Assurance for the modern age(Part 11)

Assurance for the modern age

Part 11: We have a sufficient foundation for life when we have found a plan that meets human needs

I feel, albeit with me striving hard to argue on secularists’ behalf, that we have found a secular ideology that is worthy of humanity, thoroughly profound and good. If everyone followed it, it would have a wonderful effect on the well-being of society, and countless individuals would find meaning and purpose in life, as well as peace and joy. My assessment is that this secular ideology is indistinguishable from my faith-based ideology – certainly in respect of how we could tally off so many items that appear in both. We still have to decide whether there are any extra good elements that the religious world-view has that the secular one doesn’t. Secularists will also want to argue that they have their own unique good elements and have managed to avoid the negatives of religion. However, my response is that we simply need good religion – rather than to ditch religion. Of course, religion is capable of being corrupted into a force for evil – just as everything is, no matter how intrinsically good, but religion certainly matches the best that secularism has to offer, and, as I say, I will argue, adds extra good elements that secularism is, on a point of principle, incapable of delivering. Secular ideology, we know, is very often corrupted, so we have no difference between religion and secularism on this point.

So, let us accept that there is huge overlap between the best of religious and secular ideologies. Why should this be so? Surely it is because the human condition, our needs and desires, our fears and weaknesses, all point in the same direction as to what solutions we need to be happy.

Does this mean that religion is simply “a cunning plan” to achieve human wholeness? Quite possibly. It would be no surprise, and surely we should expect it, that the universal adoption of religion (till modern times) was enabled by the fact that it met human needs for wholeness. This returns us to the issue of the peculiar way that faith works, whereby, if we aim directly for our goal we seem to miss it, but if we aim for God in all sincerity, then we hit our goals. The moment we come to believe that faith is just an instrument for human wholeness, rather than a genuine relationship with the God of love, then the power of our faith to do good evaporates. So, if religion is a clever way of self-deception in order to create benefits that are truly wonderful, then religion is a very clever plan indeed! The religious understanding is that we believe in God because he is real and we have encountered him.