When it comes to our world, the origins of life, and our existence as human beings, there are two general ways to believe:
- A God-centered understanding, that there is a supreme intelligent being who created the universe, this planet, and all life, including sapient human beings
- A godless understanding, that somehow the universe, this planet, and all life originated on its own through random chaotic forces
From each of these two general views, there are a variety of divergent beliefs, views, and cultures that have arisen. For instance, in the God-centered worldview, there is Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—all believe in the Abrahamic Creator God yet each has various divergent beliefs that lead to different cultures and practices. Likewise, among those who hold the godless worldview, there are differing beliefs, such as scientism, materialism, atheism, humanism, and communism, which result in different cultures and practices among them.
Over the past several decades, a growing social movement originating out of the godless worldview has been teaching the idea of validating, accepting, and promoting all cultures as equal in value. This idea is often presented in the negative by attacking historic Christian values as oppressive, abusive, exploitive, and racist. The godless do this by asserting that Western Christian values are the cultural foundation that instigated slavery, the genocide of people of color, colonialization, and various levels of planetary destruction.
Then the godless seek to advance their culture by promoting all forms of cultural diversity except Christianity, and they falsely claim that accepting all other cultures and practices is healthy, valuable, wise, and beneficial. This is a fraud, a con, a lie.
Let me state this plainly: Not all culture is equally healthy and beneficial and, therefore, not all culture is equally valuable. Some cultures are outright harmful and destructive, and it is right (righteous) to replace them through godly means.
- Culture that leads people back to a loving relationship with the true Creator God as Jesus revealed Him to be, whose kingdom is the kingdom of love, is healthy; culture that promotes godlessness, with fear and selfishness (survival of the fittest) as the motivating forces for development and advancement, is unhealthy.
- Culture that helps its people develop reasoning skills, values objective evidence, and reality-based living is healthy; culture that promotes feelings over facts, authority over evidence, rules over reality, and meaningless ritual and superstition over wisdom is harmful and unhealthy.
- Culture that promotes living in harmony with design law—the laws the Creator built reality to operate upon (laws of health, etc.)—is healthy; culture that promotes arbitrary rules that violate the laws of health is harmful.
- Culture that educates all its people is healthy; culture that prohibits the education of some or perpetually practices policies that result in failing schools—where the majority of students don’t gain competencies—is unhealthy.
- Culture that values truth and the free exchange of ideas is healthy; culture that censors information and obstructs free speech is unhealthy.
- Culture that values human life and seeks to protect the vulnerable is healthy; culture that values power and sacrifices human life (especially the most vulnerable) is unhealthy.
- Culture that promotes altruism is healthy; culture that promotes the exploitation of others is unhealthy.
- Culture that values Christlike character, developing the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22) is healthy; culture that values the possession of a certain skin color, gender, political party, or any other factor over godly character is unhealthy.
- Culture that promotes balanced diet, reasonable exercise, physiological rest (sleep), and spiritual rest (Sabbath) is healthy; culture that promotes fast-food, a sedentary lifestyle, long work hours that interfere with sleep, the use of various stimulants (caffeine, amphetamines) in place of sleep, and no weekly sabbatical to rest the mind in relationship with God, family, and friends is unhealthy.
- Culture that promotes forgiveness with appropriate boundaries is healthy; culture that promotes revenge is unhealthy.
- Culture that promotes honesty is healthy; culture that promotes dishonesty is unhealthy.
- Culture that promotes freedom of conscience is healthy; culture that coerces consciences is unhealthy.
- Culture that promotes autonomy, seeking to develop individuals to their highest capacity, is healthy; cultures that promote paternalism, seeking to keep the masses enfeebled to be controlled (parented—told what to do), by the few elites is unhealthy.
- Culture that values achievement over entertainment is healthy; culture that values entertainment over achievement is unhealthy.
Don’t accept the lie that all culture is equally valuable. It is not. In fact, it is right and good to identify destructive cultural practices and, through peaceful means, seek to replace them with healthier culture and practice.
We do this through the presentation of truth in love that converts hearts and minds, through education, through documentation, and through measurable observable outcome differences. We actively desire and seek to eliminate from society those cultural norms, practices, beliefs, and attitudes that are objectively destructive and harmful to human thriving.
Conflation Confusion
The godless allege that America is an abusive and destructive culture because the culture of white European Christians led to the invasion, conquering, and elimination of the governance and cultural practices of the native peoples. They allege that society would improve if the cultural practices of Christianity were eliminated. But this is a lie.
While it is true that the methods used by European nations to conquer the Americas were not godly, it is also true that the various nation-states of this world do not represent Jesus or the kingdom of God (John 18:36) even when they claim to be doing so; we will not defend the abusive and un-Christlike methods used by the kingdoms of this world because they are not God’s kingdom. But it is an error to confuse the nation-states, which operate upon the principles of this world, with Jesus and His true followers and the healthy society that occurs whenever and wherever God’s principles are put into practice by the people.
Whenever and wherever people have returned to the Bible (Reformation) and brought with them genuine Christian culture and practice, society has improved. Such practice includes: two-parent homes, work ethic, personal responsibility, the pursuit of truth and the scientific method, respecting the individuality and liberty of conscience of all other humans, and, thus, freedom of speech, worship, and association. Moreover, culture that promotes forgiving those who have wronged us, seeking to bless rather than seeking to curse, treating the human body as the Spirit temple and seeking to live healthy lifestyles, being good stewards of the planet, and valuing all human life and thus Christian culture led the anti-slavery abolitionist movement. Yes, wherever Jesus and His methods are advanced, people and society improve.
The ungodly seek to trick people into focusing on the un-Christlike methods used by nation-states and the unconverted who claim to be Christian, alleging these methods are the outgrowth of Christianity, and falsely claim that by replacing Christian culture with godless culture, society and human thriving would improve. But this is a lie.
Reality of Godless Culture
Just take a moment to examine the historical evidence for yourself and decide if that claim is supported by the facts. Would our society be a better place for human thriving if the dominant culture today was one of many non-Christian cultures that practiced cannibalism, human sacrifice, tribal wars, and slavery—as many of the American tribes did? Have societies that replaced Christian culture with godlessness (communism) such as the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and Cuba resulted in greater human thriving? No—it resulted in the greatest human abuse, genocide, exploitation, and corruption of humanity in history!
Understand what is happening in the world today—the real goal of the so-called cultural equity agenda is not to advance human thriving, but to diminish the healthy impact of living in harmony with the principles of God as taught in the Bible and advanced by Christianity.
The godless culture, through the guise of tolerance, seeks to advance its destructive culture by vilifying and nullifying the values, principles, and practices that have resulted in success for all people who practice them.
The godless culture, when it is advanced and its methods are put into place, will always bring more harm, greater pain, increased poverty, greater exploitation, abuse, and death. This has been borne out over and over again throughout human history—again, just look at every society (USSR, China, Cuba, etc.) in which godlessness has dominated.
As a physician, I have become alarmed as I have witnessed the intrusion of the godless worldview into medicine, which has led to dishonesty, exploitation, and the compromise of historic medical ethics and values. During COVID, we saw a worldwide exploitation and abuse of people, the coercion of conscience, restriction of liberties, redistribution of wealth, active obstruction of truth, and promotion of lies—and it was the medical establishment that was the frontline force of this evil assault!
The godless are behind the entire push toward so-called institutional, systemic, healthcare “equities.” The problem with the godless approach to culture and what is called systemic and healthcare equity is that they have no standard of what is healthy. Once health moves beyond the most basic measures of physiological health (lab values, blood pressure) to actual mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual thriving—which operate upon God’s design laws that govern the mind, relationships, the soul and spirit—the godless are left completely adrift in a raging sea of stormy feelings, emotions, and personal preferences, biases, and desires.
This leads to physicians and professional health societies and organizations devaluing human life and advocating and promoting all kinds of destructive practices, including medical assistance in dying (euthanasia)—not just for the terminal hospice patient under the guise of mercy, but for anyone who is deemed to be suffering. In Belgium, it is now legal for people with mental illness to receive physician-assisted death as a treatment:
- A 20-year-old Belgian woman was medically put to death, at her request, after suffering from PTSD. Another Belgian woman who killed her five children was medically put to death at her request 16 years after her imprisonment.
- In Canada, more than 10,000 people have chosen to die with the help of their physician.
What has happened to the first rule of medical practice, which is first do no harm? Godlessness, the idea that humans are just animals evolved from lower life forms, happened. The problem with the godless worldview is that they have no basis for moral health, no foundation for properly making ethical, moral, and principled-based decisions. Whatever the prevailing winds of cultural mood, the godless will be swept away by them.
One final example of how godlessness has corrupted medicine was revealed at a recent national mental health symposium in which one of the presentations was stated to highlight the racial biases and inequities in the healthcare system. The lecturer presented childhood risk factors that increase the risk of developing a mental health disorder later in life and rightly identified such elements as poverty, lack of education, poor nutrition, abuse, and neglect; the speaker supported this by citing several journal articles that have documented these findings. [1] [2]
But what was diagnostic and evidence of the godless bias in medicine is that the root cause that increases every other risk factor was not included in the presentation nor in the articles cited—and that factor is single-parent homes. A single-parent home is the risk factor that most increases the risk of poverty, low education, food insecurity, incarceration, and child abuse. The Institute for Family Studies documents that:
- Black children in America from two-parent homes consistently do better than white children from single-parent homes:
- 36% of young black women from intact families have graduated from college, compared to just 28% of young white women from single-parent families.
- 14% of young black men from intact families have been incarcerated, compared to 18% of young white men from single-parent families.
- 13% of black children in intact families are poor compared to 33% of white children in single-parent families. [3]
Why would this factor not be presented? Because it doesn’t fit the godless narrative that underpins the current attack on Christianity that masquerades as racial equity—Critical Race Theory. According to Critical Race Theory, a two-parent home is considered part of “Whitism” and to support a two-parent home is “racist.” [4] Therefore, to advocate the benefits of a two-parent home would be, in the godless worldview, racist and, therefore, this fact must be left out.
Therefore, in order to continue to advance the godless narrative, which dominates corporate medicine and the sciences, the institutions of education, medicine, and psychiatry must deny objective reality. Their godless culture, worldview, and system of living is contrary to how God built reality to operate; thus, its application and practice will unavoidably result in causing harm.
Without a moral standard, without understanding design law, without God and His Word, the godless are obstructed from advancing interventions that restore genuine health. Just imagine what would happen if medicine, government, academia, and the media actually started promoting the benefits of two-parent homes and implementing policies that would strengthen families, families that function as God designed them to function, with mature individuals who love others more than self and who will fulfill the duties of their position, who are responsible, who hold each other accountable, who teach their children to respect others and develop self-governance, who value merit, hard work, and personal responsibility. What would be the result? Ever-increasing health and wellness in those people who practice these principles and a healthier society.
This is why the godless choose a different path. They take actions that lead to the breakdown of God’s design for families; the inevitable result is a degrading quality of life with subsequent physical and mental health problems, and then they focus on these poor outcomes to allege that God’s principles, which would resolve this sad state of affairs, are the cause of the problem. This causes many to look to the state to solve the problems that the state was causal in creating—a vicious cycle of reinforcing destruction.
The discerning Christian must understand that not all culture is equally valuable, not all culture is equally healthy. We are better off in America because Western cultural values eliminated cultural practices such as cannibalism and human sacrifice. But as the godless worldview becomes the dominant force in forming today’s culture, society will only decay because it is acting out of harmony with God’s design principles for life.
But as we watch this inevitable decay, we must keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, courageously live out His principles, trust Him with our lives, fortunes, families, and futures—and lift up our heads because our redemption draws near.
[1] Compton, M., Shim, R., The Social Determinants of Mental Health. Focus, Vol. 13, Issue 4, 2015; 419-425. doi.org/10.1176/appi.focus.20150017
[2] Shim RS, Compton MT. The Social Determinants of Mental Health: Psychiatrists’ Roles in Addressing Discrimination and Food Insecurity. Focus. 2020 Jan;18(1):25-30. doi: 10.1176/appi.focus.20190035.
[3] https://ifstudies.org/blog/less-poverty-less-prison-more-college-what-two-parents-mean-for-black-and-white-children
[4] See transcript from a chart from the National Museum of African American History and Culture in our blog Beware: The Current Claim Of “Institutional Racism” Is Really An Attack On Christianity