How Secular Humanism Affects You

Years ago I was attending a conference. One of the speakers at this conference discussed secular humanism in some detail. Afterward, I went up to him and asked him how he thought that secular humanism affects Christians. He was – and remains – a very highly respected and very well-known Christian speaker. In response to my question, he said simply, “I don’t think that it affects Christians at all” – and then promptly turned and walked away.

Naturally, I was stunned – not only by his response, but in general, by the seeming lack of concern that Christians have about secular humanism. But why should I be so concerned? Because secular humanism is affecting all American Christians.

Secular Humanism Removes God from Human Life

In brief, secular humanism asserts that the human realm is important. But unhappily, it removes God from the human realm. Secular humanism does not deny God – it is happy to give him Sunday mornings – but it strictly separates him from the rest of life. This is why it is called ‘secular.’ It is ‘kitchen cabinet religion’ – everything separated from everything else, divided into nice little groups that never mix together: God and the rest of life, spirituality and the other human experiences.

Religion is an essential, unremovable aspect of many worldviews. Pagans cannot understand any natural phenomenon without attributing it to ‘the gods.’ Biblical Christianity is quite different, for it recognizes that God has created an orderly world with semi-predictable processes. But the biblical Christian still recognizes that everything in life is under God’s sovereign control. Every experience in life is an opportunity for us to respond to God in faith. Every action of the Christian’s life is a religious experience: whether the Christian is working his job, raising his children, loving his wife, or worshipping his God.

But secular humanism denies all this. God is good for Sunday mornings, and maybe even for a brief devotional on weekdays mornings. But after this task is checked off the checklist, God is dispensable. And this false worldview is exceptionally potent, because we live in a society that encourages us to ‘tune out.’ How many of us find it unnatural to consider every task as essentially sacred service to God?

Perhaps entertainment is the most obvious example. Smartphones and Netflix encourage us to ‘tune out’ and live in a world of virtual reality – a world in which God is barely remember, if he exists at all. We live in an age of entertainment – a world filled with ‘a-musement,’ the lack of ‘musing deeply’ on important thoughts. This entertainment offers constant escapes from reality. This is simply the philosophy of secular humanism at work: life can be compartmentalized into the spiritual and the non-spiritual, the God-directed and the God-dismissed.

Secular Humanism Glorifies the Individual

God made us as individuals, and he placed us within relationships and communities. Both truths are certain, and both truths are under attack from various worldviews. Secular humanism ignores community and relationship, viewing the individual as a sovereign entity. We see the tragic results everywhere: skyrocketing divorce rates, family breakup, and the endangered status of traditional marriage.

Because secular humanism encourages us to think of individuals as primary, we begin to think of the marriage bond as a mere contract, not a covenant. We have lost the concept of sacrificing one’s self for the good of others – so that we can no longer understand traditional patriotism. The supremacy of self means the downfall of authority, which is evident in the unravelling of traditional families.

You may not consider yourself to be directly impacted by this, but how many people do you know who are? And even if you consider yourself immune, your family structure will not endure without purposeful intentionality.

Secular Humanism Is Nihilistic

Secular humanists have no problem with a vague notion of heaven as a ‘better place’ for the departed. But as humanists, their main concern is with the present world, and as secularists, they never bring considerations of the afterlife into other aspects of life. Such an anemic perspective means that the secular humanist is constantly losing hope. The idea of living for eternity makes no sense to the secular humanist. Consequently, he has no reason to live at all, except in pursuit of pleasure and comfort.

No wonder that depression and suicide rates are high, in a culture with no reason to live. No wonder couples don’t have children – there is no reason to bring children into the world, and besides – it cramps their own pursuit of pleasure and comfort.

Christians, too, can easily fall into this nihilistic approach. We pursue pleasure and comfort, choosing our vocation, hometown, and activities based on the amount of pleasure, comfort, and security that they provide, rather than their kingdom value. We assume that trials are the exception, rather than the rule, of Christian living. And when those trials strike, we look frantically for ways to avoid them, rather than comforting our minds with the hope of heaven.  

In all of these ways, secular humanism is the air we breathe. Perhaps it has infiltrated and poisoned us more than we know.