The Popular Belief That Empties Churches - Frontpagemag

Many so called social advances from the 60s have not stood the test of time.

Thank you my friend MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. for posting the perspective from frontpagemag.com contributing author William Kilpatrick

Dennis Prager // Speaking
In this powerful message, Dennis Prager, Founder of PragerU, discusses various topics including politics, religion, human nature and more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX_zQGpr4Sc

Background from {[frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/popular-belief-empties-churches-william-kilpatrick/]}
Dennis Prager criticizes the idea that people are basically good. The belief that humans are inherently good is both “foolish” and “dangerous,” writes Prager, and it leads to much suffering. He offers several sobering examples from recent history of what happens to people who put their trust in human nature.
Prager was prompted to write his rebuttal when a respected Jewish publication published an article by an Orthodox rabbi claiming that “Judaism posits that people are basically good.” The idea has long been prevalent among non-Orthodox rabbis but Prager was surprised that an Orthodox Jew would subscribe to an idea that is clearly rejected in the Torah.
The notion that human nature is basically good is also rejected in the rest of the Bible—and just as strongly in the New Testament as in the Old. Which brings me to my main point. Over the last six decades, belief in human goodness has become an article of faith for many Christians as well as for Jews. This is particularly true of many mainstream Protestants and Roman Catholics. For the Catholic Church, the belief has served as a wrecking ball. Numerous polls have shown a massive decline in church attendance among Catholics (and other Christians), and a corresponding drop in the number who identify as Christians.

Different people give different reasons for the decline of Christian belief, but for me the obvious reason is that Christians have replaced the idea of human sinfulness with the idea of human goodness. And when you do that, you undercut the whole rationale for Christianity—namely, that we are sinners in need of redemption. If human beings are good the way they are, then there is no need for a Savior to free us from our sins.
The Rousseauian belief that people are born good was resisted by the Catholic Church for centuries. Then, starting in the sixties, the idea of natural goodness suddenly became fashionable in the Church, particularly among Catholic educators, seminarians, and orders of nuns.
What happened? What happened was the human potential movement. It swept through Catholic institutions in the 1960s and the change was almost instantaneous. Priests began to aim for self-actualization rather than holiness, classes were conducted like encounter groups, and religious studies books were rewritten to make room for popular psychologists such as Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow and Lawrence Kohlberg. If you’ve read some of these authors, you can understand why they appeal to Christians. There is nothing explicitly Christian in their writings, but there is a strong Christian “feel” to them.
There were similarities between the two belief systems to be sure, but they were only surface similarities. Both Christians and human potentialists urged us to “judge not,” but the later maintained that we should also be non-judgmental toward ourselves. Both belief systems encouraged us to love others, but the psychologists claimed that we could not love others until we first love ourselves. Indeed, for the psychologists, the most important form of love was self-love.
It’s easy enough to equate Christian principles with psychological ones. After all, they sound the same; yet the differences are often greater than the similarities. For example, Christ said we should become as “little children.” Is that the same thing as getting in touch with our “inner child?” Well, not quite. Christ was speaking of the innocent self-forgetfulness of children, whereas getting in touch with one’s inner child sounds more like an exercise in self-absorption.
When you get right down to it, however, the main appeal that human potential psychology has for religious people is that it is itself a kind of religion.
The humanists seemed to exhibit what can only be called a profound reverence for the human person—especially the person who is actualizing his potentials, and becoming all that he can be. In the writings of both Rogers and Maslow, one finds a sense of awe at the self-fulfilled person. There is an almost transcendent quality to their descriptions of the “fully functioning person.”

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Interesting.