(This is from an internet friend of mine here in NC, D. Ray Purdue, Jr., who publishes an email newsletter from time to time called "OpenDoor Newsletter." If you like what you read below, you may want to subscribe to his newsletter by sending an email to him at opendoornewsletter@earthlink.net requesting to be added to his mailing list.) Death of Responsibility
March 19, 2006—
In this latter time that draw us ever closer to the "End of Days", one thing becomes increasingly evident: people no longer have any sense of responsibility. This really is not anything new, but as time goes along the situation becomes even worse than it already was. It is rather common, as it has been for probably hundreds of years, for an older generation to complain of a younger generation’s lack of responsibility. Sometimes this is a humorous thing to witness, for often the complainers are those that have raised the irresponsible ones.
One thing that is not humorous is the effect that no responsibility has had upon our society. Just one look at our governments (federal, state, and local) and those that lead our governments is evidence enough. Few people realize how or why this epidemic of no responsibility has come about. In recent history the germ that has caused this infection is humanism and her twin sister, deism.
Humanism got its start at about the same time Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses in Germany and sent the Reformation off on a bang. Luther and other former Catholics began rejecting certain teachings of Rome and began reading and obeying the Word of God instead. However, some people didn’t just reject the Catholic Church, they rejected God and his Word altogether in favor of a self-serving, man-centered religion called Humanism.
By the late 17th century humanism had given birth to a philosophy of "enlightenment" called deism. These "enlightened" philosophers thought that they had discovered the ultimate secret that humanists had been seeking, the mystical "meaning of life". Deism was really just the resurrection of the old Gnostic heresy that sprang up in the early church years. Deism, like Gnosticism (i.e., knowledge), sent people seeking after knowledge in all the wrong places, and denied that Scripture could be trusted or believed, except in rare cases, and never literally.
Most deists believed that while God may have created the world, He no longer took any part in it, and never interfered into the affairs of man. One of their pet theories to prove this point was "the clockmaker theory". Just like a clockmaker makes a clock, deists said God made the world, but as the clockmaker left the clock alone once he finished making it, so did God with Creation.
Deists also believed that society corrupted man. They claimed that a group of people, completely cut off from the outside world, would have the perfect life. This moronic idea is still prevalent today, it has just been republished over the years with a different dust jacket. If deists had taken the time to read the Bible, they would have found that because of sin, man corrupts everything he touches! It is sin, not society that destroys and corrupts. But, since the Bible can’t be trusted, why look there for the answers?
Several of the Founding Fathers were supposedly deists. This list is claimed to include Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and Thomas Paine. If you read the writings of these men, you will realize that the accusation against Jefferson, Madison and Franklin is pure bunk. Jefferson often spoke of his fear of the judgment of God upon his nation (a direct contradiction of the main belief of deists), Franklin spoke of how much the leaders of the young nation needed to pray for God’s guidance, and Madison wrote of the importance of building a society that had the Word of God and God’s Laws as its Foundation. If they were deists, then they were hypocritical deists. Of all of the "Founders" the only TRUE deist was Thomas Paine, and he really wasn’t much of a Founder. Paine was an anarchist who high-tailed it out of the newly independent Colonies as soon as independence was won to cause trouble elsewhere—France.
Unfortunately, among the succeeding generations, more have followed after the philosophical mush of Paine, than the Word of God and the men who believed in it. Deism has adapted itself over the course of two hundred years, and each time it is more degraded than before. Satan used the teachings of deism to get his foot into the door of America, and has since flooded our nation with all sorts of anti-God forms of "enlightenment".
Today you can see the modern descendants of deism, and what it has done to our country. Atheism, which is the next step, has been attacking the very foundation of America almost since the first settlers stepped on shore in the early days of the Colonies. In just the last 50 years, atheism has successfully attacked and removed the Bible, prayers and the very mentioning of Jesus Christ (except, of course, in terms of cursing) from the public school system, our court system, and public displays of Christian-based materials. This could never had happened, unless deism had first gained acceptance among people, and led many to think that God is not in control.
Evolution, another link in the deist chain, has replaced the Bible in American culture. Once, America had a Biblical vocabulary where everyday speech and literature drew from the Word of God. Today, most church members cannot tell you the basic stories of the Bible, let alone have a vocabulary based upon it.
Another descendant of deism has been the so-called theory of "Theistic evolution", basically deism with a fancy name. Theistic evolution claims that God started Creation, but let evolution take over and watched the universe bubble in a pot of primordial soup for a few billion years, and one day, without any work of the Almighty, man sprung up and God started talking to him. This is just a reinvention of the crazy clockmaker theory.
Today we have a lot of people in America, who according to surveys are Christians, but are really deists. Most do not believe that God works in the affairs of man to reach His goals. Most do not believe that God has a plan for their lives. These people are deists, plain and simple, and they live, work, and vote based on their true religion of Deism.
Satan has used Humanism and Deism to reach his end-time goals, and has done very well doing so. This attack has given us a generation of man who has no responsibility. We would rather shift the blame for our mistakes, our actions and our sins on someone else.
Again, look at our nation’s capitol, our state capitols, county seats, and our town halls. Those who are elected to serve are an irresponsible bunch of people who can never admit when errors are made, it is always another’s fault. For proof you only need to observe the hearings on some of the recent scandals in Washington. Not one of the men and women, who deserve to be locked up in prison cells, will ever admit to committing a crime. Irresponsible.
Let’s go one step further; after all, we cannot blame politicians for all of our ills. Parents are not responsible. Go to the grocery store, a mall, Wal-Mart, or church. You will see parents who cannot control their children, let the little adorable hoodlums do as they please, and never discipline them, for that might damage their psychosis. What a lack of discipline is doing is making Junior psychotic! Parents often say that they cannot control their children. And it’s typical among divorced parents to blame the other for Junior’s delinquency. Ask any teacher how often their students’ homework is actually done. It’s rare, because parents "can’t make them".
Since parents are no longer responsible for their children, it is no stretch of the imagination to realize that children are not responsible for anything. When twelve-year olds are arrested for violent crimes, many pin the blame on their friends or the video games that they play. To say, "I made a terrible mistake," never enters their minds.
Probably the most irresponsible group in the world today is that of Christians. Many do not feel that true spirituality is their responsibility any more. Just look at how few show up on a regular basis to services, or show up for soul-winning and visitation programs. Let somebody else do it, I don’t have time. And then when something doesn’t get done, the roof falls in during the baptismal service then it’s that "money-grubbing preacher’s fault." It’s always someone else’s fault, never our own. But people will rush to hear men like Rick Warren babble about nothing that makes everyone feel good about themselves.
This self-serving life-style of No Responsibility has been around much longer than just the last 500 years. It was introduced in the Garden of Eden. The Word of God records this dreadful day in Genesis 3:9-13, "And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he [Adam] said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked: and I hid myself. And he [God] said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat."
God came to Adam, who as head of the household was ultimately responsible for his family’s downfall. Instead of saying, "Lord, I made a bad mistake," Adam said, "It’s that woman’s fault!" And if that wouldn’t hold water, notice Adam worded his accusation in God’s direction as well—"the woman THOU gavest me," made me do it! Of course, Eve, not to be outdone, didn’t have any children yet to blame this on, so she blamed the serpent. In the some 6,000 years of history man has not changed one bit. It’s still, blame, blame, blame—I’m not responsible—blame, blame, blame.
This lack of responsibility is handing over mankind into the hands of Satan—exactly what he was trying to accomplish in the Garden. Satan will not get everything that he wants, because God will intervene with His judgment on the world, and on Satan as well. However, Satan doesn’t have to get as much as he is getting. Men need to start being responsible and being men, being fathers to their sons and daughters, and husbands to their wives; instead of acting like teenage boys with out-of-control testosterone. Likewise, women need to start being responsible and being women, mothers to their sons and daughters, and wives to their husbands; instead of being liberated feminists.
It’s time we take responsibility for our actions, and stop shifting blame. Responsibility is a noble characteristic that should not be allowed to die. If the current generation is the most irresponsible, just think about how the generation that they will raise will be. Unless men and women have a change of heart and mind, then I believe we are about to witness the death of responsibility.
