Society a rotten apple for the government to take care of

Koot van Wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD) Visiting Professor, Department of Liberal Education, Kyungpook National University, Sangju Campus, South Korea, Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College, Australia.

The society we live in, anywhere in the world, is made up of persons who want to be rich without education and succeed with mafia friends, monopoly, sour deals, tricky deals, even unlawful deals. Also in society are those who want to be rich through education. They spent thousands of dollars for education and then struggle to find a job. Some remain unemployed. Most people do not work in the area that they have studied. Many powersystems are packed with people who were selected by chronism since the person was put in a position due to a friendship with someone else higher up in the system. Some of them are incompetent, unprofessional, uneducated at times and above all, receive huge salaries every month for being in that position in the structure. When a society is made up of elite that was given wealth by race Empowerment laws, the problems only started, they do not solve the problem. The ordinary people start to mistrust the power-systems and also develop a reaction against the elite of society. They compare themselves with these uneducated rich people with no manners and get frustrated. They themselves have degrees and high studyloans to pay but they cannot get jobs. So society is comprised of these diverse people each with their own complex deficiencies. To have a romantic view of society is to be not only naïve but utterly foolish. Society is a rotten apple and that rotten apple is the heritage of each government who has to polish the unrotten parts and try to root out the worms and bad spots on the apple. Some governments choose to support the bad and rotten parts on the apple. That is because their own ideology is rotten. Communism is such a rotten part on an apple. Communism is a politico-secular religion or cult but the difference is that in Christianity you willfully signed up or is free to go but in Communism you are threatened to stay and punished when you go. Christianity lives with an optimism of growth and development. Communism lives with a constant fear of losing and shrinking numbers like the 100 million Christians in China compared to the 88 million communist party members which gave them a phobia that Christians may take over the country. So what do they do? The Chinese government started to ransack and demolish the Christian churches in 2014 and destroying what the newspaper says, thousands of crosses in August of 2015. Prof. Yang of the USA says that they fear Christians will outnumber their party members in future too much. When there is a Christian gathering, a thousand go but when there is a communist festivity only a small crowd turns up. That is the other difference between Christianity and Communism. Christianity is taught by Romans 16 to abide by the will of the government. Communism does not have this feature to abide by Christianity’s wish or will. Communism is a smile with canine teeth whereas Christianity is a human happy smile. There is not a country that harbors communism that does not fear Christianity. Not because Christianity is militaristic but because Christianity focuses on the conscience and above all a moral and clean one. Christianity is voluntary communal but Communism is mandatory communal. People are free to participate or not in Christianity but in Communism people are forced to participate in activities or face punishments. Communism does have a two level hierarchy with their own party-members as the elite and the rest as the plebs that get’s secondary attention if money permits. Money and needs get fulfilled at the top first and then the army that maintains and protects the elite and then the rest gets their part. Christianity has all members potentially equal to excel in various ways to leadership and even to the control room of the denomination. Christianity hopes for a heaven above. Communism struggles to create a heaven below.

Some may say that it is not appropriate to compare Christianity and Communism. They assume the one is political and the other is religious. Communism worships their pioneers as gods and 100% dare not to be different. They create certain days and festivals for these gods like their birthdays and on that day they do ritual actions that are cultic in nature and essence and that enter the domain of religion. Politics became religious. When Christianity enters the domain of politics, and it did many times in history, it is no longer religion, at least not the true one, but also a political cult that appeals to the conscience of true believers with smooth prooftexts from the Bible or characters of the Bible to coach their citizens to absolute loyalty.

True religion is not a liturgy, a public display of grandeur entertainment, a showpiece of power, a mass-excited audience, but a quiet individual consideration on the word of God and how it relates to me, my life, my relations with other humans and with God. It is on purpose that the word “meditation” on the Word of God is not use. “Meditation” has negative connotations and yoga is one of the domains where it is applied. True religion is not a trance. It is not a repetitive hyping-up of oneself into someone else or whatever else. Charles D. Brooks said in his sermon on Youtube: “Well arounded sin” that a dead fish can also swim downstream but if you want to go upstream you better be alive and well. Edward Heppenstal said in his class that truth cannot be voted in by the voice of the majority. It is the truth because it is in God’s Word. Brooks continued to say that we cannot change truth by rationalizing it, existentializing it, internalizing it, theologizing it. No injunction contrary to the Bible in any form can take the place of the Word of God. Secular Jurisdiction is designed by secular societies to reign and rule over their societies but a rotten system cannot take care of a rotten society. It is bound to fail. A papal jurisdiction is not the answer since not even the pope is following the Word of God. He follows the Word of God, tradition of the fathers (which deviates at will from the Word of God) and his own declarations (which is deviating also from the Word of God ad hoc). So where can one find a proper jurisdiction for society? The secret is to first study the Word of God properly and see and know what is permissible and what not. Woman ordination is not permissible and it is not the case of trying to find in the Bible exactly the same liturgical action for sanctity of a priest but it is the principle that one wants to replace what was solely allocated in both testaments to be the work of a man to be the work of a female. Only the outside of Israel societies ordained their females for the pagan religions. In Israel it was never practiced. There are not a single priestess in the Old Testament and no reference in the New either. It is not only in modern times that female liberation actions were taken. It is as old as man but it had periods of downturn and upturn in past history. The Old Testament is not a case of a male-dominant society. Females were business women as the last chapter of Proverbs indicated. Then there is the non-biblical issue of gay-ministers. The Dutch Reform Church tried through stormy years until 2015 to introduce it to their general synod in South Africa and they are facing splits and congregations that broke way as well as groups of congregations. All parties on both sides of the argument realize full well that it is not biblical. Yet, there are pastors who pursue to introduce this lopsided concept into the church. This is what C. D. Brook is talking about when he said that no injunction can be constructed against the Word of God and pass as proper religion. It is the same with jurisdiction. If it is against the Word of God it is not appropriate and no true Christian has to follow it. Is true Christianity represented by the number of people or the quality of faith? If the faith is not biblical the quality is low even if the numbers are well above a billion. True religion cannot be designed by an eclectic combination of the Word of God, patristic father’s tradition and papal declarations. The reason is that both the fathers and the papacy declarations are subordinate to the Word of God and should be judged thereby.

How can rotten apples in the government take care of rotten apples in the society, or when the whole society is a rotten apple? It is not a case that a particular party is not rotten and another party is. All political parties and all governments are made up of rotten apples whether democratic or communistic. This is the complex task of all who are living today and no-one will have the right answer, except that power belongs to God and humility and confession is needed from humans. Isaiah said in Isaiah 33:6b-c that for the believer the “wealth of salvation, wisdom and knowledge, the fear of the Lord is the treasure.”