Chapter 3: The Challenge to the Secular (Part 2)

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.

 

Suffering and the Turn to the Spiritual

•        The modern, individualistic search for meaning in personal happiness cannot bear up under suffering.

•        To “live for meaning” means not that you try to get something out of life but rather that life expects something from us.

•        True “meaning” is found when there is something more important than your own personal freedom and happiness, something for which you are glad to sacrifice your happiness.”

•        The atheistic, naturalistic worldview is incapable of sustaining parents of severely disabled children.

•        The typical naturalistic definitions of “personhood” or “human being” do not apply to severely disabled and mentally handicapped children.

•        Only belief in the human being as body and soul can help parents care and love these children as human beings, made in the image of God.

 

The Failure of the Secular

•        The secular view of life does not work for most people in the face of suffering. Why?

o   Human suffering comes in an enormous variety of different forms.

§  Not all suffering is victimization.

o   The Western secular view of the world is too naïvely optimistic about human life.

§  The “this world” solution is never coming, and life is unhappy and hard for the majority of people.

 

The Expansion of the Self

•        Suffering’s main challenge to secular cultures is that it reveals the thinness of the World Story they give their adherents.

•        A culture must give its people a story that accomplishes at least two things:

o   It must give hope.

o   It must cause a society to “cohere.”

•        At the heart of every story is a big idea, what life is all about.

•        America: God→ Nation→ Self

o   Emphasis on Self: People who are their own legislators of morality and meaning have nothing to die for, and therefore nothing to live for when life takes away their freedom.

•        The “life story” that modern culture gives people does not have any ultimate goal more important than one’s own comfort and power.

•        When we have no meaning beyond personal happiness, suffering can lead very quickly to suicide.

 

 

A Different Story

•        The Christian “story” gives people meaning beyond personal freedom and happiness and has a place for suffering in the story.

•        Suffering is at the heart of the Christian story.

o   Suffering is the result of our turn away from God.

o   Suffering is the way through which God in Christ came and rescued us.

o   How we suffer now is one way we become more like Christ.

 

The Call for the Humility

•        The secular view puts too much confidence in human ability to solve problems and eradicate suffering.

•        But suffering is too complex and deep to be solved by money, technology, or human ingenuity.

•        Suffering has a spiritual dimension that cannot be solved empirically.

•        We should look for cures and solutions, but realize that we are incapable of solving the problem of suffering. Only God can do that.

•        Suffering can often lead us to do the hard “soul work” of humility.

•        One of the main teachings of the Bible is that almost no one grows into greatness or finds God without suffering.

•        As Christ loved us enough to face the suffering of the cross with patience and courage, so we must learn to trust in him enough to do the same. And as his weakness and suffering, thus faced, led to resurrection power, so can ours.