... man putting himself at the center of everything.

In his book Worldviews: A Christian Response to Religious Pluralism, Anthony J. Steinbronn writes,

“According to Stott (Between Two Worlds), the missionary task is -

‘faithfully to translate the Word of God into modern language and thought-categories, and to make it present in our day.  However, if we are to build bridges into the real world, and seek to relate the Word of God to the major themes of life and the major issues of the day, then we have to take seriously both the biblical text and the contemporary scene … Only then shall we discern the connections between them and be able to speak the divine Word to the human situation with any degree of sensitivity and accuracy.’

At the heart of this bridge-building activity is a threefold commitment by those who are serious about making disciples of all nations: (1) studying God’s Word; (2) studying one’s target culture; and (3) discerning and constructing missiological bridges that communicate the apostolic message into the hearts and minds of the hearer because “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17).”  (Kindle Locations 154-163).

In the study of our culture, Steinbronn identifies what I believe to be the foundation upon all that drives and authorizes much of our culture.  I fear that it is the same thing that is behind and drives the exodus from the true church for the non-denominational churches and gives rise to those who confess to being “spiritual” but not “religious”. 
What is it? HUMANISM!   Steinbronn goes on:

“What Is Humanism? There are three basic humanistic principles that provide the core assumptions of humanism:

NATURALISM – the rejection of the supernaturalist worldview that understands God as the ultimate source of all existence and value.
ANTHROPOCENTRISM - Reuben Abel traces the origin of modern anthropocentric thought to an assertion by Protagoras that man is the measure of all things. (See Reuben Abel, Man is the Measure, New York: Free Press, 1997.)
SCIENTISM – the view that science is the measure of what exists and of what does not exist. Since the Enlightenment period, the Christian truth-claims have had diminishing effectiveness for many people, partly because they have seemed inconsistent with the understanding of the world in modern science.

• Humanism is a system whereby man, beginning absolutely by himself, tries rationally to build out of himself, having only man as his integration point, to find all knowledge, meaning, and value.
• It is ‘the effort of modern man to find the meaning of his life in his own purposes or in his own communities and historical causes.’  Glover, Biblical Origins of Modern Secular Culture, 109.
• In a thoroughly anthropocentric world, there is no room left for God.
• The world spirit of our age, observed Francis Schaeffer, is autonomous man setting himself up as God in defiance of the knowledge and moral and spiritual truth that God has given.
• Humanism is freedom from “any restraint, and especially from God’s truth and moral absolutes.” Schaeffer, Great Evangelical Disaster, 315.
• Humanism, in its most fundamental expression, is man putting himself at the center of everything.

Worldviews: A Christian Response to Religious Pluralism
Anthony J. Steinbronn, (2007-01-01).
Concordia Publishing House. Kindle Edition. (Kindle Locations 439-444).

As much as we need to understand this humanism, it is critical that we understand it to be the most pure, raw and unleashed form of the old man born of original sin in the drivers seat.  As such it is all part of the first illusion Satan cast for Adam and Eve - that they could be like God.  
Truly there is nothing new under the sun. 
May the Lord grant us the wisdom of His Word and Spirit to articulate His Law so as to put the old man to death so that we might speak His Gospel by which He might resurrect a new life in all. 

- pmwl