A Secular Creed (Part 1)

Seen these yard signs around your neighborhood? They're hard to miss. One writer called them "a secular creed."  A dictionary definition of a creed is "a set of beliefs or aims which guide someone's actions."

Christians have creeds. Maybe you've heard of the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed. A creed distills down to the essentials what a person believes. And like the definition says, a creed should guide our actions.

These yard signs shouldn't surprise us. We swim in an affluent, leisure, permissive, and secular culture here in Central Oregon. That's not a condemnation; it's just reality.

Charles Taylor, a Canadian Roman Catholic philosopher, captured the spirit of the age in his seminal work, A Secular Age:

The change I want to define and trace is one which takes us from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others. I may find it inconceivable that I would abandon my faith, but there are others, including possibly some very close to me, whose way of living I cannot in all honesty just dismiss as depraved, or blind, or unworthy, who have no faith (at least not in God, or the transcendent). Belief in God is no longer axiomatic. There are alternatives. And this will also likely mean that at least in certain milieu, it may be hard to sustain one's faith.

In layman's terms, we live in a culture where God is just one option among many if even an option at all. When we say people are secular or worldly, we're saying that people are trying to make their way in this life without God. Thus, a secular creed.

But our friends and neighbors long for meaning and purpose even if what they believe leaves out God.

“The spiritually agnostic haven't ‘conquered the nostalgia for something transcendent.’” - Charles Taylor in his book, A Secular Age

Frankly, many of these statements on the yard signs are loaded with political undertones. Black lives matter? Of course they do! Science is real? Certainly! But there are deep underlying meanings for both these statements.

Many are nonsensical.  Love is Love? But what is love anyway? Who defines love? How about, “Life is Life?” What the heck does that mean? At best, there's great fluidity and moral ambiguity in their meaning.

Now the Christian apologist and argumentative side of me wants to deconstruct the statements in the secular creed that run contrary to biblical truth. There's certainly a place for standing up for truth. We shouldn't be ashamed about our biblical convictions.  But the biblical attitude is that we should speak in "gentleness and reverence" (1 Peter 3:15).

What I'm contending for (and it's not new with me) is that we should be more conversational than confrontational in talking to people about Jesus. We must be the people who speak to the void that our neighbors feel in both our words and our lives.

Again Charles Taylor in A Secular Age:

"There is a widespread sense of loss here, if not always of God, then at least of meaning.”

Especially in these turbulent times, people need Jesus. The New Testament church could not stop joyfully and spontaneously telling people about Jesus (Acts 2:47; 4:31, 33).

William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1942-1944, defined evangelism as follows:

To evangelize is so to present Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, that men shall come to put their trust in God through Him, to accept Him as their Savior, and serve Him as their King in the fellowship of His church.

In future posts, I will explore seven ways for Christians to live and share the gospel in this age of secular creeds.