On Secularism - Part 2

I Serve A Risen Saviour / He Lives

Verse 1 - 

I serve a risen Saviour, He's in the world today;

I know that He is living, Whatever men may say;

I see His hand of mercy, I hear His voice of cheer,

And just the time I need Him He's always near.

Chorus -

He Lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today!

He walks with me and talks with along life's narrow way.

He lives! He lives! Salvation to impart!

You ask me how I know he lives:

He lives within my heart.

Perhaps you've heard or sung this song in Church. It's seems to be one of the more popular songs of the old hymns, but I can't say I like it very much. It’s not because I don't like old hymns. On the contrary, I'm actually a bit partial to them. They have a beauty and depth that's underscored by having stood the test of time. But this is one song to which I must take exception.

The fellowship of believers may sing this song with kindred spirits, but when it comes to the line in the chorus that says, "you ask me how I know he lives" it gives what is possibly the worst answer to an absolutely crucial question for Christians. Granted, you can make the theological case that Jesus does, in fact, inhabit the heart. Strictly speaking God has given us a new nature and indeed the Spirit now resides within us and empowers us toward sanctification. But the reasons we give for the truth of the resurrection and new life of Jesus are not found in ourselves, through our subjective experiences, or what we feel in our hearts to be true. Like all truth, if it is true it is true outside of ourselves, completely independent of our own existence.

The truth of Christianity is bound to the historical realities of Jesus' death and resurrection, not the feelings of our hearts. And this is an important point not just in defending the truth of Christianity, but it separates itself in this way from all other religions. 

You see, where religion tells you how to live, Christianity teaches about what has happened. In other words, religions teach good advice but Christianity teaches good news. This effectively separates the point of reference between Christianity and other religions. Take Islam, for example. The teachings are not bound to the prophet Muhammed himself. For the sake of argument, it could have been an entirely different person, in an entirely different place, at an entirely different time. Muhammed only passed on what he believed to be the revelations of God. At the end of the day Islam is not bound to the historicity of Muhammed himself, so his existence isn't their primary concern. So too is the teaching of Confucius, or Buddha. It’s not Confucius or Buddha that make Confucianism or Buddhism but their teachings. Even Mormonism isn’t terribly concerned with it’s own history as it is with the “burning of the bosom.” 

All religions teach certain tenants and all promise something in the end if they’re properly adhered to. Many of them will be existentially satisfying, but that doesn’t make them true. It’s a bit like the placebo effect. A sugar pill will often be enough to convince somebody they’re getting better from an illness because they start to feel better. Sometimes they get better by themselves, and sometimes they weren’t really sick in the first place. Either way, the sugar pill had nothing to do with. But it becomes crucially important when you’re genuinely sick and you’re convinced the sugar pill is working. You can still succumb to the illness even if you believe “in your heart” the placebo is working. 

Jesus, on the other hand, is the revelation himself, as a real bona-fide physical reality, regardless of how we feel about it. So, if we were to find out beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus did not, in fact, resurrect from the dead, then everything we believe is all in vain (1 Corinthians 15:12-19). 

And this leaves us with an important distinction. Either Christ has been raised, and we must all believe and be saved, or he has not, and we can eat, drink, and be merry. If I may, we have here Christianity or Secularism. In the same way Christianity stands or falls (that is, through genuine, verify-able, observable data), secularism also stands or falls. 

It should be noted that secularism doesn’t rise out of a denial of Jesus’ death and resurrection but a dogmatic worldview that says science can explain everything naturalistically. In other words, miracles don’t happen. If there is a so-called miracle, then there is a perfectly plausible scientific explanation for it. This means, of course, that even if Jesus existed he couldn’t do any miracles, and certainly couldn’t rise from the dead. And God, for that matter, well even that is just a figment of our imagination.

The point is that both Christianity and Secularism don’t point to the inward feelings of its worldview as a testament to its truthfulness but to observable datum outside the individual. If secularism can demonstrate that miracles can’t happen, that resurrection is impossible, that the world came about naturalistically, and that our idea of God is nothing more than a mind trick, then it arises as the victor. If, however, it can be demonstrated that miracles have happened, that Jesus’ resurrection did occur, that God had to have created the world, and that God truly reveals himself to us, then it is shown to be true, and Secularism to be based on a false premise.

It’s no wonder that debates between Christians and atheists far outnumber debates between Christianity and other religions. There’s just so much more riding on it.