← All Things Catholic with Dr. Edward Sri
All Things Catholic with Dr. Edward Sri
The Religion of Our Secular World
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Did you know that even secular individuals hold religious-like beliefs? Dr. Sri examines the secular world’s values, promises of salvation, and utopian ideals, and contrasts these with the core tenets of the Gospel. He revisits the five key aspects of the Kerygma—relationship, rebellion, reconciliation, recreation, and response—and explains how the secular vision borrows from and distorts these principles.
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This podcast is brought to you by Ascension. To discover even more free Catholic podcasts, videos and resources to help you live your faith every day, visit ascensionpress.com hi, I'm Edward Sri, and welcome to All Things Catholic, where real faith meets real life. Today, I want to talk about something that might surprise you. I want you to think about a friend, family member, someone you know who doesn't go to church, probably doesn't pray often. They don't belong to any particular religious denomination. Maybe they don't even believe in God. Did you know that that person might be actually very, very religious? I know that sounds surprising, but many people in the secular world today, they have their own system of values, their own vision for how the world should be and how we should live, a certain sense of what's right and wrong and what they hope for the world. And what we're going to see is that the secular world is shaping people in a certain religion. And it has its own story of salvation, a promise of liberation from evil, a promise of redemption, hope for the future. The secular world offers a gospel message, good news, a news of salvation. It borrows a lot we're going to see from the Christian story, but twists it at crucial points. If we want to reach our friends and family members who are away from the church and are shaped more by the secular mindset than by the gospel today, we need to understand that secular vision of the world, the secular religion. And that's what we're going to take a look at in this week's podcast. So welcome to all Things Catholic. I'm your host, Edward Sri. And last year around this time, I shared with you some insights from a book that I had that just came out called what do youo Encountering the Heart of the Gospel. And I walked through. In five episodes last August and September, we walked through five key parts of the Christian gospel message. The idea that God made us with an amazing purpose for relationship with him out of love. He created us for love, but we turned away from that love. We rebelled against him, and as a result, we experienced suffering, alienation, and brokenness in our lives. But even though we turned away from God, he didn't turn away from us. He came and sought us out. He became one of us in Jesus, died for us, rose from the dead, and sent his spirit into our hearts so that we would not only be forgiven, but that we would be changed. We would be healed. We would be transformed in the depths of our soul, made to live forever with him in heaven. Now that's the summary of the Catholic gospel message that Christians have been proclaiming for 2,000 years. But what I want to do today is I want to unpack those five points that we explored last year. And by the way, if you want to go back and know the Catholic gospel, how does the Catholic summarize what the gospel message is? You can go back and listen from those five episodes from last August and September. And I summarized the gospel message in five relationship, rebellion, reconciliation, recreat, creation and response. And what I want to do is take those five points, but then look at how the secular world enters into that story, borrows from that Christian story of salvation, but then twists it and offers a different kind of salvation. And it's one that's very captivating. It's one that has convinced many men and women and shapes how they operate and how they look at the world and how they live, their marriages and approach, work, and what they hope for in society. So it's important that we understand the mindset of the people we're trying to reach. And we all have loved ones who have turned away from the church. Well, we all have friends and family members that we long to come back. It's important to understand where they're coming from and what they're being shaped by in our secular age. So let's take a look at that right now. Here I want to start with. First of all, the first point of the Christian gospel is that we're made with an amazing purpose. God didn't have to create us. This is the first point of the catechism. Catechism article number one, the very first paragraph of the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that God is infinitely perfect and blessed in himself. He didn't need to create us. He didn't need to create anything. He's infinitely perfect and blessed in himself. Yet in a plan, a mysterious plan, he freely chose out of sheer goodness, out of his own love, to bring us into existence, to share his love with us so that we could be happy and be with him forever. That's why God chose us, because he wanted us to be in relationship with us. This is beautiful, but our modern world doesn't see that we're made for relationship in the secular age. We're just here by chance. It's just random. We just happen to exist and there's no meaning to our lives. There's no purpose to our lives. We're just here. And that's just sad and lonely, you know, in the Christian mindset. I love what one psychologist says that we enter into this world longing to be longed for, seeking to be sought. And that's the point of the first, of this first aspect of the gospel message, that the One who created us, the One who is love, brought us into existence out of love. And he put in the depths of our hearts a desire to be seen, to be known, to be loved. That's how we're wired, that's how we're made. But sadly, in the secular space, we're just randomly here. We're just a bunch of cells just happen to come together in the cosmos. And there's no meaning to our lives, no intrinsic purpose to our lives. We just happen to be here and we have to just strive to give ourselves our own meaning. How sad that is if in reality we enter into this world seeking to be sought. We long to be longed for. The One who created us longs for us. And we're made for that longing. We're made for that relationship with God. And the depths of our heart is this desire for relationship with Him. But the secular age is, nope, you're just here, you're just randomly here. Now I want to turn to the second point. And the second point of the gospel message is that while we are made for God, the Christian gospel is we're made for God. We're made for relationship with him, to share in his love, and then we will be blessed. When we live in his love, we'll be happy. But we don't always experience happiness. In fact, we experience a lot of suffering and disappointment in this world. We experience pain, we experience hurt, we experience betrayal, other people letting us down. We experience loneliness, depression, anxiety, fear. So much suffering. Why? Why is there so much suffering in this world? A Christian would say, well, first and foremost, because of me, the famous J.K. chesterton. I quote him all the time on this show and whenever I'm giving talks. The 20th century writer G.K. chesterton was once asked, what's the biggest problem in the world? And he could have talked about, you know, it's war, it's violence, it's poverty, it's injustice, all these things. But he just said a one word answer. He said, me, I'm the biggest problem in the world. Doesn't mean that there's not problems with war and injustice and poverty, all these things. Yes, but why is there poverty and war and injustice? Because there's individual persons who are deeply broken, deeply wounded by original sin. You see, this is the fundamental point of a Christian way of seeing the world, is that we're not perfect. In fact, no matter how hard we try, no matter how much we study, how much we learn, how much effort we put in, we're never going to be perfect on our own. We're wounded. We have a deep wound in our souls because of the first sin. We don't see things clearly in our mind. And even when we know something's true, we don't always live according to that truth because our will is weak and our emotions go all over the place. Many times we're broken on the inside. We don't have this interior harmony that God made us with originally. So why is there suffering in the world? Why do people hurt each other? Why do people not keep their promises? Why do people let each other down? It's because we're all wounded and we give in to those tendencies towards sin, towards selfishness, toward pride, toward envy, toward greed, toward lust. This is why there's suffering in the world. It's because we're broken. We're wounded by original sin. That's not how the secular world looks at things. This is one of the most fundamental points about our modern age, is that the denial of original sin. Now, let me be clear. People in our modern age, they know they're suffering, right? We can't avoid that. Everyone's experiencing suffering. Trauma, sorrow, disappointment, hurt. But why? Why is there suffering in this world? Well, our secular gospel tells us, well, the problem's not inside me, the problem's outside of me. That's why there's suffering in this world. It's not because I contribute to the suffering in this world. No, no. It's not my brokenness, my woundedness, my sinfulness. No, it's the people around me. They cause me suffering. And so we tend to blame others. Do you ever notice that how much in the modern age, we blame other people for all our problems? My. It's their fault because they didn't treat me well, they didn't raise me well. Or it's my boss's fault. My boss doesn't understand what's really going on, and that's why I'm having a hard time in the company. Or it's my coach's fault, or my teacher's fault, or my boyfriend, my girlfriend's fault, or it's my spouse's fault. If my spouse would just change and be like this, our family would be so much better and I would be so much happier. It's my spouse's fault. Instead of looking inside and really taking a hard examination in my own life and considering what could I do better in this Marriage. How am I responsible for the walls in our marriage, the hurt in our marriage, the misunderstandings and pain in our marriage? Why can't I take a look inside myself and say that? Maybe the reason I'm having trouble with the company and I'm not getting the promotion, and my colleagues don't like working with me. Maybe it's not my boss's fault or the company's fault. Maybe there's something I'm doing that's off, something that I could improve in. Instead of blaming others, why don't we look into our own hearts? But the secular gospel doesn't really believe in original sin. It doesn't believe in our own individual woundedness. And so while we can't escape the truth of suffering, we all experience suffering and hurt and disappointment. We tend to blame other people. We're going to blame others. I'll blame my kids. My kids just would behave better. Things would be more peaceful in our home. Or I blame the government. If we just had the right political party or the right leader, you know, it's. But it's the government's fault. That's why they can't run things well and it caused me suffering. Or it's the media, or even in a religious context, we could say, it's my church, it's my pastor, it's my bishop, it's the Vatican. And so we tend to focus on all the problems outside of ourselves. And what we want is a revolution. I want a new boss, I want a new coach, I want a new teacher, I want a new spouse, I want a new boyfriend or girlfriend. I want a new leader in the government. I want a new leader of my church. And we tend to want revolution, to change things on the outside, instead of going interiorly and looking for an interior renewal in my own soul. So so far we're looking at two first aspects of the gospel. We're made for relationship, but the secular world says, nope, we're just randomly here. Secondly, why is there suffering in the world? Christian gospel says it's because of original sin and I contribute to the sin in the world. Whereas the modern world, the secular gospel message tells us, nope, the problem's not inside me, it's outside of me. And now we're going to come to the third point. The third message of the Christian gospel is that, yes, we're made for relationship, but we turned away from that relationship. So we experience suffering, brokenness, heartache in life. But God didn't abandon us, even though we turned away from the God who is love. He loves us so much. He sought us out. He sent prophets and teachers and leaders. He sent kings messengers. And he eventually sent his own son. God became man. He became one of us. That's how much he loved us, to seek us out. And he came and even died on the cross for us to offer his life as a gift of love to the Father, to repair the relationship between humanity and God. God came to save us. He loves us. He came to rescue us. But our modern world, our modern world says no. We don't need a God to come save us. We can save ourselves. We can save ourselves. We don't need God. We don't need religion. We don't need a church. We don't need sacraments. We don't need God's grace. We don't need his revelation. We can save ourselves. There's a great image in New York City that I love to turn to. I think I used this maybe last year or the year before in one of the shows. But if you go to downtown Manhattan, go into midtown, that is, and go to St. Patrick's Cathedral, right across from St. Patrick's Cathedral, there is the Rockefeller Center. And it's where you have some of the biggest, most powerful, lucrative media companies, financial investment firms, legal companies, law firms. And it's really. This is, you know, heart and center of economic political force in Manhattan. And there's a big statue that the Rockefellers had built right there in the rockefeller center facing St. Patrick's Cathedral. And it's a statue of the God Atlas. Remember the story of Atlas. Atlas is holding up the world on his shoulders, on his hands. And you see Atlas struggling to hold up the whole world, but he's holding up the world on his own. And it's. It's kind of like. I like to think of it as an image of, you know, the modern age of just like, we don't need religion, we don't need that church across the street. We don't need God. We can hold the world on our own. But you can see Atlas is kind of struggling. He's really exerting every power in his body to. To keep this world up above him. And I love what. What they built in St. Patrick's Cathedral. I like to think of it as a response. Right in St. Patrick's Cathedral, facing the massive statue that's a couple stories tall of Atlas, is this tiny statue I can carry in the palm of my hands. It's of the infant Jesus, and it's the little child Jesus behind the main altar facing out toward Atlas. And you know what he's doing? He's holding just in the palm of his hands, he's holding the world, a globe in his hands. In contrast to big Atlas, struggling to hold the world all on his own. Jesus, because he's God, holds the world calmly, peacefully, securely in his hands. And I like to think of that image right there between the child Jesus in St Patrick's Cathedral and Atlas in the Rockefeller center as an image of the contrast between the two gospel messages. The Christian gospel is Christ came to save us. He has the whole world in his hands. He has all of you in his hands. Your hopes, your dreams, your fears, your worries. Everything is in his hands. He's coming to save you. And he's trustworthy. His hands are trustworthy. Whereas the image in the Rockefeller center of Atlas is the message of, we can save ourselves. We don't need God, we don't need religion. And this was the spirit of the Enlightenment age from, say, the late 1600s all the way up to today, but particularly there in the late 1600s, 1700s, there was this real sense among many leaders in Europe that we don't really need God's grace. I mean, yeah, we believe in God, but we don't really have to depend on him. We don't need the light of divine revelation from scripture or a church. You know, we just need science and technology. We could solve all our problems on our own. We can figure out the right political system and we'll have nations living in peace together. We'll figure out the right social economic system and we can get rid of poverty and get rid of disease, maybe even get rid of death one day so we could live forever here on Earth. We just need to fix those bad guys, you know, those. All the. If we're blaming other people for our. Why is there suffering? Because of everybody else. Our parents, our boss, the government leaders, the media, whatever. You know, if we could just fix those bad guys, you know, then the world would be a better place. So we're going to save ourselves. We're going to use science, technology, the right education, the right economic system, the right therapy, the right social vision for the world. We're going to social engineer everything, you know, and if we can get in power and. And then implement our plan, the world will be a better place. So we'll save ourselves through revolution. If we can just get the right leaders influencing society, we can either fix the bad guys or just get rid of them. And we'll put the right vision in and we can build heaven on Earth. I Think that's a key point here, is that the modern secular gospel message is really utopian. It's utopian. It believes that we can build a perfect society. We can have true heaven here on earth. Now a Catholic would say we hope for heaven. This world we know is fallen because of original sin. We will never have perfection here on earth. We'll never have perfect human relationships. Well, the world is fallen. That's why Jesus always talked about there will be wheat with the weeds, there'll be good fish with the bad fish. There'll be light amid the darkness. You know, it's going to be mixed and God is working and he's bringing his light, bringing his kingdom, bringing more wheat and good fish into the world. But it's a long process and it won't be till heaven that things will be perfected and there'll be no more crying, no more tears, no more suffering. But the secular world really believes if we just have the right leaders, the right medicine, the right, you know, therapy technique, the, the, the right plan for how you order your day, the right way to do human organization, you know, and run a company, well, the right technology, these things will really save us and we. Heaven on earth. Last point I want to make. Well, no, two. Two more points is that the Christian gospel tells us that we will become a new creation, that God is going to fill our hearts with his spirit and change us into Christ likeness from one degree of glory to another. It's a process. It's not going to happen all at once. But we are being changed. We are seeing the healing of our souls, the healing of our fallen desires, of our pride, of our selfishness, of our fears, of our wounds, of our trauma, all these things. God is coming into our soul to heal us, to make us a new creation. Whereas the secular gospel says we're just going to create ourselves. That's what post modernity tells us. Friedrich Nietzsche said we want to be the kind of men and women who give ourselves our own laws. We will make our own values. We will create ourselves. And that's why you see in our modern age, a rebellion against reality, that I can decide for myself what's right or wrong. I could make up what's good and evil for myself. If I want to decide the baby in the womb is a human life or not, I decide that I can decide what marriage is. Those Christians say marriage is a lifelong union between man and woman. Exclusive, faithful, fruitful. I can decide what marriage is. I can make it whatever I want. I can make it with someone of my own sex. I can make it with multiple people. I can make it with animals. It doesn't matter. I define what marriage is. I create myself. The secular gospel rebels against the idea of our own humanity. That I can decide for myself. I want to be a man. I want to be a woman. This is the secular gospel. I create myself in you. Finally, in the Christian gospel, Jesus invites us to follow him. It's a call to follow our God, to surrender everything and to love him and to serve him, to follow his plan, the one who loves us, and that's where we find our happiness, is in living according to his loving plan for us. But the secular gospel is not about following God. It's a high call, inviting people. You can change the world, join the revolution. Do you see all this injustice in the world, all this evil in this world, all this trauma in the world? You can join us and change the world and make this world a better place. You can help us build this utopia, this heaven here on earth, be a part of this new community. We're a new community of friends. We see you, we understand you. We see your pain, your suffering, your fragmentation, your alienation. And for a modern era in which so many individuals are so isolated from one another, isolated from their families, isolated from friends, so lonely, they've experienced real trauma, real hurt. They're so fragmented. This call to be a part of a new community, a new community that gets it. They see it. They've got the right answers. They've got the silver bullet. They know how things work. They know the right political system, they know the right economic system. They know the right technology, the right science, the right therapy, the right social engineering that we need. We see the right way to build things, and we see your pain and join our movement, be a part of this new family. It's a high call to change the world, but it's one with small moral demands. It doesn't ask a lot out of you. Just join this protest, join this fight, join this revolution. But it'll never last because you can't build heaven on earth. I know we've talked about a lot here, but if I had to just pick one big theme to come back to is the modern secular gospel denies original sin. It denies how deeply wounded we are that no matter how much we learn from science and technology and psychology and sociology and economics and politics, we can never build heaven here on earth. We need God's grace. We need the light of his revelation, the truth of sacred scripture, the truth that has been proclaimed by the church. We need all that to build anything solid and good that corresponds to our true humanity. And so these revolutionary hopes for modern religion, modern secular religion, will never deliver. You can't build heaven on earth because we're fallen. And when these utopian hopes are not realized, many people end up disillusioned. And that's where we want to be. We want to accompany our brothers and sisters in this modern age, even those that have bought into different pieces of the secular gospel. Because when it fails, whether it's in the revolution itself, or in their own lives or their own dreams, or their own marriages or their own families, when they hit the bottom of what this will lead to, we want to be able to be the kind of men and women who they might turn to, because we were always there. We didn't judge them, we didn't condemn them, we were honest. We didn't hide what we believed. But they knew that we really love them. Are we the kind of men and women that really accompany those we might disagree with, that might have aspects of this false gospel in their minds and in their hearts? Because the false gospel will never deliver on what it promises. It cannot offer real salvation and true happiness. It doesn't correspond to human anthropology, who we are as human persons. It doesn't correspond to the reality of this world and the reality of our God. Now, we talked about a lot here, my friends. I think one of the best things we could do is rather than just be aware of the false gospel, is to have in our mind and our heart the true gospel message. And so I want to encourage you to take time to take a look at the Gospel, to read the sacred scriptures. You could also check out my book that I wrote on this topic called what you what do you Encountering the Heart of the Gospel, Published by Ignatius Press. We'll put information for that in the show notes as well. Thanks for listening, my friends, and God bless.