In the history of the world, the wholesale rejections of the supernatural is a quirk of Western secularism. At the same time, it will not ultimately survive the human longing for transcendence and communion with the supernatural, no matter how far technology advances.
Why is our secular culture so broken? For the simple reason that it views Jesus in the same way it views Confucius, Muhammad, or other long-dead religious leaders. If you and I do not make Christ our living king, we treat him in the same way.
Secularists have been predicting the death of Christianity in Western culture for a very long time, but God refuses to abandon us. In fact, as Os Guinness notes in his marvelous new book, Signals of Transcendence: Listening to the Promptings of Life, our Creator continues to draw us to himself in ways we might expect and ways we might not.
One way that Christians can intentionally swim against the secular currents in today’s culture is to constantly look for and point out those indications of God that He has placed in the world about Himself. God has infused His world with glimpses and reflections of His character and His grace, experiences that can wake us from our secular stupor. In God’s common grace, a stubborn sense of discontent, an unresolved question, a deep sense of some foundational truth become profound gifts to draw people outside of themselves to the eternal. He has, as the author of Ecclesiastes stated, “put eternity into man’s heart.”
We read of rising animosity against our Father and our faith, then we look at our capacities and ask, “What are they for so many?” We look at the spiritual, financial, and material needs of our day, then turn to our resources and ask the same question.
In response, consider the counsel of Pope St. Leo the Great (died AD 461): “Do not be put off by a lack of resources. A generous spirit is itself of great wealth, and there can be no shortage of material for generosity where it is Christ who feeds and Christ who is fed. His hand is present in all this activity: his hand, which multiplies the bread by breaking it and increases it by giving it away.” Will you put your “lunch” in his hands today?
A Wheaton College dean says the future of America's religious landscape will likely be similar to secular Australia – and that means Christians must be bold in sharing the love of Christ.
Ed Stetzer, executive director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center and dean of the college's School of Mission, Ministry, and Leadership in Illinois, made the comments in a social media post while visiting Melbourne. Stetzer posted the video moments after delivering a sermon at a local church, City on a Hill.
A post-Christian society may be about to learn what Christians have always taught: Not all spiritual entities are friendly or helpful. A chilling 2018 article in The Atlantic chronicled the growing demand for official Catholic exorcists, even while practicing Catholics dwindle as a share of the population. Something is going on that psychologists can’t handle. Modern Westerners’ naïve approach to the spiritual realm — treating it as a game or a joke or a political sting — leaves them especially vulnerable to attack.
God knows everything I have discussed today and is still on his throne. He is working to redeem the brokenness of our secularized society by using it to draw people to his amazing grace and love. And, as the Asbury revival shows, he is using all who will be used in his agenda of restoration and renewal.
From its very beginning, secular humanism has, in various ways, promised to save the world. Not only have these promises failed, but no coherent vision has even been offered of what a “saved world” would look like. Like the progressives of today, who promise progress without any fixed definition of better or worse, all that’s left is a pursuit of pleasure, to enshrine self-expression as the highest good. In other words, it was the abject failure of secular humanism that gave birth to the cynical postmodern ethos of today.
If nothing else, secular humanism is a cautionary tale for Christians who think of the Christian faith as a kind of humanist project.
We must never allow our skeptical, secularized culture to persuade us that sharing and standing for our faith is an imposition of our values on others. To the contrary, such bold witness is the most compassionate way we can love our neighbor as ourselves.
