Virtue; the Battle between Christians and Humanists

A Christian Perspective
The Christian would maintain that patience,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness self-control, peace, joy, and
sacrificial love are all virtues. Perseverance,
knowledge, godliness, honesty, integrity, and
honor would also be considered virtue.
Virtue is that which is good or of moral
excellence.
In its highest form virtue is absolutely good
and is derived from the Ten Commandments
and the two that Jesus stated. We are to
honor God, not steal, kill, covet, commit
adultery, or lie to or about our neighbors.
We are to love and honor our parents. We
are to love God with all of our essence and
love our neighbors as ourselves. Every
Christian realizes that to act according to
virtue is good and to act otherwise is selfserving and evil.
The secular humanist holds that the highest
good can only be determined by human
beings. Within our American culture
humanism is more closely related to
secularism. Secular means to be "worldly"
and very non-religious in nature. The
secular humanist will by necessity be an
ethical relativist. The secular humanist does
not believe in absolute standards of conduct
or morals. Each person must determine
values for themselves. Decisions, about the
goodness of situations, are based on the
best human judgment available, at that time.
Good and evil is a moving target because,
over time, human perception of right and
wrong changes.
The Christian holds that the highest good
has been established by God and does not
change. Given this understanding, the
secular humanist is not, and can never be,
Christian.
Secular humanism tends to be very anti
religious because the humanist believes the
highest value can only be determined
through the human thought process. . In
practice, the secularist (secular humanist) is
tolerant of all views except that of
Christianity.

ACP03

The secularist distrusts Christians because

Christians do not easily change their values
with the changing times. Christians just
don't seem flexible to them.
We need to be perfectly clear about this.
The idea that only humans can determine
right and wrong clashes directly with the
Christian ethic which holds that God exists
and that He has established absolute
standards of virtue and morality for all
humanity.
Lets review some examples:
Killing is wrong. The corresponding virtue is
that we are to treat human life as a gift from
God. Both Christian and humanist agree
that the Holocaust was a horrific event. One
race, using selective criteria, justified the
slaughter of another. Yet in the last 25 years
more than three times the nine million, killed
by the Germans, have been killed through
abortion. Is the humanist position one of
virtue? The secularist considers abortion
useful and certainly a politically expedient
option for a woman who has an unwanted
pregnancy. If God exists, and life is a gift
from God, then the secularist position, no
matter how expedient, is wrong.
Adultery is wrong, as is any sex outside of
marriage. Forty years ago the national
consensus was that pornography was wrong
because it led to the sexual abuse of women
by men. Today the secularist defends
pornography, through the freedom of speech
article, in the Bill of Rights. Some studies
indicate that pornography entices men to
view women as sex objects. Some
interviews, with violent criminals, have
indicated a link between violence and
pornography. If our lives are a gift from God,
then pornography is wrong because it
devalues women. It is wrong because it
encourages men to act like animals with no
self-control, and view women as if they were
mere objects of satisfaction. Again the
secularist, by defending pornography, is
demonstrating a position of no virtue.

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Honoring and loving God with all our hearts

is right. The secularist wisdom in our courts
stripped God out of our schools some 36
years ago. Prayer and even the Bible were
forbidden. Presumably humanistic norms
have been propagated. Today, our
secularist children who have added
hedonism, to their moral arsenal, are raping,
assaulting, and blowing away those who
inconvenience them. The separation of our
children from God, the only source of
goodness, has been devastating. Again the
secular humanist position has demonstrated
itself to be morally bankrupt. However, the
price is hitting closer to home with each
passing year. Now, many of our children are
at risk, just by going to school.

From the Christian perspective Satan has

deceived the secularist. They have
substituted themselves for God in their
decision making about life. In noting just a
few examples (and there are many more) its
been easy to demonstrate the flaw of
human godliness without God.

We are to love one another as ourselves.

No where is this to be truer than in the
family. With the best of intentions, secular
reasoning in legislative government has
granted easy divorce so that a married
couple doesnt have to experience undue
discomfort in marriage. When either partner
does he, or she, merely has to claim
irreconcilable differences and the marriage
is finished. No human wisdom saw that
again the children would pay the price.
Today we have found that, in almost every
juvenile problem area, children with only one
parent demonstrate many times more
problems than children with two parents.
Children, on a massive level, have been
economically and morally impoverished by
a, well intentioned but morally bankrupt,
secular system. Again, a lack of virtue has
been demonstrated by humanism.

Thus far, in the later part of the 20th century,

nothing of secular humanist origin measures
up to the Christian virtues of patience,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness self-control, peace, joy, and
sacrificial love. These virtues combined with
perseverance, knowledge, godliness,
honesty, integrity, and honor still form an
unbeatable combination as a recipe for life.
We thank God for that.

ACP03

Virtue is that which is good or of moral

excellence. Secular humanism has shifted
its perspective of good and evil so frequently
that it hasnt been able to determine what
virtue is. Christianity has always known!
The challenge for all Christians is to
maintain their stance of virtuous principle
and conduct when confronted with the
shifting sands of secular humanism.

12-14-98
Mark B. Nemzek
2716 Boone Ave. N
New Hope, Mn. 55427
612-593-1241
ACP03

12/14/98

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