After twenty years, Calvinism seized this opportunity and became THE MAIN DOCTRINE of today's church.

More than fifteen years ago, I noticed MOST Christians could not explain WHY they believed WHAT they believed. I have spent that time determining the non-contradictory Model for God so that Christians and the church could reclaim their rightful places. Instead of being embraced, "Modeling God" has been actively attacked for stating the non-contradictory HOW and WHY behind the WHAT of orthodox Christianity...BECAUSE MOST Christians truly believe THE WILDEST RATIONALIZATION!

The result is that today there is NO STATISTICAL difference between people who attend church and people who don't attend church. Actually, the data seems to show that church actually hinders the individual's ability to live a Godly and sanctified life...it seems to hinder peoples' ability to help others!

However, I have seen the information in "Modeling God" intentionally help people hear from God more clearly and more often...

And during the same time, I have learned a specific aspect of Human Nature that is the CAUSE of all this controversy with "Modeling God"...and few people discuss this CAUSE...

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