Dead Gods That Can’t Bite
By: Ellsworth E. McIntyre
All during my government education and even my religious education, this was taught as truth: "You can’t legislate morality," or, "You can’t legislate against religion." My teachers were foolish and wrong. Government can indeed legislate against false morality and false gods and destroy them, provided government is legislating under the sanction of God’s morality, his law and his religion. The truth is this: you cannot, using all the power of the civil government, create or destroy Christianity, but you surely can destroy any false religion using civil government in the name of Christ. All religion is not equal. Only Christianity stands, prospers, and grows in spite of civil government. My teachers, by saying, "You can’t legislate morality," were really saying that false religion is equal to the genuine; that is to pretend that demons are equal to Christ.
The Bible teaches that false gods, demons, and even Satan himself cannot harm us except the Lord give permission (See Job 1: 11, 12). In spite of the fact that the Lord continually tells us that all power is given unto him in heaven and earth, Christians give fear to Satan and false religions instead of the true God. It is a deadly illusion to believe Satan and his hosts have free will. They do not. Only our Lord can act without permission. By our sin, we provoke the Lord to turn us over to the power of the forces of darkness. The Lord has plainly told us whom to fear. He said, ". . . fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Mt. 10:28). Every Christian should fear God and all godly authority. Ignorance brings poverty, sickness, and premature death (1 Cor. 11:30). A life in hell can begin early, now, on this earth, and only a spiritual airhead presses on for more and worse suffering after death.
One doesn’t need to vanish into the stacks of the library or consult wizards to assemble evidence of this truth; it is abundantly apparent. The truth lies before you on Easter, Halloween and Christmas.
On Easter, for example, our children will use as playthings eggs, rabbits and other symbols. These items once represented a powerful worldwide fertility cult that seemed to have a chokehold upon mankind.
Every Halloween, our children openly mock symbols of once powerful occult religions.
Every Christmas, once celebrated as the birthday of the sun, we now celebrate as the birthday of the true Son, the Creator of all things, the Lord Jesus Christ. We rejoice and celebrate the victory of true religion over false hope. In other words, the power of Christianity to vanquish phony religion is evident all about us every holiday of our lives.
Some modern-day evangelicals, however, operate as though "the devil made me do it," and such empty-headed theology. Some Christians have become cultist followers of books such as those written by Frank Peretti. Peretti’s novels tend to celebrate the power of the demonic instead of the Lord’s. We must teach children to fear the forces from above rather than those below. We cannot duck our responsibility for sin by claiming that we are powerless before our environment or false religion. The Lord sternly warns "that which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man" (Mk. 7:20). We can do all things through Christ if we fear him and obey him and relegate the demons, false religion, and environment to their proper places.
What does this have to do with education? It is very important to teach our children to never make excuses for breaking God’s law. We teach demonic theology when we blame anyone or anything in our environment such as whisky, cigarettes, or half-naked women with overwhelming provocation that we couldn’t resist. Children will follow our example as quick as a flash if we don’t pastor them away from that pernicious trap. We infect children with this wimpy religion when we teach them to be afraid of dead occult symbols of vanquished religions. Children should learn never to excuse themselves, but to celebrate the victories of Christianity over all false gods.
When I was an adolescent Christian, I entertained all the above false ideas, and it is my prayer that my readers will learn from my errors. Enjoy your Christmas trees, your Easter eggs and making fun of dead gods. They cannot harm you provided you fear God and obey His Law-word. Teacher, father, mother, don’t teach your children to fear dead gods that can’t bite. Your baby may grow up to be a sullen, self-righteous, hypercritical excuse-maker. Ecclesiastes 12: 13,14 states, "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." If you would like to explore a career teaching children to be victorious, instead of defeated losers who believe all religion is equal, write me.
This article was first published by the Chalcedon Foundation: https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/dead-gods-that-cant-bite
