HUMANISM'S DESPAIR AND EMPTY PURSUIT

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 still cares, then he's not fully invested in what is philosophy demands.  The humanist, fully committed and detached from God, is the center of his universe and he is all that matters.   

Now this is exactly what you get if you've been 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 breath 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 is achieved through selfish pursuits of drink and drugs. 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 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.

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 believed a lie. The old lie. And once a man has fully accepted it, he's a selfish, self-centered, self-gratifying, with no hope .

The real world with God in it is calling and offering to the humanist a way to real fulfillment and joy. It begins with Christ. Read the Bible and follow Him.
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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.