24 No one can serve two masters. He will hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Mammon.
25 Therefore I tell you: Do not worry about your life, what you will eat [or what you will drink], nor about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air! They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your Father in heaven feeds them. Are you not worth more than they? 27 And which of you, by worrying, can add a single cubit to his lifespan? 28 And why are you worried about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow! They neither toil nor spin, 29 but I tell you: Not even Solomon in all his splendour was clothed like one of these. 30 If God so beautifully clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, how much more will he not clothe you – you of little faith! 31 So do not worry, and do not say: ‘What shall we eat?’ or: ‘What shall we drink?’ or: ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 The nations are concerned with all these things. But your Father in heaven knows that you need all these things. 33 Seek first [God’s] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these other things will be given to you as well. 34 So do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Matthew 6:24–34
This Sunday’s Bible texts concern God’s care for us and the warning against losing Him, becoming too preoccupied with money and worried about life here and now. We cannot serve two masters, both God and Mammon.
But what does it mean to reject God and serve another master? This is a question that is rarely discussed. In political debate, I have yet to see anyone refer to the Triune God as the starting point for answers to what we call questions of values. But that does not mean rejecting belief in something. The challenge, then, is to establish what.
The organisation Human-Etisk Forbund (HEF) is among those attempting to formulate an alternative to Christianity and the Church. On its website, for example, it invites people to a civil confirmation ceremony and writes that it is a celebration of young people based on their own values.
HEF writes, among other things, that humanism is a way of understanding the world that places the human being at the centre – not an almighty creator. We are told that in humanism there is no absolute truth. Humanists see it as humanity’s task to seek knowledge and experience by being open to new knowledge and thinking critically. Yet they nevertheless believe that we as human beings are born with the capacity for ethical reflection and moral action.
It sounds beautiful when HEF claims that empathy, compassion and ethical awareness can be developed in good human communities. But when one admits that there is no definitive answer as to what is right and wrong, and no predetermined meaning to life, we should stop and think. For such an understanding means that we can never know who has the power to define what is right, wrong and good morality. But perhaps even more importantly: How can HEF tell a world that injustice exists when they say that everything is the result of a natural development?
In the past week, this understanding of reality led HEF to withdraw its support for Moss Pride. The reason is that the organiser of Moss Pride had invited people who adhere to biological science and do not recognise that trans women are women.
But in doing so, HEF reveals the challenge we face when belief in God is rejected. For the moment human beings are given the power to define human worth, absolute human worth is also abolished. For when human worth depends on human beings themselves, it is not anchored in anything higher than ourselves, and then the fate of women is determined by power. In large parts of the Western world, this shifting understanding of right and wrong has led to women having to accept that men, too, can be women and invade their privacy. In practice, this means that biological women are no longer to have the protection that Christianity has given them for almost 2,000 years.
It therefore also becomes a natural consequence that HEF withdraws its support for a Pride event to which defenders of biology had been invited. In the godless universe, everything becomes relative. That is the necessary consequence of abolishing the absolute standard that God gives us.
The challenge is that it is not possible, even with the aid of science, to say anything about why the universe and human beings exist, or why we experience that there is a moral standard by which we ought to live.
When a people abandons God, but nevertheless wishes to live according to what it regards as moral standards, we may see manifestations such as our own law on gender identity, the ban on conversion therapy, or various states’ laws on abortion and assisted dying. This shows how dangerous it is when states base their legislation on secular humanist thinking. They are so preoccupied with acting in a morally correct manner that they throw the baby out with the bathwater. For values are shifting quantities and call to mind Jesus’ warning about building one’s house on sand rather than rock.
Today’s secular humanists want to have it both ways. They like to talk about morality, but not about its having its origin in a lawgiver who is wholly good, holy and true. They themselves want to be the starting point of morality and to define its content. But they do not see how dangerous this is for freedom. Those who dare to oppose them become not merely ordinary political opponents; they also become enemies of morality and human rights.
We cannot serve two masters. But it is only God who gives the human being the position that secures our human worth. For when secular humanism claims that its belief places the human being at the centre – not an almighty creator, the consequence in reality is that God is gone. What is placed at the centre is the human being as the starting point of morality, but then the human being no longer has any protection.
It is only the God of love who can place us at the centre, which he indeed did, and to such an extent that he himself became man in order to give him eternal life with himself.