All of us worship something. As the summer approaches, this becomes particularly evident as the oldest pagan God of them all – the sun god – rears his head and people rush to his temple.

Of course, even the most superficial analysis will reveal that what people are actually worshipping when they fry themselves in the sun of Malea and Faliraki in the summer – or in the tanning beds throughout the year in the case of especially devoted worshippers – is not so much the sun God as the gods of beauty and self. We are so desperate for adulation, so devoted to the pursuit of beauty, that we are prepared to serve the sun god in order to obtain the ‘golden’ blessing he offers.

The Bible calls such gods “idols”. Tim Keller has a very helpful explanation of how you can tell if you are worshipping an idol (as opposed to the God of the Bible): if the worship becomes mutually destructive, then the God you are serving is no true God but an idol that has enslaved you.

Reading an article about tanning in the Telegraph provided me with a poignant illustration of this mutually assured destruction and also helped me in the process to understand just how strong this idolatrous love of self is. In the words of Song of Songs 8:6, “…for love is as strong as death.”

The article (http://bit.ly/telegraph-tanning) speaks about girls who are addicted to tanning and were asked about what it would take for them to give up tanning beds, or at least reduce the number of hours they spend. The survey found that cancer was not as effective a deterrent as the risk of premature ageing.

There could not be a clearer example in modern culture of love being stronger than death. These girls would literally risk death for the sake of their God. The characteristic of worshipping an idol – a false God – is that the more devoted you are, the more your destruction is assured, usually by your own hand.

Idolatrous worship is an absolute guarantee of destruction

There is, however, a God, the worship of whom does not lead to mutually assured destruction. Devotion to him is a guarantee of safety; it is a relationship of mutually assured cultivation and blessing. He is a God whose slavery brings freedom, whose mastery brings redemption and whose death brings life. All those who trust in the death and resurrection of Jesus understand Song of Songs 8:6… but in a very different way to the modern worshippers of the sun God, Ra. They understand that love is as strong as death because it was love that prompted God the Father to send his Son to die in place of people who had rejected him. The sun God punishes those who worship him; the God of the Bible saves those who have rebelled against him.

We would be most naïve simply to assume that only young girls who go to tanning salons are enslaved to modern idols; all of us worship something. The question is not whether you believe in God… but what kind of God do you serve.

Having recently celebrated 200 years since the abolition of slavery I think that there probably aren’t many people left in the world who support the idea of slavery – of having another human being as ‘property’ and being in control of their life and actions.

So, reader, if I were to ask you today if you supported slavery, I can’t imagine you saying yes and I wouldn’t insult you by implying that this answer was anywhere near your thoughts. However, if you said ‘yes’ AND happened to ascribe to philosophical naturalism (ie. you’re an atheist/agnostic who bases this belief largely in evolutionary biology), then I would have to respond with, “Really…??”

It’s quite a simple and obvious point but philosophical naturalism does not allow for any fundamental distinction between human beings and the rest of the animal kingdom (at least not in terms it would be proud of – it’s not the most pleasant thought to tell something you have more rights than it because you “got there first”, which would be the only justification we have for any such distinction between us and animals, by virtue of us being higher up the evolutionary ladder). In terms of rights, privileges and responsibilities to the world and other creatures this system does not and cannot prescribe such things to one kind of animal and not to another (and when it does, we have eugenics and ‘Brave New World’ scenarios); its best bet is to remain neutral and plead ignorance. What this means is that while it is all very well to speak out against slavery… in order to be consistent with this belief (that slavery is wrong) then the principles of human dignity and human rights must be extended to other animals too. So, no killing animals, keeping animals, farming animals for their fur or milk or eggs – nothing.

In saying this, I don’t think I am being offensive or preposterous. There are more and more people who do feel that they need to be consistent on this point. So, vegans (although not all people are vegans for this reason necessarily) and those advocating equal rights for all primates are just a couple of examples.

What’s my point. I’m not trying to make anyone look silly for their beliefs or even ridicule any beliefs in particular. What I am trying to highlight once again is rather the inadequacy and poverty of the secular, naturalistic wordview when faced with these rather important issues. Science might be great at describing how things work and evolution certainly provides a reasonable explanation of certain processes… but they cannot touch these areas that are so important to our society, our sensibilities and our very well-being and future.

There is no mechanism in science – or any other secular framework for that matter – to make the kind of distinctions we need between humans and other animals that lead to declarations of independence and human rights. How would you define ‘dignity’ if you do not believe in a personal, higher authority who vests it on others. And, crucially, how do you decide who deserves dignity? We may ask for bigger pens for the animals we plan to kill and eat but it is still undignified to exist in order to be eaten with no hope of reprieve. We must understand that the only way the founding fathers of the USA could say “we hold these truths [ie. pertaining to human liberty and dignity] to be self-evident” is because of a theistic framework. Apart from this framework, who am I to say that non-human animals should or shouldn’t have their liberty reduced or removed? It comes down to a matter of power and ‘dog-eat-dog’. And neither should I interfere with other people’s choices. What about when it comes to humans? What reason do I have to object to paedophilia and bestiality when science cannot provide any kind of distinction between animals and humans or grown-ups and children that would tell me that such things are wrong? Consensus is one option but that just leaves me open to the tyranny of the masses. A million lemmings can’t be wrong…

Do you believe in slavery? Ultimately, before we look at the animals, we must look at ourselves. We may have abandoned the enslavement of Africans but I guess this was inevitable largely because it was too obvious. Under the radar in the 21st century, slavery is well and truly alive, through pornography and trafficking of women and children and the economic slavery of the third world - which we are all complicit in, either through looking at porn (blokes, just try and deny it), thereby perpetuating it in all its forms, legal and illegal, or by showing our indifference in how thoughtlessly we spend our money, choosing to buy another pair of jeans rather than giving a tenner towards wells in Africa or sponsoring a little kid’s education.

It is a credit to the secular liberals that they stand up on these issues more than most but as well as standing up with them, I would like to challenge them on what I hope to persuade you is the most significant form of slavery that needs to be addressed (since it is the root of all others), which is our slavery to ourselves. I would challenge the secularists on this because what I am talking about is the very klaxon call of secularism itself – that we should be ‘free’ to follow our hearts, unencumbered by any God and his dictates. But look where our hearts lead us! Surely all forms of ‘blatant’ slavery can be traced back to the original slavery – the one we all individually have sold ourselves to as we put ourselves daily before other people and ultimately, before God. Kierkegaard’s definition of this kind of slavery (the Bible calls it sin) is that it is ‘building my identity on anything but God’ (Sickness Unto Death) – this is what leads us to put ourselves before others, because anything that gets in the way of this and ‘denies’ us must be pushed aside, or else we lose our identity. But when your identity is in God, nothing can rock it; it is secure. And can I just say, if you believe that you are not enslaved in this way to yourself and your identity building (whatever that might look like), then you are the first person since Jesus of Nazareth even to make such a claim. The fact is, we all demonstrate our slavery to ourselves when we perpetuate slavery in the world.

So what about a solution….? Some people look at the third world debt and think to themselves – “why should we help them when they have mostly brought it on themselves…?” The fact is that the west is taking steps to clear the debt of the third world – at great cost to itself. The only difference is that they are doing it largely out of expediency – when God considered our debt and sent his son to free us from our slavery, he didn’t do it out of expediency, he did it out of love.