Humanism, Enlightenment, and the Glory of Jesus Pt. 2

continued from Humanism, Enlightenment, and the Glory of Jesus Pt. 1
  The reformers were very much in line with thinking of their day.  Though many of their motives were unquestionably sincere, there seemed to be a sense of zeal to liberate the Church from the theological tyranny of Catholic Church and from tradition.  After the Reformation ran it's course, the thirty years' war started.  (again forgive the over-simplification!)  It was, primarily, a war between the Catholic Church and the Lutherans over territories (primarily Germany) and 'freedom of religion'.
  After the war, or possibly because of the war, a new group of thinkers emerged on the scene.  Coming up in a period know as The Enlightenment, they viewed their roll as bringing the 'light' of humanism as a means of liberating the world from the cruel bondage of religion and it's hierarchal structure.  (Granted, the structure was wack!  However, the wickedness and rebellion that came out of this period was anything but a return to a Godly ecclesiology.)  The Enlightenment gave birth to thinkers like Voltaire, Nietzsche, and Darwin.  These guys were extremely influential in the successful spread of humanism in the West.
  Humanism, although present in some form quite a while before Jesus' day, gained a lot momentum during the Enlightenment.  Nearly all of the philosophers within this movement were starting from the premise that everything existed to make man happy.  After this, most new movements or theories within philosophy were simply based on this assumption.  Nietzsche, for example, wrote that exercising power over others was one way to be happy.  Hitler was a student of Nietzsche.
  Other existential philosophers taught that happiness came through sensual gratification.  Anything that feels good is good for you.  Therefore, what feels good should then be interpreted as 'good'.  Since the concept of an absolute authority (God) with absolute standards of righteousness for which all men would be accountable was incongruent with humanism, many philosophers devoted themselves to disprove the existence of God or of the scheme of morality presented in the Bible. Nietzsche famously claimed that recent advances in the human understanding of existence had made the "myth" of God obsolete with the phrase, "God is dead".
  So...here we are.  What does ANY of this have to do with us?  Now we are going to get to that part.  Naturally, since existence revolved around the happiness of man, this began to be the focus of Western society.  All of these ideas worked themselves into the educational institutions from grade school to higher education.  A very influential American philosopher named John Dewey (1859-1952) taught us that happiness came through self-expression and finding who you "really" are.  Having great influence as an educational reformer, he persuaded a generation of parents to stop disciplining their children because it produced 'restraints' to them being themselves.  He taught that children would only be truly happy (thus fulfilling the reason for existence) if they were allowed to be themselves without behavioral restraints (or with as few as possible).
  Generation after generation were raised to understand existence around their own happiness.  Society reaffirmed this as propaganda and advertising appealing to people to make decisions based on what made them most happy.  (This was really done because this is the way wealth and power were achieved in Western society after this.)  From Hitler's campaign posters which promised the liberation of Germany from the oppression imposed by the Treaty of Versailles to the comercial that you just watched during the football game, the whole Western world functions based on the highest appeal to your self-fulfillment, absence of pain, and ability to 'feel good' about yourself.
  All of this, obviously, gained deep inlets to the church.  Both the regular teaching of the Church and the Gospel message itself were reinterpreted as the 'good news' that Jesus came to earth to make men happy. None of us have to look far to find evidence of this.  To quote a favorite Bible teacher of mine, Stephen Venable said, "If we are honest, we believe that God exists for us, and not that we exist for Him."
  As humanism was accepted into our midst there were several disagreements over how to express it. The liberals either did not believe in heaven and hell anymore or they did not consider talk about heaven and hell as 'life giving'.  Since the implications of heaven and hell did not produce happiness in the hearers of the message, it was considered unnecessary to achieve the goal of the church.  Eventually the cross and the atonement were removed in many of these congregations because it was hard to preach about a God who only cared about people's happiness if He would also kill His only Son.
  The fundamentalists generally maintained the teaching of the cross, the atonement, heaven, and hell.  They were interpreted, however, still largely in the context of humanism.  The cross was simply a means of human happiness in heaven, while the liberals emphasized human happiness on the earth.  The conservative message became, 'Come to Jesus so that you can escape hell and be happy in heaven.'  While the liberal message became, 'Come so that you can escape hell on the earth and find happiness on the earth'.
  This is why liberal branches of the church are pursuing social and political reform as a part of walking out their Christian faith.  They are simply escaping hell on the earth, and hoping to bring heaven on the earth.  The fundamental church in the West (largely still under the influence of humanism), while still maintaining the thrust and motivation of the happiness of man,  often presents Jesus as wanting 'a chance' to make them 'truly happy'.  'Give Jesus a chance'.  He is presented as the chief of many possible routes to human happiness.
  So, hopefully I have spent enough time on this to make you sick enough to want to read the next part.  To be continued...