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

Ironically, then, adherents of reductionist worldviews have to disregard their own reductionism—at least while arguing their case. They have to borrow Christianity’s high view of reason in order to give reasons for their own view.

Principle #5

Replace the Idol: Make the Case for Christianity

The final step is to propose a biblical alternative to secular and pagan worldviews. To craft an approach that is most relevant to our own day, we should take our cues from precisely those points where other worldviews fail. Think back to Principle #3 where we met materialists who openly acknowledge that “they cannot live” with the consequences of their own worldview, that they are “compelled to believe” in free will. Think of Principle #4 where we learned that adherents of reductionistic worldviews cannot even affirm their own claims unless they borrow Christianity’s high view of the human mind.

What a powerful image of people caught in cognitive dissonance, reaching out to grab on to truths that their own worldviews deny—truths that only a biblical worldview logically supports.

In Principle #5 we will explore several real-world examples of secular thinkers who are “free-loading” what they like best from Christianity. They find a biblical worldview so appealing that they keep borrowing from it (whether consciously or unconsciously). In admitting that they cannot live within their own worldview, they are showing that they are hungry for more fulfilling answers than their idols give them. And by free-loading from Christianity, they are showing that they need what only Christianity can offer.

The five principles derived from Romans 1 build a powerful case to show that idol-based worldviews fail to give adequate answers to the basic questions all people must answer. At the same time, the five principles demonstrate that Christianity provides better answers—answers that fit the real world and are internally coherent. Because a biblical worldview starts with a transcendent Creator, it does not deify anything in creation. Therefore it does not need to ramrod everything into a limited set of categories derived from one part of the cosmic order. Christianity liberates us from any life-denying reductionism that dishonors and debases humanity. It affirms the high dignity of humans as full persons made in the image of a personal God.

No wonder Paul proclaims that he is “not ashamed” of the gospel (Rom. 1:16). Christianity has greater explanatory power than any other worldview or religion. It fits the data of general revelation better. And it leads to a more humane and liberating view of the human person.

At School, At Work

The five principles of Paul’s apologetics training manual can be applied in the classroom, in the workplace, or in conversations with neighbors over the backyard fence. To give you practice, in the rest of
Finding Truth
we will apply the principles to today’s most widespread philosophies. For example, materialism is not so much a single philosophy as a family of interrelated theories. Consider how it permeates just one field: psychology. Leading thinkers such as Ivan Pavlov, Sigmund Freud, B. F. Skinner, Erich Fromm, and Albert Ellis proposed quite different theories. Yet they were all committed to materialism and atheism. Thus when you reveal the flaws in materialism, you discredit not just one philosophy but an entire family of materialist theories.

Because philosophies cluster in families, learning to analyze them is easier than you might have thought before you picked up
Finding Truth
.

Some worldview families are so widespread that we will examine them more than once. Each time, however, we will be advancing to the next strategic principle and learning a new skill.
Finding Truth
is not designed to teach the tenets of various worldviews. Instead the goal is to master the skills that will enable you to cut to the heart of any set of ideas, using the most common worldviews merely to illustrate at each step of the way.

Liberated Minds

Learning critical thinking is important not only for speaking to people
outside
the church but also for educating people on the
inside
. They often absorb ideas from the cultural atmosphere and thus need help liberating their minds from secular assumptions.

In the hallway of a Christian college where I was teaching, I noticed a student reading a book on postmodernism. “What are you learning?” I asked.

“It’s showing me myself!” the student said. “I finally understand why I think the way I do.”
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He had absorbed elements of postmodernism without knowing it.

A woman once sent me an email saying she was raised in a home where the rule was that Christians should never expose themselves to nonbiblical ways of thinking. “But when I read your book
Total Truth
,” she wrote, “I discovered that I had unconsciously absorbed ideas from secular thinkers like Rousseau and Kant.” Because she had never studied their ideas, she had no critical grid to recognize and reject them.

The lesson is that Christians must never treat idol analysis as a matter of addressing only how
other people
think. Scripture does not allow us that luxury. In the original Greek, there are no chapter breaks; the first chapter of Romans flows immediately into the second chapter, where Paul turns to the reader—the person who has God’s written revelation—and says, “Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things” (Rom. 2:1).

All through Romans 1, it appeared that Paul was directing his teaching to pagan idol worshippers. But now, in a surprise move, he places his readers on the same level as pagans. He even repeats the same phrase as in 1:20, “without excuse.”

By that verbal link, Paul implicates everyone in the charge of suppressing the truth and creating counterfeit gods. Christians are not immune. Scripture is addressing Christians in verses like “flee from idolatry” and “keep yourselves from idols” (1 Cor. 10:14; 1 John 5:21). We must be committed to turning away from idols and toward God as the ultimate source of truth in every area of life. To avoid being “conformed to this world,” we must “be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:2).

The ultimate goal of learning a biblical apologetics strategy is to love God “with all your mind” (Luke 10:27). Whether you are a Christian already or just beginning to learn about God, you may be surprised by joy when you discover that biblical truth is bright and resilient enough to be “a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps. 119:105), illuminating every area of life.

Let’s get started honing our skills to identify the idols of our age. How can we learn to recognize false gods, especially when they are hidden under secular labels and taught through the secular education system?

PRINCIPLE #1

• • • • •

Dylan was not your stereotypical intellectual. In high school he was an athlete. Football, basketball, track—you name the sport, Dylan was in the thick of it. As captain of his football team, he won the Most Valuable Player Award and was courted by top colleges. Witty and outgoing, he was a natural leader.

Then, in his senior year of high school, Dylan’s life took an unexpected turn. His achievements began to seem empty, and he wondered if there wasn’t more to life. Through a Young Life group and a local church, he heard the gospel and became a Christian. Immediately he knew that he wanted to live a life completely sold out to God.

But when he started college the next year, Dylan suddenly found himself in a fierce battle with doubts and disappointments.

In his science classes, Darwinian naturalism was assumed as unquestioned dogma. In his psychology classes, most of the theories—from Freud’s psychoanalysis to Skinner’s behaviorism—promoted negative views of Christianity. In a humanities class, the professor told him that Christianity was just a “values choice”—something that might be meaningful to him personally but was not objectively true.

Dylan’s church had taught him the basic gospel message, but it had not equipped him to meet the challenges he now faced in the classroom. It had not taught him how to “destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10:5).

Dylan joined an evangelical campus group, but when he raised questions there, the leaders essentially said, “You’ve got the Bible; why do you have any questions?” They urged him to redouble his devotional efforts—pray more, evangelize more, memorize more Scripture. Yet Dylan was already active in the group’s intensive discipleship-training program, even living and working with other group members. When his questions refused to be silenced, the group leaders accused him of being proud, of thinking too much, of being too intellectual.

“Having been an athlete all my life, it was the first time anyone had accused me of being an intellectual,” Dylan later recalled with bemusement. Frustrated that he could not find answers, he finally decided the intellectually honest course was to start over and reconsider the case for Christianity from square one. He embarked on a serious investigation of philosophy, theology, science, and biblical criticism.

Midway through college, Dylan traveled to Europe to visit the country where he was born, and decided to take a detour to L’Abri in Switzerland. The “detour” turned into an extended visit. There, for the first time, Dylan met people who were not afraid of questions. He heard a case for Christianity that was both intellectually persuasive and practically viable. After nearly a year of study and discussions with Francis Schaeffer and the other L’Abri staff, he was finally convinced that a Christian worldview does provide livable answers to the questions of life.

Instead of an escapist attitude of
avoiding
the world by retreating into purely devotional activities, Dylan found he could now
engage
the world with confidence.

Does Devotion Defeat Doubt?

It is a serious mistake for Christian parents, teachers, or churches to dismiss young people’s doubts and questions, or to think they can be overridden merely by cultivating a more intense devotional life. Because we are created in God’s image, we are all endowed with a mind and a natural urge to make sense of life.

My own experience as a teenager was as discouraging as Dylan’s. I found it all but impossible to find adults in the church who would take my questions seriously. It may not have helped that I had long, blonde Alice-in-Wonderland hair. People were constantly asking if I was a cheerleader.

Stereotypes like these have done enormous damage, robbing young people of opportunities to find answers to their questions. Athletes and cheerleaders are just as intellectually curious as anyone else. And they need facts and reasons just as much. All Christians are invited to “have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16).

Because we are created in God’s image as rational and responsible beings, we all have a philosophy—not necessarily one learned out of a textbook, but an overall view of life by which we make sense of the world. The biblical view of human nature implies that we are “incapable of holding purely arbitrary opinions or making entirely unprincipled decisions,” writes Albert Wolters. “We need some creed to live by, some map by which to chart our course.”
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If we take the Bible’s view of the human person seriously, we need to take questions seriously.

Leaving Teens Vulnerable

Recent research underscores how important teenagers’ questions are. In one sociological study, teens were asked why they fell away from the religion in which they were raised. The question was open-ended with no suggested answers. Nearly a third (32 percent) said they left the church because of doubts and questions. The teens told researchers, “It didn’t make any sense anymore.” “Some stuff is too far-fetched for me to believe.” “I think scientifically, and there is no real proof.” “Too many questions that can’t be answered.”
2

A Barna study turned up similar results. In
You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church … and Rethinking Faith
, David Kinnaman reports that 36 percent of young adults felt they could not ask “life’s most pressing questions in church.” As a result, 23 percent said they had “significant intellectual doubts” about Christian teachings.”
3

In today’s pluralistic, multicultural society, teens have to navigate their way through a complex web of competing worldview claims. One study found that the age at which most people leave the church is in the high school and college years.
4
Yet church youth groups rarely teach apologetics, majoring instead on games and goodies. The goal seems to be to engineer events that ratchet up emotional commitment, as though sheer intensity of experience will compensate for intellectual doubts. But emotional intensity is not enough to block out teens’ questions. If anything, it leads them to redefine Christianity in purely emotional terms—which leaves them even more vulnerable when they finally face their questions.
5

If my own students are at all representative, teens regard emotional tactics as manipulative anyway. They know it’s easy to manufacture an artificial sense of belonging with loud music, water-balloon fights, and Ultimate Frisbee games. But they also know that those feelings burn out quickly. As one student told me, “What I hear at my church are mostly ‘feel good’ messages. But I don’t want to feel good. I want to wrestle with difficult questions.”

No wonder
Christianity Today
announced, “Apologetics Makes a Comeback among Youth.”
6

Parents are rightly concerned about the risk involved in exposing their children to nonbiblical perspectives. But there is also a risk in raising children who think the only way they can test their mettle is by breaking away from their family and church. Competing worldviews often appear more attractive when they acquire the allure of the forbidden. The only way teens become truly “prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks” (1 Pet. 3:15) is by struggling personally with the questions.

The danger was brought home to me when I talked with a Christian mother who told me, “All the answers we need are in the Bible. We should not have to read anything else.” In the next breath, she confided that her son had recently gone off to college where he promptly joined a New Atheist group and vehemently rejected his Christian upbringing. This mother thought she was protecting her son by avoiding discussions of doubts and difficulties. Instead she had left him defenseless. Paul warns that Christians can be “outwitted by Satan” if they are “ignorant of his designs” (2 Cor. 2:11).

It is far better for young people to explore the fascinating world of ideas with parents, teachers, and church leaders as guides who can give them the tools to think critically and think well. As one of my students put it, “Exposing the mind to ideas is like exposing the body to germs. It’s the way to build immunity.”

No age is too young to get started. A friend’s eight-year-old son asked him, “Dad, people with other religions believe they’re right about their gods, and we believe we’re right about our God. How do we know who’s
really
right?” Even second-graders’ questions need to be taken seriously.

Principle #1

Identify the Idol

Where do we begin? According to Romans 1, those who reject the Creator will create an idol. They will absolutize some power or element immanent within the cosmos, elevating it into an all-defining principle—a false absolute.
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When evaluating a worldview, then, the first step is to identify its idol. What does it set up as a God substitute?

Despite the vast diversity of religions and philosophies, they all start by putting something created in the place of God. In
Culture and the Death of God
, literary critic Terry Eagleton lists several idols of the modern age: Enlightenment rationalists made a god of reason; Romantics deified the imagination; nationalists idealize the nation; Marxists offer an economic version of sin and salvation.

“Not believing in God is a far more arduous affair than is generally imagined,” Eagleton concludes. God cannot be rejected without putting something else in his place. The history of philosophy is largely a history of setting up God surrogates.
8

It is a history of idol-making.

One of the most effective ways to understand history, then, is to identify the prevailing idols. As Timothy Keller writes, “Every human personality, community, thought-form, and culture will be based on some ultimate concern or some ultimate allegiance—either to God or to some God substitute.” Thus, “The best way to analyze cultures is by identifying their corporate idols.”
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In its teaching on idols, Scripture has given us the key to unlock all of history.

This is an exciting insight because it means Scripture provides conceptual tools not only for ideas that are normally labeled “religious” but also for ideas that are labeled “secular.” In the Old Testament, Ezekiel calls them idols of the heart (Ezek. 14:3). Today when we speak of the heart, we mean the emotions. But in Hebrew the word means your innermost self, including the will, mind, moral character, and spiritual commitment. “Man looks on the outward appearance, but the L
ORD
looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7).

In the New Testament, the Greek word for heart (
kardia
) likewise means the center or core of a person’s being.
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Thus idols of the heart are the convictions that engage us most deeply and drive our behavior.

We often contrast “believers” to “nonbelievers,” but that can be misleading. Everyone believes something, in the sense that they must assume some principle as fundamentally true. Atheists often fail to recognize that they are in the same boat as everyone else. A common mantra on atheist websites goes like this: “Atheism is not a belief. Atheism is merely the lack of a belief in God or gods.” But it is impossible to think without some starting point. If you do not start with God, you must start somewhere else. You must propose something else as the ultimate, eternal, uncreated reality that is the cause and source of everything else. The important question is not which starting points are religious or secular, but which claims stand up to testing.

The advantage of using the biblical term
idol
is that it levels the playing field. Secular people often accuse Christians of having “faith,” while claiming that they themselves base their convictions purely on facts and reason. Not so. If you press any set of ideas back far enough, eventually you reach an ultimate starting point—something that is taken as the self-existent reality on which everything depends. This starting assumption cannot be based on prior reasoning, because if it were, you could ask where
that
reasoning starts—and so on, in an infinite regress. At some point, every system of thought has to say, This is my starting point. There is no reason for it to exist. It just “is.”

If starting premises do not rest on reasons, how can they be tested? Although you cannot argue
backward
to their prior reasons, you can argue
forward
by spelling out their implications, then testing those implications using both logic and experience. This is the strategy we will follow throughout the rest of
Finding Truth
. It will prove remarkably effective, demonstrating that Christianity outperforms all competing worldviews.

Religion without God

Another advantage of using the term
idol
is that it avoids a kind of dry intellectualism, as though people choose a life philosophy the way they solve a logical puzzle. When people commit themselves to a certain vision of reality, it becomes their ultimate explainer. It serves to interpret the universe for them, to guide their moral decisions, to give meaning and purpose to life, and all the other functions normally associated with a religion.

We might even think of philosophies as secular religions. That may seem like an oxymoron, but it makes sense once we know the generic meaning of the term
religion
. What is the one feature shared by all religions? It’s not what you might expect.

Does a religion have to affirm the existence of a personal god or creator? Most Westerners would say yes. An atheist friend once argued on my Facebook page, “Religion is belief in a deity. No deity, no religion.” Yet many beliefs that we classify as religions do not identify the divine with a being at all. In pantheist religions, such as Hinduism, the concept of the divine is not a personal Being but a non-personal, non-cognitive spiritual substance or essence—akin to energy, electricity, or the force in the
Star Wars
movies.

In its popular forms, pantheism often does include the worship of local gods and goddesses. But what Westerners often fail to understand is that these local gods are not identified with ultimate reality. They are merely beings in which the divine essence shared by all humans is more highly intensified or concentrated.