Chapter 3: The Challenge to the Secular

Walking with God through Pain & Suffering

By Tim Keller

 

Chapter 3: The Challenge to the Secular

 

•        Secular philosophies of suffering do not do a good job of actually helping people in the midst of their suffering.

o   In the real world, many people ignore the counsel of the secular philosophies.

o   Instead, they fall back to the more traditional and spiritual explanations for suffering.

 

Where Were the Humanists?

•        In times of crisis, the humanists are often absent.

•        Clear religious and spiritual language is not questioned and is even welcomed in times of tragedy and grief.

•        Religion provides more than just “community” in times of grief and suffering.

•        Religion gives sufferers larger explanations of life that make sense of suffering and help them find meaning in their pain.

•        Secular humanism is incapable of providing true community and is incapable of providing a satisfying theology to help in times of suffering.

•        True community is only forged when people unify around something that is more important than their individual self-interests to which all share a higher allegiance.

•        “Humanism suffers… from the valorization of the individual” and cannot sustain true community.

 

Is Atheism a Blessing?

•        Atheism claims a superiority in times of suffering because it does not have to wrestle with questions of the goodness of God and the problem of evil.

•        Atheism offers consolation to the bereaved by offering “rational truths” such as non-existence and no suffering after death.

•        Atheism just moves on and seeks to find a rational and scientific solution to the cause of the suffering.

•        Atheism exaggerates the “problem of evil.” It was not a problem before the rise of the “immanent frame” and radical individualism.

•        A strong theological foundation is able to wrestle with and handle the presence of evil in a Theocentric world.

•        Atheism claims a better response to suffering by advocating for solutions such as “social justice” and “human flourishing.”

•        Two problems with Atheism’s claims:

o   Issues of social justice have historically been championed more by religious movements than secular ones.

o   Atheism’s naturalistic foundation offers no clear or rational basis for morality or justice.

§  Science and empirical reason cannot be the basis of morality, since they can tell us how people live but not how they ought to live.

•        Is it really a comfort to the bereaved to tell them that death is the end of everything and “there is no suffering in death”?

•        This is “too brutal to be honest.”

•        It makes little sense to point to a state in which we are stripped of all love and everything that gives meaning in life and tell people that they need not fear it.

•        The secular view of “non-existence” pales in comparison to resurrection.

•        When real life suffering comes, historical experience shows us that people find more consolation in religion and spirituality than in the secular view.

•        This intuition—that we are not just a concatenation of matter and chemicals but also a soul—is one of the most widespread convictions of human beings in the world today and through the ages.