Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes (9 page)

PRINCIPLE #2

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“Why does God let people go through the ‘stupid years’?”

John Erickson was telling me, in self-deprecating tones, the story of what he calls his “stupid years”—the time spent turning his back on the church and looking for a more sophisticated creed to live by. It is a familiar trajectory, traveled by many young adults.
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“I grew up in a devout, church-going, King James Bible Southern Baptist home in West Texas,” John told me. “But during my senior year in high school, I began reading Darwin and Freud. I immersed myself in the French poets, like Rimbaud and the other Decadents.

“When I asked questions about these secular ideas, the answer seemed to be that good Baptists didn’t ask those questions. That did not satisfy me.”

Coming of age in the 1960s counterculture, John was attracted by its heady idealism. He was morally outraged by the more than fifty thousand dead Americans in Vietnam while, as he saw it, the church wrapped itself in the flag. As a Southerner, John was also repulsed by the church’s historical role in slavery and racial oppression. He veered left in his politics and his theology, grew his hair long, and joined protest marches against racism and the Vietnam War.

After college, John was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship to attend Harvard Divinity School. There he studied under the leading liberal luminaries of the day, such as H. Richard Niebuhr and Harvey Cox. Also teaching at Harvard at the time was Joseph Fletcher, author of
Situation Ethics
, a book that alienated students from the idea that there are unyielding principles of right and wrong. For students like John, it seemed that Fletcher had achieved an intellectual tour de force: He had “put a scholarly gloss on what, for centuries, had been regarded as mere adolescent fantasy—that we are free to make up the rules as we go along and then call it Christian.”

It was not until John was about to graduate that he finally encountered a challenge to his theological liberalism—not by reading the Bible but by reading Nietzsche.

“Vociferous Atheist”

The turnaround began when John wrote a paper on Nietzsche for one of his courses. “I knew that Nietzsche was a vociferous atheist and an enemy of the Christian faith, but I rather enjoyed watching him throw jabs in the face of flabby bourgeois Christianity. I figured it might be fun to spar a few rounds with him in my term paper.”

But the sparring match turned into a rout. To John’s surprise, he found himself agreeing with much of Nietzsche’s scathing critique of the white-bread cultural Christianity so common in the West. Nietzsche denounced religion that had degenerated into sheep-like bourgeois respectability.

“I submitted my essay and made an appointment with the professor to discuss it,” John told me. “I couldn’t even look him in the eye. Looking down, I said, ‘Nietzsche won. I could not answer his arguments.’”

You might expect a professor at a prominent divinity school to offer a robust counter-challenge to one of history’s most notorious atheists. But to John’s astonishment, the professor had nothing to offer. Except an A- on the paper.

Years later, John came to regret the years that he had spent captivated by Nietzsche’s atheism and nihilism. As a rebellious college student, he had found it all too easy to flog the organized church for its failings, while ignoring Christianity’s positive contributions. John eventually discovered that many of the freedoms and human rights enjoyed in the West are fruits of its Christian heritage. That modern science is largely a product of the biblically inspired concept of laws in nature. That just-war doctrine, developed by medieval theologians, did much to bring an end to unlimited slaughter, rape, looting, and enslavement. That a host of moral ideals, from anti-slavery to women’s rights, have their roots in Christianity.

“As students, we took all of this for granted, like oxygen in a lecture hall, and we heaped harsh judgment on the Christian West,” John recalled. “But we rarely asked, ‘Compared to what?’ The ‘what’ was always some form of utopian ideal. But utopian ideals have not fared so well. In the twentieth century, secular utopian idealists presided over the extermination of a hundred million people, killed for ‘a higher good’ by the apostles of Darwin, Marx, and Nietzsche. History has never produced a more efficient set of butchers.”

John came to wish his Harvard professors had been a lot tougher on their students’ faddish nihilism. “My professor should not have let me off so easy. He should not have allowed me to walk out of his office thinking that Nietzsche had obliterated nineteen hundred years of Christian intellectual and moral accomplishment. He should have said something like this: ‘Nietzsche was a brilliant, tormented genius who gave us the blueprint for spiritual disintegration and Hell on earth. He beat you up because you’re weak, rebellious, and ignorant. Worse, you’re proud of it. Take your paper and write it again.’”

In the end, John grew disillusioned enough to pack his bags and leave Harvard, moving back to West Texas where he reconnected with his family and his roots. Over the years, he rethought his theology and became a committed Christian. Today he is a highly successful children’s writer, author of the much-loved Hank the Cowdog series.

Have It Your Way

Why does God allow people to go through what John Erickson calls the “stupid years”? To answer that, we must listen again to the message of Romans 1. The text repeats a poignant phrase that speaks volumes: “God gave them up … gave them up … gave them up” (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28). The phrase does not mean God gives up on people. Just the opposite. It means he tries to get through to them by allowing them to play out the negative consequences of their idolatrous choices.

This divine strategy is apparent throughout Scripture. When the ancient Israelites turned to idols, God said, “So I let them follow their own stubborn desires, living according to their own ideas” (Ps. 81:12
NLT
). Similarly, in the Song of Moses, God said, “I will hide my face from them; I will see what their end will be” (Deut. 32:20). In the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament), the word for
see
means to show, point out, exhibit, teach, demonstrate, make known. Clearly, God’s purpose is to reach out and communicate. In essence God is saying, Okay, have it your way, and see for yourself how destructive it is.

This strategy has obvious parallels in everyday life. Parents sometimes have to allow children to make bad choices and suffer the consequences. Teachers may have to let students fail due to bad study habits. Counselors know that addicts have to hit bottom before they are willing to change. In the same way, God gives people up so they will perceive the harmful consequences of their idols. From verse 26 to the end of the chapter, Romans 1 illustrates those consequences with a long list of destructive and self-destructive behavior. God uses these negative experiences to press people to the point of decision: Will they continue worshipping a counterfeit god that is destroying them, or will they repent and turn to the true God?

Principle #2

Identify the Idol’s Reductionism

Why do idols invariably lead to destructive behavior? What is the connection? The link is that idols always lead to a lower view of human life. In Romans 1, the connection is captured in the word
exchanged
: They “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Rom. 1:23). When a worldview exchanges the Creator for something in creation, it will also exchange a high view of humans made in God’s image for a lower view of humans made in the image of something in creation.

Humans are not self-existent, self-sufficient, or self-defining. They did not create themselves. They are finite, dependent, contingent beings. As a result, they will always look outside themselves for their ultimate identity and meaning. They will define human nature by its relationship to the divine—however they define divinity. Those who do not get their identity from a transcendent Creator will get it from something in creation.

We could say that every concept of humanity is created in the image of
some
god. And because that divinity will always be lower than the biblical God, its view of humanity will also be lower. Those who dishonor God will dishonor those made in God’s image. Those who create idols eventually “become like them” (Ps. 115:8).

In philosophical terms, this is called reductionism—the process of reducing a something from a higher, more complex level of reality to a lower, simpler, less complex level. When an idol absolutizes some part of creation, everything else must be explained in terms of that one limited part—pulled down to that level, measured against that one yardstick, reduced to that lowest common denominator.

Principle #1 gave us the first step in engaging any nonbiblical worldview: Identify its idol. Now we move to Principle #2: Identify its reductionism. When God gives people up to their idols, the result is always a reductionistic view of humanity—which ultimately unleashes harmful and destructive behavior. When we reduce people to anything less than fully human, we will
treat
them as less than fully human.

When we define God as a
something
instead of a
Someone
, we will tend to treat humans as
somethings
too.

Dehumanize Thy Neighbor

It may be easier to recognize reductionism by starting on a personal level. Consider the idols that many of us live for. Do you live for financial success? Is that the most important goal in your life? If so, you will evaluate every activity by its economic payoff. You will size up other people by asking whether they are useful for advancing your economic interests. Your outlook on life will be one-dimensional and utilitarian.

Or is the most important thing in your life your relationships? Your physical appearance? Your professional accomplishments? No matter what your idol is, you will feel pressure to measure every part of life by that yardstick. An idol always leads to a reductionistic attitude that dehumanizes others and justifies using them for your own agenda.

Reductionism is often signaled by the phrase “nothing but.” Think of some examples from everyday conversation. Haven’t we all heard people say that religion is nothing but an expression of psychological need? A projection of a father figure in the sky? A myth invented by primitive people to assuage their fear of natural forces? In the typical college course or television science program, a reductionist theory of religion is simply assumed without argument.

Or haven’t we all heard that love is really nothing but a product of chemical reactions? Current theories in neuroscience convey the impression that love can be reduced to neurotransmitters and circuits in the brain. A
Wall Street Journal
article suggests that Valentine’s Day cards should not feature hearts but images of a squishy gray blob—the brain. “And instead of saying ‘I love you,’ the knowledgeable lover would say, ‘Darling, dopamine floods my caudate nucleus’ every time I look at you.”
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Haven’t we all met cynics who insist that morality is nothing but self-interest in disguise? In ancient Greece, the sophists argued that people do what serves their own advantage, and afterward invent a moral code to justify their behavior. Today an updated version of sophism is taking the college classroom by storm, a theory called evolutionary psychology. It claims that altruistic behavior has been programmed into our genes by natural selection because of its survival value. We are kind to others only so that they will be kind to us in turn (reciprocal altruism). Or we are kind to those who share our gene pool because we have a vested biological interest in passing our own genes on to the next generation (kin altruism). Evolutionary psychology reduces all human behavior to masked self-interest.

In practice, people often find ways to avoid the reductionistic implications of their worldviews. Because humans are made in God’s image, they often do treat others with dignity and respect; they engage in humanitarian projects and advocate for human rights. The problem is that nonbiblical worldviews provide no logical basis for such altruistic behavior. For example, the late Richard Rorty was revered as a philosopher of democracy, yet he wrote, “I do not know how to ‘justify’ or ‘defend’ social democracy … in a large philosophical way.”
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He was acknowledging that he had no basis for his own highest ideals.

In evangelism, it can often be effective to walk people through the implications of their worldview to show that it provides no basis for
their own
highest moral and humanitarian ideals.

The Science of Cheating

Reductionism is the key to explaining why idols lead to immoral behavior—why Romans 1 ends with a list of destructive and self-destructive behavior. When we dehumanize people in our thinking, we will eventually mistreat, oppress, abuse, and exploit them in our actions.

The connection between thinking and behavior has even been investigated scientifically. An article in
Scientific American
describes an ingenious series of studies designed to test the practical consequences of holding the philosophy of materialism, with its corollary that humans have no free will. A group of enterprising researchers decided to test whether such a reductionistic view of humanity has any impact on moral behavior.

The results showed a clear yes. One experiment involved a quiz designed to make it easy to cheat. Some participants were randomly assigned to what was called a
determinism
condition. They were asked to read statements such as “A belief in free will contradicts the known fact that the universe is governed by lawful principles of science.” Other participants were randomly assigned to what was called a
free-will
condition. They read statements such as “Avoiding temptation requires that I exert my free will.”
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Which group of participants cheated more on the quiz? The
determinism
group, whose members were encouraged to think they had no capacity for moral choice—and thus no moral responsibility. By contrast, the
free-will
group, whose members were primed to exert their moral will, was less likely to cheat.