Signs of the
Total Secular State
Or
The Total Absence of God
I
Gradually the loss
of human dignity
Is no belief in
the sanctity of life.
Filled with
ambiguity,
The new secular
order rife
With its version
of people value
Creates a culture
for each individual,
A dignity seemingly
better than biblical.
II
The politics of
covenant is gone,
A collective
responsibility forsaken
For the common
good previously undertaken.
Deep roots has a relationship
of covenant,
A willing
sacrifice for the sake of others.
Secular citizens begin
caring less
About any such
political fundament
And more about their
private living.
Society dissolves
into a series of pressure groups, chilling.
No deep, stable
structure
Lives in the
secular ever-variable.
The steady
religious tenet they puncture
With lies never tenable.
The secular floats
on the surfaces,
On tides and waves
uncertain,
No meaning and no
purposes,
The real life
behind their curtain.
III
Morality also a
loss,
Though citizens
not necessarily immoral.
Words losing force
and original meanings now dross.
Duty, obligation,
honor, integrity, loyalty and trust,
In secularism, all
a loss.
IV
Relationships no
longer consecrated,
Marriage becomes a
mistress.
New forms of
friendship reconfigure and break
Relationships with
no emotional distress.
The idea of
marriage as commitment,
A loyalty at the
depths of our being,
Easy to discard
and unsustainable,
Bring personal
resentment.
Fewer people
marry,
More divorces
ensue,
Parents with no
connection to their children,
Bonds across
generations subdued.
V
The possibility of
life meaningful,
Not a personal
project
As offered by
secular culture,
But from the
outside bedecked
As a call, a
mission, a vocation.
From the outside
means a Transcendence,
Perhaps the final
religious functioning in your presence
To teach, heal,
and fight all forms of injustice.
The total secular
order
Has no space for transcendence,
vocation, or the life meaningful.
Conclusion
When life floats on
the surfaces
It is a
purposeless and self-centered fantasia.
Life becomes
meaningless and disposable
In the form of
abortion and euthanasia.
This is a versed adaptation/interpretation taken from the writings of Rabbi
Jonathan Sacks’
The Great
Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning.
Schocken Books/Random House, New York, 2011, pp. 103-4.
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