I have been preparing to lead a class on seculosity and spirituality so when I read the lessons for today the idea that we should put the things that are from God first in our lives caught my attention.
Seculosity is a new term, coined by David Zahl, to explain the lateral move from faith-based religion to secular based religion. How many of us have heard someone say “I’m spiritual, but not religious”? While the term seculosity does apply to this growing group of people, Zahlclaims it applies to atheists as well. His basic argument is this, “religion is…. the lens through which you sort the data of your days, rank your priorities, and focus your desires.” With this definition we are able to widen our lens and see that our drive to make more money, to have and use the latest technology, to plan every moment of our children’s day, to be the highest achieving student in school, to fight injustice in the world are all religions if they are the central factor in our lives.
To be clear there is nothing wrong with wanting to make more money, with planning activities for our kids, getting good grades or fighting injustice, that is not what is at issue here. The issue is twofold, first claiming to not be religious and then using a secular -ism or task to organize your life is in fact a religion it is just not a religion based on God. Second, and more applicable to us, is that claiming to be religious but then using secular tasks and -isms to shape our time and energy is, by definition, sin, but let’s not dwell on that, instead let’s focus on Jesus’s call to be ready and Paul’s pressure to be faithful.
The day I left for the UK I was having lunch with my best friend Tyler and we quickly found ourselves talking about how religious zealots have coopted Christianity and our political system. Tyler is a card-carrying atheist and has a profound respect for those of us who choose to believe in God, primarily, he says, because of his friendship with me. While he has no interest in believing, he has seen the positive impact faith has had on my life and that helps him to see that the zealous bigots who get all the press are not in fact all that religion has to offer. Religion is being used to shape government policy, which is problematic for two reasons. First and most obvious is that government is supposed to protect the rights of all people, not just the people those in power prefer. Second, the version of Christianity that is being used is not the only version of Christianity that exists, and more importantly I think it important to name what it is, it is the Pharisee version of Christianity. It is the version that has set strict and unbending rules, even when bending or even breaking those rules may in fact be the morally and ethically right thing to do, the thing that demonstrates the love God, as taught to us by Jesus.
When Jesus tells the disciples “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.” He is not telling us to be good little slaves and obey our master; he is indicating that in God’s kingdom things will be different by using the language that his disciples will identify with. The Master will trade places with his servants and take care of them, not because the Constitution says that all people are equal before the law, not because the Universal Declaration of Human rights says that all humans have a God given right to life, but because in God’s kingdom Love rules the day. The whole point of the Gospels is for us to learn that God’s kingdom is counter cultural, it is a new and different way of living, a way that doesn’t just bend the rules, it gets rid of the rulebook because the rulebook is not faith, it is religion and over time humanity has a habit of replacing faith with religion.
Paul tells us that Abrham faithfully obeyed God and because he truly believed that God would fulfill their promise and God did so. What God asked of Abrham was to leave behind the life that he knew and trust that God would lead him to newer and better things, so Abraham did so and from his faith came generations of faithful people. People who sought a homeland of their own, a land that would be ruled by God. We are the descendants of those people and the promise of God has not changed, but we have.
As we have become more sophisticated and enlightened as a species we have moved further and further away from faith and have claimed to reject religion, but what David Zahl has pointed out is that we have not rejected religion, we have simply replaced one religion with another.
We have replaced the simple teachings of Jesus, the call to love others as much as we love ourselves with a love of material goods, straight A’s, being the top of our professions, being the best mom or dad and then wonder why we feel tired, and stressed, and unsuccessful. We don’t feel that way because of what we do, we feel that way because we are always viewing our lives through the lens of those things and that is what David Zahl means by seculosity. If we view every moment of our lives through the lens of our professional life then we will inevitably feel that when we are not working, we are somehow failing. If we view ourselves through the lens of being a student who needs to do well in order to have a good life then we will inevitably feel like a failure when we get a lower than expected score or when we achieve our degree, we will feel incomplete because the thing by which we defined ourselves is gone.
Utilizing secular lenses to define ourselves and to shape our worldview is fine to a point, but ultimately all roads lead to the same place, a place of unhappiness and loneliness. A place where people go hungry or eke out a meager existence based on the rules their society have written down, rules like constitutions and lists of Human rights. Jesus gave us a different lens, not a lens that blocks the other lenses, but changes them, like when the optometrist flips and twists their magic machine. The lens of faith simply allows us to view the world with love in our hearts. It does not keep us from striving to be good at our profession, but it does help us to ensure that we do not harm ourselves or others as we do so. Jesus does not say to stop doing your best in school, but does ask us to think about if our efforts to be the best are harming ourselves or others.
When I think about at the religion of the past, the religion that required adherence to strict rules I get why so many people have left it behind and I get why so many people are fearful or more accurately angry about the religious zealots who are forcing their views on us all. I also get why so many people have latched on to zealousness, because it is easy. It is easy to boil human existence down to a list of rules that help you easily decide who is right and wrong, but that is not what we are called to do. We are called to be people of faith, people who love God, love ourselves, and love our neighbors above all other things. People who consciously choose to be counter cultural and out the love of all people ahead of our secular beliefs. Amen.
Learning by Fire! 