Greetings folks:
Last week I went over the different power sources. Now I’m going to go over how each source orients us into walking with God. Let me just start by saying that these power sources don’t necessarily determine whether or not we go to Heaven, they just determine how we are growing in relation to God and how we are growing spiritually (see next unit). These are just different power sources. There’s one power source left over, and THAT one may be determinant of Salvation, but I’m not going to discuss that one.
Remember when I said that both forms of humanism use certain techniques to justify behavior patterns? Well if you look at the behavior pattern, you’ll find the power source. Let’s take a look.
In secular humanism, remember that God has been removed from the equation and that people are trying to fix their flaws in an earthly system. When this doesn’t work, they get depressed and move into circles that justify their behavior patterns. Think about the man who is fussing with his wife. They are both saved but the wife wants him to step up in his masculinity and he’s shrinking away from the task. He’ll find comfort in the arms of a group that will tell him his wife is wrong, or he’ll just go find himself an extramarital affair. But that would be the actions to justify behavior patterns…not necessarily the behavior patterns. This man (not an actual man) is clearly running away from God’s Call to him as a husband/spiritual household leader to justify the things he’s not doing right (in his mind). And once he gets in deep with his other sources, he’ll find sources to justify that behavior. It’s a very interesting application of the fruit of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-21). Spirit and flesh can’t be in the same place; they will clash. This is the choice that the flesh flees from the Spirit (of God) and seeks to do it’s own thing. The prime flaw in this is that people operating out of this power source will be temporal, and thus, always have some sort of worry or “not-peace”.
The Kingdom says that we are no good and we need a Savior (thank God we have one [John 3:16-18], amIrite?]). I’m doing this one first because if you asked someone in the third power source, they’d tell you Kingdom (although it’d be a throwed idea of the “Kingdom”). In this idea, all things come from God. And there’s an innate set of understandings that (1) God loves us no matter what (2) He’s the best thing for us and (3) There is no greater source of authority than Him. The Fruit of the Spirit is Love, Joy, Peace, Long-Suffering, Kindness, Meekness, Self-Control (Galatians 5:22-23)…all these are within God’s Standards. Spirit and flesh clash…and this is the choice that involves the Spirit booting fleshly things out. This is where that Peace of God (Philippians 4:7) comes over us and supercedes all understanding (like humanism). There’s an innate genuineness in the Kingdom Power Source. While the King is perfect, the Kingdom itself is eternally working toward His Ideal Model but you could take any snapshot in time and see flaws. The primary difference between this and the secular humanism is that submission to God leads to the “fixing” of the flaws (which themselves play a role in our need for a Savior both from damnation and from ourselves [Philippians 2:12]).
Religious humanism is arguably the most complex of the three power sources. Why? Because it talks about God. Well, sort of. There’s nothing about the God of the Bible necessarily because God is the First and the Last and there is no other God beside him (Isaiah 43:10, 44:6). And if we have an immutable God of the Bible, a God that can change to justify behavior patterns is a false God. God has a set of Standards as laid out in Exodus 20:4-18, but there are also a set of essential doctrines (later study) that provide boundaries for the Kingdom and who God is. Again, people are justifying their behavior patterns, but they throw a God on it to divinate them. The issue with this is, is that these are the same people going out and evangelizing into false faith systems and leave the lost with more question marks than they had before. Or, they leave them with exclamation points. How? By using the Word to wound as opposed to uplift and teach (Galatians 6:1, Ephesians 4:29, 2 Timothy 3:16-17). This disenfranchises folks to anything with “God” attached to it and drives them into secular humanism or some other religious humanism that justifies their behavior pattern.
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