Where Has the Love for God Gone?

The Modern Era

Introduction

Over the past few decades, the appreciation for at least the idea and authority of God and the acceptance of the importance of His Word has waned. Over a series of three articles, we will examine this question of where this love for God has “gone”. This week, we will examine what followed the Enlightenment: The Modern Era.

Misunderstanding “Modernity”

The idea of “modernity” to many people has come to simply mean “things of the present”. This was actually more true of the late 19th and into the 20th Centuries. This described a time of both great optimism and the rise of Humanism. Such a philosophy encouraged ideas such as:

Man’s Limitless Potential

This idea suggests that man is able to achieve basically anything when given the right resources and time. This has been manifested most in the great leaps in technology enjoyed over the last 100 years. The danger is that when man believes he is capable of anything, he sees little need for God.

The Primacy of Humanity

As an outgrowth of evolutionary theory and spontaneous generation theory (e.g. man’s origins being of purely cosmic occurrence and not of creation), true humanism places man himself as the head of all creatures. In essence, man himself becomes the object of worship as a god.

The Pursuit of Utopia

Countless death and sorrow has been caused by those who sought to bring about Heaven on earth. In a world where man believes he can build it, reason it, design it, etc., man has sought to build “a better world”.

Biblical Rejection

While such notions have been noted and rejected Biblically for many years (see all of Ecclesiastes), man came to believe that if we were to discount the supernatural, investigate rationally, and apply the ingenuity of our minds, we could care for every problem of man. However, the consequence of such ideas was to create a following generation which has become greatly cynical about the world at large.

The truth is, the most important problems of man cannot be bought, investigated, out thought, out engineered, or out maneuvered. Only the free gift of Christ can remove sin (Rom. 6:23). But, how do you convince someone that they need the help of Christ when they believe that they hold all the power in the universe?