Secular Shortfalls: Faith and Suffering
BreakPoint with Chuck Colson ^ | December 15, 2004 | Chuck Colson
 

One of the best tests of a worldview is how well it stands up to the challenges of real life. When tragedy strikes, does your belief system meet the challenge—or does it let you down? Christian psychologist Paul Vitz says that how Christians handle suffering can reveal the truth of Scripture—and expose the shortfalls of the secular worldview.

Vitz is the author of a book called Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship. Modern psychology, he says, is deeply committed to narcissism, egoism, and worship of the self—a phenomenon he labels “selfism.” This commitment has turned psychology into religion—a form of secular humanism based on the rejection of God in favor of self-worship.

Selfist theories assume that self-gratification is the only ethical principle. The idea is to “actualize” ourselves through creativity and self-absorbed focus on our own needs and desires. But selfist philosophy falls apart when its followers begin to undergo suffering. And that’s where we find one of the starkest contrasts between Christianity and selfism.

Christians, you see, acknowledge the reality of evil, with all of its attendant agony, heartbreak, and death. But Christians also believe that when we commit ourselves in obedience to Christ, suffering can actually bring us into a closer relationship with Him. This view, Vitz says, is “at the very heart of Christianity, as represented by the passion of the cross followed by the joy of Easter.”

By contrast, “selfist philosophy trivializes life by claiming that suffering” and death lack intrinsic meaning. Suffering, Vitz writes, is treated “as some sort of absurdity, usually a man-made mistake that could have been avoided by the use of knowledge to gain control of the environment.”

This view seems plausible enough when life is going well—but it becomes less and less convincing when people begin to suffer sickness or loss. After all, what do you say to the man who discovers, at age forty, that he’s dying of cancer? What do you tell a middle-aged woman who will never have the children she so desperately wants? What do you say to the couple whose only child was killed by a drunk driver?

As Vitz puts it, “Does one say, ‘Go actualize yourself in creative activity’? For people in those circumstances, such advice is not just irrelevant, it is an insult.”

Selfist-humanism begins optimistically enough, but it ends in misery. Christianity, on the other hand, offers understanding of the human condition that accounts for the reality of suffering—and holds the promise that suffering is ultimately redeemed.

You can read more examples of the clash of the secular and Christian worldviews in the new How Now Shall We Live? Devotional—the only worldview devotional currently available.

Psychology as religion has wreaked havoc on our culture, with its facile justification of divorce, promiscuity, and our fanatical focus on self-fulfillment. As our neighbors discover the shallowness of a life lived for personal glory, Christians must be ready to lovingly offer the true source of life filled with meaning.

And that begins by focusing, not on ourselves, but on the God who sent His only Son to suffer and die so that we might be forgiven and live in peace with Him.