Seculosity: Living In A Culture Of “Not Enough”

Now that I’m finished with my program and taking some time off from school, I have more time to read choicebooks instead of textbooks. Thus, as I am entering this short season of rest, I am able to spend a little more time in writing. Interestingly enough (and not on purpose), the choicebooks that I am currently reading all seem to have a common thread to them and I am now finally wrapping my head around those thoughts and ideas that are increasingly growing by each passing day. The hope is to write one blog post a week in regards to one particular book that Ken has mentioned recently.

Author David Zahl’s remarkable book, Seculosity, makes it clear that the spiritual crisis of our age is that we are not less religious, but in fact more religious than ever before. We have simply migrated our religious-like fervor for salvation to certain things in our daily world to validate our “enoughness”.

There are some terms that need to be parse out in order to move forward with this series. Hopefully this will help anyone who reads these posts.

First, Capital-R Religion and lower-R religion has very two distinctive meanings. Imagery of robes, kneeling, and Buddy Christ are what we might call Capital-R Religion. Lower-R religion is when we direct our longings to a particular activity to tell us we are okay, that our lives matter, and there is a purpose spending our days climbing towards a dream of wholeness.

Secondly, Zahl’s unique term, seculosity, comes from marrying both ‘secular’ and ‘religiosity’. It is our attempt to fill the void left by religion to look to what is ubiquitous – from eating and parenting to dating and voting – for the meaning once provided on Sunday morning.

Lastly, ‘Performancism’ is the idea that who we are is defined by what we do. It is when we tie our identity and value directly to our performance and achievements. It follows that ‘enoughness’ must come from reaching some level of accomplishment. That is, as Zahl’s writes, “we believe instinctively that, were we to reach some benchmark in our minds, then value, vindication, and love would be ours – that if we got enough, we would be enough.”

Scripture and the Apostle Paul use a different word to describe our ‘enoughness’: righteousness. Modern language defines righteousness as “a behavior that is morally justifiable or right”; however, righteousness is sometimes translate in Scripture to mean “the state that is acceptable/approved by God”. In other words, our righteousness (or enoughness) has already been found.

For the next 9-10 weeks, I will be giving summaries of each chapter along with sprinkled reflections of my own. I hope you can join with me on this journey!