In the wake of the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral, cultural commenters are searching for the meaning of this destructive blaze.
Conservative talk show host, Dennis Prager, sees it as a spiritual omen: “The symbolism of the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral, the iconic symbol of Western Christendom, is hard to miss. It is as if God Himself wanted to warn us in the most unmistakable way that Western Christianity is burning — and with it, Western civilization.”
Canadian commentator Mark Steyn noted on the Tucker Carlson show: “The (French) people are mourning, but I don’t think they are mourning just for their culture, art, history, or, architecture—they are mourning for something else. But what that something else is, post-Christian France can’t quite identify.
They do not realize they’ve lost the sense of the transcendent meaning of life that generations before them treasured. In just a few years, France let go of their faith in God in favor of an aggressive belief in secularism—no God, Bible, or Ten Commandments, is necessary for morality or meaning: reason (and science) will replace them (Prager).
Must we follow France into meaninglessness?
Over Easter Weekend, I viewed The Ten Commandments, Charlton Heston’s powerful portrayal of Moses watching the fiery finger of God write the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone.
Under our watch, we have allowed the Ten Commandments to be removed from the public square, the Bible from our schools. And in less that 20 years, as Richard Fernandez notes, “marriage was redefined from its centuries-old meaning as a union between a man and woman to include homosexuals.
“Abortion became a progressive sacrament. Concepts of gender and race, which some had thought to be immutable, were transformed in a few short years into a veritable smorgasbord of categories (Belmont Club, April 19, 2019).
But the radical Left’s belief that secular reason can replace God and the Bible turns out to be completely wrong. Just look at the psychological imbalance going on in them—they are the most irrational and morally confused people among us.
We were made for something more
In the early 60s the Swiss psychotherapist, C. G. Jung on BBC said: “Man cannot stand a meaningless life.” Created in the image of the Master Creator, we seem to intrinsically know that we were made for something more.
Religion has traditionally supplied the framework for our answers to the question of meaning. Yet, according to Jung the institutional religions of his day did not seem to be meeting this need.
Author Norman Vincent Peale explains: “For decades many churches (Catholic & Protestant) have emphasized a social gospel. They teach that Christianity is a social manifesto for change in society’s structure, rather than the power of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit to change individuals from within.” Why?
Several hundred years before, Western Christianity denied the supernatural as a valid source of knowledge in favor of reason. Forty-nine percent of the New Testament contains references to spiritual (non-rational) experiences. To be bound by rationalism will effectively limit the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers.
If we are not spiritually relating to God, but only rationally, we will lose our opportunity to flow in the Holy Spirit; to receive guidance through dreams and visions; and to commune with the Lord in a dialogue and to fully experience the inward benefits of true worship.
God can be experienced
We may have tried many things, but they never satisfied us. We intuitively know there is something really missing. Whatever we lost in the Garden of Eden, we want it back.
Thank God, something keeps driving us, until we get the spiritual breakthrough and touch that which is missing: Life— it’s the Spirit of life that comes from God, the Spirit that God breathed into Adam. This is what is missing.
My friend Pauline was quite religious growing up, but one day she realized nothing had ever changed in her. She prayed, “God I go to you over and over, and nothing changes. How come?”
That’s when the Lord answered her: “You just practice religion, but you don’t know me.”
It was true. She believed in God, but yet she didn’t know him. It wasn’t long before she had an experience with God that radically changed her life. She’d found what she’d been looking for all those years.”
When we find it, we have what we are searching for: peace, joy, righteousness, fullness of the Holy Spirit, and fullness of life. This is what people are looking for.
Because of the Spirit of the living God, we are adequate to serve a new covenant, one written on tablets of our heart.
Who made us adequate as servants of the new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Corinthians 3:3-18)