Taking every thought captive for obedience to Christ (2 Cor. 10.5)

Vision
Religion
I suspect that some of those philosophers gathered on Mars Hill to listen to the Apostle Paul might have been mildly shocked to hear him say, at the beginning of his oration, that, having observed their city and talked with many of them previously, he was pleased to see that they were very religious (Acts 17.22, ESV).

Oh, they went along with the gods-game which was still fashionable in Athens at the time, but most thinkers of Paul’s day had succumbed to the rationalism of a secular worldview, and didn’t think of themselves as being religious at all, except as a kind of social formality.

If Paul were addressing a crowd of secular and naturalistic philosophers in our day, I suspect that his opening to them would be very much along the same lines. But those today, who might hear him refer to themselves as religious would be more than a little shocked.

But Paul would be right.

It is a symptom of Enlightenment thinking that everything must be explained in merely naturalistic and human terms. I’m reminded of the song from the Broadway version of The Sound of Music – deleted from the film, to the detriment thereof – in which the Captain’s friends sing about the joys of self-interest in a strictly material cosmos where everything ultimately orbits around “I.”

This is the worldview of naturalism and narcissism, which insists that we live in a strictly material cosmos which is here, apparently, for the benefit of human beings, to do with as we will. Everything in our lives can be explained in rational and material terms, and whatever we do is purely for the sake of self-interest.

For contemporary thinkers, this goes for religion too, which for the heirs of the Enlightenment, is merely a psychological phenomenon expressing a common human inclination in naïve and perhaps dangerous terms. For the secular thinker, religion will decrease in importance as we continue to learn more about the cosmos and our place in it, for it will succumb to merely naturalistic explanations more agreeable to what our egos desire.

Charles Matthews takes on one of the latest iterations of this argument in the Fall, 2015 issue of The Hedgehog Review (“Can You Change Your Life?”). He insists that religion “is not going away; belief is not withering with the expansion of voting or antibiotic use or gender equality.” He adds, “Our societies are not secularizing so much as pluralizing, becoming sites that host multiple and quite radically different ways of being human in our common world, many of them religious.”

In a very real sense, all worldviews are religious in that they seek to bind us back (Latin, religare) to ultimate things, such as beauty, goodness, and truth. All worldviews require a faith commitment to unseen hopes, centered around an ultimate reality which is, for adherents, the equivalent of the Christian God.

Mr. Matthews argues that the impulse for improvement, characteristic of all human beings, and which secularists insist arises from within us, is actually a response to a summons from beyond this world – a desire to become more than what we are, based on our sense of something greater than all.

The challenge to Christians is to recognize that impulse through all the different forms it takes, and to engage it as such, as a longing – my words – for God. This is how Paul addressed the secular worldviews of his day. He treated them as varying forms of the pursuit of the knowledge of God, and he proclaimed the Gospel as the true longing for which they all inclined in their hearts.

That didn’t result in everyone happily converting to Christ. The way, as we know, is narrow, and few ever find it.

But it did result in a crowd of secular thinkers being forced to face up to the religious nature of their worldview, and reminded of what they all knew but suppressed, that they were made in the image and likeness of God, and owed worship and service to Him alone.

As Charles Matthews explains, this is still the case in our day.

For reflection
1.  What do secular people take as the ultimate good in life? Can you see how this takes the place of God for them?

2.  How is it apparent that even secular people live by faith in unseen things?

3.  Meditate on Acts 17.32-34. What three responses should we expect from people as we share the Good News of Jesus with them?

Do you know any secular people? See what you can find out about what they believe to be the greatest good for them? How do they know this to be so?

T. M. Moore

Stretch your vision of Christ and His Kingdom by ordering a copy of T. M.’s book, The Kingship of Jesus, from our online store (click here).

The Week features insights from a wide range of topics and issues, with a view to equipping the followers of Christ to take every thought captive for Jesus. Please prayerfully consider supporting The Fellowship of Ailbe by sending a gift to The Fellowship of Ailbe, 19 Tyler Drive, Essex Junction, VT 05452.