there's a real sense i think that every christian is a missionary if we go back to the new testament and we see in the book of acts that when persecution arose in jerusalem we read that all of the christians were scattered except the apostles and those who were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the gospel that was the way the christian church was born not simply with the ministry of the clergy of the apostles or even of the deacons but it was the rank-and-file christian that took the gospel wherever they went in the ancient world and
but in our church today we make a distinction don't we between a professional missionary and a layman who is not a missionary but in biblical categories every christian in a sense is a missionary because every christian is called to participate in the mission that christ has given to the church well when i look at what we do with missionaries before we send them into a foreign country what do we have them do we don't just select a missionary put them on an airplane have them arrive in timbuktu or someplace like that and say okay do
your thing before a missionary can go to the foreign field that the person has to undergo in-depth study of the culture to which they are going they have to learn the language they have to learn the customs they have to be able to understand the way people think and the way they behave in the land to which they are sent as missionaries well let's assume that you are missionaries to the united states what's your preparation it's not enough simply to know the gospel to know the content of scriptures the subject matter that you want to
communicate and bear witness to your culture it is also very important that you understand the culture in which you are acting out your role as a missionary so that's the purpose of this series of lectures is to try to get a handle on the culture as it now presents itself to us as christians i think it would be a dreadful mistake to assume that the american culture is predominantly a christian culture certainly we live in a nation that has had an enormous influence from the church and from judeo-christian value systems it's not that our country
is pagan our country has been strongly influenced by christianity some have said that we've been influenced to the degree that people are influenced when they receive a shot of inoculation to prevent a disease that you put a minor dose of the disease in the inoculation so that they have just enough of it to be immune to the real thing and some have maintained that that's what has happened here in the american culture that we've had just enough christianity uh impacting our society as to make us immune from the real thing there's a sense as i
said in which our nation is not pagan paganism is a pre-christian situation it's a situation that exists where the gospel and the light of the gospel has never been manifest in a particular environment but that's not true about america ours is what i call a secular environment a secular society and sec the secularization of the american culture is a post-christian phenomenon not a pre-christian pre-christian is pagan post-christian is secularized now i think it's also important for us to understand that our culture is and has been a melting pot we don't live in a culture that
is monolithic what is monolithic a monolithic culture is a culture where only one definable worldview or value system is operating and there's kind of a uniformity as you find in some nations you go for example into red china and you see a uniform system of thought that everybody is supposed to embrace it's taught in the schools it's advertising posters and even the uniformity comes down to literal uniforms people dress in the same way as there is this enforced conformity but that's not been the american ideal the american ideal has been we are a melting pot
so that there are all kinds of different beliefs and philosophies competing for acceptance within our society and within our culture and if a christian is going to be able to communicate to this culture he has to be aware at least of the dominant systems that are operating within our culture as i said we're not monolithic but the term that we use is pluralistic and we'll have a separate study a separate lecture just on pluralism but the various schools of thought that are most dominant i believe in our culture today include the ones that i'm about
to put up here on the blackboard and we're going to look at each one of those individually in the lectures to come first of all there is the influence of what we call humanism as i say we will have a separate lecture defining the content and the perspective of humanism secondly there is the influence of existentialism how many of you think that you could give a good definition of existentialism how many of you have never heard the word existentialism right just a couple most of you have at least heard the term existentialism but it's one
of those terms that we hear bannied about in the culture but very few people are able to give concrete definition to we'll have a separate lecture on existentialism a third ism that has had a tremendous impact on our culture that most layman have never heard of is the ism called positivism how many of you have never heard of positivism see there's some more here that have more than have never heard of existentialism and also there's the influence of a very ancient uh perspective or or philosophy that we call hedonism how many of you have never
heard of hedonism how many of you have heard of hedonism you have heard of me i've heard of that okay all right and then there is as i said pluralism and relativism as its uh poor and there's one other ism that i'm going to incorporate up above with positivism which we call pragmatism which is a distinctly american life and world view right so let's see how many do i have there five humanism existentialism positivism pragmatism hedonism and pluralism and its corollary relativism all right those are going to be the systems of thoughts or philosophical perspectives
that we will be examining in this brief course but what i'm looking for today is this is there an overarching generic holistic philosophy or value system that would in some sense incorporate all of these been said that no society can survive no civilization can function without some unifying philosophical perspective even if you have all different kinds of views competing there must be some kind of overarching atmosphere or environment that makes it possible even for these to coexist in a given society and when the historians and the philosophers seek the common term that common basic generic
lowest common denominator that incorporates features of all of these usually the term that we hear is the term secular ism and that's what i want to look at in the time that we have left today let me do my handiwork here with the eraser and we'll start again with this word secularism obviously when we see that word we see that we have a root and a suffix and my favorite method of teaching is to do word studies and break these concepts down into its constituent parts so that we can get a hold of them there's
the word secular and then there is the suffix now let's start at the back and work our way forward anytime we see this three letter suffix ism what do we see what do we find what's it saying what's it do to the word you're allowed to answer my question you know what does it do huh what does ism do to a word it makes it a state of being a little bit more than that a philosophy a a system of thought a what what we call a vote on a way of looking at the world
a view of the world a value system it's one thing how many of you believe in in humans and i think that being human is a good thing it's one thing to be human it's another thing to be a human nest that is one who embraces humanism we all exist but we are not all existentialists are we you put that ism existentialism on the end of the route for existence and you're talking now about a philosophical system a whole way of looking at things you want to be practical but does that make you a pragmatist
of course not all right so we see that the suffix ism takes the root and elevates it to the level of a philosophical system now the word secular is a perfectly good and positive word in the christians vocabulary historically the church has always had a good view of that which was regarded as being secular i'm thinking in terms of the whole of the history of the church in the middle ages for example men were ordained to a specific role in the priesthood that was called the secular priesthood because those were men who had offices that
took them out of the arena or the institution of the church to minister out in the world where there were specific needs that needed the healing touch of the church or the priestly mission of the church there's a sense in which i was ordained as a secular clergyman because i was ordained to the teaching ministry not to an ecclesiastical office within a local congregation so i was commissioned to go to the university and to be a teacher out in the world if you will in the secular world that can be distinguished to some degree by
that sphere that we have set apart and called the church or the sacred realm but so often in christian's mind the distinction between sacred and secular is the distinction between the good and the bad but that's not the way it was meant to be in the development of church history it was simply a different sphere of operations okay now the word secular has its origins and its roots in the latin in the latin language it comes from the latin word ceculum which means do we have any latin scholars in here what does the latin word
ceculum mean what's its translation it means the word ceculum means in the original latin world okay i said a secular priest is one who ministers in the world what does the latin word mundus mean does anybody know world remember athanasius saint athanasius what was on his tombstone athanasius contra mundum athanasius against what the world all right so that mundus also means world well both words mean the same thing in the original latin what was the difference well the people in the ancient world understood that as human beings they lived in time and in space we
still talk that way don't we that our life is spatial it's geographical there is a certain awareness to my life i live here i am i am here i'm not somewhere else and there's also a time frame in which i live jesus talked about this place or this generation this age okay the present age so in the latin the word for this world thinking in terms of time is sacrum and the word for this world in terms of space is mundus now what in the world what in the mundus or the sacrum does this have
to do with our culture well ceculum or the secular had to do literally with this time this world in the present time the secular realm is this world in this pl this world in the present time now what happens to the word secular when you add the ism the basic overarching theme of secularism is this that all of reality all of life every human value every human activity must be understood in light of and judged by the value or the norm of this present time where's the point of conflict between secularism and christianity can you
see it coming the the new testament scriptures the biblical worldview is always concerned about long range considerations the bible teaches us that we were created for eternity that at the heart of the new testament message is that christ has come to give us life a life that wells up into what eternal life and that at the very beginning of our understanding of the world we read in genesis 1 1 in the beginning what god created the heavens and the earth so that we look at the earth and we see that it has a beginning in
space and time but before there is even a world if i can use the term before there is one who transcends the world one who stands above the world one who is outside of the restrictions of this space and time order that we call the world namely god in the beginning god and we as part of the the most core dimension of the christian faith we believe in a transcendent god a god out there a god who is beyond the confines of this planet a god who is transcendent and a god who is what eternal
and that all judgments that god makes all things that he does are done from the perspective of what of the eternal now in philosophy we call that that god considers everything sub species i turn a tautus now that's just a fancy latin phrase for a very simple idea that means that god considers everything under sub means under under the species or the auspices the auspices are from the perspective of the eternal in fact the admonition and the rebuke that christ brings to this world is that men are only thinking short term they're thinking in terms
of the now and only the now instead of the future consequences of their behavior long term and jesus says that he comes from above he descends from the eternal realm and he calls the christian to live his life in light of eternity and that his values are to be measured by transcendent norms of eternal significance i have a column that you know of in in uh in table talk our magazine and what's the what's the byline what's the title of the column right now counts what forever why did i choose that byline just to be
cute i did it because i said if there's only one message that i can give to my generation and i can say the same message over and over and over again until people begin to think about it it's that that's the one voice that i want to scream from the streets right now counts forever what you do now has eternal significance and i did that consciously aware of the fact that we are being pressed upon by every side from the philosophy of the secularist who says bottom line right now counts for what right now there
is no eternity there is no eternal perspective you've heard it said a jillion times there are no absolutes there are no abiding principles by which human life is to be judged it's to be embraced is to be invalu evaluated all reality is restricted or limited to the now we see it in in different phraseology in theology we've seen an attempt in 20th century theology to produce a secularized gospel remember the death of god movement one of the most important books that came out of the death of god movement by dr van buren was called the
secular meaning of the gospel in which he talked in terms of synthesizing classical christianity with the philosophy of secularism but how can you do that without declaring the death of god but you see the death of god in the terms of the loss of transcendence the loss of the eternal means for you the death of man because it means that history has no transcendent goal no eternal purpose that the meaning of your life is summed up in the words on the tombstone born 1925 died 1985 that's it you have eternal point a beginning and of
ending with no ultimate significance this is called the theology or the philosophy of the hick at nunc the here and the now well do you do you have to go to the library and get a dusty tome of philosophy a heavy weighty treatise on moral philosophy to be exposed to these ideas huh where else do you see it the media is full of it you know my favorite illustration of it is that as the the beer advertisement you only go around life once so uh do it with gusto and you see the guy on the
sailboat and this wind is blowing his hair and the salt spray is splashing against his face and he's having a fantastic time right now okay it's pepsi calls it what the now generation do it now get it now because the message that comes through crew is you better get it now because there is no tomorrow ultimately now we're going to consider hedonism later but one of the themes of the epicureans who were hedonists in antiquity one of their bottom line of their philosophy was eat drink and be merry for tomorrow you die contrast that with
jesus lay up treasures in heaven think in terms of eternity long range implications you see this touches us most heavily not simply in how we handle our bank accounts or in how we speculate philosophically but it touches us at the level of how we invest our lives because life is an investment and the question that modern man has to answer is is he going to invest his life for short-term benefits or for long-term gains and every time you are faced with a moral decision the temptation to do something now that may have harmful after effects
you are caught up in the tension and the conflict between two world views right now do we live for the present or do we live for eternity because again at the core of our biblical understanding of life and of our moral behavior is that there are actions and that every action not only has a cause but it also has what a result or a consequence and the consequence takes us to tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow what shakespeare say creeps in its petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time but for
the christian there is no last syllable of recorded time our lives are forever that beyond the secular or the seculum there is the eternal and that's what the christian faith is all about why should a person be worried about salvation in terms of personal redemption if there is no eternal dimension what is the mission of the church if secularism is correct why should we be concerned about redemption of individuals all we can really do and churches get into this all we can really do is minimize pain and suffering for a season we can never really
offer ultimate answers to the human predicament because for the secularist there is no ultimate answer because there is no ultimate realm this side of eternity is the exclusive sphere of human activity it's not by accident as we will see that for the most part those who buy in to secularism who are thinking people ultimately embrace a philosophy of despair and that despair will manifest itself in a host of ways escapism through drugs alcohol and other forms of behavior to dull the senses from the message that is being proclaimed indeed screened from every corner of our
culture there is no tomorrow ultimately it is a philosophy of despair and it is right now competing for men's minds in the united states of america what we're going to look at in the weeks to come are the constituent elements that make up secularism humanism you've heard of secular humanism there's also secularistic existentialism positivism and those different philosophies may be in the collision course with each other but they all embrace one common point namely the denial of the transcendent and of the eternal look for it in your culture be aware of it when you see
it for we need to understand the world in which we live
