The Missing Piece
Searching for Forgiveness in a Secular Religion
“Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”
― C.S. Lewis
We all long to be free. Not in the usual sense of that word, as in, free from bondage, or free to to act however one chooses - but free from ourselves. Free from the crushing suspicion that I am not, in fact, a good person.
The human desire for absolution runs deep in the race, and our increasingly secular culture finds the origin of this seemingly spiritual impulse more and more elusive. But what does that mean, to be absolved?
ab•solve | əbˈzôlv, əbˈzälv |
verb
To set or declare free from blame, guilt, or responsibility: the pardon absolved them of any crimes.
If you’re anything like me, just reading the words “declared free from blame or guilt” brings a sigh of relief - the very possibility lifts the proverbial weight from my shoulders, and I’m not even really sure why.
In the absence of the knowledge of a God who loves us even though He knows we are bad, we desperately try to convince ourselves that we are in fact, good.
The son of an ex-Catholic-turned-Evangelical, I wasn’t raised with the double helping of guilt many of my Catholic brethren have reported. I was raised knowing that my Heavenly Father was a God of grace and forgiveness - in the famous words of Mr. Beaver, "’Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good.” The God I grew to know was and is a loving, self-sacrificial God, whose only Son was sent to absolve me of my many sins, so it isn’t a religiously cultivated guilt complex I’m speaking of when I say I believe we all have a deep yearning to be set free. One doesn’t need a Catholic sense of guilt to be aware that deep down, we are all painfully flawed, and upon realizing that, either consciously or subconsciously, are left wondering what do with that knowledge.
This brings us to the problem. Where do we turn with our own irreparable brokenness? Those in the Christian tradition are spared the search for absolution, having been blessed with the knowledge of a forgiving God often since childhood - many outside that tradition have not. Yet they thirst for absolution all the same.
Without the knowledge of a God who loves us even though He knows we are bad, we desperately try to convince ourselves that we are in fact, good. When that fails, as it always does, we settle for the next best thing - the appearance of goodness. If I can’t convince myself I’m good, then I’ll bloody well do my damnedest trying to convince everyone else I am.
Enter the modern-day concept of “virtue-signalling”. Relatively new in common parlance, the term describes the phenomena of publicly declaring one’s allegiance to the cause du jour, the Current Thing™ - whether that’s posting a black square on Instagram for the Marxists in the Black Lives Matter organization, putting pronouns in your Twitter bio to demonstrate your complicity in radical gender ideology, the local restaurant with “No One is Illegal” written in chalky cursive under their food menu, or the local flower shop with the “safe space” window sticker declaring safety for people who have never once felt unsafe… in a flower shop… ever.
Racial inequality, differing expressions of biological sex, illegal immigration, sexuality - all are complex issues that can be approached from many different perspectives. For some reason, we like to cast aside all that pesky nuance and publicly declare for our circles of influence that we fall on one side of the issue, often without even the slightest attempt at fully understanding it.
Why? If we can be brutally honest with ourselves, I believe it comes down to the original sin - Pride. I’ve been hard on the left thus far, but it would be unfair not to mention the long tradition of Pharisaical hypocrisy on the right. Christ was famously brutal on the Pharisees, the religious leaders of his day, whom he called out as relentless hypocrites: “As he taught, Jesus said, ‘Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.’” This impulse to appear holy is an old one. Christians for a long time have been condemned for talking a game they weren’t great at walking, and it’s a habit we may have passed on to the increasingly religious secular zealots we see on the modern left.
The point must be made though, that the secularists quickly lost the moral high ground, if it ever had it. Secularism could mock hypocritical religion right up until the point it became a religion itself. And indeed it has become one - rites of confession, a liturgical calendar, sacrements of confirmation - but one thing it lacks: it has no real means of absolution.
There is no forgiveness in the religion of modern secularism. The woke god is a vengeful, spiteful creature, drunk on human narcissism and power, and there is no hope for its worshipers.
We’ve seen this story over and over again - someone says something that the woke scolds brand as Deeply Offensive™, and the next day in the headlines is the apology, the public rite of confession: “What I said was deeply offensive. As a (insert immutable characteristics here), I’d like to apologize - my words were uninformed, I was ignorant of others’ lived experiences, and I caused real harm. I’m choosing to do the work to educate myself, learn from a diverse set of voices, and I ask for patience in this period of personal growth.” These victims of cancel culture, once finished with this song and dance, are then told it’s not enough. They are pariah, anathema, stripped of their careers, never again to be allowed in polite society.
There is no forgiveness in the religion of modern secularism. The woke god is a vengeful, spiteful creature, drunk on human narcissism and power, and there is no hope for its worshipers.
So where does that leave us? It leaves right at the precipice, ready to fall into the loving arms of a true Heavenly Father, whose whole project is forgiveness. A crucial task of today’s Christian is to rescue the sinner from the woke cult. The only answer for them is the same answer we poor religious hypocrites are forced to come to, that “there is none who does good, no not one”, and trying to appear that way for an unforgiving jury of our peers is a hopeless project.
We are not good. We never will be good. Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.