Francis Schaeffer said that humanistic reasoning only leads to despair and that the humanist comes to only value personal peace and materialistic wealth. In other words, the humanist only cares about himself. He doesn’t even care for his own children and grandchildren. If he says he still cares, then he’s not fully invested in what his philosophy demands. The humanist may say he loves, but it’s only his conscience that won’t admit the truth that he’s a selfish man who cares only for himself. Fully immersed, and detached from God, He is the center of the universe and he is all that matters.

Now this meaningless, self-centered existence is exactly what you get when you are fooled to leave God out of your world view. If you don’t have God, then the universe and your own life has no real meaning. You are just an accident, a chance meeting of atoms, that happens to breathe and think. But without God, you have to conclude you are going to return to the dust and there’s nothing more beyond that. It is an abysmal philosophy of life.

The personal peace a humanist seeks is achieved through selfish pursuits of drink and drugs and materialistic acquisitions. How many people today are sustained day to day only by being high? It’s rampant. The personal peace is an illusion and so the drugs have to be taken to achieve the escapist peace.

Escapist peace is really the detachment from the world by feeling good. Imagine if you will someone who takes a drug or drinks alcohol to such a measure that his or her mind is not in the least bit able to connect to the real world that you or I are in at this moment. They are escaping from the existence they’ve been fooled to believe in. The utopia they conceived that was freedom from the mystical or fanciful controls of an Almighty God turns out to be an empty place with no meaning. And so when they have turned from God, they turned to meaningless existence. They have no meaning. Their children and grandchildren have no meaning. And so they are reduced to feeling good through escapists means.

Escapism is pursued not only by drug highs, but it is also pursued by the the thrill of stuff. The materialistic pursuit of getting stuff. The lust for more stuff. Shiny stuff. Fun stuff. More and more must be acquired to keep the humanist excited and “alive”. If he or she doesn’t get more and more, he will think what is the point. Contentment doesn’t figure into the world view of the humanist.

Feeling good is god to the humanist. He has nothing else. He has closed his perfectly good and able mind to the thought that stuff doesn’t come from nothing. He has battled and beaten down his own spirit that cries out for meaning and for an affinity with the Creator. In doing so, he’s destroyed any chance of real happiness and meaning. He has believed a lie. The old lie. Once a man has fully accepted it, he’s become a selfish, empty, self-centered, self-gratifying, narcissistic fool. No God and no hope is found where his humanism has led him.

Think about it, Christian. We are all fighting the battles of sin. We are not immune to the temptations to set God aside in the pursuit of feeling good and acquiring things. If it ever takes hold in you, you will leave God. Why? Because humanism is a false god. And no person can serve two masters, Mt 6:24.

Bless you. Draw near to God. Love God. Love your neighbor more than yourself. True happiness and fulfillment is found only in Jesus Christ. Did not Jesus teach that the abundant life comes through death to self and living to God? Yes, Jesus is right. – Dan Mayfield

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Note, Schaeffer was no “prophet” in the Biblical sense, but he like many insightful individuals, like Orwell and other thinkers, could see where all of this was going.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNlvlia2Anc