The Empty World of Atheistic Humanism

We can put a positive spin on anything. Atheists embrace a flat and monotonous world –one devoid of moral values, meaning or purpose. However, this doesn’t stop them from celebrating it and thinking that they can fill the emptiness with self-created meaning. The Humanist Manifesto II claims that:

• Humanism can provide the purpose and inspiration that so many seek; it can give personal meaning and significance to human life.

After rejecting God and any intrinsic higher purpose and meaning of life, humanism boasts that it can provide the very things that it has eliminated, like filling an empty apartment with furniture, albeit make-believe furniture.

Meanwhile, some atheists have the courage to look at the emptiness endemic to atheism. The brilliant mathematician, Bertrand Russell claimed that the emptiness of an “accidental collocations of atoms… destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system” is the only “meaning” we can embrace:

• Only on the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built. (Why I am not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, 107)

Surrendering hope of any meaning was Russell’s only “habitation… safely built.”  Later in life, Russell realized that atheism was unable to offer anything that could possibly overcome the “accidental collocations of atoms” that inevitably would result in “unyielding despair.” Russell understood that creating meaning and purpose out of a purposeless world is like imagining having a wife and kids where there are none – a mere exercise in self-delusion and escapism.

However, for the younger atheist, the pursuit of pleasure and sensuality seems to be able to fill the void, at least temporarily. In The Pleasures of Cocaine, Adam Gottlieb writes:

• If there is any teleological purpose to man’s existence on earth and in his power to progress, it is that he should achieve a successful form of decadence and learn to live in harmony with it. The life-game then would be, at least in part, to sustain a decadent situation for as long as one might expect any civilization to last…

For Gottlieb, life is about decadence, and decadence is about immediate self-gratification. Evidently, he found little appeal in humanism’s promise to “give personal meaning and significance to human life.”  

However, the pursuit of sensual pleasure has a short shelf-life, as King Solomon had concluded:

• Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come    and the years approach when you will say, “I find no pleasure in them.” (Ecclesiastes 12:1)

Solomon advised that our investments had to be far-sighted, and this required an eye to the Creator.

The Labyrinth and Post-Modern “Christianity”

 

Postmodernism has rejected doctrine in favor of experience, as Julie Sevig has written:

• Post-moderns prefer to encounter Christ by using all their senses. That’s part of the appeal of classical liturgical or contemplative worship: the incense and candles, making the sign of the cross, the taste and smell of the bread and the wine, touching icons and being anointed with oil. (The Lutheran, “Ancient New,” Sept. 2001)

Are these really ways to “encounter Christ?” How do we know this? If so, why doesn’t the Bible specify these things? Are we even supposed to be seeking to “encounter Christ?” For many, these questions don’t even seem to matter. Instead, it’s a matter of the experience.

Meanwhile, the Christian faith suggests that if we “encounter” Christ, it is through His Word:

• Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. (2 Peter 1:2-3) 

Nevertheless, techniques, not Scripture knowledge, abound which purport to get us into contact with Christ. One of the many is the prayer labyrinth walk. Lauren Artress is credited with reviving this technique:

• For her, the labyrinth s for the “transformation of human personality in progress” that can accomplish a “shift in consciousness as we seek spiritual maturity as a species”…She calls her discovery of the labyrinth…one of the “most astonishing events of my life.” For her, the labyrinth is a “spiritual tool meant to awaken us to the deep rhythm that unites us to ourselves and to the Light that calls from within.” (Faith Undone, Roger Oakland, 68)

If the labyrinth is essentials for the “transformation of human personality,” why isn’t it ever mentioned in Scripture? Instead, Paul has written that Scripture contains everything we need for spiritual growth:

• All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Tim. 3:16-17)

To claim that the labyrinth is essential, is to add to Scripture! This is something that Scripture warns against:

• I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book. (Rev. 22:18-19)

I don’t mean to pick on the labyrinth. There is certainly nothing wrong with walking in circles when you pray. (I even enjoy walking as I pray!) The problem with the labyrinth is not the labyrinth or even the action. Instead, as with the many other mystical techniques promising a “connection” with Christ, it is a matter of what we believe – where we place our faith.

To believe that the labyrinth as an essential part of the Christian life is to believe in a different God, one who cares more about learning various mystical techniques than what He specifies in His Word – righteousness, holiness, peace, faith, repentance and obedience.

In fact, nowhere in Scripture are such techniques specified. Instead, God warns against rituals, even those He specifies, when they are not accompanied by true piety:

·        Then the Lord said to me, "Do not pray for this people, for their good. When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence." (Jeremiah 14:11-12)

Jesus insisted that believers “must” worship God in truth (John 4:22-24)! Why? Any relationship must be founded on truth. If my wife discovered that I love her because she reminds me of my first fling, our relationship is doomed.

Instead, belief is foundational to experience. I used to feel that God condemned me. I was rescued by the truth that “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ” (Rom. 8:1). This enabled me to reject the feelings of condemnation and to love God.