Say this for Sartre, at least he was facing up to the implications of his philosophy: Without God, the universe is a gloomy place indeed. Not many people can live with that. (Maybe that’s why Sartre reportedly converted to Christianity on his deathbed.) More often, irreligious people try to put on a happy face, seeking to convince others — and, more important, themselves — that they’re really not missing out on anything worthwhile. Many make a point of saying that while they’re not religious, they’re “spiritual” in their own way, and that’s all they need for their happiness and well-being.

So I wasn’t surprised to run across an article in the Webzine Slate about the rise of “secular officiants.” These are people who

create religion-free life-cycle rituals commemorating everything from birth to death, puberty to menopause. Advertising through Web sites like SecularCeremonies.com and ARiteToRemember.com, they attract those who have abandoned traditional religion — atheists and the “spiritual but not religious” alike—along with those who feel abandoned by religion—for example, unmarried parents.

Click to some of those sites and you quickly get the feel for this sort of thing.

At Secular Ceremonies, they’ve got “commitment ceremonies” for the “Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender” and for the “polyamorous.” (If you’ve never heard of the latter, just think “not monogamous.”) They’ve got “Humanist Weddings” where people “commit” to — well, whatever they feel like. (Couples make “agreements to govern their marriage” — and “those agreements can be anything the couple chooses.”) They’ve got “Divorce and Separation Rituals.” (“Relationships don’t really end … they just change form.”) They’ve even got “Religion Recovery Counseling,” to free people from “fear, guilt and self-doubt.” (Many of their clients are “really angry about the religions they were brought up with,” Secular Ceremonies founder Terri Mandell-Campfield tells Slate.)

Then step on over to A Rite to Remember, where you can get “ceremonies tailor-made for your life, your relationships, and your personality.” Here they specialize more in the spiritual-but-not-religious client. Ann Keeler Evans, billed as a “theologian and a spiritual circuit rider for today's ecumenical world,” says she’ll help “put sense and the sacred back into the passages of life in this complex and confusing world.” Only it looks like shedoes have a religion she’d like to pull you toward: pagan goddess-worship. (“We are made in Her image and there is much to celebrate! Welcome the possibilities and responsibilities of being a woman with the turning of the seasons and the waxing and waning of the moon: Menarche, Maturation, Motherhood, Menopause, Dark and Full Moon ceremonies.”)

You could make fun of this stuff, but you also have to be sad about it. No doubt some of these groups’ clientele did have bad experiences in their religious upbringing that, often, didn’t represent true Christianity. Some may have had emotionally abusive parents who reduced the faith to a legalistic “behave or be punished” approach. It’s understandable that they might feel cut off from Christianity based on their own misperceptions. Yet they also long for a sense of meaning in their lives. They feel a spiritual hunger that craves — well, they know not what.

All that said, though, it must also be said that the secular-ceremonies movement is fundamentally selfish.

If there’s one common thread between all these types of ceremonies, it’s a variant on the old Burger King slogan “Have It Your Way.” Just look at the language. “Commitment” is defined as “anything the couple chooses.” (And for the “polyamorous,” “couple” can easily be replaced with “trio,” “quartet” or, in principle, “the Seventh Fleet.”) Ceremonies are to be “tailor-made for your life, your relationships, and your personality.” (Never mind any oppressive old notions about God’s design of us as men and women meant to relate with each other in particular ways.) And “fear, guilt and self-doubt” are simply assumed to be inherently bad — as if the job of the conscience were to hand out warm fuzzies to each of us or shut up. (The best response may be the sarcastic words of a character in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra: “That truth should be silent, I had almost forgot.”)

In short, the secular-ceremonies movement appeals to the same spirit to which the serpent in the Garden appealed: “Then you will be like God.” Secular ceremonies deliver all the seemingly important trappings of Ritual and Meaning, but it’s clear that God isn’t invited to the ceremony. His role has already been taken by the participants.

Lest Christians think we're not tempted to this sort of idolatry, though, we should consider a few more words from the Slate article.

It’s not as if traditional religions are immune from our culture’s emphasis on the individual. … Today, in this country, the most up-and-coming faiths are those that tap into this individual-centric worldview. It’s no coincidence that evangelical Christianity is ascendant in the Protestant world just as many boomers and their children are seeking “personal spirituality” outside of churches and synagogues and through secular ceremonies. Like the “secular spiritual” crowd, evangelicals are all about the individual, although for them the religious life centers around the born-again experience and the resulting personal relationship with Christ.

Does he have a point? I think so. True, evangelicals don’t go so far as the secular-ceremonies folk: They know they’re under the Lordship of the One who created the moral order, and they don’t claim the right to remake that order into “anything you choose.” But many churches (and even more Christian bookstore resources) put a heavy emphasis on a rewarding lifestyle — how you can have a better marriage, a better career, etc., if only you do it “with Jesus.” That can be dangerous, especially when every other voice we hear already urges us to seek self-fulfillment above all. We risk coming to see Jesus primarily as a means to our own ends.

He, of course, would fix our eyes elsewhere. And one way He does it is with rituals. Christian weddings give us His Word, telling of His creation of man and woman and His purposes for the life they are to have together. Christian funerals shun hollow worldly comforts (expressed in clichés like “she’s alive in us as long as we remember her”) and testify to the true comfort of eternal life in Christ.

There’s no cutting God out of such rituals. He’s inescapably present: In fact, He’s at the center. Which is just where He wants us to be looking. He knows that’s the most fulfillment our selves will ever find.