INTRODUCTION
“How’s that working for you?” For decades, this has been a catchphrase for the popular TV counselor known as Dr. Phil which he employs to help people realize their dysfunctional behavior. “How’s that working for you,” forces the individual to self-evaluate; to recognize that their status quo isn’t working at all.
For decades, America has experimented with secularism; the idea that our public life can be governed apart from or uninformed by religion. In A Secular Age, Charles Taylor describes a secular society as one in which belief in God is implausible or unimaginable. (Taylor, A Secular Age, 83) In God’s place, our culture has two basic idols: self and state.
Our culture has bowed to the idol of expressive individualism, the idea that human beings are self-defined through their own desires and actions. “Be who you want to be,” is the shorthand for expressive individualism. Rather than conforming to an external standard, we have taught generations to look within themselves for truth.
Our culture has also bowed to the idol of the state. Francis Schaeffer wrote that “If there are no absolutes by which to judge society, then society becomes an absolute.” (Schaeffer, How Then Shall We Live, 224) Another way of putting this would be, “If there is no God above the state, then the state is god.”
America bought the secular lie: that life, meaning, and purpose can be defined without reference to God. In the absence of the true God, the self and the state have become our functional deities. So, it’s time to ask, “How’s that working for you?”
THERE IS NO NEUTRAL GROUND
The public square is not a morally neutral place. It is not a religiously neutral place. As Jonathan Leeman says,
“…behind every Senate Judiciary Committee vote, Supreme Court decision, protestors’ picket line, editorial board meeting, social media campaign, interest group press conference, political action committee email, campaign television advertisement, and presidential veto is someone’s basic worldview of how things ought to be. And behind that worldview is a god. This is true whether the matter up for debate is abortion, same-sex marriage, tax policy, immigration law, or funding for national parks.” (Leeman, How the Nations Rage, 27)
So, as I have said before, it’s not “whether” or not we will bring our religion into the public square, it’s “which” gods we will serve. Will we serve and obey the living God of the Bible or the false gods of self and state?
Christian, whenever someone tells you that you shouldn’t bring your religious views to bear in the voting booth, or a town hall meeting, or a school board meeting, you must remind them this is impossible. We all serve something or someone as the supreme good. Whatever we serve and obey above all else is our god.
THE GODS OF SECULARISM HAVE FAILED
The self and the state are not bad things. God has made us, therefore our individual selves are a gift from God. The same is true with the state. God established the civil magistrate in Genesis 9, and we ought to be thankful for the gift of civil government. But our culture isn’t thankful for either the self or the state as gifts from God. America has elevated the self and the state to a divine status, and that project has utterly failed.
Idolizing the self has failed. Look around. Our neighbors are utterly confused as to what a human being is. Roe v. Wade was repealed, yet abortionists have won every single state-level referendum since Roe’s repeal. Our nation sanctions so-called homosexual “marriage, and our culture can no longer identify male and female as objective categories. This is insanity of the highest order.
Idolizing the state has failed. Our nation is drowning in debt. Inflation has devastated families. Our border is wide open allowing the flow of criminals and poisonous fentanyl into every state in the lower 48. Globally, America is rudderless. Wars rage in the Middle East and Ukraine and our government has no clue how to lead. Bloated three-letter bureaucracies (FDA, CDC, FBI, IRS, et. al.) have blown any credibility they ever had. Our culture has trusted the state as a savior. This is insanity of the highest order.
The gods of self and state cannot save you. They cannot provide for your needs. They cannot give you peace. They are impotent and it’s high time that our nation turns from them to trust in the living God.
REPENTANCE
In one month our nation will go to the polls to vote in national and state elections. In the next month, I will challenge you as best I know how to go to those polls as thoughtful Christians. Exercise your right and duty to vote, and don’t vote for the howling communists.
But as you prepare to exercise the right to vote, pray that God grants our neighbors a spirit of repentance. (2 Timothy 2:25) It will be useless to vote for the right candidate and subsequently put your trust in that candidate. Do not put your trust in princes. That is what got us into the mess we are in.
“Do not trust in princes, In mortal man, in whom there is no salvation. His spirit departs, he returns to the earth; In that very day his thoughts perish. How blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, Whose hope is in the Lord his God, Who made heaven and earth, The sea and all that is in them; Who keeps faith forever; Who executes justice for the oppressed; Who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free.” (Psalm 146:3–7, NASB95)
We cannot vote our way out of the failure of secularism. We can only repent our way out of it. That repentance will lead to voting, but it will also lead to trusting in the Lord; serving, and obeying his good commands.