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Tuesday Report:

Subject: STRATEGIC Considerations in the Story of History

(Friday, November 26, 2004)

(approx. 5995 words, 11 pp.)

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Look, the political season is over, and we all had "fun" with it, and in 2 years we will do it all again, a little bit anyway, and in 4 years all yet again, big time? Right? But in the meantime, what we really need to do is ask the question, What really matters in life? Very simple, really. In truth, "politics" are just a small part of the larger culture, and the culture generally is pretty much a reflection of the spiritual condition of a society as a whole. I am almost certain we pointed this out numerous times, no less, during the campaign season, but political emotions were running so high no one wanted to listen to us here at uptospeedgoforit. But the point is clear? Always come here, if you want to know the truth dispassionately, about politics or any other matter, but if you are seeking hot-head, hot-air propaganda, go elsewhere, please. As we like to say here, "simple enough." Feel free to call us your rational one-stop web destination. (Though many people say this about us, we here would never say that of ourselves of course, and I think I speak for our entire staff, sizable though it is.)

Ultimately what really matters in life involves two questions:

Ultimately, what really matters in life (in dealing with the bigger and smaller issues of human existence) involves two questions: 1.) Is there really a God in heaven?  And, 2.) Did Christ really die for our sins, and rise again to give us new Spiritual life in Him? Answer these two "fundamental" questions about existence and human existence, about "God" and His "Christ," and most all other questions about what really matters in life and history will take care of themselves. Again, simple enough.

The triumph of the truth of God and His good, righteousness, reason, love, holiness, Christ, etc. is "the story of history," and the opposition in this story is, well, falsehood, false light, false good, false truth, false right, false reason, false love, false Christs and false prophets, and so forth, and so on. And the classic story of the battle between good and evil in history is given to us by Mr. Augustine, of course, in The City of God. Been there, done that, not going back today. But in this cosmic struggle between Good and Evil in and throughout history, there are two types of considerations for the (evangelical) Church, namely, tactical considerations and strategic ones.

Why is the Evangelical Church not successful in evangelizing the world in a strategic sense, and why is it not successful in a tactical sense? In order to unpack this two-part question, we must ask where the (evangelical) Church stands practically and spiritually speaking today in the cosmic battle for the universe in the story of history. That is to say, the starting point for understanding strategic and tactical considerations is a realistic assessment of our current overall situation.

The starting point, boys. . .

The starting point, boys, is, well, we are getting our butts kicked, big time, are we not? (that is, in the battle against Satan and his demonic hordes) This is something of the Battle of Kasserine Pass in World War II, spiritually speaking of course. (Did you ever see the movie Patton?) Clearly we (in the Evangelical Church) are not being successful in any significant sense in winning the lost world, and although there are said to be today about 60 million or so born-again, Spirit-filled Christians in America who truly love God and are growing in their faith, etc., in fact we have not really seen this figure move much off the dime in 10, 15, or 20 years to the best of this writer's knowledge, anyway, and that is even accepting the proposition that there really are 60 million truly born-again Christians who practice their faith regularly, diligently, and so forth, with all their heart and in all they do, etc., which I personally think is highly unlikely.

The whole-heart Christian life is (of course) way, way, way beyond simply attending an evangelical church weekly, which is an "obvious" demographic social standard and one we often use here on this website for various purposes or for superficial analysis. The truth is, of course, if you prayed to receive the Lord five years ago, and you have generally attended an evangelical church every week for the past 5 years, and that is all you have to say for yourself, you probably, in all likelihood, are not truly saved (yet anyway), though no doubt, or presumably, you have had some sort of minor or superficial evangelical spiritual experience of some variety, one can probably assume?

In any case, any way one figures it, there are no more than 60 million evangelicals in America since that is said to be the number of regular such Church attendees, but presumably nowhere close to all of these people are truly saved from God's ultimate Judgment and are truly born-again and Spirit-filled, etc. In short, bottom-line here, we are not only not evangelizing the world with the Good News of new Spiritual life in Christ, in truth we are not even making a dent or even minor dent in the world or in so-called "spiritual warfare" or "worldliness," nor having any significant effect in the larger cosmic struggle in the universe between Good and Evil in the battle of all history where true light and true understanding and good are said to fight against darkness, false light, misunderstanding, unrighteousness, evil, demonic rebel forces, etc.

In my view there are broadly speaking two ways of looking at why the Church is failing so miserably to defeat the spiritual forces of darkness, deception, and evil of Satan with his massive hordes of demons and so forth. As in any great warfare and clash of two massive and mighty Kingdoms (or cities) with armies of millions (in this case the army of our Lord and his Christ vs. the Army of Satan and his rebellious angels), those two ways of looking at the battle can broadly be described as strategic reasons and tactical reasons for victory and defeat. (I owe much of this following analysis today to my delving into Mr. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom as a youth, somewhat unsuccessfully I might say.)

Why is the Evangelical Church not successful in Evangelizing in a strategic sense, and why is it not successful in a tactical sense? In order to be successful we probably must understand and separate tactical and strategic considerations in the cosmic battle for the universe. Simple enough? What does this mean? Ultimately, spiritually, one is either in the born-again Kingdom of the Spirit in Christ, or one is not, and that is not just a practical spiritual reality but a logical fact. (You either is or you ain't, so to speak.)

This is the grand strategic spiritual reality of life and the cosmic structure of the universe, but this is not exactly practically, technically, and in this case tactically why the Church is not succeeding. Tactically, we fail for many, many reasons, for example, sin in the camp, prayerlessness, worldliness, internal division and strife, no true or right fear of God, lack of focus, no clear message, etc.  Strategically, however, we tend to fail because of our failure to establish dominance and consensus on the idea of moral theism generally as an ultimate worldview reality of human existence as opposed to the worldview of some sort of amoral atheism or agnosticism or rejection of God generally. And, further, for the born-again Christian (again, as a practical and logical fact), we as human beings either live in, and move, and have our being, in the Kingdom of the born-again Spirituality of the New Covenant, or we don't. Very simple.

What does this mean for our strategic analysis here? For the most part the world and cosmic historical reality for the non born-again, non New-Covenant individual is an entirely different reality than for the New Testament believer (and even for the moral theist generally) because the City or Kingdom of Man is either amoral or outright immoral, and it, the City of Man, is either not spiritual at all or it is falsely spiritual, and, further the City or Kingdom of Man is either ahistorical or falsely historical, and it is either anti-rational or falsely rational, and the City of Man does not believe in spiritual enlightenment and wisdom and understanding or it is falsely "enlightened" with poor "understanding" and foolish "wisdom," etc.

But in this writer's view, more than anything, what makes the forces of darkness and deception so successful in the cosmic struggle of good against evil on earth and in the universe is revisionist history which reflects not just a false spirituality outright, but encompasses a larger sense of irrationality, denial, and immorality in the battle of the Good, the True, the Right, and the Rational against the not-so-really Good, and the not-so-really True, and the not-so-really Right, and the not-so-really Rational. In short, not only do the two grand heavenly armies live and move and have their being in two different spiritual realities or Kingdoms, but so also right here on earth does man live and move and have his being in one of these two broad and opposed spiritual realities, yes, right here on terra firma, as the expression goes (and so seeing or understanding things right here on earth keeps us from getting too mystical about all of this stuff).

After the Allies had successfully landed on the beaches of Normandy and carved out a significant stronghold beach-head, they were not able to break out through the hedgerow country. The Nazis were just too dug in. (Again, did you ever see the movie Patton?) Solution for a breakout? The newly conceived notion of carpet bombing. The Allies picked a good spot in the German lines and did saturation bombing by air of everything in a 3 1/2 mile wide corridor, and then the Allies poured Patton's mechanized Third Army through the newly cleared-out massive hole in the enemy lines. Simple enough. To extend the analogy, you might want to say here for our purposes in this analysis, "Here comes the Third Army?" While not in combat, for discipline purposes Patton made everyone go about in virtually full dress uniform, but, though we have grown a tad bit "lax" in this area, to say the least, in truth that is probably not necessary for discipline or victory? (This writer is becoming something of a softy in mid-life? It may ruin his reputation!)

This website has advocated for many months the truth and validity of the Augustinian view of history and of the cosmos as the triumphant story of the City of God unfolding over the centuries with the culmination in the New Millennium (and our having crossed the "Jordan" of history and so forth, last summer) or, that is, this Augustinian view of history is the actual story of the spiritual triumph of God's Truth, Justice, and Righteousness in history. This is the literal working of God in history, as described in the Bible, so Augustine would say, and so, hence, Augustine looked back, using such Biblical analysis, at all actual history prior to his time around 425 AD. Further, Augustine set the table for the next 1600 years of history which would follow his time in the Battle of the two Cities (of man's atheist morally relative one against God's, etc.), and hence, Augustine, in essence, set the table for the eventual reality and spiritual wedding banquet of the Lamb in the establishment of the Kingdom, and so forth, whenever that time might come. (Now, of course, silly.)

This is a wonderful, wonderful, believers' view of history, an absolutely delightful story of mankind, and of the triumph of Good over Evil, and Christ and the Saints over Satan and his hordes of demons, and all that business, quite literally for Augustine. However, this writer is well aware that not everyone shares this view of history, truth, or good, nor, of course, does everyone actually share Augustine's deep love of God. No kidding on the fact that many do not truly love God as Augustine did! But, today, a love of God, as such, is not exactly our consideration here. Today we are more concerned with a love of truth, and we are going to look strategically at the alternative city-of-man view of human history and even all existence (and, hence, in effect, set up to do a little old-fashioned strategic carpet bombing, as it were).

What does this mean? It means the question we will consider today is, What is the primary overall, alternative humanist or atheist view of history compared to Augustine's City of God view? And, indeed, as we will see, this is to ask, What is the dominate (strategic) overall worldview of existence and human existence in the world today? And, in fact, we will go on to consider the question, What is wrong with the current dominate humanist worldview of life and history? All fair questions, no? The Plan is: We will look at this STRATEGIC larger worldview set of questions first in an overview and worldview historical analysis, and then following this, we will look at the TACTICAL failings of the Evangelical Church today in the cosmic struggle of the universe between Good and Evil in the story of all history. Simple enough?

This website is, of course, openly Evangelical, but that does not mean we do not explore, investigate, seek to understand and appreciate other religious, spiritual, philosophical, and historical viewpoints. This writer has been doing this sort of analysis for decades, hard as that may be for some of "our" more critical readers to believe, and the real question we need to face is, Where do we stand in the world "spiritually" (and in this case "strategically") as human beings in the story of all history? In a sense this is the question strategically, and our problems here are clearly what is stopping revival and worldwide spiritual awakening. This overall strategic and worldview spiritual reality question is not simply a "Bible" question, nor simply a "Bible prophecy" question, we have just done an extended almost year-long Bible prophecy series, which we also had "fun" with, but we are not here doing Bible as such nor Bible prophecy anymore (been there, done that, etc.). The fact is the question we face as humans, ultimately, is one of "spirituality" and "historical reality and truth," Bible or no Bible, as it were. "Spirituality," as such, is not exactly a Bible question, as such, but a personal experiential enlightenment question and a rational question of truth, good, right, and even history itself, if, in fact, history is a meaningful story, and not a meaningless "tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, (and) signifying nothing," as the expression goes. (And of course logically and practically these are the only two options of ultimately meaningful or meaningless story.)

Still, there are competing views of actual history, clearly, and of history's actual meaning, and we here on this website often speak from the City-of-God Augustinian position and of the City of God's understanding of the contributions of the Greeks, the Romans, the ancient Hebrews, the early Church, Augustine himself, the Reformation, modern notions of democracy and rights, the founding of America with its original city-on-a-hill vision of the founders, and similar such things, and so forth. Okay? Right? Our regular readers are well aware of these many different historical and philosophical currents in this website's analysis of things? (Sick of hearing of them probably?)

But, truth be told, there are various other views of history. (Trust me on this.) And probably the dominate view of history today is the secular humanist view of history, which is also known sometimes as "modernism" or "naturalism" (not in the Natural Law sense of "naturalism" but in the mere "materialism" sense), and as everyone knows "modernism" or "humanism" has in recent years tended more to so-called "post-modernism" (of no real truth of any sort, etc.) and even at times to a "New Age" spirituality or humanism. But what is the nature of these alternative, essentially secular and humanist views of history, and how did they come about? A further question is, How does, say, today's (spiritual) Liberalism relate to humanist (that is, atheist outright) theories of history? Unpacking this interrelated set of questions is the strategic goal for today's analysis in this writing. (There will be three or four parts to this strategic analysis, each of which is about 10 or so pages long.) In short, we are going to "look at" the city-of-man view of human history (which, ultimately, also involves a certain view of existence and of human existence).

Generally speaking, the secular humanist view of all history holds (foundationally) that there is no God obviously (and by definition), and the entire universe and unimaginably large ordered cosmos began with a spontaneous generation explosion from a single point billions of years ago, and billions of years later complex ordered life spontaneously began on earth, and millions of years later the human species developed solely by such things as chance, mutation, natural selection, etc. Apart from possible problems and the somewhat mythological and certainly metaphysical nature of almost all of this, which we will look at later below, how is subsequent human history, as such, viewed by the secular humanist, traditionally, and today by the increasing number of spiritual humanists and liberals? That is, What is mankind's non-story (as it were) in and for the City of Man? Fair question, is it not? It is a "non-story" and not an ultimately meaningful story, or it would be, by its very nature, "theistic" in order to have real ultimate meaning and truth, etc.! (We are such wise-acres here.) We are going to cover a lot of ground quickly in this analysis, and there are without question, variations on almost all of these points in this larger city-of-man humanist theory of history, but not as many as you might think, in the bigger picture anyway. . .

First, there were not the Hebrews

To go straight to the relevant points here, what to do with the ancient Hebrews, if there is no God, and hence no God who has delivered them out of Egypt miraculously and certainly no God who made an original covenant with Abraham, nor Who literally gave The Law to Moses, etc.? There are three or four major theories, to the best of this writer's knowledge, which take turns being the most popular with humanists and liberals. The key to understanding these various and "competing" liberal and humanist theories of history, and of the ancient Israelites in particular, is to understand that for the humanist, there is no God, period. For the humanist (that is, atheist) virtually all ancient Hebrew history is mere "mythology," more or less, although for the liberal or (so-called) higher critic, there is usually some sort of "spiritual" higher force at work, discovered by the Hebrews, Who is not polytheistic and not merely a projection of nature or man, but this "God" (of the liberal) cannot be known directly by man through scripture or, that is, by Biblical revelation in any of His actual literal attributes, since there is no literal revelation (supposedly), and so forth, for the liberal or humanist. (The liberal will usually concede that the ancient Hebrews came upon some possible knowledge of a "God" but not a "literal" knowledge or revelation of God, or he would not be a liberal but a conservative! Not complicated.)

Bottom-line here? Both humanist and liberal tend to agree that the supposed literal revelation of the Old Testament is mythology, whether totally, or just generally speaking. Some humanist and liberal scholars will concede that there may have been a Jewish or Hebrew people who came out of Egypt, and even some type of bondage in Egypt, but nothing like the Biblical account, but regardless, all would agree that the accounts are essentially mythology (or, again, these historians would not be liberal and humanist, obviously), and in fact a good number of humanists and even some liberals would hold there was no Exodus at all, and certainly no actual "Law" given by God directly. Why no "Law", and possibly no Exodus at all? Because the general consensus among liberals and humanists (this is what makes them liberals and humanists) is that the stories and writings of the Old Testament were the ancient Hebrews' "mythology" (in one form or another) created to give these people a sense of meaning and purpose and national identity, and so forth, as all other cultures of that time had a mythology to do this.

Though the other cultures around ancient Israel were not monotheistic in their mythology, that would be about the only major difference most humanist and liberal "scholars" would see ancient Israel to have with the surrounding cultures of other societies of that time. Of course, the (outright) humanists and the (spiritual) liberals see a big split between themselves (as liberals and humanists) because the humanist is total-atheist, total-mythology in his analysis, and the liberal is not, but in the end there is little practical difference between the two since neither sees the various Covenants with the Jewish people as real, true, and valid for history, nor literally, spiritually true, for the condition of man. And as far as "monotheistic" Israel goes, up until the Babylonian captivity as a practical fact, ancient Israel worshipped many idols for many centuries themselves, making them little different than other societies at times both the liberals and humanists would point out. And, further, though the Mosaic Law did represent some sort of fundamental applied notions of absolute truth, morality, good, justice, right, and so forth, these concepts are also generally rejected by both liberal and humanist, virtually as concepts, let alone as applied actual revelation.

In fact, I have seen some "scholars" (both liberal and humanist) who do not believe that much of the entire "mythology" of the Hebrews (Law or otherwise) was created until very late in the day, say the Babylonian captivity, in order supposedly to give the captives a sense of national identity while in exile, and hence, Moses, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and even David (a kind of a mythical Hebrew Hercules) never existed at all, so the more radical theories go. But be that as it may, the entire Old Testament revelation, for the most part, is considered highly embellished history (at best) to the point of being, say, 70, 80 to 90% fiction by the liberals, and generally total fiction or "mythology" by humanists, as far as its meaningful and real story of man goes and his interaction with God. The point here is neither the humanist nor liberal believes in any real revelation in any real significant sense by a literal God in heaven, Who is a conscious Creator Supreme Being, Who is all-knowing, all-powerful, and present everywhere (what theologians call omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent).

What this means for a theory of history is that when Christianity comes along, there can be no possible continuity of the Hebrew revelation, or a fulfillment of that revelation, or a fulfillment of literal covenant or prophecy in Christ since the original Hebrew revelation with Abraham and the Law and prophets and so forth from the previous 2000 years, was, supposedly, not valid or literal in the first place. So, bottom-line: the only true contribution made by the Hebrews to history is the general possible idea of a monotheistic God (whether fact or fiction), picked up later by the Christians and Muslims. For the liberal this is a "good" thing, if not literally true or valid in any real or significant sense of those words, but for the humanist it is complete mythology and fallacy on top of complete mythology and fallacy.

Apart from the idea of a possible (and un-describable) monotheistic force or spirituality in the universe, the differences in ancient Israel and her surrounding cultures are historically generally insignificant for most liberal and humanistic historians, who only look at "real" history and not "mythology," they would say. From the humanist (and generally liberal) perspective "real" culturally and historically relevant history in "the story of man," supposedly and usually starts with the ancient Greeks who supposedly gave us all of our notions of modern science, government, heroism, virtue, democracy, art, culture, learning, medicine, architecture, theater, poetry, and so forth. And so, ancient Greece is said to be where reason and rationality and the glory of man finally begin to reign supreme in the story of man, and not the usual more normal superstition and mythology of antiquity (blah-blah.), etc., etc.

According to this humanist theory, and in fact, Alexander conquers the known world and takes the Greek culture to the ends of the known earth, but the empire breaks up upon his death and degenerates and is eventually conquered by the Romans, who have a Republic and Senate and representative government with Roman law, order, commerce, and great architectural feats, no doubt, though the larger cultural foundation of Rome is not just the more stark Roman "virtues," but a great deal of the Greek "artistic" thrown in culturally speaking, and some Romans in that time would say for good, and some would say for evil. (The ancient Romans were a little touchy about this, were they not? But many sent their youth to Greece for education, no?) But, in truth, both ancient Rome and Greece were highly polytheistic, and for the most part not really given to reason, virtue, and morality (as a general understatement), and certainly not to the philosophical "God" (of Reason) or "Good" of the Stoics, or Plato, or Aristotle, etc. Of course, since there was such diversity, one can almost find anything one wants in the ancient Greeks and Romans, but, in truth, it was hardly mostly reason, light, order, beauty, virtue, and good! (My goodness. And certainly no one today would want to live there under virtually any circumstances?)

In any case, the Roman Republic falls to the Empire and Emperor (by way of Caesar), and after several centuries the Empire slowly collapses from within from moral decadence and from political and other corruption of one sort or another, and eventually the (Western) Empire by the 5th century is totally destroyed after waves of various invaders, some of whose names are notorious to this very day, such as the Vandals and the Huns, if not the Goths. In secular or humanist history, at this point, the light, "the true light" of humanistic reason and pagan antiquity is extinguished, and we go into the so-called "Dark Ages" (usually so called by secular historians) or into what is also called the "Middle Ages" (between antiquity and modernity) of seven or even eight hundred years, until the humanistic pre-Renaissance of the 12th and 13th centuries which reached its full blossom in the Renaissance itself in the 15th century, when pagan and humanistic antiquity (with its reason and glorification of man) is rediscovered and reasserts itself in the story or history of man in order to carry us into "modernity."

The point for our analysis here is that the general view of secular humanist history is that the light of pagan antiquity was extinguished with the final fall of Rome in the 5th century, and it was not really re-lit (so to speak) until the Renaissance 1000 years later in the 15th century. And though the Christian monasteries kept learning and manuscripts alive through the Middle Ages, it was, primarily, not until Aristotle was re-introduced into the West specifically in the 11th and 13th centuries (if my general references sources are correct) that once again the West began to return to classical learning, reason, knowledge, scholarship, science, and so forth. We say here Aristotle was "re-introduced" to the West because in the 11th to 13th century time frame Aristotle's writings are introduced into the West (which generally did not have his writings) by way of Islamic scholars who had kept Aristotle's writings alive in the lands they had conquered in their heyday. And, so the humanist theory of history holds this re-introduction of a "scientific" Aristotle into the West began to dispel, or displace, Christianity as the dominate cultural force, and Christianity then slowly lost its premier status with its (supposed) religious superstitions which had ruled since the fall (of the light) of ancient Rome, and hence the theory goes modernity with its reason and science, etc. started to come into being with this pre-Renaissance discovery, or re-discovery, of Aristotle. And, hence, supposedly, according to humanist theory, secular modernity based on reason and science and not religion eventually becomes the predominate worldview of the West. And so, according to the humanist and liberal theory of man, from the full Renaissance (in the 15th century) forward humanism, science, and reason have "ruled" in the West to this day.

Although other factors come into play, the thrust of this is, more or less, that it is the revival of pagan antiquity which fuels and indeed causes the Renaissance and the entire modern secular "scientific" worldview which we have today. So, many historians, following this train of events, will even say we actually owe the Renaissance and indeed all of modern secular science, history, and society to Islam which kept Aristotle in particular and pagan antiquity generally alive through the so-called Dark Ages as much as the Church did, which did not for the most part have Aristotle, who then plays out to be the savior of the West, who with other "re-discovered" pagan writers catapults us into the Renaissance, which in turn catapults us into the complete modernity of the Enlightenment based not on the Christian "faith" but completely on "reason" in the 17th and 18th centuries, and from the Enlightenment forward we have a totally secular scientific worldview in the West, based on reason alone, so the humanist (and liberal) theory of history goes, with "modernity" starting in the (humanist) Renaissance (in full), as it were, in the 15th century.

According to the humanist, liberal theory of history and knowledge, there is no viable or scientific or reasonable form of religion or God left after the Enlightenment in the 18th century. And, in fact, for the most part "spirituality" itself is thrown out as non-existent.  Man is seen as a purely physical "machine" with virtually no spiritual component or aspect, let alone soul, though liberals are not quite as radical in this view as the pure humanist, atheist, materialist, etc. Even though in the late 18th century the West gets the political "rights of man" in the French Revolution, based solely on humanism, it is in the 19th century where humanism reaches its full blossom in all areas of knowledge and science, etc. (supposedly). Marx gives us dialectical materialism, where one no longer needs God nor even truth, right, wrong or any other mere abstract notion or value, all of which are supposedly a mere rhetorical justification for class power, and so forth. (This is Marx as the original so-called "deconstructionist.") And of course in the 19th century Darwin revealed not so much the details of how life could spontaneously generate, but how species could evolve naturalistically and really almost inevitably by natural selection and survival of the fittest, etc., which in turn created entire "scientific" theories of social Darwinism for people (no less) which were so popular with materialist and humanist political philosophers such as Marx and Nietzsche and highly evolved "supermen" and super races, etc.

However, in the 20th century this materialism, humanism, and "reason" did not culminate in an absolutely unimaginable utopia on earth as was not only predicted but assumed by the humanists, but more in an unbelievable hell on earth in the 20th century, which was pretty much one big massive bloody humanistic conflict of World War I through World War II, and which then bordered on potentially the total destruction of all mankind until the collapse of the humanist Marxist Soviet Union in the late 20th century. And though the worldview of supposed "reason" and secular optimism had started in the Enlightenment and Renaissance and had held sway in the secular West for some 500 years, it is often said the optimistic humanist view ended completely with the occupation of France in World War II, and here one (in fact) sees the rise of the philosophy of Existentialism or, that is, essentially, postmodern philosophy in a serious way. However, in truth, optimistic humanist modernism was showing serious cracks in its worldview and optimism with the so-called "Lost Generation" after World War I and with reports of the gulag leaking out of the so-called "Workers' Paradise" in Russia in the 1930s.

In any case, having looked briefly at this humanist story of man, without question with the Nazis, and the occupation of France, and the death camps, etc., most humanists would hold the entire optimistic, rational, secular, scientific French Enlightenment and its essentially positive view of history is forever laid to rest with the rise of the dominate thinking of French Existentialism, and in fact in subsequent postmodern thinking in the West generally. Nothing in the long story of the history of man is more optimistic than the liberal and humanist writings of the 1930s and nothing more pessimistic and nihilistic than the postmodern humanist theories of man and history in the 1960s and following with their radical multiculturalism, moral relativity, so-called "deconstruction-ism" and so forth, where virtually nothing in history is really what it seems to be or says it is (supposedly), and cynically, nothing is any longer really true, right, or good.  Life is, indeed, in the final analysis "a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury and signifying nothing." And this entire shift from Enlightenment modernism to Existential postmodernism is what we have called on this website the Great Slide into humanist existential despair, but of course if one had not bought into the whole humanist story of history in the first place in the 18th and 19th centuries, one would not have been so prone to despair in the 20th century when things did not work out so well for the foolish, and ultimately irrational humanist and liberal "true believers" with their faulty worldviews, etc.?

Without going on endlessly and boring our readers to death (endlessly) and without being a wise-acre (if that is possible), what is wrong with the over-all humanist view and theory of history, mankind, and indeed existence itself?

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To be continued next time in a Part II to this STRATEGIC considerations in our Kingdom Victory Series. . . .