False Thinkers
If there is one thing our world has never been lacking in, it would have to be men of great thinking capacity. Names such as Darwin, Freud, Einstein, Marx, Plato, Aristotle and Lincoln can all be acknowledged as men whose viewpoints and ideas have had a great influence on our world. While many have had a positive impact on our lives, even long after they spoke and penned their wisdom, many have equally left a legacy of distortion and despair.
In the latter category the name of Sigmund Freud would have to be placed. Freud was the founder of psychoanalysis. This form of psychotherapy tries to treat people suffering from nervous disorders by asking the individual to recall painful experiences from the past that somehow are lodged in unconscious and subconscious thoughts. While this form of treatment is losing support today, the Freudian ethic, which Freud popularized has shown little sign of releasing its hold on America.
What did Freud believe? Hal Lindsey summed up the Freudian view of man as follows: “The human race is motivated chiefly by pleasure; everything starts and ends with sex. Man is repressed by society in the fulfillment of his unconscious drive for gratification of his erotic desires; this repression makes him unhappy. The consequence of the conflict between our pleasure-seeking instincts and the repression exerted by our society is neurosis.” Lindsey further stated that: “Freud firmly laid the groundwork for extreme permissiveness.”1
Our sexually liberated society today can directly trace its roots back to Freud. The Bible views sex as a most beautiful experience that is reserved only for the marriage bed. If this boundary is ignored then sex no longer becomes a special union of two souls but a commodity bartered between two fleshes.
The result is an inevitable progression into the world of perversion and disease. Premarital and extramarital sex, homosexuality and lesbianism, incest, prostitution, sodomy, pornography, V.D., AIDS, sadomasochism, abortion and countless millions of destroyed families totally shatter the beauty that could have been.
Just what can we thank Freud for? Freud has become the father of a fractured fairy tale of fiction, where fast and free living have served only to foster a lifestyle of fatal attractions. Permissiveness has led to perversion. Peace of mind has been sacrificed in return for pleasure seeking. Finally, the stage has been set for danger in the years ahead.
False Freedoms
False systems, false movements and false thinkers all seem to offer the same thing to their followers, namely, false freedoms. As we have seen, communism talks equality but denies true freedom. Humanism offers us so much freedom that we turn it into a noose. Freud offers us freedom that perverts the soul.
Counterfeit freedoms are always a product of darkness. They masquerade as light but soon reveal their true nature as darkness. But there is still hope amidst all this darkness, for there still can be light at the end of the tunnel. True freedom is obtainable and our old friend the Bible has a few thoughts on how to find it. For we read in (John 8:32): “…and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
A Final Thought
Nature, more appropriately called “the creation,” is full of beauty, wonder and surprises and it is a very positive force. Every facet of our natural world speaks of a purpose, and asks us to ponder just how such magnificence could have come into being. The Bible casts its vote in favor of divine design. It states that this great universe of ours is the product of a divine, omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient Creator.
The forces of darkness, which we have discussed, have filled the ballot boxes with the names of a host of different candidates. Each of these candidates in the last analysis has brought with it despair, repression and depression. Darkness by its very nature can never lead us into the light.
1 Hal Lindsey, Satan Is Alive and Well on Planet Earth (New York: Bantam Books, Inc., 1984), p. 79.