The Resultant Misery of Denying God to Champion Ourselves

I would like to share a secret that not many people know about me. 

I am imperfect and a sinner.

Okay, everyone that knows me even in passing actually knows this poorly kept secret.  The only thing I can say in my defense is that I seem to be in good company with the rest of the world.  What is often apparent these days though is that not everybody realizes that they too are imperfect creatures made and sustained by a divine and perfect Creator.  Not that this is a great credit to me, but I am painfully aware of the many transgressions I make on a daily basis and how often I fail to do what God wants.  I am not a very good Christian far too much of the time.

Sadly, in this day and age of post-Christian modernity, it seems that those that still do believe in God and are thus trying to live their lives accordingly are seen as superstitious rubes and fools by most people in society.  The biggest growing religious affiliation group today is the “nones”; that is those folks having no religious affiliation or belief.  Far too many of the remaining people that still “believe” in God have redefined him so that their “god” agrees with their thoughts, beliefs and world view, rather than conforming their own beliefs to what God has taught us.  This is almost a new kind of atheism.  “There is a god, BUT he thinks just like ME!”

Most people have subjected God to either agreeing with them or simply denying his very existing altogether.  And why not?  For most of us, It is hard to live by God’s rules in this fallen world today.  It is far easier for us to change what God thinks so as to align with our own thoughts, or failing that, to simply no longer acknowledge his very existence.  After all, if God doesn’t exist, then I can think and do as I see fit.  I am no longer constrained by an informed conscience that is guided by a divine loving creator God.  I am free!  I am not shackled by any authority greater than my own needs, wants, and desires.  My ego is now the supreme authority over my actions in this great cosmic lie.

Bishop Robert Barron succinctly states,

“All of us sinners have, to one degree or another, bought into the lie. At the heart of the lie—and we can see it in the Genesis account—is the deification of the ego. I become the center of the universe, I with my needs and my fears and my demands.

And when the puny ‘I’ is the center of the cosmos, the tie that binds all things to one another is lost. The basic reality now becomes rivalry, competition, violence, and mistrust.”

Indeed, if everyone does precisely what their own ego and its desires dictate, of course we are going to run into conflict with our families, friendships, and society.  We no longer are governed by God’s commandment to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, or if we do treat others well, it often is because we expect something in return.  Nothing is ever done simply out of a loving heart with no expectation of reciprocation these days.  The result of all of this self-centeredness untethered from a higher purpose (God) are broken relationships, broken families, increased rates of drug use and suicide, meaningless and empty promiscuity, abuse, and violence.

Yes, these things have always been with us as part of the fallen human condition, but for all of our societal advances, we seem to have an increase in these things rather than having mitigated them.

I have seen too many friends, acquaintances, and even family members choose to go down this path of denying the existence of God, seemingly so as to not have to justify their actions that God has clearly spoken out against.  From supporting sexual conduct outside of marriage to championing the redefinition of marriage itself to accommodate homosexual marriage or plural marriage, I have witnessed the chaos and self-destruction that inevitably comes when we intentionally turn our backs on God’s plan for us.  This is especially true when it comes to those championing the killing of innocent newborns and then justifying it under the more tender euphemism of “pro-choice”. 

Our society has increasingly turned away from God and an abiding belief in him and his desires for us to be happy and TRULY free by cooperating with his plan for each of us.  The results have been disastrous and sorely evident throughout or “enlightened” society.  From comparatively lesser problems like nearly half of marriages ending in divorce, if one no longer acknowledges the commitment, let alone the sacred nature of marriage, then any reason one chooses can be a valid excuse for dumping your spouse.

Today, often times because people no longer understand or respect the sacrament of marriage, many couples just choose to live together as an unmarried couple.  This “temporary” arrangement without a true sense of commitment usually fosters insecurity and a decidedly unharmonious life together often times.  With few exceptions, I have not seen this work out well for more than a few years at best. 

I have also witnessed a good-hearted young woman agree to be a surrogate mother for two “married” men and then suffer emotionally at giving up the baby she carried for nine months.  Let alone that common sense and psychology used to tell us that children do far better in a stable home with a married mother and father, now we can put the best needs of the child aside because two men who can not procreate together as per God’s design have selfishly decided that they want to “have a child”.

Then there is the matter of abortion.  God tells us that murder is wrong and a grave sin.  Pope Francis recently reiterated unambiguously once again that abortion is murder, and yet this issue today is one that is highly contentious in America.  Let that sink in for a moment.  It is a CONTENTIOUS ISSUE that tens of millions of Americans support killing an unborn child.  Over 62 million unborn babies have been killed in the United States alone since the passing of Roe v. Wade in 1973.  Nothing can justify the intentional taking of an innocent life, but the problem is especially egregious when the deification of one’s ego justifies this act for matters of convenience or financial reasons. 

Now this is not to say that all atheists or agnostics are bad people, anymore than it is to say that all self-professed Christians are good people.  Neither is obviously the case.  Personally, I have known and do know many atheists that live very moral lives and actually care about others for the sake of the others.  Having once been an atheist myself, I can understand what I consider to be the false religious doctrines of atheism.  Even here on my own blog, some of my favorite interlocuters have been atheists such as John Myste, Heathen Republican, and Jerry.  All of these gentlemen are obviously exceptionally bright and seemingly very good people.  They make the world a better place for their parts in it.

Unfortunately, far more of the quasi-Christians, agnostics, and atheists are only in this world for themselves.  Nothing greater is in control of their lives and actions than what their egos tell them.   Life is meaningless in all things except to get whatever one can out of it.  If others can help in that goal, then great, otherwise to hell with most others.  It is a sad existence.  I know.  I once lived it too.

Regrettably, I forget where I came across this quotation, but it seems particularly relevant to this topic regarding our human nature and history as God’s creatures.

 

“It is a history of creatures attempting to make their Creator into their own image and likeness. But the most the creature can do is turn away from what truly is and live in a world of his own imagination. 

If insanity is measured by the degree to which what one believes corresponds to what truly is, the story of mankind’s revolt against reality is really the story of mankind’s descent into insanity.

Sanity produces the opposite. When you see things as they truly are (and live accordingly), good things result. Sanity invariably leads to human flourishing, whereas its opposite alienates us from ourselves and from all that is around us—to regression, human misery, and destruction.”  

 

In Vatican II’s words, “when God is forgotten . . . the creature itself grows unintelligible,” seem prophetic in retrospect.

Ascending Secularism

About a year ago, a traveling exhibition of The Dead Sea Scrolls went on display at the local museum near where I live.  These early manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible dated as far back as the 3rd century before Christ and are the second oldest known manuscripts of the type in existence.  The finding of these scrolls was a truly remarkable discovery.  I figured it would be fascinating to see these in person, so I sauntered on down to the museum to spend the afternoon perusing them.

Immediately upon entering the exhibit, I noticed the museum placards describing various artifacts and scroll fragments were all listed in the ridiculous Before Common Era (BCE) and Common Era (CE) notations.  At first I was borderline amused, which quickly turned into extreme annoyance.  A museum placard at the beginning of the exhibit explained with politically correct reasoning that the museum did not want to upset those people viewing the exhibit that might be offended by the notations of Before Christ (BC) and Anno Domini (AD) [Latin for “in the year of our Lord”].

Really?!?!

I would bet that anyone that was interested in coming to see these scrolls which were a part of the Hebrew Bible (aka part of the Old Testament) would probably not be offended by the non-secular “BC” and “AD” notations.  While I had been aware of the ever-encroaching foolishness of political correctness manifesting itself in hyper secularism, this really sent me over the edge and made my teeth itch.  Had the most remarkable religious discovery of the 20th century fallen victim to politically correct secularism?

Secularism.  What the hell is that?  It is not necessarily the same thing as atheism, although the two often go together like the ACLU and hypocrisy.  Secularism, in the classical understanding of the term, is used to mean those things that dealt with earthly matters or the temporal order.  Today, the term seems to be used in the context of an absence of religious belief or participation thereof.  Indeed in the modern era, seemingly more and more people embrace a type of purely self-sufficient humanism – a secularism aimed at one’s material flourishing without any consideration whatsoever of a transcendent order and reality.  And that in and of itself is fine with me, if such is a person’s choice.  More power to him or her. After all, we still live in a free country – well, kind of anyway.  

That said, America as a nation was founded with an acknowledgement of our “firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence” and those most precious inalienable rights bestowed upon us not by the government, but by our Creator; thus states our Declaration of Independence.  Regardless, the idea was that Americans could worship as they choose, in public and indeed in government buildings and institutions, or they could choose not to do so.  Today, with the rise of this seeming virulent secularism, some twisted notion that faith should never intrude into the public arena seems to be the rule of the day.

And so we see this infectious secularism now spreading to a historical religious exhibit at the local museum in the guise of BCE and CE notations. This is really nothing more than a mere change of a name.  It is as if some secularist decided, “Don’t bring this Lord stuff into the debate!”  Okay.  Fine, but then tell me, what is the single defining event that separates BC and the silly BCE from AD and the sillier CE?  Is it not the birth of Christ regardless of the terms?  I suppose if one were to ask some quasi-scientist or politically correct historian what was The Event that delineated BCE from CE, he could shuffle his feet and mumble something about a non-theologically significant event --- or he could tell you about Christ.

Whether one accepts the divinity of Christ or not, the historical fact of His existence and the undeniable fact that He changed the history of the world since His human incarnation is the lone event that ends the era “Before Christ” and ushers in the era “In the Year of Our Lord”.  The changing of the names of the eras to something that is politically correct does nothing to change the actual event that delineates those eras.  Rather it simply points out in glaring fashion the degrees to which secularism has ascended in our Western culture today.

The BC/AD to BCE/CE debacle is only one small thread in this new secularist tapestry being woven by many of the politically correct and secular humanists today.  There are other issues on the secularist’s loom that they are trying to remake too.  For example, a denial of our country’s history and its founding as a Christian nation is a pervasive meme found taught by many of higher academia’s teachers today.  Even President Obama has insisted in the past that we are not necessarily a Christian nation.

The secularist’s axiom seems to be as science and reason spread, religious belief will wane.  The notion that science and faith are inextricably linked seems like an utter impossibility to the secularist, and any mention of God or faith in the public sphere is something to be shunned lest it lead society backwards into the dark ages of superstition and the supernatural.

Because of these new ideals, public prayer or Christmas nativity displays are often banned in many cities today.  And yet debauchery is on display in some of those same cities with gay pride parades and the like where members openly mock Christ and those things that a majority of Americans still consider sacred.  Even during the Christmas season, it is often seen as an affront to PC Secularists to wish someone “Merry Christmas!” instead of the more benign and ambiguously indifferent “Happy Holidays”.

And what have we gained by this metastasizing secularism?  Are we a kinder, more generous and caring people because of this?  Is ours a society that strives to take care of the least of our brothers and sisters in desperate need?  Or do we simply focus on the humanistic secularism that says we must “get ours first and foremost” in a Darwinian survival of the fittest?

It has generally been my experience that those people whom are the most militant in their secularism are often times the most disagreeable and abrasive of souls too.  They seem to be very unhappy, and indeed how could they not be?  If one believes in nothing more than materialism and temporal matters alone, how could one be truly happy?  Love, beauty, and life itself are not magnificent gifts from God to the militant humanist secularist.  They are subjective things to be used as tools for a means to an end to further one’s earthly gains.  With such an outlook, I suppose I would be grumpy and acerbic too!

Unfortunately though, it is not enough that they alone hold this merely as a personal opinion.  Rather, it becomes incumbent upon them to spread this secularist mindset to all of society so that nobody might be offended by God, His son Jesus, or religion at all.

Myself having once traveled down an atheistic, if not secular road before, I found life to be very unfulfilling.  It was lacking in purpose – in meaning – and certainly in true agape love.  My heart was restless and often very saddened until, through God’s grace and mercy, I eventually was lead back to Him.  Indeed I pray that this secularism is nothing more than a trend that will eventually pass like a strong winter storm.  In its passing, we will once again come into the Spring of God’s blessings and perhaps many of those lost secularists will return or perhaps for the first time come into Christ’s fold. Their need to replace or wipe away any vestige of things that are overtly religious or even having religious connotations, such as replacing BC and AD with secularist substitutions in our museums, will no longer be necessary for them.  Perhaps these would-be secularists can then finally find some semblance of peace.  St. Augustine said it best regarding God, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless, until they find rest in you.”

Indeed!

Christianity and the Creation of Science

In our ever-increasingly secularized world today it has seemingly become rather hip to run down or mock people of faith as being unenlightened, backwards, willfully ignorant, or just plain dumb.  Our new modern age culture teaches us that science (and progressive politics) should guide us in our lives.  Anyone that still believes in an omnipotent divine creator is a curiosity at best.  Today they are often looked down upon with sadness and a slow back-and-forth nodding of the head as one might do when a not-particularly-bright child trys to stick a fork into the electrical outlet.  Either that, or with outright sneering and scorn.  Indeed, these foolish Christians that believe in such myths and fabrications of an all-powerful and loving deity must be dragged from their pews and into the new millennium for their own good, whether they want to do so or not.

The truly amusing thing is that irony abounds in the fact that today many atheists and agnostics are championing Science as their god.  Unfortunately for them, Science as we know it today would never have developed without the Catholic Church.  Indeed, it was the Catholic Church that developed the scientific method in the High Middle Ages via the Bishop of Lincoln,  Robert Grosseteste.   It was Bishop Grosseteste that was the very first man credited with formalizing the Scientific Method, under the concept of “composition and resolution” using Christian, Islamic and Aristotelean texts. His ideas were translated into the Scientific Method we know today by Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar who used terms like “observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and independent verification” for the first time.  Indeed, even the Big Bang Theory was formulated by a priest, as was our modern theory of genetics.

This must be very confounding, if not outright vexing, to our atheist friends today.  How can it be that the Catholic Church and Christian Western Civilization developed the Scientific Method and empirical science in general?  How come it was not developed by the Chinese or in India or other advanced cultures of those days?  For that matter, how come ancient Greece or Rome did not formulate the Scientific Method?

The answer will further confound and vex my atheist and agnostic friends, but I would submit that it lies in two simple words: Monotheistic Religion.

 

“WHAT?!”, you say!  “How can that possibly be?” 

Well, quite easily, actually.  History show us that the fragments of intellectualism that remained after the collapse of the Roman Empire were salvaged by Christianity.  Further, that same Christianity provided the philosophy on which the Scientific Method was founded.  Now Christianity has as one of its core tenets of belief that the Universe was created by a magnificent and supremely rational God.  Logic would thus dictate that the Universe He created must therefore also be rational.  This rational Universe that God created abides by very specific laws;  Laws regarding physics, gravity, thermodynamics and entropy and so forth.

At least through the 18^th century, discovering the laws of nature and how they worked would be the same as discovering how God ordained that events and the Universe should unfold. Without that guiding philosophy and rationalism, it leaves only a conception of nature and the Universe as a succession of different events that just happen to show patterns and regularities.  To the atheist, it could be said that it is just one damn thing after another, accordingly.  Tom Bethell of The American Spectator and author many books and essays regarding science said it best, “Christianity elevated the faculty of human reason and fostered a spirit of inquiry.  Without it, there would never have been a scientific revolution.”

Atheism not only had absolutely nothing to do with the creation of Science but it could NOT have ever created Science.  To an atheist who thinks that life and the creation of the Universe happened as a matter of random chance coming to fruition over billions of years, this seems to be in direct conflict with an ordered universe.  “That’s just how things are” is hardly the basis for sound scientific thought, let alone the creation of the Scientific Method.

If, however, the very laws of nature and the Universe come from a supreme lawgiver, and we as mankind are made in the image of that lawgiver, then indeed the Universe absolutely explodes with possibility.  Everything is a subject for observation and rational study accordingly.

So the irony is supremely rich: The New-World Atheist claims that Science — created and promoted by religion, and indeed made possible by religion — invalidates the need for religion.  It seems to me that the religion of atheism requires a far greater leap of faith than does the rationality of Christianity accordingly.

Defining Atheism