1984 July/August issue Part 6

Recommended Reading

Herbert Schlossberg: Idols for Destruction, Thomas Nelson. A stunning treatment of the ways in which idolatry corrupts the modern Christian's thinking. Secularization connotes a turning away from Christian faith, but Scholoss- berg clearly shows what it is that we turn to as substitutes for God: nature, mankind, power, history, social or political systems. In his chapter, "Idols of Humanity," he writes: "In its refusal to acknowledge will and responsibility in those over whom it establishes its protection, humanitar-

ianism could be speaking of cocker spaniels or Chevrolets rather than people.

"This view of humanity is a twisted and deformed travesty. It is ironic that for human- itarians only poor people, minorities, and those who have run afoul of the law are assumed to be shaped by the iron grip of circumstance. If we look at the villains-the police, politicians, social workers, businessmen-instead of at the victims, we find that the humanitarians have given them free will. They do not speak about the industrial- ist's tyrannical father, the loan shark's miserable childhood in an orphan home, the politician's neurotic mother. Those people are responsible for their acts, and therefore are human. Humanism thus awards its enemies the status of human beings while taking that status from its wards." (p.83)