Close Encounter With A Universist
In my former life in talk radio, I had a spokesman for the Universist movement on my show. For those of you who have rubbed shoulders with Unitarians and Universalists the word above is not a typo! My guest was a delightful chap who represents a group who claim that they have landed on a truly postmodern belief system. I enjoyed the dialog and even tempered debate, but my East Coast guest subscribes to a terminally flawed ideology.Their website claims:
“This is the long-awaited dawn of postmodern religion - religion in the first person. We're about living creatively, free from universal truths. Your unique and evolving understanding of life is the dynamic force we call Universism. You are the morning of your future self, and it's time to rise.“
For all its heralding of being a brand new breath of fresh air, I am reminded of my late Church History professor, Anita Blackburn, who would review ancient heresies and new religious movements. Her analysis was punctuated by the words from Ecclesiastes: ”There is nothing new under the sun.”
This “new religion’ celebrates a hope in human progress and the idea that we have unlimited potential.
This is at best, a wholly naïve position for anyone to adhere to. God’s green lumpy thing is littered with evidence that humans while capable of altruism, sacrifice, selfless love and creativity are at the same time capable of barbarism, cruelty, and destruction. To use Star Wars parlance humans, each one of us, have a dark side.
GK Chesterton asserted that Original Sin is the only empirically verifiable Christian doctrine.
The human race is united in the fact that we are all sinners in desperate need of a Rescuer who will liberate us from the tyranny of the dark side and bring us to a place of healing and restoration. Jesus of Nazareth is God’s Freedom Fighter who came to shatter the darkness and liberate us to live life fully as God intended.
The Universist movement is built on a philosophical premise: “There are no absolute truths that apply universally to all people.”
The problem with a statement like this (there are no absolutes; there is no absolute truth) is that it is, in and of itself, a statement of absolutism!
