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Phil Warren
Phil Warren is a local pastor and has lived in the Dexter community for the last 12 years. He has six children and four grandchildren and his wife Cindy is a local teacher. He enjoys photography, reading, writing and golf. He also loves coaching in the local park leagues. Phil spent his early years growing up in the hills near Wappapello Lake. He moved to Granite City, IL. during his grade school years. Phil worked 13 years at McDonnell Douglas Aircraft in St. Louis and has pastored since 1986. He also served in the U.S. Army as a military policeman and was stationed at Ft. Campbell KY. and Seoul, Korea. He attended college at SIUE and Oakland City College.
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Oink! (Part One)

Posted Wednesday, April 14, 2010, at 11:05 PM

I remember reading George Orwell's two great novels when I was a teenager, "1984" and "Animal Farm", and being profoundly impacted by the message carried in each. Growing up in the American culture of my day I was grateful to believe that these two scenarios painted by the words and ideas of Orwell would never become a reality in the country which I loved....how na*ve.

More than ever the warnings that Orwell espoused in his writing need to be embraced. While Orwell was a socialist at heart he saw how the socialist system failed because it was led by flawed men who once they overthrew the power they hated they themselves became corrupted by the power they now held.

As the progressives of our day (as the new/old corrupted socialist order is called) have influenced almost every facet of the American life we must awaken to the reality of what is happening to our culture. We are becoming a socialist nation heavily influenced by the teachings of Marxism (the foundation of communism) in our higher education and even at the highest levels of our political systems.

The government is in control of almost every area of life. We are on the verge of losing whatever vestiges of democracy are left and the individual freedoms that this nation was founded upon. We are becoming like the sheep in "Animal Farm" indoctrinated and believing whatever we are told. We march unthinking to the beat of the propagandist who litter our airways, fill the blogs and often control the newspapers. It is time that we awaken from our narcissistic slumber and realize that we are in grave danger as a nation; politically, socially, morally and spiritually.

We have been taught by and large that we are to explicitly trust the institutions that govern our lives. If we question, doubt, or raise a skeptical lamp to investigate what we are told then that we somehow have a lack of faith, we are un-American, or we are subversive to the norms of society. One of the most dangerous things we can do is to suspend reason and toe-the-line to what is being taught.

When it comes to our belief in God no where are we told that faith is the denial of reason. Jesus Himself questioned the reasoning and application of the Scriptures by the religious elites of His time. He regularly said, "Have you not read" or "Have you not heard" to those who propagated their form of religion which was designed to control the masses instead of promoting a true obedience to God Himself as communicated through God's own words.

The Apostle Paul congratulated the Bereans in Acts 17:11 NIV for not taking his teachings at face value. He said, "Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." William Whitaker, a theologian from the early 1800 said, "If the doctrine of the apostle was examined by scripture, then the doctrine of the church should also be examined by scripture. " In other words, the people in the pew should not take everything that leaders say at face value but examine it against the Scriptures.

The Apostle Paul understood that some would even doubt the Scriptures as being a basis for belief. He used the argument of nature (or general revelation) to persuade for belief in God. That argument states that God uses the laws and nature of this physical universe to create or influence events to display His existence and power. Paul wrote in Romans 1:20 NIV, "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--His eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." Simply, when you view nature you must ultimately believe that there is a God because what is seen could not happen by random chance. The teaching of evolution is not primarily an argument about the origin of things but a treatise against a Creator.

My point is not to give a lesson in theology but to decry that we are not to suspend reason when it comes to our faith and blindly follow whatever a church or spiritual leader may say. God has given us individually the ability to think, reason and to believe. We can read the Bible and understand what it says or we can look to creation and see the hand of the Creator.

Today we have many in the "church world" who are like the Pharisees in Jesus day and are taking the Scriptures and making them say what they want them to say. This is especially true when it come to the fallacy of "social gospel" which is becoming a tool of those who want to socially reengineer our nation. The power of the church and its ability to influence can become a tool of evil as well as a tool for great good.

Many, if not most of us, who call ourselves Christians have been deceived by the term "social justice." This is because as Christians we rightly love the ideal of justice and hate the ideal of injustice. But the "social justice" that is being branded today is not necessarily true biblical justice.

Dr. Mark Hendricks fro the Center of Vision and Values said it well when he wrote:

"The standard of biblical justice is equal treatment by law: "'Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly" (Leviticus 19:15). Justice not only means that nobody is to be picked on because he is poor or favored because he is rich, but that (contrary to the doctrine of "social justice") nobody is to be picked on because he is rich or favored because he is poor. Everyone's rights deserve the same protection. Thus, nobody should be taxed at a higher rate than his neighbors, nor should anyone receive special government handouts.

The modern left's "social justice" strives for economic equality. It endeavors to reduce, if not erase, the gap between rich and poor by redistributing wealth. This is "justice" more akin to Marx and Lenin (or like Animal Farm (my words), not according to Moses and Jesus. It is a counterfeit of real justice, biblical justice."

Further in the column he went on to write:

"The Lord's mission was to redeem us from sin, not to redistribute our property or impose an economic equality on us. In fact, the Almighty explicitly declined to undermine property rights or preach economic equality when he told the man who wanted Jesus to tell his brother to share an inheritance with him, "Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?" (Luke 12:14).

All that having been said, there is much injustice in our world, much needed reform that all Christians can unite in accomplishing. Around the world, many people are poor and will never realize their God-given potential due to lack of freedom and opportunity. Let us never be on the side of those who reject man's God-given rights and biblical justice, and who oppress and impoverish in the name of a spurious economic equality....The Bible doesn't condemn economic inequality. You can't read Proverbs without seeing that some people are poor due to their own vices. There is nothing unjust about people reaping what they sow, whether wealth or poverty." (http://www.visandvals.org/The_Social_Justice_Fallacy.php)

One of this nation's founding documents, The Declaration Of Independence, says, "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It does not guarantee success, wealth, opportunities or "our fair share". It says that as free people we all have the same equal right to pursue those things that will bring us happiness as those differ greatly from person to person.

Religion in "Animal Farm" is used by the "intellectualy superior" pigs (who had taken leadership after the rebellion...so much for equality), as Karl Marx famously said, as an "opiate of the masses." The animals are distracted from their horrible living situation and life of labor with false visions of "Sugarcandy Mountain," a supposed heaven. The power of religion was corruppted by those with corrupt power. The government tolerates religion precisely because of its ability to placate and to distract the lower-class animals. Yet religion is also the only thing that makes the animals' lives seem worth living as their situation becomes increasingly miserable.

The church world today must be very careful that we are not used by those with an ulterior motive to promote a socialistic doctrine while abandoning our true mission to redeem a sinful and broken world.

(Note: this is the end of part one. Part two will attempt to reveal how the Animal Farm allegory is becoming a modern day reality in our social and political landscape)

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