IDEOLOGICAL INTOXICATION
A Useful Simplification Rev. Emerick When mixed together, two historically significant ideas make a toxic cultural cocktail: (1) the idea that everything that happens, will happen, or can happen, is determined by forces above and beyond us - forces like God, the gods, nature, the “divine right of kings” (and the Church), the “Invisible Hand” of laissez-faire, or fate (which is called “pre-destination” in the Church’s teaching); and, (2) the idea that we are all born rotten to the core (the Church’s doctrine of Original Sin), and therefore we can never do anything intelligent, right, or good. “Christendom” has been serving this toxic cocktail to Western culture for many centuries. And Western culture has been imbibing the toxic cocktail to the...