There are an awful lot of things you can point to in society at present that have a God-shaped hole. So said Douglas Murray in an interview about a month ago. I like Douglas Murray, I like his political view, his assessment of what's going on in the west these days. But why do unblievers always manage to so completely distort the Christian message? Well, he's gay and I suppose he has a problem with the biblical pronouncements against homosexuality. Or maybe, come to think of it, it's that he has the common misappehension that Catholicism is Christianity. Even some Christians have that wrong idea though, a failure of education. I hasten to add that there must be some true Christians within the Roman Church, but the institution itself is not Christian, it's pagan, pagan with some Christian ornaments subverted to its paganism.
But the God-shaped hole is about the human soul. Nothing in "society" can have a God-shaped hole. Society may offer us all kinds of substitutes to try to fill our souls but in itself it can't HAVE a God -shaped hole. He seems to have the idea that this is a condition in which since the society has abandoned the God of Christianity, society is looking for something to fill the gap. Perhaps politics. Perhaps art. Etc. It's a fair way of thinking, it just isn't what the God-shaped hole means.
It would be better if he had another term for that. "God-shaped hole" specifically refers to the human soul. We are made in the image of God and until we commit ourselves to God we will always feel this unfillable hole in us, in our souls, in the core of out being. So, yes, some point out that unbelievers may try to fill heir own God-shaped hole with alcohol or other addictions or material wealth, "toys" and so on, and I guess that's a fair enough notion, since the point always is that you can't fill the hole that way. I might also add here that you can't fill it with the sort of "higher" thoughts that Jordan Peterson wants to fill it with. It's GOD-shaped, it isn't idealism-shaped, it isn't good-works shaped etc, it's GOD-shaped. "You made us for Yourself and we are restless until we rest in Thee." Augustine?
The fallen human being, no matter how intelligent, sane, high-minded, devoted to good works, can never get it right. Just can't. Doesn't have the spiritual faculty that makes it possible to get it right. We lost that faculty at the Fall, lost it all the way back in Eden, and like the loss of, say, the function of the appendix, we all inherit that loss, it comes down to us through our ancestors. The fallen human being still has a broken image of God in his nature, still has a conscience though that too can be compromised, and in this fallen world the only way we can fill the God-shaped hole is through God's merciful redemption of us from our fallenness, by grace through faith in Christ's life and death in our place, and the regeneration, the new birth, that restores our apiritual connection with God.
