Have you ever seen an idol, a false god?
Tertullian (an early church father from Second Century) said, “Just as Christ was crucified between two thieves, so this doctrine of justification is ever crucified between two opposite errors.”
These “two false gospels” can be called hedonism / relativism / irreligion on the one hand, and legalism / moralism / religion on the other hand. There is a Gospel according to the Relativists and a Gospel according to the Moralists.
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Relativists |
Moralists |
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Stresses grace without truth, for they say that we are all accepted by God (if there is a God) and we have to decide what is true for us. |
Stresses truth without grace, for it says that we must obey the truth in order to be saved. |
But “truth” without grace is not really truth, and “grace” without truth is not really grace. Jesus was “full of grace and truth”.
Any religion or philosophy of life that de-emphasizes grace falls into legalism. Any religion or philosophy of life that de-emphasizes truth falls into liberalism. Any religion or philosophy of life that de-emphasizes either grace or truth is a false religion or false philosophy of life.
I. Difference between Moralists and Relativists
The Relativists
- Relativists are usually irreligious (or at most associate with “liberal” religions)
- Tout tolerance and personal happiness
- Are very inconsistent: e.g. can be highly idealistic (esp. political) YET espouse that everyone needs to determine what is right and wrong for themselves.
- Their beliefs in God will tend to see Him EITHER as loving OR as an impersonal force.
- They are not convinced that God is just and must punish sinners.
- They may talk a great deal about God’s love, but since they do not think of themselves as sinners, God’s love for us costs him nothing.
- They believe that if God accepts us, it is because he is so welcoming, or because we are not so bad.
The Moralists
- Moralism is the view that you are acceptable (to God, the world, others, yourself) through your attainments.
- Moralists do not have to be religious, but often are. (eg. Conservative, traditional, filled with rules)
- Moralists live with according to standards, which leads to EITHER/OR… a) self-hatred = because you can’t live up to the standards; becoming depressed, having an inferiority complex, and become guilt-ridden. b) self-inflation = because you think you have lived up to the standards; become smug, arrogant, having a superiority complex. Note the IRONY: inferiority and superiority complexes have the very same root. Whether the moralist ends up smug and superior or crushed and guilty just depends on how high the standards are and on a person’s natural advantages (such as family, intelligence, looks, willpower).
- Moralists can be deeply religious—but there is no transforming joy or power.
II. Similarities Between Moralists and Relativists
They seem so different, but from the viewpoint of the gospel, they are really the same. They are both ways to avoid Jesus as Savior and keep control of their lives.
Dr. Albert Mohler reports that when Christian Smith and his fellow researchers with the National Study of Youth and Religion at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill took a close look at the religious beliefs held by American teenagers, they found that the faith held and described by most adolescents came down to something the researchers identified as “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”
Moralistic Therapeutic Deism consists of beliefs like these:
- “A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.”
- “God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.”
- “The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.”
- “God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.”
- “Good people go to heaven when they die.”
Notice the inconsistencies in the above theological views. Also, notice that many young people religiously believe something that is a twisted mixture of relativism and moralism. STRANGE.
Notice the following comparison of the two false “gods”, noticing their similarities.
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Relativism |
Moralism |
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seek to be their own saviors and lords through |
seek to be their own saviors and lords through |
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Irreligion |
Religion |
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Individualism (self-determined morality) |
Institutionalism (sanctity of establishments) |
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“worldly” pride |
“religious” pride |
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The irreligious person rejects Jesus entirely |
but the religious person only uses Jesus as an example and helper and teacher–but not as a Savior. |
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God is not perfect so He understands my mistakes. Besides he helps those who help themselves and try hard. |
I am more moral and spiritual than other people, so God owes me to listen to my prayers and take me to heaven. God cannot let just anything happen to me–he owes me a happy life. I’ve earned it!”) |
Ultimately, these two “false religions” two different ways to do the same thing: attempts to ontrol our own lives.
Notice more incredibly TWISTED irony:
- Moralists, despite all the emphasis on traditional standards, are in the end self-centered and individualistic, because they have set themselves up as their own Savior.
- Relativists, despite all their emphasis on freedom and acceptance, are in the end moralistic because they still have to attain and live up to (their own) standards or become desperate. And often, they take great pride in their own open-mindedness and judge others who are not.
They are both based on distorted views of the real God. The relativist loses sight of the law and holiness of God, and the religious person loses sight of the love and grace of God. In the end they both lose the gospel entirely, for the gospel is that Jesus fulfilled the law of God out of love for us.
Only the gospel–that we are so sinful that we need to be saved utterly by grace—allows a person to see God as he really is. The gospel shows us a God far more holy than the legalist can bear (he had to die because we could not satisfy his holy demands) and yet far more merciful than a humanist can conceive (he had to die because he loved us).
Both Moralism and Relativism deny our sin and thereby lose the joy and power of grace. It is obvious that relativistic, irreligious people deny the depth of sin, and therefore the message “God loves you” has no power for them. But though moralists may be extremely religious and sorry for their sins, they see sins as simply the failure to live up to standards by which they are saving themselves.
They do not see sin as the deeper self-righteousness and self-centeredness through which they are trying to live lives independent of God. So when they go to Jesus for forgiveness, they only as a way to “cover over the gaps” in their project of self-salvation. And when people say, “I know God is forgiving, but I cannot forgive myself”, they mean that they reject God’s grace and insist that they be worthy of his favor. So even religious people with “low self-esteem” are really in their funk because they will not see the depth of sin. They see it only as rules breaking, not as rebellion and self-salvation.
III. Finally Let’s Consider the All-together Different Gospel, from the one and only true and living God.
The followers of Jesus are those who have adopted a whole different approach to God. They may have had both religious phases and irreligious phases in their lives. But they have come to see that their entire reason for both their irreligion and their religion was essentially the same and essentially wrong!
Christians come to see that both their sins and their best deeds have all really been ways of avoiding Jesus as Savior. They come to see that Christianity is not fundamentally an invitation to “Be happy and go to heaven” or to get “more religious. “
A Christian realizes that we all sin in one of two ways; we all have either worshipped the god of pleasure or the god of piety… trying to be our own Saviors.
THINK ABOUT IT: The relativists don’t repent at all, and the moralists only repent of sins. But Christians also repent of not only their sins but their righteousness, too!
A follower of Jesus realizes that Jesus is the only true Savior.
- He alone has perfectly kept the moral laws of God.
- He alone is righteous.
- He alone is worthy of heaven.
- Through Him alone we have joy.
Here is the essence of the true Gospel: Here is the way to believe in the only true and living God:
- Believe that Jesus is God and that He became a man also.
- Believe in Jesus Christ as the only one who has ever lived a sinless and righteous life
- And went to the Cross to die as our Substitute, suffering the wrath of God against our sin.
If so, you will believe in what the Bible says about our extreme sinfulness.
If not, the payment of the cross seems trivial and does not electrify or transform.
If you believe in sin and evil, but do not believe that in Christ’s completely satisfying life and death, the knowledge of sin would either crush us or move us to deny and repress it.
Take away either the knowledge of sin or the knowledge of grace and people’s lives are not changed. They will either be crushed by the moral law in moralism or run angrily from God’s moral law in relativism.
So the gospel is not that we go from being irreligious to being religious, but that we realize that our reasons for both our religiosity and our irreligiosity were essentially the same and essentially wrong.
So, here are our options:
- We can seek to be our own Saviors by rejecting the Truth of the Jesus, and seek keep control of our own life through Relativism.
- We can seek to be our own Saviors by rejecting the Grace of the Jesus, and thereby seek self-justification and acceptance by God through Moralism.
- Or we can trust in Christ as our Savior by accepting the Truth of the Bible about our sin and Jesus’ righteousness, and we turn from trusting either self-determination or self-denial for our salvation; we turn from either moralism/legalism or relativism/hedonism and we embrace the Grace of God.
Jason Robertson is the pastor of Murrieta Valley Church in Murrieta, California which he planted in 2001. He is theologically Christian, Evangelical, Baptist, and Reformed. He is married with three children. He loves riding motorcycles, fine cigars, and college football. He has a Masters of Divinity from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and teaches Church Planting at California Baptist University.
The above sort of analysis is exactly the reason that Pandeism is slowly but surely rising up to push all the mythological revelation-based faiths from the Earth. The "God" of Pandeism has made a far greater sacrifice for our existence then any theistic faith sets forth, and must be respected for that.
Arcos, I would like to know exactly how you are defining Pandeism. There seem to be several defintions and just taking “pan” and “deism” to draw a definition is not going to state your case. But keep it short. I am not looking for a treatise on Pandeism, but what you personally mean when you use the term.
Arcos Plage,
Huh?
Acros, if you would like to elaborate, feel free to do so. Of course, I believe that Pandeism (in any of its forms) is erroneous. But if you would like to give any support for your belief or if you would like to explain why the above analysis is "reason that Pandeism is" rising, feel free. But do so only if you are willing to engage in a cordial conversation about Pandeism vs the Bible.
I define Pandeism as the Germans did, straightforward pantheistic Deism, encompassing the view that the Universe was both created by “God” and is “God” by the explanation that God intently ceased to be God and became the Universe, in order to experience existence as the Universe. In one theory, the cosmological and ontological problems are resolved, the prime mover is found, and the question of design is answered, but at the same time the problems of evil and determinism are resolved as well.
I prefer not to engage in a debate of “Pandeism vs the Bible” for two reasons. One is that Pandeism is equally a counter to all theistic faiths (so perhaps, Pandeism vs the Bible and the Koran and the Vedas and the Book of Mormon, all of which are equally true by comparison). The other is that Pandeism subsumes and accounts for all that can be said to support theistic beliefs. It would, for example, be most natural for the writers of religious texts to believe that they were receiving active counsel from God in a pandeistic Universe, in which God exists constantly within all of us, and within even the quietest recesses of our minds.
So you are using ‘pan’ as shorthand for ‘pantheism.’ Considering pan as a prefix has a rather established meaning you will probably mostly confuse your audience with such a coinage.
Pandeism sounds like a religion that worships an amalgamated god called Jesus/Zeus/Krishna/Allah/Etc.
It also sounds like you are a…pantheist. Yet you want to attach to it the authority of the God of the Bible (while denying Him) to give your pantheism a leg up on all other religions and so on.
Is yours a revealed religion? The Urantia Book by chance?
Not being snarky, just askin’.
Arcos, you said, “I prefer not to engage in a debate of “Pandeism vs the Bible”.”
That is probably the smartest thing you have said in the above statements
but not for the reasons you mentioned.
Arcos, you also defended your belief system with this statement: “In one theory, the cosmological and ontological problems are resolved, the prime mover is found, and the question of design is answered, but at the same time the problems of evil and determinism are resolved as well.”
You haven’t resolved the most important problem of all — the end of sin and evil. If there is no end, then there is no God. And Pandeism has no end for sin. Therefore Pandeism is found wanting.
To David:
Pandeism is hardly my coinage, as a little research will reveal. You are correct in recognizing pandeism as a form of pantheism, but the amalgamation you imagine has nothing to do with it, except that the miraculous events experienced by worshipers of all of those theistic gods can best be accounted for by the pandeistic nature of the Universe. But pandeism is also a form of deism, and it recognizes the Creator, the Deus — you would say I deny your Creator, but since yours is already encompassed by and explained away by pandeism, nothing exists to deny. I suppose that you mean denying Bible-God, as I’m sure there are dozens of Gods that you deny, and even alternate conceptions of your own.
And pandeism is not a “revealed” religion in the sense that we believe the Deus to have approached some ancient shepherd or farmer or fisherman and dictated for transcription all of the truth and glory of the Universe; the Deus need not do that, for it has created a Universe that tells its own story, and reveals in its design the nature and purpose of the Deus.
To Jason:
You say “If there is no end, then there is no God” — that sounds like a mathematical principle, that the one is a necessary condition for the other. I’d be curious to see a proof of that. However, it is irrelevant to pandeism, which does indeed forecast an end.
As I have said above, “God intently ceased to be God and became the Universe” — but this is only the beginning. There would be no purpose in the Creator engaging in a complete and irrevocable act of self-sacrifice; nothing would be learned, because learning requires not only experience, but later reflection on this experience. Hence, for existence through the lens of the Universe to be meaningful, their must come a time when the Universe ends, although it is a matter of scientific certainty that this will not come for many billions of years to come. But come it will, and when it does, all things will return to the motive force, the Deus, from which they came.
And what of evil, and what of sin? All things will be sustained within the knowledge of the reconstituted Creator, so everyone who has ever existed will continue to exist within that paradigm. And also within that paradigm, everyone will share in the sum of the collective experiences of the Universe, including the experiences that resulted from their own actions. Those who do evil, who cause harm or suffering to others, will experience exactly this suffering, as they share in the experience of those whom they made to suffer. Those who do good to others will experience exactly this good. Can there be any more just resolution of existence?
FOrget it man, theyre not going to respond to logical arguments that go against their faith in a an evil/crazy blind idiot god.
One problem: this is not what God has revealed about Himself.
The odd thing is that God seems to have revealed different things about itself to different people, and at different times.
Pandeism is a better explanation for the existence of revelation and of miracles than any among the theistic faith, and on a more logical basis. Miracles are recounted both in the texts, revelational and otherwise, and in anecdotal reports by observant members of all faiths. Revelation itself is a category of miracle (it is an experience of perception that is inexplicable but for the presence of a higher power). Protestants and Catholics, Mormons and Jews, Muslims and Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccans, Asutrans — none of them can claim to have an exclusive experience of revelation or of miracles in response to prayer!! This can not be true if there is only one God conforming to only one particular faith, so the evenly distributed incidence of miracles disproves all holy texts which propose a single correct faith.
However, if Pandeism is true, then a single force underlies the Universe which remains unconscious and yet can potentially be tapped into and manipulated by the human subconscious. A person who experiences a moment of the Creator’s dream would be unable to distinguish it from a conscious message from the Creator. Consider, in your own dreams, when you dreamt you said something to someone — if another person were able to peer into your dream, would they not perceive your dreaming words to match your active intent, even if upon waking you would say no such thing?
Arcos, you claim: The odd thing is that God seems to have revealed different things about itself to different people, and at different times. On what basis do you make this claim? On what authority do you know that the revelation is about God, from God, etc?
Arcos, you also claim: Pandeism is a better explanation for the existence of revelation and of miracles than any among the theistic faith, and on a more logical basis. The basis of authority here seems to be “logic.” But on what basis do you know that your logic is correct? Besides, any faith that is based solely on logic is a faith that is really based on the intellect of a creature not the self-disclosing revelation of the creator. Therefore, your Pandeism faith is really faith in yourself to figure out things beyond yourself. Therefore, you have elevated yourself to the status of God himself. Pandeism is therefore a false faith… logically.
Your final paragraph seems more like wishful thinking than anything concrete and plausible.
Arcos, I would encourage you to believe the God of the Bible who created you in his own image, giving you the ability thereby to think and know him. In his image you were created to glorify him, to reflect his character and display his righteousness. Of course, you like us all have failed in this. Nevertheless, God came to this earth to both pay for your unrighteousness and to live a perfectly righteous human life. We know him as Jesus. Arcos, I hope that you understand one day that Jesus is both JUST and JUSTIFIER. He will deliver you from this bondage of trying to be god and free you to live to the fullness as a human being created in God’s image.
Regarding the competing revelations, there are numerous accounts from all different faiths of people asserting that they were communicated to by God — these are generally pretty straightforward, the communicating power identifies itself as God and proceeds to instruct the recipient on the content of an amount of text to be transcribed (or merely imparts a lesson which the recipient transcribes of his own accord). Such is the claim in the authorship of the Qu’ran. Mormon history records that God sent an angel to confirm for no fewer than three witnesses that Joseph Smith was the recipient of God’s new testament — and another eight witnesses attested to seeing the golden plates containing the text of that testament. Jesus himself appears in the Book of Mormon, and makes a multitude of characteristic statements. The Vedas recount encounters with lesser gods (which are in turn recognized as mere aspects of a one “God” incorporating all of them). The texts of Buddhism attest a somewhat different experience, that of Buddha achieving nirvana and achieving connectedness with all things — in effect becoming one with God.
Your second point is not a logical argument. A logical argument demonstrates the truth of succeeding points, but you seem to have missed a step. You say “you have elevated yourself to the status of God himself. Pandeism is therefore a false faith” — but for that to be a correct statement, you must first prove that a faith in which the individual elevates himself to the status of God himself is necessarily a “false faith.” This is rather like saying that preferring blueberries to strawberries is a “false preference” — there is no empirically demonstrable truth on which to base a premise. In the case of your assertion, this is complicated by the fact that proof obviates faith. If you could prove what you claim, then there would be no need for “faith” at all, and yet you adhere to a religious system that extols faith itself.
Now, there are different ways in which I might “elevate” myself to the status of God himself. Augustine and Anselm, devout Christians both, attempted to make logical arguments proving that even putting aside the Bible, there must be a God. Their arguments (the prime mover, the independent being, and so forth) are in fact equally applicable to proving a pandeistic God, but did they elevate themselves to the status of God by making them? If you presume a God that punishes inquiry and rewards faith this may be so, but suppose the Universe itself is all of the revelation that God has made, and we are intended to exercise our remarkable ability to use logic to discern the true nature of things from that? If the Universe itself is the “self-disclosing revelation of the creator” then the intellect of a creature within the Universe is an expression of that revelation, and I act as a vessel of God when I attempt to use logic to discern the nature of the Universe.
Let me ask you this, do you deny that God is the in all things, that God is the very fabric of the Universe itself and the glue that holds it together? Mankind has, through scientific advance, now confirmed the existence of atoms and subatomic particles that were once mere theories. We have taken photographs of individual atoms, even! And we have conducted experiments which seem to confirm that the subatomic particles of which atoms are made, the electrons, neutrons, and protons, are themselves constructs of even more minute particles called quarks, which are in turn likely composed of even smaller things called subquarks.
Now, at this juncture it is vital, absolutely vital to remember that matter and energy are the same thing, merely in different forms. All matter, all physical objects from an iron hammer to a whisp of air to your own brain cells, are merely charged particles that are constrained by forces to interact with one another in a way that causes them to be experienced — by us — as matter. These forces are themselves held together by even more minute forces. Superstring theory, which is the latest advance in the proposed understanding of the nature of the Universe, suggests that these most minute forces are made of…. nothing at all!! There is nothing there but unimaginably tiny strings of space itself, coiled in just a certain way, and vibrating at a particular frequency. And it is this coiling and vibration which causes these bits of nothingness to act as every bit of force expressed in the Universe.
But what sustains these strings of nothingness in their form and movement? Can it be doubted even for an instant that the entirety of the Universe is an exercise of the ongoing manifest will of God? And thus that you and I and everyone else, and the rock upon which we stand and the star around which we turn, and all the other things in the Universe, collectively, are God? And if this is the case, is not the presence of God equal in all things, including in the minds of men?
And if we are within God, then we are within the mind of God (for God is all mind), and thus we are all to some degree the mind of God.
So, in closing, Jason, I would encourage you to believe in the God of Pandeism, who sacrificed its own conscious existence, giving you the ability thereby to think and know yourself (because you, like all things, are God, and to know yourself is to know God). You were created to give the infinite Creator the experience of the finite perspective inherent to your existence. None of us have failed in this, but in misinterpreting our purpose we inflict suffering on those who fail to conform to behaviors mistakenly believed to be mandated by God (how often it is that people imagine God’s preferences to conveniently line up with their prejudices and their self-interest!) We know him as Jesus and Buddha and Mohammad and Socrates and a thousand others who were gifted enough perhaps to grasp a fragment of the whole. Pandeism will deliver you from the bondage of denying that you are God and free you to live in the fullness of a human being that is an equal part of God itself!!