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The Colossian church lived in a culture pervaded by the worship of a pagan deity that foreshadowed the radical environmentalism Christians confront in the 21st century. The Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul declared to them - and to us - that Christ is the answer to such folly.
Colosse was located in a region of Asia Minor called Phrygia in which the people practiced a particularly fanatical form of paganism. They worshipped a goddess called Cybele, also known as the "earth-mother" or simply "mother earth." Cybele was the "state goddess" of the region. Cybele was also known as "the mother of the gods, the one who hears our prayers." In Rome, Cybele was known as Magna Mater (the "Great Mother").
Cybele was but one of a succession of "earth mother" goddesses found in the pagan religons of antiquity. Archaeologists have found them in some of the earliest artifacts of post-Flood Egypt, and in Babylon, Malta, Africa, western Europe, and the region that is now occupied by the nations of Romania, Moldova, and the Ukraine. A successor deity to Cybele in later Greek antiquity was called Gaia.
The worship and sacrifices made to these false deities were, as Paul declared to the Corinthians, made "to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons" (1 Corinthians 10:20).
Sacrifices to Cybele's Successors
The same demons that were worshipped as environmental gods in ancient paganism are receiving the human sacrifices of environmentalists today, as the bodies of slaughtered children are being burned to heat the hospitals in which they are aborted.
On March 24, 2014, The Telegraph of Great Britain reported that hospitals of the United Kingdom's nationalized health service are burning the bodies of thousands of aborted children as "clinical waste" - using them to heat hospital buildings as part of an environmentalist-driven "waste-to-energy" program. [1] On April 23 of the same year it was reported that the remains of aborted children from British Columbia, Canada are being imported along with other "medical waste" to be burned in a "waste-to-energy" power plant in Oregon in the United States. [2]
Many Christians do not understand that the radical environmentalism which not only demands large-scale abortion, but also demands so-called "energy conservation," "sustainable ecosystems," and "green technologies," is essentially pagan. Much of it is rooted in variations on the thinking underlying the so-called "Gaia hypothesis" of environmental management, developed and popularized from the 1960s onward by British scientist James Lovelock and American microbiologist Lynn Margulis, who was formerly the wife of noted evolutionist Carl Sagan. [3]
The "Gaia Hypothesis"
The "Gaia hypothesis" is named for the Greek goddess who was worshipped as the "mother goddess" who gave birth to the Earth. The "Gaia Hypothesis" gives the name of Gaia to the Earth, and stipulates that "Gaia" is a living organism or being exercising intelligence. Today many neopagans worship Gaia as the spiritual embodiment of the Earth and its environment. Lovelock complains that standards of political correctness in some academic circles do not permit references to Gaia as "she" or giving the Earth anthropomorphic attributes (e.g., "the Earth doesn't 'like' carbon") - but even this paradigm has been changing.
As we already noted, Gaia has equivalents in nearly every pagan religion. Among the Hopi Indians today she is known as Tapuat. Among the Hindus she is known as Kali. The official name of "Earth Day" (April 22nd), as established by the United Nations in 2009, is "International Mother Earth Day." The Earth Day Anthem, composed by William Wallace and set to the tune of the "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, promotes the philosophy behind the Gaia Hypothesis:
Joyful joyful we adore our Earth in all its wonderment
Simple gifts of nature that all join into a paradise
Now we must resolve to protect Her
Show Her our love throughout all time
With our gentle hand and touch
We make our home a newborn world
Now we must resolve to protect Her
Show Her our love throughout all time
With our gentle hand and touch
We make our home a newborn world.
Lovelock first developed the "Gaia hypothesis" while working on a project for the U. S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to detect life on Mars. The name was suggested by British neopagan writer William Golding, the Nobel Prize-winning author of Lord of the Flies, in which one of the major themes is the sacrifice of individual welfare to a so-called "common good."
Environmentalists have held four large-scale "Gaia conferences" to promote and refine their views: at the University of Massachusetts in 1985; the American Geophysical Union in San Diego in 1988; in Valencia, Spain in 2000; and at George Mason University near Washington, D. C. in 2006. So-called "Gaia-Science Meetings" are held regularly at Harvard, Cambridge, Johns Hopkins, and other leading universities.
Christians who have attended secular colleges tell me that variations of the "Gaia hypothesis" are commonly taught as a core fact of environmentalism in science classrooms, and that their instructors, who claim to be true scientists, often encourage radical environmentalism as a way of "honoring" Gaia or "mother earth."
The Demon-Gods Still Live
It was common in pagan religions for worshippers to offer their own sons and daughters to be burned as propitiatory sacrifices to these gods who were said to control the earth and its environment. God warned Israel to have no part in this, while they were yet in the wilderness before entering Canaan where such practices were common (Leviticus 18:21, 20:2-5). Yet we read that many centuries later, when King Solomon married pagan wives and began to institute the worship of their gods alongside the God of Israel, one of the pagan sites he erected was dedicated to the worship of Molech, an environmental god (2 Kings 11:7).
Three hundred years later, King Josiah led a reformation in which idols and their worshippers were destroyed as God had commanded, and the worship of the one true and living God which had virtually ceased was re-instituted. He destroyed the site where Molech was worshipped (which had survived an earlier reformation under Hezekiah), so that the people would no longer sacrifice their sons and daughters to this demon-god (2 Kings 23:10).
Psalm 106 records these things as part of the sad history of Israel's continuing apostasy:
They did not destroy the peoples, concerning whom the Lord had commanded them, but they mingled with the Gentiles and learned their works; they served their idols, which became a snare to them.
They even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons, and shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with blood.
Thus they were defiled by their own works, and played the harlot by their own deeds. Therefore the wrath of the Lord was kindled against His people, so that He abhorred His own inheritance. (Psalm 106:34-40)
Clearly, the demons who received the worship of those who burned their children to propitiate these environmental gods thousands of years ago are still alive and active, even as they await their final doom in the Lake of Fire. In the 21st century these environmental gods receive the sacrifices of the slaughtered unborn, whose bodies are burned in the name of "energy conservation" to "save the environment." It is nothing but a more sophisticated form of the pagan abominations that have existed since ancient times.
God Will Not Be Mocked
In the fullness of time, God poured out His wrath for these things on ancient Israel. Many were slaughtered as the pagan nations invaded Israel and Judah, desecrated the land and the temple, and carried the survivors away captive.
In the United States, it is estimated that over 56 million children have been slaughtered through abortion since the Roe vs. Wade decision of 1973. It is estimated that since 1980, over 1.3 billion children have been slaughtered worldwide, most of them in Asia. And now, their bodies are being burned to heat buildings, in order to "save the planet" and "honor Gaia."
God will not be mocked, nor is He unjust to allow such sins to go unavenged. Thus far He has held back the outpouring of His wrath upon the nations who have shaken their fists in His face in our time. But He will not stay His hand forever.
The Duty of the Church
What are Christians to do? The answer is not to be found in changes of laws or of governments. It is not to be found in the methods that have so often consumed the Evangelical church such as protests on the steps of the Supreme Court, or so-called "prayer vigils" outside abortion facilities in which believers join with unbelievers, contrary to God's command. The answer is to be found in the salvation of souls.
As the church goes, so goes the nation. Why have nations that were once strongly influenced by the Bible now rejected it? They have done so in large part because the church has abandoned its Christ-given commission of preaching the Gospel and edifying the saints, and has pursued fool's errands.
The Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul told the Colossian believers, living in the midst of intense Cybele-worship, that Jesus Christ is the answer:
...giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. (Colossians 1:12-17)
Christ is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, not Cybele, Gaia, or some other pagan "earth-mother". The entire universe was created by Him, and for Him. By His cross He has secured the ultimate redemption of the universe, for which this present creation yearns along with the saints of God:
For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. (Romans 8:19-25)
This world is perishing. New heavens and a new earth are coming. God through Christ is saving a people "from the wrath to come" to live in that new world (1 Thessalonians 1:10). We must be about our Savior's business.
References:
1. "Aborted Babies Incinerated to Heat U. K. Hospitals," The Telegraph online edition, as viewed at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10717566/Aborted-babies-incinerated-to-heat-UK-hospitals.html/a>
2. "Canadian Aborted Babies Incinerated in Oregon Waste-to-Energy Facility to Provide Electricity," LifeSiteNews, as viewed at http://www.lifesitenews.com/canadian-aborted-babies-incinerated-in-oregon-waste-to-energy-facility-to-p.html
3. See, for example, James E. Lovelock, "Gaia As Seen Through the Atmosphere" in the journal Atmospheric Environment, Volume 6, Issue 6, August 1972, pages 579-580; James E. Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, "Atmospheric Homeostasis By and For the Biosphere: The Gaia Hypothesis," in Tellius, the journal of the International Meteorological Institute in Stockholm, Volume 26, No. 1-2, 1974; and James Lovelock's books The Vanishing Face of Gaia, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2009) and The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1988).
Next: Cybele-Worship and Mariolatry
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