SECULARISM AS THE IMPOVERISHMENT OF HUMAN LIFE

How do most people know the presence of God? St. Paul tells us that the requirements of God’s moral law is written on our hearts, our consciences also bearing witness, and our thoughts accusing or defending our attitudes and actions. The secrets of our hearts will one day be judged by Jesus Christ as the gospel declares (Romans 2:15,16).

“God is present in our lives as the moral lawgiver, the one with authority who demands of us that we become a certain kind of person. God is the Lord, and if he is not known as the one who must be obeyed, he is not really known at all. We know that there is a God because we recognize that we are beings who are accountable for how we live our lives. God is known simply as the one to whom we are accountable.

The modern secular world in which we live is a kind of concerted mutiny against this divine authority, an attempt to depose God as our moral ruler and usurp his role as moral lawgiver. The result of the mutiny is moral confusion and moral disintegration. Of course, the secular world sees this mutiny not as a revolt but as liberation, the achievement of full human autonomy. Being accountable to God is not incompatible with genuine freedom, since it is only when we are related in love to God that we can be genuinely free.

This idea that true freedom is linked to being accountable is often ignored because such a claim is so contrary to the prevailing ethos of contemporary Western culture. We think that freedom means being completely autonomous. We talk about “holding people accountable” for their actions, but what we really mean is that we want them to be punished when they do what we do not like. We like to see others held accountable for their behavior, but we ourselves do not like being responsible to others.

The demands of duty are literally God’s requirements for us, and the voice of conscience is the voice of God despite our differing cultural upbringings. The most important fact about our moral lives is that we recognize that we have duties; we are morally accountable beings.

Why is it that religious faith has declined among intellectuals in Europe and North America in the last two hundred years? Bertrand Russell would say to God after death in defense of his rejection of Christianity and God: “Sir, why did you not give me better evidence?” The secular narrative is as follows. Modern science has shown that the natural world can be explained without reference to theology. Historical biblical criticism has undermined belief that the Bible is an inspired revelation from God. All such accounts presume that modern intellectuals have rejected belief in God because of their intelligence and intellectual honesty. Belief has declined because we have become more intelligent and less credulous.

Kierkegaard simply does not buy this narrative. He thinks it gives an overly flattering view of secular intellectuals; it presumes that they would be quite willing to believe if only their intellectual problems were solved. On his view religious faith has declined among some intellectuals not because they are so smart, but because their imaginations are weak and their emotional lives are impoverished. If intellectuals do not believe in God, it is either because they do not want to believe or because the natural human capacities that ought to allow them to recognize God at work in their lives have atrophied and are no longer working properly.

If we fail to grasp the truths we ought to know, we must not assume the problem lies in the evidence rather than in ourselves. We must not assume that a failure to know God is always a result of a lack of evidence. Our knowledge of God may not always depend on evidence at all. Even when such knowledge does depend on evidence, a failure to gain knowledge may be a result of a person’s inability to understand and appreciate evidence, or an inability to have the experiences that might provide the evidence. We are not purely thinking beings, but embodied persons whose lives, including our intellectual lives, are deeply shaped by our hearts. What we know and believe is intimately connected to what we desire and fears and hopes and loves. Our emotions and passions allow us to connect with the world in the right way. Our religious knowledge comes to us through conscience and our knowledge of the ethical: what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong. We cannot see the need to help another if we cannot feel compassion for the suffering of another. We cannot aspire to live courageously if we are not inspired by courageous actions. We cannot value honesty if we cannot feel the shamefulness of a shabby lie told to save a few bucks.

It is in and through the passions and emotions that we become aware of God’s claim on our lives. People who lack this quality will not be helped simply by acquiring more information or becoming scientifically educated. Rather the person needs to care more deeply about the point of living a human life.”

(Excerpted from C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard and Spirituality: Accountability as the Meaning of Human Existence, 52-59)