The Worship of the Skeptic

In today’s politically-correct and eagerly-offended world, much is made of names. What we choose to call ourselves reveals a great deal about who we are and what we believe, and what we choose to call others reveals perhaps even more. Though it is rare that I find myself concerned about such trivial things as names, I admit that I have given a fair amount of thought to what name I give to those who oppose what I believe.

More often than not I tend to call them skeptics, and I do so with great purpose and forethought. I use it as a broad brush with which to paint the wide swath of humanity that has not yet tasted the fruits of Christendom and have no hope in the Kingdom of God. I imagine that it includes the whole panoply of straying and stumbling individuals, from the man whose credulity toward modern science allows him to suffer the first real searing pangs of doubt, loosening his grip upon the faith he once professed so proudly, to the most fervent denier and despiser of the faith (or any faith). I use it—though it may be terribly inadequate—to describe those who are not complacent in merely disbelieving, but who refuse to sit idly by and allow others to bask in the freedom of faith—the anti-evangelist. Everything from the quiet, peaceful hesitancy of the struggling parishioner to the shrill battle cry of the militant God-hater. These are the skeptics.

But perhaps the one word is insufficient. Others choose to divide the skeptics into the agnostic and atheist schools—one is wary of God, the other disbelieves entirely. The former is okay, as there are some who are very genuinely uncertain, but I want to be adamant in asserting that I will no longer (unless, as right now, the situation demands it) use the word ‘atheist.’ I won’t use the word because I really don’t believe in such a creature. I think that the word itself presents a contradiction. Or, rather, I believe in the atheist, but in much the same sense that some might believe in unicorns. It seems possible, in theory, that some genetic malformation might result in a horned horse (though what evolutionary advantage such a modification might allow is difficult to imagine—certainly survival-of-the-fittest would quickly take care of such an abomination), just as the same might produce a man who truly knew no god, but it does not seem very likely.

Though the atheist is a mythical creature, the term remains in somewhat regular use, but I think it’s telling that even the disbelievers have progressively shied away from the word. It is difficult to say just what sort of politically correct reasons might be behind it (though I suspect that there is a decided pretentiousness about it), but a careful search of skeptical literature reveals a decided shift toward a preference for “secular humanist”. Secular humanist websites, secular humanist books, secular humanist churches (believe it or not).

This evolution of nomenclature among the skeptics has almost certainly not come about for the same reasons that I have discontinued use of the word, but I like to believe that there might have been some subconscious revelation. Atheist, taken literally, means to be “without god,” and though I readily admit that the humanist is a person who emphatically opposes the idea of god, and who rejects the truth and influence of religion, it can scarcely be said that to deny God is the same thing as to be without God.

Man is never—can never be—without God. The atheist is not a creature who has somehow found a way to throw off the shackles of his own nature, he has simply found some clever ways of disguising it.

Run from him though we may, man is incapable of fully rejecting his own nature, which is a nature of worship. We exist—and exist solely—to give glory. This very simple truth may be discovered not from a careful reading of the Bible, but from even a cursory examination of humanity.

Man is a creature created to worship.

To deny God is not to destroy God. Truth cannot be destroyed—it cannot even be damaged by disbelief.

The worshipfulness of man may not be directed toward God—it may, in fact, be intentionally directed away from Him—but it will never cease. It will never so much as wane. Worship is the one truly universal value; every man, whether theist or humanist, has his chosen (or default) object of worship. To many it is the worship of the self, as in the case of the humanist, who is at least somewhat honest about it. The humanist is a man who has divorced himself from the negativity of atheism for the much more accurate union with the self-worship of humanism. The humanist cannot deny that he needs an object for his worship, so he naturally chooses himself. He is not an atheist. He is not without god; he has readily embraced the god of man.

What seems to me the clearest and sanest objection to skepticism is this: One may stray from God, but in doing so one is inevitably straying toward something else. Man cannot escape this need to hold something up as supreme; to seek it with all his heart, soul and mind. The tragedy of skepticism is that almost inevitably this non-God object of worship is either man himself or something made by man. But has there ever been a creature less desiring of worship than man? Has there ever been a deity less worthy of glorification than a man-made object? At least the Romans, Norse, Greeks and Egyptians seemed to understand their own limitations enough to create mythology to direct their worship—even a false god seems preferable to a man-made one.

The truth of this is written in the tendencies of our hearts, but it has also played out over the course of history: Why did the Israelites flirt so regularly with rejecting God in their Exodus from Egypt? They did so because they refused to be led by a God who sought to lead them, and desired a new god who could be led. It is telling that they did not refuse to believe in God outright; they did not rebel by rejecting god and taking up atheism. They started no “death of god” movements and they raised up no altars to science or reason with the promise of being freed them from the very idea of God. They did not become atheists, they became idolaters. They would not be led by God, but in their humanness they sought to somehow regain control of their own lives. They turned to statues of gold; not that they believed there to be any deity within the statues themselves, but because they thought that if God could be made to dwell within a physical object, they might finally force deity to align itself with their interests rather than His. God may order them to one place or another, but their idol could be carried wherever they decided to go—and of course it led to their own enslavement and eventual destruction.

The idolatry of the Old Testament seems somewhat foreign and archaic to us today. Though this very literal idolatry may still be prevalent in some cultures today, our worship rarely takes on the form of bowing or praying to an inanimate object. Our tendencies are the same, but our gods have come to look a little different. We may think curiously of the Pentateuch when it speaks of “household gods,” but certainly even ancient Palestine, even the cities of Canaan, could not have dreamed of the menagerie of gods cluttering the homes and cities of the 21^st century. Our devotion to the things we hold dear—whether it is our lives, our money, our fame, or our things—is absolutely a form of worship, but a form of worship that absolutely pales in comparison to true worship.

True worship demands a true God. Worship that is worthwhile demands an object of worship that will not disappoint; an object that continually lives up to the glory that is ascribed to it. The scientist may find his worship in the mysteries of the universe, but how much more worthy is the One who set it all in motion? The materialist may worship money and possessions, but how much more worthy is the One who promises the eternal riches of glory? The humanist may worship man, but how much more worthy is the one man who was also God?

It is perhaps appropriate to seek to better understand the glories of the universe, and there is nothing outwardly wrong with hoping for a comfortable or successful life, but it is cold and empty and meaningless to believe that from any of this will come anything more satisfying than another way of passing time in a pointless life before a pointless death—a death that remains just as certain as it ever has, despite centuries of medical idolatry, the miracle of plastic surgery, and the unraveling of the genome. This is not an insignificant point—the life of man has remained the most consistent variable in the lives of man through his history. All will die, either to the nothingness of the skeptics, or the eternal reward or damnation believed by the Christian.

In the end, according to Kierkegaard, “There is only one proof that the eternal exists: Faith in it.” And faith in God arises most clearly and most definitely once the faith in all things less than God have proven their ill-worth. Only when the idols have proven their insignificance. Only when the humanist has lost his faith in humanity; when the materialist realizes that there is no hope in materials. Only then will the skeptic’s skepticism begin to crack and he will perhaps become open to a truer object of worship.