Have you ever had a friend who very clearly had a problem that they were in denial about?

Maybe they were doing drugs, maybe there were drinking too much, or maybe they were spending too much money that they didn’t have. Whatever it was, they surely had a lot of good excuses about why whatever the problem was, wasn’t a problem.

As a friend, you only have a few choices about how to handle someone who doesn’t want to admit that they have a problem. You can either compromise the friendship by repeatedly pointing out what is wrong with them, maintain the friendship by ignoring and enabling the behavior or you can distance yourself from the relationship and watch their life fall apart until they finally admit that they might in fact…you know…have a problem.

Lately, that is what has been going on between my friend Modern Society and I. They have a spiritual drinking problem but they refuse to admit it because they don’t think that the problem exists. That’s what happens to people who get too drunk on science.

No matter what I say or how hard I try, Modern Society is impossible to reason with! They refuse to accept the fact that their logic is flawed and they could be wrong. Somewhere, somehow they were led to believe that they have the ability to decide if Spiritual Problems exist or not based on what they choose to believe, but that’s not reality. Reality is that they are drunk and that’s not how it works. Believing that one has the power to determine the existence of something like God is a sign of delusional thinking.

A rational person understands that what they believe doesn’t determine if God exists or not. What they believe determines if they want to live in denial or not. It’s a choice. You either decide you are living in God or you live in denial of God. Those are the foundations of two very different realities, only one of which can be true. If God is the reality in some people’s lives, then that proves that God must be the reality in all people’s lives. People just choose to live in denial, even though the logic for existence is true.

And what makes one so irrational that they’d rather live in denial of something’s potential instead of acknowledging that potentiality implies something’s unrealized existence?

A Modern Society that takes shots of Science for breakfast because it doesn’t believe in Spiritual Problems.

Imagine trying to talk to an alcoholic friend you run into one night who is clearly very drunk, but not quite belligerent. They’re just drunk enough to think that they’re fine, but you know better so, you have to try to stop them from driving around in their brand-new Modern Society.

They keep trying to tell you that they’re not drunk but you know they are because you’ve seen alcohol before, you know it exists, you know what it does to people and you know this friend has a drinking problem and yet they insist that they’re not drunk because there is no physical evidence around to prove it.

“PROVE IT,” they say, “PROVE that I have been drinking. I’m not drunk, there’s no alcohol here. You’re trying to force me to believe what you believe and you need to back off because you’re creating a problem that doesn’t exist!”

And while they make a good argument, everything is NOT actually fine and there IS actually a problem because you KNOW that they’re drunk and your kids are in that Modern Society and you don’t want them being driven around in it by someone drunk.

At this point, there’s nothing that will satisfy your friend’s request to prove that they’re drunk unless you actually catch them drinking and that’s not going to happen because they’re about to get in the car!

What do you do when your friend is drunk enough that they don’t think that they’re drunk and they’re a threat to not just themselves, but to others? Do you just let them go or do you have a moral obligation to rip the keys out of their hands and pin them to the ground?

That’s where I’m at with Modern Society. I feel like I have a moral obligation to pin my friend down and rip the keys out of their hands, but they’re so much bigger and drunker than me that I can’t do it all on my own!

I suppose the only thing left to do is write this post and try to present an analogy that’s difficult to argue with.

“I can’t prove you’ve been drinking too much alcohol, but you’re acting drunk and there’s a bunch of empty bottles in the trash,” is like saying, “I can’t prove you’ve been drinking too much science, but society is pretty messed up and there’s a bunch of religious books in the trash.”

You can’t prove that your friend is drunk because there are empty bottles in the trash just like you can’t prove that society is pretty messed up because there are a bunch of religious books in the trash….but you can look at the circumstances and put two and two together.

So, that’s what’s going on with my friend Modern Society. It is very obvious that there is a spiritual problem, but they won’t admit it and I’ve done all the things that a friend is expected to do. I’ve had a couple sips of Science to maintain the friendship, I’ve compromised the friendship by repeatedly pestering them to admit that they have a problem and now I’m at the point where I’ve had to distance myself entirely to watch my friend fall apart until they are finally willing to admit that they have a Spiritual Problem and start asking me to help them stop drinking science.

“Are you ready to admit that you have a Spiritual Problem now Modern Society?”

I’m waiting….