Opening Connection To God… In A Secular Culture

Opening Connection to God… in a Secular Culture

Brad Bailey – Sunday, June 3, 2018

Intro

We have spent the past 8 weeks engaging the questions of what is involved with belief and engaging some of the questions that must be considered in believing in Christ.

Today, I want to consider how we talk about such belief.

How can we open connection to God in a secular culture?

How can those who believe have positive conversations with those who don’t yet believe… especially with the more secular perspective of our current culture?

I think most people feel it’s more challenging today to talk about spiritual beliefs than in the past.

Most people feel there is such a minefield …often a minefield of misconceptions…that many just want to withdraw from sharing about one’s beliefs…or perhaps withdraw from belief in itself…just avoid the sense of conflict or rejection.

This tension may reflect that our culture is more cynical about everything…and social media is less personal and therefore more disrespectful… more intimidating. But perhaps even more at the core …is an internal shift… people are generally more secular.

The Secularization of Culture

The word “secular” is often used to simply mean the opposite of that which is deemed “sacred.” As “sacred” refers to that which is set apart to God… “secular” can refer to what is not set apart to God. [1]

It’s common to assume that our culture is simply shifting away from believing or at least honoring God… based on some form of more progressive or modern understanding of the world. But our cultural shift towards becoming more secular is not that simple or rational.

Philosopher Charles Taylor wrote published a defining work, “The Secular Age,”… just a few years ago. This massive study provides a deeper grasp of the change that has taken place over the last 500 years. What he captures is how the shift is actually not so rooted in changes regarding belief in God as much as changes regarding belief in self. [2]

He traces the slower process by which a change in how western lives began to see themselves as guarded from the larger world.

Whereas western civilization had become that which discovered that Christianity always provided for ordinary human flourishing…but under divine grace…slowly this grace became eclipsed, for people endowed with reason and benevolence need only these faculties to carry out God's plan. This eventually leads to what is called an "exclusive humanism.”

The shift to "law-governed structure" …and a social order that can be organized by rational codes, and human relationships which matter are prescribed in the codes. The new way of trying to perceive life… is that we "acquire knowledge by exploring impersonal orders with the aid of disengaged reason" (p. 294) and form "societies under the normative provisions of the Modern Moral Order."

The ultimate order is now deemed to be the human freedom of finding one’s own way.

Taylor describes this as a shift from which the vulnerable "porous self" became the "buffered self"… disengaged from the transcendent larger questions and forces… no longer in need of relationship with God.

But Taylor captures that there are cross pressures. There is a feeling of malaise, of something lost. Heroism is lost in the leveling down of aspiration; utilitarianism is thought too flat and shallow.

The cross pressure describes the individualistic mood of people who feel caught between a closed world without God and a haunting of the transcendent.

So what is helpful to understand about the secular nature of our current culture?

• Secularization is a shift in beliefs…more than facts

As Keller notes, we are the first culture that doesn’t believe that it is a culture…it just believes it is a universal way that all smart people see things. Our culture is filled with beliefs…but doesn’t believe that their way of life is a set of beliefs. The belief that there is no larger reality that I am connected to … that serves human flourishing beyond myself…is a belief…not a fact.

• Secularization closes one off from what lies outside themselves… and with it…the ability to find themselves in relationship to a larger source of identity and meaning.

Yesterday…getting my haircut…and the young adult woman discovered I was a pastor… and that moment didn’t lead to an awkward silence… or “how nice” comment. She stopped… and engaged intently…expressing something to the effect… of expressing she has no clear faith…and feels lost. She explained how her grandmother was the source of a real center…but she dies when she was 12…and her parents divorces 2 months later…and her mother stopped paying for her each night…and her father became more atheistic. And now she feel her life is missing something. She shared how she has experiences of a transcendent presence…and ask if I thought that was weird.