It never fails -- every Christmas season, some group or individual gets a huge boost of news by attacking the religious context of the holiday. Trying to take the "Christ" out of Christmas, and soforth. I usually find it amusing, as if protesters started an effort to remove any mention of me come May 31st each year, but keep the rest of the birthday intact. To do it for its own sake.When you remove God from the equation of life, what you're left with is a mobius loop of doing things for their own sake, with things giving themselves meaning. The American Humanist Association's started an ad campaign with the slogan of "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake." which illustrates this point perfectly. Who needs God? We can be "good" without God, right? Just do it for its own sake!
Not to be smarmy or anything, but this is a campaign designed by someone who has a third grade understanding of how the world works. I should be good, just because? Why? Because it's good? If I'm not deriving my morality from God, then what do I have to fall back on -- the government's sense of morality? The popular majority? My own relative sense of right and wrong?
Humanism is a loose philosophy that essentially says that we as people have the ability to better ourselves -- and that we don't need religion or God to aid us in that. We can rationally deduce what is "good" and what is "bad" by observing the world, then choosing "good" to better the world for ourselves and those around us. An example of humanism that I'm pretty familiar with is the core of Star Trek, which Gene Roddenberry designed to be a universe where mankind has bettered itself through humanist actions, where religion is passé, and where all anyone needs to do is to go forth and preach the good news of how awesome people are so that not-as-good people can wake up and start being good for goodness' sake.
If humanism asks me to view things rationally, then fine, I will: this is an incredibly silly philosophy because it is not backed up by the world historically. People just are not good for goodness' sake, ever. We are not "basically good" at our core -- we are selfish, sinful and hostile to our neighbors. We're out for ourselves. If you can look at me and say, with a straight face, that we as human society have evolved to a better sense of morality on our own, then I'll applaud your optimism and ignorance of the sheer amount of killing and evil that's happened in the 20th century versus anything back in the "dark days" a thousand, two thousand, three thousand years ago.
This ad campaign isn't a call for Christians to be riled up to anger over an attack at the core of truth -- after all, that's been going on since the dawn of time. But it is a call for us to shore up our beliefs and not bend when someone approaches us with a humanist argument -- that we do not need God to be good. Once you buy into that, you've thrown aside the whole of the Bible; God's message to His children is that we are simply incapable of being good through our own ability. We need God's grace to save us, we need His forgiveness to wash us clean, and we need His strength to help us overcome temptation and sinful influences in order to be made more and more Christlike in our daily lives.
Humanists hate verses like Romans 3:23, because they claim that God is beating us down, making us feel guilty, making us feel inadequate. But it is the truth that "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" -- and it is equally true that this verse is smack-dab in the middle of a passage wherein God demonstrates how much He loves us despite this failing, and how He's provided a way for our salvation and redemption.
The point to my life isn't that I'm doing things just for the sake of them. That's empty and without purpose. Instead, my faith and life in God gives me supreme context and purpose for all I do -- when I do good, it is for His glory and kingdom, and when I do bad, it is because I am a sinner who is still being sanctified.
Why believe in God? Because I do good for His sake, not my own.
2 comments:
“When you remove God from the equation of life, what you’re left with is a mobius loop of doing things for their own sake, with things giving themselves meaning.”
Yes, and what’s wrong doing things for your own sake?! People often forget about themselves and that we need to spend time on ourselves too or we often get burned out etc.
“Not to be smarmy or anything, but this is a campaign designed by someone who has a third grade understanding of how the world works.”
And what is the first grade of understanding a world which is relative and where a majority of your thoughts and ideas is a construction of the very society you live in, often strongly related to the locale? A symbol for morality like god, is only meaningful because you make it meaningful to you but it doesn’t need to be meaningful to others and therefore emphasizing the human worth might be important for others instead.
In my opinion, you’re the one having a third grade education on this topic because you usually, which is common among most Christians, don’t inherently recognize that your world view doesn’t always need to be the right one, and man, there are so many world views out there!
“If I’m not deriving my morality from God, then what do I have to fall back on — the government’s sense of morality? The popular majority? My own relative sense of right and wrong?”
So you claim all others not believing in god can’t make moral decisions? Let’s me mention one thing, the morals you see in for example The Old Testament are all moral ideas which existed BEFORE the Bible was written down, or how could people or anyone know about it and write it down? If you mention divine inspiration here fine, but why is it then that people generally agree to not steal, not kill and to not commit crimes such as adultery regardless in the society the live in? I have to say that the evolution psychologists got the longest straw here, with their idea that if we mindlessly kept killing each other as pack animals we would die out as a species.
Ultimately, the morals you develop you once again gain from the locale and your environment. If you live in a Christian context you will develop more typical Christian morals.
“We can rationally deduce what is “good” and what is “bad” by observing the world, then choosing “good” to better the world for ourselves and those around us.”
No, because what is good for you is bad for another, good and bad are relative terms which becomes quite clear once you start to look at the actions of others. What Stalin did was considered good in his world view, just like the Holocaust was good for Hitler. They both thought they had good, just and right causes or they wouldn’t do it. Very few people would do things out of the conviction that it’s bad, what’s the logic behind that anyway?
“If humanism asks me to view things rationally, then fine, I will: this is an incredibly silly philosophy because it is not backed up by the world historically”
Did you ever study some basic psychology? There is an idea in cognitivie therapy in general that is called self fulfilling prophecy, and I will explain to you how it works.
“We are not “basically good” at our core — we are selfish, sinful and hostile to our neighbors. We’re out for ourselves.”
If you believe humans are like this, you will mostly focus on the bad events and even believe you can see into this future. Did you find yourself saying “hah, I could see that coming!”, well, the chance is that you are not alone doing this. The point being is that your emotional center in your brain is also the one controlling your logic and rational thinking. Why do you think media mostly thrives on delivering negative news? Because there is no emotional sensation behind it. Let me ask you how much humans evolved in terms of morals and ethics since Christianity became a major world religion.
As a matter of fact, the idea of moral and ethics has barely evolved since Ancient Greece, we are still more or less using these ideas in a more modern context and Ancient Greece existed before Christianity did.
“This ad campaign isn’t a call for Christians to be riled up to anger over an attack at the core of truth — after all, that’s been going on since the dawn of time. But it is a call for us to shore up our beliefs and not bend when someone approaches us with a humanist argument — that we do not need God to be good”
I would rather say that the campaign is there to give people an “aha-experience”, but not necessarily convert anyone. As you said, this is not something to get riled up for, it’s there to be thought-provoking and that’s good. Sometimes people take their religion a little too much for granted. As I said, we tend to forget ourselves sometimes but we also need to love ourselves, not only god.
“Once you buy into that, you’ve thrown aside the whole of the Bible; God’s message to His children is that we are simply incapable of being good through our own ability. We need God’s grace to save us, we need His forgiveness to wash us clean, and we need His strength to help us overcome temptation and sinful influences in order to be made more and more Christlike in our daily lives.”
I can’t disagree with you here if you want to have a more Orthodoxy belief of Christianity, but I also know many strong believing Christians who very well manage to verse their ideas of a good society with their belief. One can argue whether they are true Christians or not, but I frankly don’t care what you choose to label yourself with, as long it makes you happy, it’s good all right? That’s a typical humanist idea by the way.
“But it is the truth that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”"
No, it’s not true, you cannot scientifically prove it in any whatsoever way. It is only true if you choose to believe it is true, humanists obviously do not and they personally don’t feel that ideas of these is not fit into a modern secular world.
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Why believe in God? Because I do good for His sake, not my own. “
I just want to point out that you do believe in god for your own sake as well. What does god benefit for you believing in god as long you are happy? You don’t seem to recognize that many of your actions and ideas are because you did them, whether you felt you had the courage to do them or not thanks to your faith in god, but god did not do it for you. You do it for your own sake just like you believe for your own sake.
Can you do good without believing in God? Sure. But I would argue that in your life, it would lack purpose. On a long enough timeline, everything is meaningless if there isn't anything greater than ourselves. I can do good, sure, but why? Because it betters myself, or others, or society? But all that will perish, and then we'll be back to nothing. So to do good for goodness' sake is to engage in a very temporary act with no greater meaning. Obviously, my view is that faith and a life lived in God gives it much greater meaning.
God does grace us with an inherent morality that not only helps us make right choices, but hopefully to identify Him as the author of that morality.
You helped to illustrate the futile nature of humanism in that "good" and "bad", without God's framework, is entirely relative. This ad campaign asks us to do good, but in what way? From what viewpoint or culture? The context seems to be that we should do good by whatever our culture sees as "good" by a popular majority, leaving culture and the mob to be the judge of morality. And that is far more disturbing to me than to believe in a God who is completely holy, the author of all things good, and the final judge of this world.
To do something for God's sake and not my own is part of the process of handing over my life to Him for his work. One of the biggest recurring messages of the Bible is that it's not about us, it's about God. That doesn't mean we deny ourselves, but that we focus our thoughts, attentions and drive toward God and His plan. If I do something to help someone and gain pleasure from the task, that's a side benefit, but it should not be the driving force behind whether I do it or not. I help others, love others, serve others and teach others because I'm commanded to in the scriptures, and because that is me sacrificing my old sinful self to the new life that I live in Jesus.
Humanism is, at its core, a selfish philosophy aimed at self-gratification, replacing God with a new god (ourselves), and back-patting without recognition that this philosophy is not backed up by historical events and trends.
Thanks for swinging by and caring enough to leave your thoughts on this!
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