Two Parallel Roads

There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death. Proverbs 16:25

Annually, the chief executive of the United States issues a report to Congress on the state of the Union. Traditionally, these rhetorical exercises do not much consider that lofty goal; instead, they have most often devolved into an opportunity for the presiding president to champion his agenda and promote his own political position. Meaningful discussions regarding the present condition of the American soul are rare and reflective looks back and prospective glances forward are shrouded in the self interested mists of party and power.

It is the purpose of this treatise to go beyond the immediate and the selfish, to look above and beyond the cloud, so that the paths to the horizons of past glory and future hope might be clearly seen and traversed by those who seek to walk therein.

If America were to look over her shoulder to her past(something she rarely does anymore), she would see that two parallel roads return to her founding, and beyond, to antiquity. Between the roads is a dense thicket, a wilderness of syncretism and compromise, a place of melding of two mutually exclusive principles and perspectives that results in the confusion and lostness of the wandering traveler.

At Lady Liberty's conception and birth, she was placed in the right path, an avenue of freedom whose source was the heavenly Jerusalem. This unique and exemplary path was narrow, to be sure, and exclusive to the followers and believers of the Builder; yet, it was open to all who would come and commit to it's maintenance and defense. The newborn nation, brought forth by fathers of faith in the Way, was dedicated in it's infancy to two eternal and absolute propositions heretofore untried within the family of nations and the human community. To be sure, the earthly Jerusalem of old had come close, walking firm within the first, but stumbling hard within the second of the eternal tracks in the road.

The first was the track of allegiance and submission to the sovereign will of the Almighty, a recognition that the blessings of freedom and opportunity are gifts of Providence to bestow and not things created, earned, or given by man himself. America's birth certificate declared this truth, speaking of the Creator's endowment of certain unalienable and unalterable rights to all men. The blessing of life, liberty, and the pursuit and fulfillment of one's purpose and meaning are universal and absolute. They are immutable pillars of strength upon which freedom rests; supports that cannot be torn down or altered rightly by the despotic weakness of human power. Simply put, because they are of eternity, and of God, time has no claim and man has no right to abolish or abuse them.

From this first principle is derived the second: Because God is the creator and lover of all and because he is no respecter of persons, all men have been fashioned in EQUALITY, the same in value in the bosom and image of the Author of Life. No man is, in essential nature and being, above another. No man has a right to rule another without the consent of the one governed. No man is good enough or superior in person that he might be a master and another be a subject. Every INDIVIDUAL has value and every life sanctified, resplendent in mortal glory fashioned by Immortal hands. Because of this absolute truth, slavery is excluded, humanly illegitimate, and monarchy is reserved for the King of Kings alone. Human government, thus, has no right to bestow such gifts or sit upon such thrones. The only proper function of human authority is to protect those God given natural rights and guarantee them to all - human power has thus a very solemn charge, yet one that is inherently LIMITED in scope, always and forever subservient to the authority and auspices of God.

The parallel road to the left of the right runs not to the city of God, but to the city of man. It runs to Athens. In ancient Greece, the philosophy of humanism, planted in Eden, rose to full bloom in a supposed golden age of earthen achievement. It was the Athenian citizen Protagorus who, in 400 B.C., exclaimed, "Man is the measure of all things." Indeed, the Greek worldview embodied this sentiment to such an extent that it's ultimate expression was found in the collective Man and the human gods of his own making.

The city-state was the the final arbiter of truth and justice. The wisest, strongest, and wealthiest ruled the crowd and the individual derived his value from the mass. Human wisdom and power held sway and equality and freedom were simply man made inventions only arbitrarily bestowed. Despite the fact that INEQUALITY and slavery reigned, the 'polis' was revered to such an extent that Athens saw not the person, but the STATE as sanctified. This is perhaps most vividly seen in the final choice of the learned Socrates. Upon his conviction for heresy, he was given the choice of exile from the state or death. "Having knowingly agreed to live under the city's laws, he implicitly subjected himself to the possibility of being accused of crimes by its citizens and judged guilty by its jury. To do otherwise would have caused him to break his "social contract" with the ALL POWERFUL state, and so harm it, an act contrary to Socratic principle." He chose death.

Perhaps the ultimate expression of humanism was found on the heights of Olympus. The pantheon of gods, reaching mythical proportions of imagination, are a telling collection of humanity deified. The demigods of Greece are impressive to be sure, but at the same time vindictive, revengeful, weak, and sinful. They provide interesting tales of the nature of man and of human interaction and foibles, but no lasting source for truth and freedom. Chaos reigns in a vague netherworld of ideals and principle where order is retained only by force and moral choices are based on relative and pragmatic circumstances and beliefs.

The lasting power of the ideas of Greece are evident when one realizes that while the greatest empire in history conquered her militarily and geographically, Greece conquered Rome in the battle of ideas. The Roman world became completely Hellenized religiously, ethically, sensually, and politically. This is seen throughout the annals of her history, but most clearly at the empire's demise. Historian Edward Gibbon notes in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" the following five characteristics which marked the city of seven hills at her end: a mounting love of show and luxury, a widening gap between the very rich and the very poor and a collapse of the 'middle class,' an obsession and perversion of all things relating to human sexuality, freakishness in the arts and entertainment masquerading as originality, and finally, an increased desire to see the state as all powerful and to live off it's largesse. Truly it seems, all temporal roads, even those of modernity, do indeed lead to Rome.

The two paths thus far examined also stretch forward, both to certain and inevitable destinations. The path of God must lead to a place of freedom and peace, restricted only by the ignorance and wrongs of foolish and sinful man. If devotedly followed in single minded focus, the traveler will be blessed through trial, find light along the way, and reach the blessings of the heavenly city. It is true that the road began there, but it also leads there, an unbroken circle from everlasting to everlasting. If one veers from the path into the wilderness of confusion, even as far as the lanes of the broad and human way, he must heed the call of God within his conscience and turn again to fight his way back to the narrow, back to the truth and to freedom.

Sadly, America and the church within her has indeed heard the Siren voices and wandered to the way on the left. She must, like Odysseus and the Argonauts of old, sing the song of freedom and pass by the way which ever leads to the inevitable whirlpool of slavery and destruction. Human wisdom has obscured the voice of God and America has fallen prey to the temptations of man. The battle has been in the heart and in the mind, in the church and in the school. The apostles of higher Biblical criticism and the saints of evolutionary doctrine have infiltrated the institutions, spreading an infectious disease that has become pandemic in scope and disastrous in effect.

There is a great task before all those who walk in the way of the heavenly city. We must fight with weapons of righteousness and sound a clarion call of truth to this generation. We are woefully behind in our efforts and have often been silent and weak. But it is not too late! Nothing is impossible with God, but we must hurry. Millions are abandoning the narrow for the broad, the way of freedom for the path of bondage. Perhaps the following quotes will serve as a warning and as a call to battle, before the secular state holds illuminable dominion as the "slavemaster of all free souls."


"Atheism is science’s natural ally. Atheism is the philosophy, both moral and ethical, most perfectly suited for a scientific civilization. If we work for the American Atheists today, Atheism will be ready to fill the void of Christianity’s demise when science and evolution triumph. Without a doubt humans and civilization are in sore need of the intellectual cleanness and mental health of atheism.”

"Christianity has fought, still fights, and will fight science to the desperate end over evolution, because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus’ earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the son of god. Take away the meaning of his death. If Jesus was not the redeemer who died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing! How does a god die? Quite simply because all his followers have been converted to another religion and there is no one left to make children believe they need him. We need only insure that our schools teach only secular knowledge. If we could achieve this, God would indeed be shortly due for a funeral service." G. Richard Bozarth

I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future
must be waged and won in the public school classroom
by teachers that correctly perceive their role
as proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity
that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians
call divinity in every human being...
The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict
between the old and new -- the rotting corpse of Christianity,
together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith
of humanism, resplendent with the promise of a world in which
the never-realized Christian ideal of 'love thy neighbor'
will finally be achieved." John J. Dunphy

"Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school, meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?" Charles Potter

There is not sufficient love and goodness in the world to permit us to give some of it away to imaginary beings." Friedrich Nietzsche

"There is no evidence that God ever interfered in the affairs of man. The hand of earth is stretched uselessly towards heaven. From the clouds there comes no help." Robert Ingersoll

"When I became convinced that the universe is natural – that all ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain . . . the joy of freedom. . . . I was free – free to think, to express my thoughts . . . free to live for myself and those I loved . . . free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope . . . free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the ‘inspired’ books that savages have produced . . . free from popes and priests . . . free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies . . . free from the fear of eternal pain . . . free from devils, ghosts and gods. . . . There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought . . . no following another’s steps . . . no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words." Robert Ingersoll



Charles Francis Potter


On Humanism


Old: God created the world and humanity.
New: The world and humanity evolved.

Old: Hell is a place of eternal torment for the wicked.
New: Suffering is the natural result of breaking the laws of right living.

Old: Heaven is the place where good people go when they die.
New: Doing right brings its own satisfaction.

Old: The chief end of humanity is to glorify God.
New: The chief end of humanity is to improve ourselves, as individuals and as the human race.

Old: Religion has to do with the supernatural.
New: Religion has to do with the natural; the so-called supernatural is only the not-yet-understood natural.

Old: Humankind is inherently evil and a worm of the dust.
New: Humankind is inherently good and has infinite possibilities.

Old: Humankind should submit to the will of God.
New: Humankind should not submit to injustice or suffering without protest and should endeavor to remove its causes.

Old: Salvation comes from outside humanity.
New: Improvement comes from within. No person or god can save another person.

Old: The ideas of sin, salvation, redemption, prayer, and worship are important.
New: These ideas are unimportant.

Old: The truth is to be found in one religion only.
New: There are truths in all religions and outside of religion.


John Dietrich:

Energy conveys to us the idea of motion and activity. Inside a living organism we see a source of power, which by some manner is released in terms of movement.... Life is energy... it is the creator or initiator of movement change, development. We are different from moment to moment because the life principle is at work with us.... The spirit of humanity, like the forces of nature, and like the physical life, is at bottom energy.... Spiritual life, therefore, is just as much a development out of what has gone before in the evolutionary process as physical life is; which means that the origin of spiritual life is from within.

Marcus Aurelius:

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. I am not afraid.


Pearl S. Buck:

I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.

Robert Ingersoll:

If abuses are destroyed, we must destroy them. If slaves are freed, we must free them. If new truths are discovered, we must discover them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind; if the defenseless are protected and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of people. The grand victories of the future must be won by humanity, and by humanity alone.

Sir Julian Huxley:

Today the god hypothesis has ceased to be scientifically tenable ... and its abandonment often brings a deep sense of relief. Many people assert that this abandonment of the god hypothesis means the abandonment of all religion and all moral sanctions. This is simply not true. But it does mean, once our relief at jettisoning an outdated piece of ideological furniture is over, that we must construct some thing to take its place.


May God raise up many and stir us, that we might see the invisible foe, assail, and slay it, boldly going forth upon the freedom road, under the banner of truth and in the power and name of the King of Jerusalem.