BLOG 7/6/2016. WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD ANYONE NEED ‘GOD’?

Early in the last century George Jacob Holyoake gave us the classical definition of secularism: The doctrine that morality should be based on regard to the well-being of mankind in the present life to the exclusion of all considerations drawn from belief in God or the future life. I was reminded of that recently when someone asked me if I meant that a mutual acquaintance was an atheist, when I described that person as a secularist. Atheists, on one hand, tend to be a bit militant in their denial that there is a god of any kind. Secularist, on the other, fashion a whole way of life in which any conception of God is irrelevant to their pursuit of happiness.

I live in a substantial middle-class suburb of Atlanta. We are well-peopled with prosperous young professionals. But, then, I have a friend who carries on a remarkable Christian ministry in Central America and the Pacific northwest to illegal immigrants, to gang members, to prisoners, to those wanted by the law, to those who are incarcerated because they have been engaged in drug wars and violence. When this friend gets into conversation and dialogue with those persons, he finds them responsive to such conceptions as guilt, fear, rejection, sin, etc. … and to their response to such promises of Jesus Christ as forgiving love, acceptance, peace with God, realism about their mis-spent lives, … and a readiness to respond to the promises of Jesus and to receive the hope that comes in him, to open their lives to his healing. I find the writings of this friend (Bob Ekblad) just absolutely awesome.

But then, I don’t live in such a context of encounters with the law, with violence, with fear, and with estrangement and hostility. I live in suburbia. I live around young professionals who are skilled, who have achieved some security, who own homes, who are prospering so that they can send their children to private schools if they choose, take thrilling vacations, and who don’t even seem to give passing thought to such notions as any guilt and sinfulness, or of any real need for ‘god’ (even though they may maintain token identification with some church, or might go to mass occasionally). For most of such persons the description of being secularists fits.

When one reads the life and teachings of Jesus, it seems that he didn’t focus on the religious, or the righteous … but on (note) sinners: “I came not to call the righteous but sinners to new life, to seek and to save the lost.” Such language is lost on most secular suburbanites—it doesn’t even register. Why would they need to repent or change anything? They’ve got it made (until the roof of life caves in, they lose their jobs, the economy collapses, or they get the diagnosis of cancer). They are like those to whom the Old Testament prophets were sent, who have eyes but do not see, and ears but do not hear. Repentance requires a change of mind, or priorities, of one’s center and goal.

What we know, however, is that there is “a god-shaped vacuum in every heart.” We know that there is in all humankind a sense of deity, or “a haunting loneliness” that lurks deep in the sub-consciousness. It’s there. But it expresses itself differently in my young urban friends than it does with the illegal immigrants and prisoners and gang members that my friend lives with. That sense of incompleteness, of the meaning of life, of one’s need for an ultimate hope … is what Jesus addresses. It is all of such lost human beings to whom Jesus came incarnating the love of God, and opening a way into the acceptance, hope, newness, forgiveness, and joy of God’s New Creation. Secularism is a ‘dodge.’ It is not good news. And it is bankrupt.

Jesus came, as he said, that we might have life. He came to set us free. He came to reconcile us to God and to give us hope. That’s worth checking into, … whether you are a gang member in Central America, or a happy pagan in suburbia. What is your response. Feed back to me.

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