You Shall Be As Gods

This is the opening passage to my new book, You Shall Be as Gods: Pagans, Progressives, and the Rise of the Woke Gnostic Left. The book is out today and available for order here.

In 2021, Pew Research released the results of a survey that showed that nearly 30 percent of Americans consider themselves unaffiliated with any religion. The percentage of “Nones” doubled in just over a decade. In the same time period, self-identified Christians dropped from 75 percent to 63 percent of the population. Why are so many formerly professing Christians joining the ranks of the Nones? The numbers are stunning, and several people have tried to understand and explain the significance of this shift in religious affiliation.

A common answer is politics. Sadly, politics has become all-consuming for many, including Christians. As one researcher explains, with the growing divide between the political sides in the United States, many of the Nones are struggling to find a place to belong: “They don’t put up political yard signs. They don’t go to political meetings. They feel left out, left behind, lost, unmoored, and disconnected from the larger society. They feel like society doesn’t work for them.”

Churches, which should be a refuge from the world, have become increasingly partisan. Political beliefs and debates are fracturing relationships, families, and congregations. In response, a growing number of people are choosing to opt out of church altogether. But religion doesn’t just go away. There are no real atheists. Everyone places faith in something, worships something or someone, even if it’s a humanist religion that worships the self. Blaise Pascal is remembered for speaking of the God-shaped hole in everyone’s heart. Paul explains in Romans 1 that humanity knows there is a God and that we should worship Him:

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly per- ceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are with- out excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. (Romans 1:20–22 ESV)

Left to our own devices, we will try to fill the God-shaped void in our lives with anything and everything imaginable. And that’s what is happening even now when so many people claim to have no religion.

Defining Religion and Faith

How would you define religion? The dictionary definition seems straightforward at first glance: “a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices.” For Christianity, the set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices comes from the Bible and the traditions of the various denominations. The basic beliefs include one triune God who created all things, who sent His Son to die on the cross for the sins of His people, and who hears prayers and answers them. Worship includes singing, praying, reading the Bible, listening to sermons, and participating in the sacraments. The number of sacraments—and how to practice them—varies, but the two that all denominations accept are baptism and communion. Believers profess faith in Christ for salvation. Christians look to their faith to guide how they live and treat others.

Every religion has beliefs that address questions like: How did the world and people come to exist? What does worship mean? What is the purpose of life? How should people treat others? Which behaviors should people engage in and which not? What happens after death? Even atheism and agnosticism offer answers of a sort to these questions.

An atheist might say the world and humanity evolved through scientific processes. The purpose of life is to live life to the fullest because there’s nothing after death. While atheists might say they can’t tell others how to live, they generally believe certain behaviors are right and others are wrong. They love their friends and family and believe they are basically good people. As far as worship, they may think they don’t worship anyone or anything, but something in their life is of such ultimate importance to them that they would sacrifice much for it. It could be money, love or sex, a cause or purpose, or even the pursuit of happiness.

“What’s in a name?” William Shakespeare once wrote. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Meaning, call it a rose, or not a rose, it is still a rose. Call a rose an onion, and it will still smell nice. Even when we label a system of beliefs as atheism, religion is still religion. Although it may claim to be simply about there being no God, it remains a belief system about the nature and origin of life, the universe, and everything. It’s important to remember that because, as we’ll discuss, religious beliefs and faith play a central role in our lives and in our society.

Over the past fifty years, American society has tried—with some success—to push God, faith, and Christianity from public life, schools, businesses, and politics. But that doesn’t mean religion is gone. In fact, a new religion is on the rise. What do I mean by a new religion? Well, going back to the dictionary definition, an alternative definition of religion is “a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith.” In the U.S. today, there is growing pressure to accept a certain system of beliefs. And as we’re seeing, this new religion that doesn’t call itself a religion does not want to co-exist peacefully with conservative, Judeo-Christian beliefs.

What in the World Is Happening?

That’s the question being asked by so many Americans today. Many people feel as if reality itself has been turned upside down. Judeo-Christian values once taken for granted are not only routinely ignored but openly attacked. And many people simply don’t know how to respond. They don’t agree with what’s going on around them, but they care about their neighbors and they don’t want to appear mean or unkind. So, they keep their heads down and go about life with their families, hoping that the mob won’t come for them, but not sure what to do other than to rant and rave on social media. Maybe you’re one of them.

Even those who are angry and fed up with it all aren’t sure how to respond. Sure, it may feel good to rant, and voting for someone who “fights for us” may provide some small satisfaction in the moment—sort of a “take that” mentality—but at the end of the day, nothing changes.

Surely there must be a better way, a path to both understanding and responding to these attacks to shape deeper cultural change. There is, but it requires dealing with tough topics and being willing to understand how we got here in the first place and what we are truly up against at the root level, beneath all the clickbait headlines, fear, and angst.

The reason for all the crazy we see today is the influence of a religion that claims not to be a religion. In fact, it claims to be the anti-religion—when nothing could be further from the truth.

Back in 2016, I wrote You Will Be Made to Care in which I likened the Left’s radical cultural agenda to a wildfire raging across our nation. What I said then was that it was just beginning to burn and that it would get worse before it burned itself out. The only question was how much cultural damage would be left behind. Unfortunately, we are seeing that fire burn today and popping up in many places.

I want to call out something in particular: The problem is not just on one side of the political spectrum. Yes, I do believe that the Democratic Party of today has been largely co-opted by those who seek to advance this radical, religious agenda. And it would be easy to dismiss it all as a partisan problem, thinking that if we all just vote Republican then the chaos will end. Not only does that approach come with its own problems, which I explore later in this book, but that partisan approach also misses the roots of the problem.

The bottom line is this: Our country doesn’t have a partisan problem, a political problem, a social problem, or an economic problem. We have a spiritual problem. In the absence of God, Americans across partisan lines have turned to government and celebrity for their gods. They have gone off to worship idols. At the core, they have reverted to the original mistake made in the Garden of Eden: They choose to see themselves as gods.

The problem with viewing everything through a partisan lens is that neither side really wants to deal with the spiritual problem of evil. Because the American nation, its politicians, and its people have pushed God out of their lives, evil creeps into the void. Evil is not partisan. The godless, secularists of the Left push evil agendas. Likewise, the God-fearing Christian Right often pushes evil agendas.

As a result, the Left, Right, and self-described Christians in all camps put tribal loyalty of party above love of neighbor and love of Christ. And evil advances. It has torn up families, neighborhoods, and communities. It is tearing up the nation.

We need Jesus, not partisanship. Our leaders have failed us on all sides. They’ve led us to idols and performance art on social media. And like all of humanity throughout history, we, in turn, have defaulted to the original sin.