When I first came up with a title for my book four plus years ago I was going call it, Apologetics for Parents: How to keep your kids from becoming “Nones.” Since most Christians don’t know what apologetics is, or what “Nones” are, that wasn’t ideal. Keeping our kids from becoming “Nones,” however, is an increasing challenge in our secular 21st century. Over the past 20 or 30 years the fastest growing segment of the population when asked their religious affiliation chooses “None of the above,” thus the press christened them Nones. A piece in The Atlantic highlights how and why this might be happening.
While America will never be as secular as Europe, secularism has infected every square inch of American life, including life among Christians in the church. Because of the power of this behemoth of a plausibility structure, religion, and specifically Christianity, just doesn’t seem relevant to many people today. The material world, and all that comes with it, is what seems real, seems worthwhile, seems like where meaning and significance are found. Watch some advertising on TV, if you can stomach it, to see why. In your face secularism is the reason the chart looks the way it does.
What’s really interesting about The Atlantic article from a self-described None is his conclusion:
American nones may well build successful secular systems of belief, purpose, and community. But imagine what a devout believer might think: that millions of Americans have abandoned religion only to recreate it everywhere they look.
He confirms that Christianity is the Truth! Wait a second, you may be thinking, that’s an awful lot of apologetics baggage to read into those two sentences. It is not. Human beings are incurably religious. Philosophical atheism, that the material is all that exists, that there is no spiritual realm beyond it, is actually a tough sell. Most people in the West, probably upwards of 95 percent, still believe there is a God or some kind of spiritual reality, however they might define that, even after the “New Atheists” have done their level best to convince them otherwise.
This young author is actually quite prescient. There is no such thing as a non-religious person. All people live by faith, even atheists, who assume materialism, but can’t prove it. To those of us whose view of reality is informed by the Bible, this is obvious. Human beings are created by God, but fallen rebellious creatures who refuse, by nature, to submit to his rightful rule over our lives. When we reject him, we always find something to replace him, thus idolatry.
Idolatry is not a common term, to say the least, among those who live in the 21st century secular West. If people are familiar with the term at all, they think of wooden or metal sculptures that people, mostly ancient, worshiped as gods. But idolatry is much more subtle than that, and ubiquitous, in our time. Modern, educated people think they are immune to such religious superstition, but they most definitely are not! The Atlantic author gets this, although he might not quite agree or understand my take.
Simply, idolatry is a replacement for God, a way human beings strive to replace what only God, their Creator, can give them: ultimate meaning, purpose, and hope. If we don’t find these in our Creator, we must and will try (the operative word, try) to find them somewhere else, ergo idolatry. The problem, as I argued in my last post about the tragic short life of Amy Whinehouse, is that idols never deliver. Christianity perfectly explains the meaning-seeking creatures we are, but how do you explain that if all we are is lucky dirt? You don’t.
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