Secularism. A dead end.

In recent messages Pastor Jeff and Ben Kennedy made the case against secularism. I’d like to pile on if that’s okay.

The issue is personal for me. Looking back, I believe I could have saved myself a lot of grief if I hadn’t fallen into the secular trap.

Perhaps the biggest problem with secularism is its pervasiveness. It is the air a lot of people breathe every day. I grew up in Quebec, the most secular of provinces, and then worked in the media, one of the most secular of industries.

I also grew up in a Christian family, and regularly attended church. But the messages I got in one hour Sunday morning had to contend with the messages I got the other 167 hours of the week.

When I was a kid, 14-year-olds hung out in bars. If you hadn’t had sex by age 16, that was kind of weird. If you were a virgin at 20, there was definitely something wrong with you. One of my best friends was in a sexual relationship with his 15-year-old cousin. He was 12. No one batted an eye.

In other words, secularism is an upside-down world in relation to God’s way.

Where was I in all of this? I should have been following Paul’s advice to “not conform to the pattern of this world.” (Romans 12:2. NIV) But I wasn’t. I was one of those Christians at the pub on Saturday night and in church Sunday morning. I thought that showed I was well balanced. I was very wrong.

Recently I was watching videos by evangelist John Ramirez. Ramirez is a former Satanist who changed sides. He says the “casual Christians” like I was made easy targets for enemy attack because they forfeited some of the protection they might have had if they were properly following God.

Pastor Jeff and Ben clearly laid out some of the problems with secularism. The focus on “my truth” vs. “the truth”. Doing what feels right as opposed to what is right. Believing that material goods equal happiness.

Maybe the best rebuttal to secularism is the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus laid out the right way and his audience was “astonished”. (Matthew 7:28. KJV). Many no doubt were following the pattern of the world, and suddenly they saw how it should be. Breathtaking.

I said earlier that secularism was a personal issue for me. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about how people who don’t follow that message may find that their lives will collapse “with a great crash” when the storms of life hit. (Matthew 7:27. NIV).

Unfortunately, that was me.

In short, secularism is a dead end. It doesn’t work because it flies in the face of the Creator’s plan. God’s way may be straight, narrow, and sometimes difficult, but it ends up somewhere that you want to go.