Posts by Steven Willing, MD

How do we, as followers of Christ, engage the secular world?

This is no simple question, as the situations and circumstances are nearly infinite in possibility.

Since St. Augustine penned The City of God, there has been a general understanding that Jesus did not come to establish an earthly dominion. One might argue there have been “Christian nations” in a particular sense, but through most of Western history, church and state have always been separate power bases in an uneasy tension. Sometimes the church was on the ascendancy, as when Pope Gregory VII excommunicated emperor Henry IV (1050-1106) over the investiture controversy. You may have heard the story about how Henry stood three days barefoot in the snow to beg forgiveness. This feeds the popular myth of an all-powerful Catholic church embraced by many secularists. Less well known is that three years later, after his second excommunication, Henry IV led his armies against Rome, forcibly deposing Gregory VII and putting his own man in charge. So much for the “all-powerful” church. Power is fleeting, even for emperors and popes.

How do you ascertain God’s will for your life?

This is one of the greatest existential questions asked by followers of Christ, the young in particular. It is also one of the most profoundly misunderstood.

We may be taught that there is a divine roadmap for our lives, known to God yet unknown to us. We desire to know it for two reasons. First, we seek to please God and be good stewards. Second, we believe following his divine plan will maximize our earthly joy and blessing, but He offers no objective way of knowing it. What then, does that say about God? He created a divine master plan for us to follow, but we have to pry it out of Him? What sort of God would do that, and why? What if we make the wrong decision?

In last Saturday’s New York Times, Christian columnist Ross Douthat asks, “Can the Meritocracy Find God?”

“The secularization of America probably won’t reverse unless the intelligentsia gets religion,” writes Douthat. Nor is he sanguine for the prospects of that occurring. Douthat postulates two primary obstacles. First, “a moral vision that regards emancipated, self-directed choice as essential to human freedom and the good life.” Second, an entrenched anti-supernaturalism: “The average Ivy League professor, management consultant or Google engineer is not necessarily a strict materialist, but they have all been trained in a kind of scientism, which regards strong religious belief as fundamentally anti-rational, miracles as superstition, the idea of a personal God as so much wishful thinking.”

“You can’t handle the truth!”

That classic line from A Few Good Men from Colonel Jessup in the witness stand became a waving flag for many. It is enticing to think we own the truth, and that those who can’t “handle” it are naïve, weak or cowardly. Delivered to perfection by Jack Nicholson, Jessup hammered a wedge between truth and fantasy, and of course we all know which side we’re on, don’t we?

Too often, it seems, Christians engaged in culture are fighting yesterday’s battle. Probably, most who are engaged in apologetics still believe the worldview of secular culture is premised upon values of tolerance and moral relativism. We are way beyond that. Having emerged victorious (according to some) in the “culture wars,” tolerance and “rights-speak” are no longer useful to sexual revolutionaries. Their narrative has shifted. Opponents of Christian morality now assert far more than equivalence. They claim moral superiority, along with intolerant disdain for traditionally-minded folk of most religious or conservative persuasions. The prideful often fall by overreaching, as Napoleon did by invading Russia. Opponents of Christian sexuality have badly overreached. It is a battle they cannot win.