A Religious Trojan Horse (Part 6)‏

Hello Friends!

 

Welcome back. Here is another culprit inside of our Religious Trojan Horse that has been attacking the church for decades. In this case, it was through the German culture via Hitler and the evil Nazi influence that caused death and destruction throughout all of Europe and the world abroad...

 

Positive Christianity

 

Most people do not realize that Hitler was not just interested in a perfect race through eugenics but he was also interested in the same spiritual evolution and Hinduism that is growing in popularity today.  Hitler himself said "I am founding an Order…the Man-God, that splendid Being, will be an object of worship but there are other stages in which I am not permitted to speak…"  The Emergent Church leaders of today are committed to spiritual evolution and much of the worldview of Hinduism.  In addition, Pope John Paul the II, the current Pope Benedict and many Catholic leaders have embraced Hinduism.  Both the protestant and the Catholic faiths are embracing the foundation for the coming one-world religion.  I believe Hinduism will be a major part of the "Positive Christianity" that Hitler also called for as a promoter of ecumenism. Note: The Nazi Swastika symbol was adapted from the Hindu religion.

 

The question for Germans in the 1930s is the same question we face in America today. When do state concerns begin encroaching on the authority of the church to a point where the church needs to shout “halt”? If the church is healthy and is playing its role correctly, it will check the unbridled growth of the state and will protect its own members - and others, too - from illegitimate state power. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about this in his famous essay “The Church and the Jewish Question.”  He said there were three ways that the church must behave with regard to the state.  

 

First: It must question the state. In a sense it must call the government to account, and be a voice that speaks out if and when the state is not behaving legitimately.  

 

Second: If the state is harming anyone, it is the role of the church to help those whom the state is harming. 

 

Thirdly and most radically: If the state is behaving wrongly, it is the role of the church to directly oppose the state. That’s where he lost a lot of people. They couldn’t believe a good Lutheran German would say such a thing. But Bonhoeffer was a Christian first and a German second.

 

Such state encroachment usually concerns the fundamentals, such as the definition of a human being. The Nazis did not believe that human life was sacred, because they didn’t believe that human beings are created in the image of God. They were essentially pagans with a social Darwinist worldview and they began to “legally” define humanity according to this bleak, utilitarian worldview. So, a German Jew was no longer a human being in the way a Gentile German was a human being. And a mentally or physically handicapped person was no longer equal to others and was therefore “disposable.” Jewish babies could be legally aborted, but German babies could not. The Nazis began to define such things in a way that aggressively challenged the beliefs of all serious Christians, so the church had to make a choice: be the church and fight the state on these issues, or accede to the state’s definitions of humanity and effectively cease to be the church. Most in the church simply acceded to the Nazi’s definitions. Those who didn’t give in formed what came to be known as the Confessing Church. Bonheoffer was one of its leaders, of course.

 

A related parallel has to do with Christianity itself. What is it and who gets to decide? The Nazis didn’t like certain things about the Christian faith, so they simply decided to redefine Christianity. This is always the great danger and it’s happening in our time as well. When we decide that we want to dispense with two-thousand-year-old teachings because they don’t suit us, because they strike us as old-fashioned, culturally uncomfortable or politically incorrect, we had better be careful - and warned! One may open the door to things one hadn’t anticipated.

 

God’s truths are eternal... or they aren’t God’s truths - Period.

Blessings on your success!
Shane <><

 Lighthouse Publications <><
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