Oh It’s a Wonderful Life

Listen to Episode

Please note, this is an A.I. transcript of the podcast Thinking Out Loud Together. As such, it will lack the polished quality of an actual blog post. It’s provided for those who prefer reading to listening. Special thanks to Mark for volunteering to humanize the process by shaping the wording into a more readable format.

Nathan

Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your cohost, Nathan Rittenhouse.

Cameron

and I'm your co-host Cameron McAllister.

Nathan

Cameron, today I would like to ask you about the components of It's a Wonderful Life. We'll start with the film, a classic for this time of the year, and then move on to what people love about that film, and finally think about what it means to have a wonderful life in 2023. So that's the trajectory we're on here. So, to start, you're the film guy. Fill us in. I'm going to go out on a limb and say, the majority of our audience has seen the film "It's a Wonderful Life" but can you give us the Cameron Spark Notes version? Bring us all up to speed.

Cameron

Well, the first thing is that most people didn't like It's a Wonderful Life when it came out. I don't know if you knew that, Nathan. This movie was a real commercial failure. The reason you, I, anybody knows about It's a Wonderful Life is actually kind of a happy accident. It was released in the public domain for a little while and for that reason got wide circulation. More and more people came to see it, and it became a classic at that point. I think it was 1946 when It's a Wonderful Life was released and my favorite critic of all time, James A.G. (wonderful, marvelous writer, love his reviews and his film essays), hated It's a Wonderful Life. This is one of those moments where you even had some of the best critics arrayed against this film. He thought it was very sentimental and it just didn't do well. Now, James Stewart (who plays George Bailey the main character of the movie) came to regard this as his favorite film he had ever done. I don't know how many movies are in James Stewart's filmography, but it's extensive. The man had a massive acting career. So, the fact that he came to view this as his finest achievement or the film that he had the fondest memories of is pretty remarkable. Of course, now It's a Wonderful Life is not regarded at all as a failure. In fact, when most people hear it was regarded as a failure, they are shocked because this is the Christmas classic for many. It seems to be carried down from generation to generation. I have seen some jokes recently about how millennials haven't embraced it as much and all of that. Nathan, you and I are in the same category here; the generation speak, it's a little annoying to me after a while. In my experience, I'm a geriatric millennial, but I grew up watching it and loved it and have cherished it and I think plenty of other people have as well.

Nathan

And I think it's safe to say that for anything with a 1946 release date, we can say whatever we want and consider that not to be a spoiler alert because; if you haven't seen it, you've had time.

Cameron

Oh yes. Oh yeah, there will be spoilers, but it's 1946, so get over it. But also, yeah, I think I saw something obscene the other day. (I'm gonna get myself in trouble here, but I don't care, because here we go) Somebody said, "You know, for us millennials, the Muppets Christmas Carol is our It's a Wonderful Life". Absolutely not. What utter nonsense.

Movie Summary

Nathan

So, summarize the film for us as best you can.

Cameron

Well, I mean, this is the story of George Bailey, (who is mostly played by James Stewart) and he lives a life of self-sacrifice. It's also worth pointing out here, Nathan, this movie is heavy going. It's heavy stuff. So as a kid, there were several scenes in this film that really upset me. So I'm going to give you a series of vignettes rather than just the boring plot summary.

The movie begins with George Bailey saving his brother's life because there's a sledding accident and his brother falls through the ice. He saves his brother's life. But then there's another scene; when I was a kid, I associated black and white films that my parents would let me watch with kind of a sentimental or softer vision of reality. And yet in the beginning parts of It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey is an assistant for a pharmacist. The pharmacist is grief-stricken because he's lost his son and he's drunk. So, he gets the prescription wrong, and he puts the wrong pills into a bottle. And this is a mistake that would cause a fatality if this actually happened. So, George challenges the pharmacist. The pharmacist is so distraught and so upset that he starts slapping George. George sustained an injury in one of his ears from saving his brother. So, as he slaps him, then there's blood coming out of his ear in this scene. And finally, the druggist realizes the mistake he's made and is very repentant and hugs George. So, this is a film that may be accused of sentimentality, but when you watch it, I think you're gonna be surprised. It's pretty rough in some scenes. 

Nathan

Yeah, so far, you're really selling it as a wonderful life.

Cameron

Right. Well, I mean, there's a whole lot of reality packed into this movie. It's worth pointing out in my colleague and friend Ken Boa has a wonderful analysis of this movie. This is one of Ken Boa's favorite movies. Ken points out that George Bailey does a lot of good things, he's a good man in most ways, but he's also a deeply flawed character. From the start of the movie, there's a there's a hardness and there's a bitterness to him. And that's absolutely true.

Another scene that upset me as a kid, is when the girl who he's gonna end up marrying is falling in love with him. But he is simultaneously realizing in this moment that if he marries her (Mary) his dream of being a world traveler, seeing the whole world getting out of Bedford Falls, also has to die. Or at least it has to take a backseat because he'll be married, he'll have a responsibility. And so, he grabs her very roughly and he shakes her and he said, "I don't want to get married". There's a rough pain to that scene and it's never comfortable watching a man shaking a woman. So, there are a lot of scenes like that and then there's the existential crisis that George goes through where he attempts suicide. And again, I'm hopping all over here, but the movie begins and ends with a prayer. The film begins with the kind of heavenly perspective of all these prayers for George Bailey.

So, the movie sort of begins at that crisis point, and then you get the context in the whole story for Gabriel, the angel, who is deployed to help George. And so that's when you get his history, how he grew up, all of that, and then leading all the way up to that point of crisis, where he comes to a place where he just feels like he has completely wasted his life, that he's destitute. Now he's also in a place where the villain of his life, his enemy and really the villain of the town, Mr. Potter, is going to drive him out of business and he'll be financially ruined. So, he has spent his whole life giving everything away, living self-sacrificially, and now he's come to a point where it seems like there's no reward whatsoever for any of that behavior. In other words, "I gave everything away and this is where it led me. To this house that's decrepit and falling apart, my finances which are now destroyed, and my enemy who's gonna triumph over me, and my whole family, everybody looking at me, everybody depending on me", and he goes and he tries to jump off a bridge. And then of course there's that amazing creative thought experiment where his guardian angel Gabriel responds to him saying, "I wish I'd never been born", and Gabriel just says, "oh, okay, you were never born".

And then, George Bailey gets a tour of the world that would have transpired in his absence. And of course, his brother is not alive because he wasn't able to save his brother from falling in the ice. His brother was a decorated war hero so all of that is also undone. The pharmacist is now an alcoholic and a despondent drunk because he wasn't there to intervene and stop him from making that mistake with the prescriptions. And the whole town has been taken over by Potter. In a fun little side note here, Nathan, the second back to the future movie borrowed pretty heavily from this, some might even say stole.  Where Marty McFly goes back and the whole town has been taken over by Biff. That's definitely borrowed from It's a Wonderful Life where if George has not been born then Bedford Falls is Pottersville, a kind of modern vanity fare. I think that can count as a synopsis of the film through a series of vignettes of the heavy doses of reality built in. And it is a sentimental film, but sentimentality is not always a bad thing. And I think it's a good film.

Staying Power

Nathan

So, what's the staying power there? Because is the audience supposed to then come away with a recognition, sympathy, and empathy? I have difficult things in my life, and I think anybody who's living with any attempt of intentionality, or perhaps even if not, will experience that. There are the ups and downs, there's the brokenness, times in which we are called on to give sacrificially, maybe even beyond what we want to do. And then the continual adding up in addition of the mass of all these little troubles and struggles in life gets us to the point where we at some point look around and say, "is this what this is all about and is this all this has gotten me to". So, I think it pulls everybody in and puts everybody into that sensation. And then I guess the optimistic flip there is to say, "yeah but could you imagine the world if your life hadn't been?". And helping people see the impact that they've actually had in some ways gives a glimmer of hope that there's a fruitfulness to our lives that we can't actually see but is still meaningful.

Cameron

Yes, I mean, there are a number of different ways of responding to that. First and foremost, it's a really well-made film, and that just has to be stated because time, the harshest of all critics, levels almost everything that's come out. Now, more so than ever, innumerable movies and books and cultural artifacts are released and most of them will never be remembered. And that doesn't necessarily mean they're all bad, but most of them are forgettable. They're here for a time and then they're gone. And that's true of most eras. But those that have staying power, and sometimes it takes a happy accident (public domain) but in the end, quality speaks for itself. So, I think first and foremost, this is a great film. Frank Capra made a wonderful movie, and it's well put together. It has all the features of a good film. It's got great pacing, it has fantastic acting, and complex and rich characters. That's what saves it from being a merely sentimental Christmas story. So, I would say that the movie White Christmas with Bing Crosby; I'll put my cards on the table, I can't stand that movie. I know a lot of people love it and that it's a Christmas classic. But It's mainly remembered for its soundtrack, you know, Bing Crosby's crooner voice and all of that. But that is a film that I would say is purely sentimental. And people love it and cherish it mainly because of a nostalgia element. I would say that is not the case with It's a Wonderful Life. It has some sentimental elements in it; most people remember the line from the little girl at the end, "every time a bell rings, the angel gets his wings". But it's much more than the sum of its parts. This is a film with very rich characters. 

What also gives it staying power, Nathan, is the spiritual vision behind the movie. Now, I wouldn't characterize this as an orthodox movie and to call it a Christian movie might be a bit of a stretch. But it's a very spiritual film. It begins and ends with prayer, it doesn't give you a conventional picture of God, this sort of flashing, glowing galaxy is God talking and he has a very grumpy sort of voice "You know, my servant George Bailey, he's in despair". The angelology is a little bit unique. This is a creative story really about the endurance of the human spirit and very much about relationships. George Bailey is a rich man and you see that at the end of this movie, but he's not wealthy. It's not that he's prosperous in a material sense. He's wealthy in relationships. He's rich in relationships. And I think there is a nostalgic element to this film too, but in a more moving sense than with something like White Christmas. In this film, I think for some viewers, there's a longing for a world that no longer exists now. And Ken Boa points this out, a lot of critics have pointed this out. I think this is a point that you'll find interesting, Nathan. I think you actually mentioned it when we were talking, It's a Wonderful Life is a world that we don't have anymore. Not just in the sense of the values that are cherished in the movie, but also the sense of the kind of community that you have at Bedford Falls where you have a neighborliness that still exists today, but it is way more difficult to find it. And when you have it, when it's pursued, it takes a whole lot more intentionality these days. People had to depend on one another more intimately in the past because it was more of a necessity. Not the case as much in our doordash online world where many of us are in suburbs; where it's entirely possible to live in a huge neighborhood and know almost nobody or maybe two or three people.

All films are time stamped and give you glimpses into bygone eras. That's one of the values of cinema, you get to look back in time and It's a Wonderful Life definitely gives you a glimpse back into a world that no longer exists. So, I think that gives it a staying power as well. People remember that fondly. They remember an America that isn't here anymore. We can complicate that a little bit Nathan, for instance, the Bailey household does have an African American maid, and so there are clearly aspects of this world that we can celebrate as now being part of the past. So, I just wanna add again that films are timestamps, and when that movie was made, the decision to feature that in there was probably not a self-conscious one at all. That just merely reflected the social reality of the film as it was made. And it's valuable to see that, so we have those historical markers, which are there to give us that needed perspective. It can guard against an unhealthy nostalgia. But still, there are healthy forms of nostalgia, where we can lament, "why don't we have that sense of community anymore, those social bonds, those shared values". By shared values, I mean shared values about family, the importance of not just relationships that you choose, but your obligation to your neighbors, and also the sense that those are essential bonds. Also, this wouldn't have even been spelled out, but there is no controversy on what it means to be a person, the movie assumes that being a human being means you are an essentially spiritual and relational creature with bonds and obligation to all of those around you.

Choices and Community

Cameron

All of that is contested these days. In fact, Nathan, I want to throw this out here and then I want you to run with it for a bit because I think here's a striking contrast between the world of It's a Wonderful Life and so many of the holiday specials that we see today. It's a Wonderful Life gives you a picture of neighborliness, of thick community that was more of a necessity than a luxury. And most of the holiday episodes of TV shows these days or movies, especially the Thanksgiving and the Christmas ones, usually revolve around the fact that the friends in the show didn't choose their families and they have a hard time with their families. But they're so grateful for their friends because this is their chosen; these are their chosen family. And so, that's the precise opposite of what's going on in It's a Wonderful Life, where you have a world where you didn't choose these people. And that's part of the basic limitations of humanity, you were born into a certain place in time with these family members, whether you like them or not. And we must learn to pursue those lines of obligation in a holistic way. Whereas now, choice needs to be at the forefront of all of your relationships. And that's a really interesting point of contrast. I'd love to get some of your response to that, Nathan.

Nathan

I was thinking, not as eloquently put, along those categories earlier. Let's think, how many pharmacies were there in Bedford Falls? One. How many diners? One. You know, there is only one of everything. And so, there isn't a choice of which diner you go to. There isn't a choice of which grocery store do you go to. There isn't a choice of who is your mailman. There's a sense in which you don't have choices. In 1946, Amazon is not going to deliver your Christmas. So, there was a real limitation on the boundaries of your choices, but that meant that you had to navigate and negotiate the complexities of what you had to deal with. If you didn't like your neighbor, you're probably going to have to figure out how to work that out because not interacting with them wasn't an option. And that's one of the things of the past that I think built thick community, and let's not act like it was all glorious and wonderful. That's the complexity that I see there, when you talk about things that bind Communities and groups together, part of it is the lack of option that you have for something else, that's woven in there. I was reading a collection of essays by the poet Donald Hall and the collection was called "String Too Short to be Saved" and he has a line in one of those where it says, "nostalgia was self-hatred". But the preceding line, I can't quite recall, is something like “when we become dismayed with the anarchy that we experience in the present, we begin to long for the order of the past". And so, when you get really frustrated with how things are in your life right now, you start looking to the past as a form of escapism from the complexity and the difficulties of your life that you experience now.

So, I would separate out the distinction between nostalgia and memory. If Nostalgia is a form of escapism, then it’s an unhealthy thing to try to retreat to the past and it will probably manifest itself in unhealthy ways in our personal lives and in the relationships in the communities that we're forming now. However, if you can remember good and beautiful and wonderful things of the past or things that you need to learn from the past, I think that also is a wonderful thing. And that's a gift. So, memory is not a form of escapism. It's saying, "what are the elements and the features here that are part of what a truly wonderful life entails?" and then "how do I learn from them moving forward?". Fundamentally, it's a "looking back in order to find your footing to move forward" type of enterprise. And so, I think we can do that even with what you were just talking about. When it comes to community, you're not going to find a Bedford falls in America, it's a different time. But there are still really good communities. And Cameron, sometimes you kind of self-deprecatingly refer to the suburb life that you live; but in a time of crisis, you still have neighbors who stop by. I think the difference is that if there are components of something like "It's a Wonderful Life" that you value, then we all have to recognize that those are all still possible. But they don't come naturally or easily anymore, you have to cultivate them. 

Cameron

You have to pursue them intentionally, yeah.

Nathan

Yeah, you won't accidentally find yourself in community anymore. So, Cameron, the fact that when you have an issue, people reach out; it's because of the work that you and your wife have put in; getting to know the neighbor's kids at the swimming pool and the who's walking their dog at what time. And when somebody goes out to get the mail and Mr. So-and-so does what, and they have a problem and you help them with their car. What I mean is, that's still how the world works and it's there and it's real, but it does require a renewed sense of effort on our part to make those connections. The underlying factor here is the same as the self-sacrificial giving of time and energy and interest in other people's lives. If you want to ask, "what's the buy-in in order to form community?", it would be that sacrificial giving and reflex to help even if you don't fully know all the details or if it doesn't make sense at the time. The thoughts dancing around in my mind right now are: What is the same? What is similar? What is necessary? What is possible? What can we remember and smile about but not try to hide in? 

Cameron

That's good and the ending of the film works along those lines as well, it bears that out. George and his whole family have poured themselves out for the community and then in their moment of crisis everybody comes to their aid. There's nothing unrealistic about that. When people who are known for being very giving, who have lived their lives giving to others self-sacrificially; when such a person finds themselves in a time of profound crisis and they ask for help, they tend to get it in droves. This is a basic reality of human life. We forget this nowadays too, because America sometimes in the background operates with a really vicious sort of social Darwinism. "You just got to get ahead", "only the strong survive", "competition is good", "ruthless capitalism", that sort of thing. That's kind of like the dark side of our fierce sense of innovation and our fix-it, can-do, attitude. But the truth is, that's actually false anthropology, which is a mercy, wonderful news. Life is actually not fiercely Darwinistic. It's not this massive, horrible struggle. When my father was growing up, his dad bought into this a little bit and he talked about it in terms of a big wolf and a little wolf and the big wolf survive and devour everybody else and the little wolves get killed. But actually, when you find a real crisis happening, people help you. People come to one another's aid. This is part of the human spirit, as I would call it. That's not some mystical observation, that's based on the hard evidence of life. Nathan, you've gone through times of crisis, I've gone through times of crisis. Not by accident, both Nathan and I belong to churches, good churches. Good in the sense that the people who love the Lord and love their neighbor. And so guess what? People have taken care of us. I've been on the receiving end. The ending of "It's a Wonderful Life" doesn't look unrealistic or like some tacked on happy ending. That looks like life as I recognize it.

Nathan

Yeah, it's not sentimental to say that we bear one another's burdens. It's a biblical reality. You can see it as a command but it is also just a description of the way that community supports and takes care of itself. So yeah, I'm with you on that. I guess here's what's sad to me, George is not a religious person in this film from my memory. It's not like you would say he has a deep spiritual life at all.

Cameron

No, there's a scene where he does pray out of desperation. It's a very atheistic kind of prayer, "Lord, I'm not a praying man".

Reality, Goodness, and Our Role in It

Nathan

Okay, here's what I see as the difference, Cameron. I was actually using these words in my mind to think about discipleship, formation. What is it that we're trying to train our kids to do? What is it that our parents were training? What were my parents training me to do? And I think the words that popped into my mind were like, to go and to go and to go, to give and to give and to give, and to live a life where you're trying to bless, not impress or invest; and then to come to the end of it and lay down to die with a grin. I think that's kind of really short metanarrative of what life looks like. But a key question is, can you do that with a deep sense of satisfaction all throughout it? George doesn't have that. But if you look at the teachings of Jesus on the self-sacrificial life of the giving, and the caring, and the investing, and the going, and the doing, and the prioritizing what's really important in life; then he says, "my peace I give you not as the world gives". I think the part that's missing in "It's a Wonderful Life" is to see you actually can live that life and experience the joy of doing it throughout. It doesn't need to end in a time on a bridge where you're saying, "was this all for nothing"? And you can also pray, "Lord, help me do the right thing, even if I never see the fruit of my effort".

For most of us there's not going to be an angel that shows up to show us what the world would look like if we never existed. Is that a motivation in life to say, "I'm going to live my life in such a way that if I get to the end of it and look back, it’s better than if I'd never existed."? That seems to me to be unnecessarily complicated and complex and maybe a bit philosophically naive and unproductive. So, is there a better vision that we could have? Perhaps, "Not because of the goodness of my own heart, but because of what Christ is shaping and forming in me"? These are the attributes of a self-sacrificial life that I want to live, but (and this is the key distinction) I can find a deep level of satisfaction and say, "this is a wonderful life" all the way through it, rather than just at the end in hindsight. So, that would be my hope for me as I live this out, but also as I teach my children what it means to be a follower of Jesus. And I think for anybody listening to this as well, that It's a Wonderful Life, as a film, pushes on some buttons that we can all recognize. But the gospel offers this good news of great joy to all people. There's another layer to this cake that adds color to it, which I think we don't want to miss out on and we want to see as part of the beauty of what's happening at this time of year.

Cameron

Yeah, and I think I want to return really quickly as a parting thought to that observation from Donald Hall, why would nostalgia be self-hatred? Well, if you dwell on that for a second, I think that there are various aspects to nostalgia, not all of them necessarily bad, but self-hatred would be a kind of nostalgia that keeps you haunting some kind of a past in your mind or always going back to a past. Usually, a sentimentalized version of the past that didn't really exist in the first place. What I mean by that is when people say, "oh, times were simpler back then", maybe in some ways but in other ways that's not the case. You may have had less responsibilities or your memory may be a little bit more sanitized. The world has fallen and times are always complex and difficult and there are always lots of constraints in any time.

But, why would it be self-hatred? Because if you live in the past in your mind, that's going to cause you to neglect the world you're in now, the present. And if you're not careful, you'll turn your back on the people who need you most now. You won't be present for those who need you now. And so that's why that's a shrewd observation. And that's why we may watch something like It's a Wonderful Life and lament and there are losses. We don't have that kind of thick community, not naturally, it doesn't come as naturally anymore. And that's true, doesn't mean it isn't possible, doesn't mean we can't have it, and doesn't mean we shouldn't be about the business of pursuing it.

Nathan

Yeah, but the flip side of that is that a modern despair with the way things are in the world, or even in the phrase self-hatred, is in and of itself a focus on self. And so what a wonderful life is pointing at is (and we can way up that as Christians and say) this idea of self-sacrificing and giving and considering the needs of others and bearing one another's burdens and looking for ways in which we can serve and be helpful and support and encourage; are all outward facing expressions of the ways in which we want to focus and use our time and our energy in our lives. I think there's a hope that actually comes from that, we all know this. The happiest people we know are the people who invest the most heavily in other people's lives. And some of the most miserable people we know are those who are pursuing their own self-interest at all cost. And so, Joy to the World has some teeth to it here. When we start thinking about where is our appropriate focus; on what is real, what is good, and what is my role in it. One of my favorite lines from the hymn is "long lay the world in sin and error pining till he appeared, and the soul felt its worth. The thrill of hope, a weary world rejoices for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn". And then the "fall on your knees" as a worshipful response to the beauty of that truth.

Ultimately, only when our eyes are fixed upward and elsewhere do we find the proper worship, but then also the proper way in which we live our lives. Which then as a byproduct, I think we do find to be quite wondrous and meaningful as we pursue these other goods and glorious things. So, perhaps It's a Wonderful Life will come across your screen at some point in the next few weeks, but if not, or if you've never seen it, a wonderful life is something that is offered to you. And we're reminded about part of that great plan as we celebrate Christmas together with our friends and family and fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. You've been listening to Thinking Out Loud, a podcast where we think out loud about current events and Christian hope.

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year: Authenticity

Listen to Episode

Please note, this is an A.I. transcript of the podcast Thinking Out Loud Together. As such, it will lack the polished quality of an actual blog post. It’s provided for those who prefer reading to listening. Special thanks to Mark for volunteering to humanize the process by shaping the wording into a more readable format.

Introduction

Nathan (00:01.296)

Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your co-host Nathan Rittenhouse.

Cameron (00:04.714)

and I'm your cohost, Cameron McAllister.

Nathan (00:06.868)

And Cameron, today we're going to be talking about Merriam-Webster's word of the year. Some years it's entertaining, some years it's eyeball rolling, and this one maybe is somewhere in between. But I've long had a fond memories of Merriam-Webster's word of the year, because I used to play a fun game with an old office mate of mine using Merriam-Webster's word of the day. 

The way that this would work is each morning we would get to our offices, get settled in, and then we would look it up, and then we would try to use the word of the day in a telephone conversation with somebody. And there were two of us in the office, so clearly you can hear what the other person was saying on the phone. And I thought it was great fun, but it was a little difficult to work the word pachydermatist or philoprogenitive or something like that into a normal sentence at times. But, then we kind of got points on whether or not you could pull it off in a casual way in a sentence on the phone. I guess all that to say is I am somebody who enjoys words and playing with words.

I'm anxious to hear your thoughts on this year's Word of the Year, according to Merriam-Webster, highly sought-after word for definition, and the word is this. Get ready. The word is "Authenticity". And it surprised me a little bit because I knew Authenticity was a buzzword, but I thought it sort of had its heyday. But now it's back. There are some reasons for that but what are your first thoughts? Surprise you or not?

Cameron (01:39.118)

Surprised me, the same reason as you. I thought, authenticity, haven't we been there, done that? I've been hearing about that for years. I suppose it makes sense because this is a time where there's massive institutional distrust and you've seen a lot of corruption in all sectors of society. So, it makes sense that a lot of people would want authenticity and sincerity and would be looking for integrity in people. But at the same time, there's an irony that hangs over this because you just think about all of the different brands, all of the different companies who cynically want to use this word to exploit people. So yeah, I think it's understandable, I was a bit surprised, and I also think there's a bit of irony mixed in here.

Definitions of Authenticity

Nathan (02:33.772)

Some of what I read on it is that authentic or authenticity actually does have quite a wide range of definitions. And that's part of the reason that when people start to think about it, they look at up. Obviously, a lot of this was driven this year by the development of AI (artificial intelligence algorithms), or Chat GPT, particularly of trying to decide what's actually real.

And that is the first and most common use of the word authentic or authenticity is real/not false or an imitation. And so, at a point where an algorithm can write an essay for you or generate a picture or a deep fake video or something like that; certainly, I think it's a good sign that we're once again curious about what's real and what's not an imitation.

On the superficial level, I would say this is a good sign that people are starting to push back against what I would consider to be fake and falsehoods. Although some people would say maybe "the new reality is generated in this way". So, there's that authenticity side, "it's just real, it's not fake". So, we can pursue that if we want to on the technology front. 

And there are a couple of those topics like the idea of Twitter or "X" formerly known as "Twitter" now charging people to have an authenticated account so that you're sure this is really who it is. You also have social media trends where people like #BeReal where they're encouraging people to post photos of themselves that aren't doctored, aren't filtered, or don't use a beauty filter on the photo. Where people are saying "this is what I actually look like". So that's one level of authenticity when you say what's real/what's not false? What's not an imitation of something else.

Then the other boost in authenticity is connected to more like a Taylor Swift type performer of celebrities who people feel like they are authentic or they're speaking about things that actually match their lives or encouraging them to be their true selves. So, if definition one of authentic or authenticity is about being real, the second one is about being true to oneself, one's personality, one's character, or one's spirit. And take that for what it is.

I think that also summarizes our time of what it means to be authentic is to be "true to yourself", "your own being", "unique just like everyone else". Can you help me think of examples or do you see how that split could be there; where one is like "here's what's not false" but then "here is being true to yourself". Those sort of seem like they're in some tension with each other which would lend credence to the breadth of the use of the word authentic.

Cameron (05:34.494)

I think the one that makes the most sense to me involves the proliferation of AI technology. Because I hear more and more people say, "I have the distinct feeling I'm not talking to a person" when they're in an online chat or something like that. I hear more and more teachers saying, "you wouldn't believe the number of essays that I get that are clearly Chat GPT". And so, I've mentioned this before, this tends to lead to a diminishment of humanity in some sense and it makes us feel lonelier and it's just creepy. There's a sense in which you're just longing for actual human contact. That's a weird thing to say right now, but yes, I think it makes perfect sense, it makes a lot of sense when you think about the social media landscape where you can put out a persona more effectively than people have been able to before. And you can curate that image. And it’s true, there is a trend in social media now to highlight the dirty laundry on the floor, what you look like without makeup, what you look like when you first wake up in the morning, and all of that. And this is done ostensibly in the name of authenticity. Now, I want to step aside for a second Nathan and point out again - this is still a kind of social performance. You're still doing this for an audience. In your actual day-to-day life, you don't usually have an audience; unless of course you're making your life a kind of work of art and broadcasting it for the world; which some people do. 

Nathan (07:22.291)

You're saying you don't have an audience in your laundry room?

Cameron (07:26.874)

I hope not, I sure hope not. But I think there's a weird sensation that people have these days. It's a relatively novel mindset where we tend to live as though we're performing in front of people, or we tend to have an audience in mind. Social scientists and sociologists have pointed to this in recent years, that's a very unique frame of mind. And I think that has a part to play here also. The most powerful pop icon on the planet being a symbol of relatability and authenticity strikes me as pretty funny. I'm gonna leave it at that for right now because I don't want Swifties chasing me down the street.

Nathan (08:22.308)

Oh, Goodness. Yeah. Well, so one other place I saw Authenticity was my late high school/early college years when you'd go to a youth conference or a camp and there was this huge focus on authenticity. And what that turned out to be was- you'd get a bunch of young guys together and then the leader would come in and basically share all his dirty laundry of his own life and be like "look, I'm just as messed up as you guys. Here's what I'm struggling with". And that was like, "oh, this guy's really authentic in telling us the truth". And what I quickly realized there is that authenticity alone was becoming the goal even within the church. So, what we were missing was authenticity and holiness. That's not to say that people shouldn't confess their sins and be honest about who they are, but we shouldn't say that just simply doing that is what makes you virtuous. And that to me seemed to be a missing feature that I would say was not an authentic representation of what the church was about. And maybe that's just my experience, but I think it wasn't. So, all that to say the church has its own history here of using authenticity as a tool or an idol.

Cameron (09:48.106)

To press into one of the thorny issues that you brought up earlier, you said, "there's a press for us all to be unique, just like everybody else", and I think there's the rub. Imitation, emulating someone, is at the heart of human life. And just very briefly let's make a quick case for that. We come back to this point over and over again on thinking out loud, but we have to stress it because by default, most of us tend to think very individualistically. And I think serious individualism is a key feature of the current discussion on authenticity because it's very much about you finding your path, your way, your church. And by the way, "your church", may not be an actual traditional church at all. I've heard plenty of people say the "gym is my church", "this is my sanctuary", that kind of thing. But this isn't new, just consider the forest being a sanctuary, Emerson and Thoreau, this is already in the DNA of America. So, nothing new there, so the point is, we're going to follow somebody. We're gonna emulate somebody. So, what I want to suggest, Nathan, is that part of a tension that we're gonna feel is that imitation is going to be totally and completely inevitable. Now, holy imitation is at the heart of Christianity. We are to be imitators of Jesus Christ. 

Authentic to a Standard

Nathan (11:25.68)

Ooh, hang on. You're beating me someplace. Yeah, right, because there are three definitions of authentic and I only gave you the first two. So, number one was "real, not false". Number two was "being true to yourself, personality, character, spirit, or whatever". Number three is the less often used version of it, but this makes sense and fits exactly with what you're saying. The third definition of authentic is "conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features". So, what does it mean for something to be an authentic Van Gogh? Or an authentic Stradivarius? Or substitute your own architect or artwork. Think of authenticity in that category and now we're getting somewhere where maybe this becomes a useful phrase for the church.

Cameron (12:29.642)

Think about that, an authentic Rubens or an authentic Van Gogh. You set me up for a kind of Jesus-juke, Nathan. But, usually, how do we authenticate a precious piece of artwork? Well, you have the signature. Christian men and women, (it's hard to say this without laughing) we have the signature of our Lord on our lives. Okay, that's a little bit too precious and a bit too cutesy, but it's true though. So, a mark of authenticity in this sense would be men and women who faithfully lead their lives in the spirit in which Jesus Christ did. Now, if you're okay with it, Nathan, let's linger here just for a second because I want to make an important distinction. And this is a challenging point from...

Who am I going to quote? Who do I quote so often on here? Who's it going to be?

Nathan (13:29.358)

I quoted Dallas Willard the other day and somebody said that I was supposed to check with you first before I did that. That's all I'm saying.

Cameron (13:36.194)

How dare you? I'm so glad that they brought that up because I was incensed. But yes, it is Dallas Willard.

Nathan (13:41.237)

But I also told the people that if you ever quote my grandpa, I'm charging you $2. So, I think we're even.

Cameron (13:47.554)

There you go, absolutely. Yeah, if we don't have Grandpa Rittenhouse and Dallas Willard show up in an episode, something's deeply wrong with the universe. So, Dallas Willard actually has a very helpful way of exploring this theme. He says, first of all, Jesus was a Palestinian carpenter who lived 2000 years ago. So imitating Christ doesn't mean trying to be exactly like him in every conceivable way. The phrase he uses is, (it's a bit cumbersome, but I think it's helpful because he's trying to spell out a key distinction here) "I want to lead my life the way Jesus Christ would lead it, were he me". In other words, "you with your weird personality and your gifts and talents and your quirks leading your life under the empowerment of Jesus's spirit". Now, obviously there are certain common features; we follow Jesus's commands, that sort of thing. 

I'm saying this because I'll do deference to authenticity here. This doesn't mean that your personality is ejected and you suddenly become this sort of droning, blind, carbon copy of Christ. Such a thing wouldn't even be possible, by the way. Try it. But it means that you are you because the Lord made you. And to imitate Christ is to become what he made you to be. And yes, that is in conformity to his image but that still honors your personality because your personality after all was no accident and the Lord made you. So, I think we should explore that for just a second. I've said enough to get us into some interesting territory there.

Righteousness

Nathan (15:49.224)

Yeah, okay, I'm going out on a limb here with a theory. I want to connect authenticity and righteousness, so let me begin my case. Somebody, I forget who it was, pointed this out to me that based on the primary way in which the word righteousness is used in the Bible, that a good functional general definition for righteousness is conformity to a standard. If you think all the way back to covenants in the Old Testament; God reveals himself, he sets out a stated order of being and a certain set of do's and don'ts and ideas for worship. And the degree to which someone conformed to that revelation is the degree to which they were considered righteous. So then, by the time you get to Jesus and the "hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled" and "seek first the kingdom and his righteousness and these things will be added to you", that if you think of righteousness as a conformity to the standard, and you think of Christ as the standard to which we should be conformed. Here's Romans 8, "we're predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son". If you think of righteousness as conformity to a standard, and you think of authenticity as conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features, then all of a sudden being Christ-like does not mean walking in sandals everywhere, because that's not an essential feature of what he was doing or teaching. It doesn't mean crafting tables or building walls or whatever Jesus was doing as a carpenter. But if you're reproducing essential features, then when he says, "be merciful", "forgive as your heavenly father has forgiven you", then all of a sudden, the things that he says become the essential features that we are to reproduce. And that is essentially what Scripture is preserving for us; the essential reproducible features that would mean us living authentic (and I'm using the word there in the third definition sense) and righteous (using the biblical sense). So, I don't know what do you think about that? Is that shoehorning it in there or is this just a nice parallel to say that actually the biblical use of authenticity is actually righteousness?

Cameron (18:09.826)

No, I think that sounds right. That's in line with what I was suggesting as well. So, a good question, I think, to bear in mind nowadays is who is it that you're imitating? Or what is it that you're imitating? So, the irony, Nathan, in so much of this is that in popular culture, a lot of pictures of authenticity or images of authenticity are being sold to us. This is a decidedly cynical vision of authenticity; we're imitating some image that really is just a source of profit for somebody else.

Nathan (18:56.752)

Okay, yeah, but what about when we like the imitation better? So, um, General Tso's chicken is not an original Chinese dish. I like General Tso's chicken. I mean, you can go right on down the list of knockoff versions of things that aren't actually what they're advertised to be, and we all know it, but we still like it. That's a thing.

Cameron (19:20.182)

Yeah, that is, and I like General Tso's chicken too. But I would say, it's one thing to enjoy certain food that is a cheap knockoff or an imitation or something like that. It's another thing though, when this begins to encroach on our actual lifestyle, commitments, or our matters of ultimate concern. I think that sociologists still use that phrase when they're talking about people's spiritual habits. So, when this kind of marketing encroaches on our spiritual commitments, then I think we need to be very wary. Also, we need to recognize the irony of that; I've left something unstated here, Nathan, which I think can add some clarity here. Christianity has a lot of things going against it in today's culture. It usually does. Christianity rarely fits in. And if you're a committed Christian, you'll see that that's probably a good thing because as human beings, we tend to be incorrigible idolaters and we like stuff that's made in our own image. 

Nathan (20:41.969)

Who was it that said if you're not conforming to a dysfunctional society, is that actually a problem?

Cameron (20:51.734)

Correct. So, the notion of Christ as Lord who exceeds all your powers and your personal whims and fantasies; that can be seen as problematic. I think one of the many features that people don't like about Christianity is the notion that now you're attached to this dogmatic religion and, according to the world, you're absolutely not leading an authentic life. I mean, "if you want to do that, that's great", "if it meets needs for you, absolutely, but if it stands in the way of some of your desires? If it thwarts your sexual appetites, that sort of thing? Then it's harmful and it's getting in the way of your self-expression". So, I want to just put that out there, a lot of people will see that. I've just voiced some central complaints against Christianity that you'll hear in everyday speech. 

Let me bring back in, imitation is inevitable. Bob Dylan had the song "everybody's got to serve somebody", but you've got to imitate somebody too. There's no way to avoid that. So, the question is, who or what are you imitating? And there, I think we can draw some clarity. If we're imitating a certain ideal or lifestyle or vision, that's really nothing more than a marketing campaign, there's an essential hollowness to it. There's an emptiness to it. If we're imitating an iconoclastic figure like Jesus Christ, yes, it's gonna fly in the face of many of our desires and it will interfere. I always liked how C.S. Lewis points out in Surprised by Joy that Jesus interferes with us, he intrudes on our lives. Yes, all that's true, but these are all marks of something bigger than us. Someone bigger than us.

Nathan (22:54.921)

Yeah, so that is the fundamental distinction then. There's a pretty famous book by Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ. So, if you want a classic in spiritual formation, the Imitation of Christ would be it. Okay, so let's just clarify what we're saying here for a second, we're setting up a fundamental distinction between definition two and definition three of "authentic". Definition two is being true to yourself and your own personality and your own character and your own spirit. And definition three is conforming to the pattern of an original and reproducing the essential features of that. So, definition two is an internal standard and definition three is an external standard. So, you can use "authentic" in both ways there, but what Cameron's laying out for us is the fundamental divide between being conformed to my own image and being conformed to the image of Christ. The English language uses "authentic" for both of those, but if we want to truly make that distinction within the church, then we might use a cheap form of "authentic" for definition two, but we're going to use "righteousness" for definition three actually within a religious context. But these are mutually exclusive. The tension that Cameron's laying out for us there is necessarily there because there are two different goals in mind and an entirely different set of means for reaching those goals. So that was just a complicated way of saying "duh, I think that this isn't going to work if you're pursuing one and it's going to seem weird to those who are pursuing the other".

Insufficiency of the Self

Cameron (24:42.762)

And let me just bring in one factor here that I think is really important before we draw our remarks toward a concluding point, this is typical of us here on Thinking Out Loud. What I'm going to introduce opens up a new can of worms, but Charles Taylor often points to (there are a number of different precursors to this line of thinking, Freud would be a big one) the notion that we have these vast inward depths and we have all of these inner riches. That's a big assumption that most of us make. Now, I'm going to agree with part of that, every human being has inner riches in a manner of speaking. This is not because you have some vast, unplugged subconscious full of hidden sexual desires and neuroses as a Freud would suggest. Or in the Jungian sense, you have all of these archetypal spiritual skeletons in your closet, something like that (We could bring Jordan Peterson on to spell that one out for you). But rather because you're a spiritual creature; that's the wonder of human beings. That's also the horror of human beings in some ways, because we're capable of amazing things because we're made in God's image but we're also capable of drastic things, terrible things as well. 

We have the inner riches in the sense that we are spiritual creatures. For those who are Christians this will be a truism in some ways, but may I suggest for those who are on the fence or who aren't or maybe are flirting with some of the other stuff; we don't have sufficient inner resources to take care of ourselves. And I'm just suggesting this to you, put this in your pipe and smoke it and think about it, or put it in your incense and light it up. You are a spiritual creature and that's an amazing feature of human life, but it can take you in some very strange directions if you channel this in the wrong way. This is behind the impulse to experiment with the occult. This is behind the impulse to adopt new age practices. This is behind the impulse to experiment with psychedelic drugs. You are a spiritual creature because you were made by God for God, and you inhabit a spiritual world. There are spiritual powers in this world and there are dark spiritual powers in this world as well. So, we want to be careful. The stakes are high. The dark spiritual powers are very real and are very authentic. Well, they're authentic in the sense that they're real (sense one). And you don't have sufficient inner resources to take care of yourself completely. You're not a self-sufficient being. You cannot find fulfillment in and of yourself. That aspiration is just a basic form of idolatry. God alone is the self-sufficient necessary being and you're not a God. And at the heart of so much of this, by the way, is that we behave as though we are God and as though we're masters of our own destiny and control of our lives, and we rule everything. That won't work. And I think we see ample evidence that it doesn't work. That doesn't stop it from being a huge temptation and doesn't stop it from just making a lot of sense to people because that's the spiritual environment of our culture right now. But it's deeply misguided. And so, I think my parting thought here, Nathan, is just that we are not self-sufficient and we don't have sufficient inner resources to take care of ourselves.

Nathan (29:03.168)

Yeah, and I was just thinking there's an additional aspect, let's make it worse. Even if you can determine within yourself the good that you ought to do, you often don't have the will or the power to actualize it. So, it's not even finding the resource within yourself to have the right idea. It's actually going ahead and doing it. And so that's why I think it's pretty important that we attached at the end here that it is God who wills and works (Philippians 2:13). When we're talking about obedience and conformity to the image of Christ, that's not a self-actualization maneuver. That is an act of God working on your life and in your life and through your life. Because I think there is a Christian version of the danger that you just outlined for us. Like, "oh, well, I'm not doing yoga to align my chakra and find my inner spiritual light", but maybe I'm on something that parallels sort of like a self-help Christian discipleship formation sort of thing. Which is basically the same thing where you're the primary agent in the action that's happening there. And that's not how it works. So, I think a lot of people end up in bad spots when they just try to take that type of behavior and then just stick Christian language on it. When it comes to being authentic and being fully human, Colossians is a great book. This idea of fullness pops up all over there. Or Jesus's teaching, I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly or have it to the fullest (John 10:10). Therein lies the goal of what we're after. We're looking for something that's real and I think there are authentic people. 

Conclusion

I was thinking of when I visited my grandfather on my mom's side shortly before he died. And I think I've told this story before, I walked in and I said, "Hey, grandpa, how are you doing?", and he said, "you know, what you see is how I am". And I thought, that's a good way to live if you can confidently say to people, "what you see is how I am". So, there is a realness to people, and I think we should encourage and champion and aspire to be people that don't have false pretense, that aren't trying to put on a performance, that are confident enough about brokenness in our lives to share that, but also excited about the goodness in our lives and we're willing to share that. I think there's an attractive quality and feature to that. Don't hear me poo-pooing definition one (the realness or the non-imitation side of authenticity), I think that's great. I think Cameron has outlined for us the dangers of authenticity definition two (trying to be true to yourself). And we've collectively pointed to that the biblical ideal falls more in keeping with authenticity definition three (conforming to an original and replicating the features of that). And in doing so, what else could Christ-like mean? What does "Christian" mean? Like Christ, right? There's an authenticity, a replication, and a righteousness that's baked into the pursuit of doing that.

Cameron and I, I think we speak pretty vulnerably about the things we don't know about and things we're trying to figure out and sort out. And so, thinking out loud's role here is not to say, "we're the experts, learn what we say", instead it's saying, "hey, we're trying to grow and think and be formed in this direction, come journey with us". We're pursuing righteousness here because it's a command of Christ. So, blessings to each of you as you listen to this. As you then try to figure out what that looks like in your lives, we're trying to sort that out ourselves.

And we appreciate knowing that you're on the journey along with us. You've been listening to Thinking Out Loud, a podcast where we think out loud about current events and Christian hope.

Cameron (32:49.454)

Thanks for watching!

Critical Theory in the Classroom

Listen to Episode

Please note, this is an A.I. transcript of the podcast Thinking Out Loud Together. As such, it will lack the polished quality of an actual blog post. It’s provided for those who prefer reading to listening. Special thanks to Mark for volunteering to humanize the process by shaping the wording into a more readable format.

Nathan:

Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your cohost, Nathan Rittenhouse.

Cameron:

and I'm your co-host, Cameron McAllister.

Introduction

Nathan:

So, it's back to school season for many people. Some have already started, and some are gearing up for that. But did you know that teachers also sometimes need to learn things before the school year starts? And Cameron was just in Oklahoma speaking to teachers. I thought this would be a fun thing for a little back to school. Cameron and I were speaking over the last week we're going to debrief on that a little bit. I'm particularly interested in the assignment you had in Oklahoma. If you were at the event in Oklahoma, this can be a rehash for you. And for all of those who weren't, this can be an introduction to it. Cameron, could you catch folks up on who the audience was and what the assignment was? And then I have some questions for you. 

Cameron:

Of course, yes. And also on a somewhat poignant note, I had to miss my own son's first day of school to do this. So that was kind of a sad moment. But yeah, wait, hold on, Nathan, my...

Nathan:

Yeah, that's a bummer. He'll have another first day of school next year.

Cameron:

Well, that's true. Nathan always was the sentimental one between the two of us. So, every now and then you get an assignment that is really fun, it's just an interesting topic. So, a friend of mine got in touch with me. He works with the Academy of Classical Christian Studies in Oklahoma City, which is a very fine school and a major operation over there. And he asked me to come and speak about critical theory in the classroom and some of its practical outworkings. So, this was a two-day event. The first day I gave a lecture on critical theory, basically looking at three questions. Is it new? What is it? And where is it going? And on the second day, I really only looked at one question, and that was, why do we like it so much? Critical theory, by any standard, has been wildly successful in the sense of being a major influence and presence in politics, the media, and education.

Nathan:

Now, so just to clarify here. You were speaking to the educators, not to the students, correct?

Cameron:

Correct. This is not to the students. So, this was to the teachers. Yes.

Nathan:

Yeah. And I think the reason this is important is I would say that I don't hear critical theory as quite as much of a buzzword on the political scene as much anymore. Maybe other things are taking over that, but definitely on the educational front, this is still a live question. And so, I'm not surprised that you were invited to speak on that topic.

Cameron:

Yeah, and well, it was interesting because I'd given a lecture on critical theory before (You can find it on YouTube) and that was, I'll speak in euphemisms, that was an "interesting experience", the Q&A in particular.

Nathan:

I thought it was a great talk. Just for anybody who wants to know, Nathan approved of it, although his audience did not.

Cameron:

Right. But it was a great learning experience. And so, because of that Q&A, I was able to go and try to deepen the lecture and enrich it a little bit. What I really wanted to do, Nathan, was give some actual concrete history to the ideas. I think that is so incredibly important. In America, we're predisposed to want to sometimes dispense with the history of the idea because we just want to get to the truth of it. "Okay, is this true or is it not?", "Does it work or does it not?", "Who cares about the history.", "Does it help me or is it going to get me?".

It's a whole lot of extra work. It's so painstaking. Alastair McIntyre is a major proponent of history and context of an idea being crucial for actually understanding it. I remember he did a couple of back-and-fourths in a scholarly journal with somebody else who was saying, "no, I don't care about the history, just give me the philosophical arguments". And McIntyre was making the case, "without that history, you're not really going to properly comprehend the philosophical arguments". I'm with McIntyre on that. 

What is Critical Theory

And so, on the first day, I wanted to look at the Frankfurt School, which was the birthplace of critical theory as we know it. But I also wanted to paint a broader picture and show that there was an ancient precedent for critical theory as well. If you look to ancient Greece, you'll see numerous precursors. But really, the money statement for me is Protagoras' "man is the measure of all things". Protagoras famously said he was agnostic on the question of the existence of the gods.

    Paraphrase: Maybe they exist, maybe they don't, we can't know, I can't know. Here's what we can know. We can know human experience. We can concern ourselves with the polis. We can concern ourselves with building a civilization. That's what matters. So, we need to restrict our thought to political questions and questions of social thought. 

So, in some ways, speaking in broad generalizations, that's the starting point for a good deal of modern thought - You start with human beings. You look at man, man is the measure of all things. 

That was the starting point for critical theory. The Frankfurt School wasn't called the Frankfurt School in Germany. It was called the Institute for Social Research. And that's what they were interested in. They were interested in society. And they were pioneers in many fields. We've got to give them credit for the kind of pop cultural analysis that we just take for granted. They were the first, they called it "mass culture", or they would derisively call it the "culture industry". When they ended up in America, they were the first to look very closely at cultural trends in music, jazz, whatever was capturing the popular imagination and look at the ideas behind it, look at the hidden levers of power, all of that stuff. One of the funny statements from Max Horkheimer was, "there's a metaphysics of bubble gum".

Nathan:

Alright, so where we lose people and where you lost people the first time you gave this lecture is that the audience could be coming to this as, "critical theory is bad, I'm not sure how to define it, but I know that it's bad". And Cameron is saying, "look at where it came from, there was some helpful stuff in the beginning". If you can't make out the distinction between those two things, you're going to really struggle here. And that's what happened with your first audience is you said, "I disagree with it, I think it's misguided, here's the history of where it came from." And people said, "so why do you love it?". So, it has become a flashpoint and a trigger-word at some point in the conservative mind. So, we'll talk about how we fundamentally think is misguided and unhelpful, (and we'll get to why) but you're better off if you understand what the thing is which you're disagreeing with. So just hang in there with us for a little bit. That's one part. 

Do you ever watch the Honest Trailer YouTube channel (I think they are some of the funniest things ever)? Is there a sense in which critical theory in its original social analysis of the cultural shaping institutions kind of was like an Honest Trailer review of saying "look, this is how this is marketed, but if you look at the principles and the ideas that are actually being displayed here, this is what's going on". Is that too flippant of an analogy or connection to make?

Cameron:

No, it's not too flippant, because what critical theory wanted to do was part the curtain, so to speak, so you could see what's going on behind the scenes. Let's consider a song by the Rolling Stones "I Can't Get No Satisfaction". Ostensibly, this is all about freedom, sexual freedom in particular, and being uninhibited; and people who listen to it are, “rebellious". The critical theorists are the ones who said, "yeah, you're so rebellious when you go and be a good consumer, buy this single, put money in the record company's pockets, support the Rolling Stones, and give them their lavish lifestyle. Yeah, what a rebel you are. How politically subversive".

Nathan:

“And your mom buys you your rebel apparel”. Oh man, watch out.

Cameron:

Yes, exactly. Or the same could be said to our generation; "So you like a band called Rage Against the Machine. Yes, they're clearly so rebellious. And oh, look, they have the communist manifesto in the album artwork of their album. That's just amazing. They're so rebellious." Meanwhile, they're millionaires and they're doing these tours and you're being a good consumer buying their stuff". 

Nathan:

So, irony is part of it.

Cameron:

Irony is part, critical theory was actually quite sophisticated in the way it looked at things like empty consumerism (particularly in places like America). How it makes people feel like they're expressing themselves, they're free and uninhibited, but really, they're just doing what they're supposed to be doing. Same is true of, "oh, so you want to take a vacation and get away and have some nice recreation. So, you have to spend thousands of dollars on a cruise ship or on an all-inclusive, and you have to drink all this alcohol that puts you into a state of total oblivion and take these drugs and then go dance in these loud, throbbing, discos or nightclubs. Yeah, you're clearly so free". Again, critical theory would say you're just being a good consumer. It's not like you're somehow rejecting being a good little consumer and doing what the powers-that-be want you to do. So yes, in some ways it's not too glib of an example to talk about those honest movie trailers. 

But let's back up a second. Let me give you my quick definition of critical theory so that we can work with that. There are two that I used in these lectures, and I think they're helpful, but you can take them with a grain of salt because this is more sort of my definition, and a lot of ink has been spilled on what precisely "critical theory" is. But broadly speaking, it's a methodology for identifying hidden systems of domination in a culture. But then secondly, (and this one requires a little bit of explanation) it is also a worldview. Critical theory is a worldview with an ambiguous anthropology and a quasi-mystical utopian vision.

Nathan:

Well, there's the thesis for you.

Cameron:

Yeah, there's a thesis, but all of the problematic elements, from my perspective as a Christian, are in that second definition there. The vague, the ambiguous anthropology and the equally ambiguous utopian vision that animates it. That's what makes critical theory damaging in some of its expressions.

History of Critical Theory

Nathan:

So, give us a little of that history then. So, you're talking about couching these ideas in a historical context. Connect those dots for us.

Cameron:

Yeah, I have to speak in some generalizations, but that's okay. I'm going to be done dying the death of a thousand qualifications. Critical theory, as we know it, begins at the Frankfurt School in 1923. The most fruitful years of the Frankfurt School are really from 1933 through 1940. Now you might notice, "Hey, we're smack dab at the beginning of National Socialism in Germany here". You're correct. So, around 1933/1934, the leadership of the Frankfurt School decided they needed to get out of Germany now. They established offices in Geneva for a little bit and then in Paris, but then Paris had to be shut down eventually too because Paris was occupied. The real permanent home away from home for critical theory was at Columbia University. It was sort of a loose partnership with Columbia University, but they got a property in Manhattan. And what I think is really important about this is it gives them a sense of distance from Germany, they're away from the absolute catastrophe that's happening in Germany, the Second World War. But they also have enough financial stability to not have to cater to an audience or worry about a constituency. So, they're operating with relative freedom in isolation and they're able to pursue their own interests as an institution. So that's part of what's amazing about the Frankfurt school is that it lasted through many tumultuous circumstances without falling apart. Their major publication was called the Zeitschrift, which means "the writing of the time" and they didn't start writing in English until 1950.

Nathan:

And how were they funded?

Cameron:

So, they were mostly funded by some wealthy patrons and parents of some of their members who invested and basically set up an endowment for the Frankfurt School. They weren't exactly swimming in cash and a lot of the money went towards supporting many scholars who were emigrating to the United States. And, to this day, I don't think they've released all the names of those that they supported, but there are a lot of major figures who they supported. So, they were generous with it as well. 

The major people to bear in mind, the names who are somewhat household names now would be Max Horkheimer, who was the director for a while, just a man of amazing intellectual energy and capacities. Theodore Adorno, who was incredibly prolific, published so many books. And Herbert Marcuse, who distanced himself from the Frankfurt School toward the end of his career, but he's really the bridge from the Frankfurt School to the United States. He became one of the more notorious critical theorists in the academy. He was big on the sexual revolution.

Nathan:

Where does Derrida fit in?

Cameron:

Derrida is what I would call second generation critical theorists. Derrida was not part of the Frankfurt School, but he took lines of their thought and continued to develop them. The two biggest second wave scholars would be Jacques Derrida and then Michel Foucault. And of the two of those, Foucault is the much clearer writer, I think. Derrida is deliberately difficult to read and impenetrable. A key assertion of Derrida's is that language is highly problematic because power structures are embedded in our language. And part of the job of deconstruction as a technique is to ferret out those hidden agendas and motives of power. Foucault is a historian and he's going to give what he would sometimes call a "genealogy". You take a given institution, whether that's the prison system (Discipline and Punish might be one of his most famous books) or History of Madness (where he looks at the asylum and he looks at the treatment of insanity down the ages), or sexuality. So, from Foucault, we're going to get the notion that gender is nothing more than a social construction. So, these guys are important, but they're carrying on a line of thought that began with the Frankfurt School. 

Herbert Marcuse is also the guy who says we need to be polymorphously perverse, and this is a way to establish freedom from the tyrannical status quo as well. Another name associated is Heinrich Heine, who was a psychologist. He is the man who actually coined the phrase "sexual revolution". So, embedded in the Frankfurt School are the seeds of what would become the sexual revolution and a lot of the more explosive thought of the 1960s which we're now seeing a full flowering of today. What I want to point out today is that the original people associated with critical theories, particularly Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno, were a good deal more hesitant than their successors. They were pretty revolutionary at first. In 1923, a lot of their thoughts were more optimistic but as they got older that began to change. One of the big ideas of critical theory is that you have "theory". Theory is absolutely essential; theory is how you chip away at all of the lies of the status quo and uncover and expose what's underneath. But then you need Praxis (German for practice), which is a loaded Marxist term and can sometimes be shorthand for "revolution". You have to tear down some of these institutions so that you can put just and classless ones in their place, right? But what happens is, of course, Adorno, Horkheimer, and all of these guys begin to see Soviet Russia and they see what some of the outgrowth of praxis actually looks like. And they became, the only way to put it is, more apolitical at the end of their lives, to the point where some of their future students of the Frankfurt School felt that they had betrayed their original vision because they were recommending a kind of a quietism. Well, you see all this injustice, you're giving us all this theory, and then you don't want to do anything about it? And I don't think that's an inconsistent thing to say, by the way.

Nathan:

So that's interesting. Because I think, there is a sense here in which sometimes (Particularly, in political realms) we don't have terms or limits or even within our lives; we don't have the time to watch our ideas come to fruition and to see the consequences of the logical conclusion of our ideas. And so, it seems like in the Frankfurt School the original crew got a glimpse of what the practical outworking of their theory actually was. Am I following you there?

Cameron:

They did. See, this is where history is helpful and if you want to think holistically, it will hurt you if you want easy pat answers. So, another reason why the Max Horkheimer and crew made some people really angry is because they departed from orthodox Marxists in a number of different ways. They felt that a lot of Marxist theories were crudely materialistic and way too oversimplified. They distrusted totalizing systems of thought. Marx was a brilliant thinker, but he was fiercely reductionistic. Marx is building on Hegel.

So again, sorry, you gotta get some history of ideals. Hegel is a notoriously abstruse philosopher, if you've ever endured the torture of The Phenomenology of Spirit then you'll know what I'm talking about. But in very simple terms, Hegel was arguing that history is reaching or is moving towards some point of total culmination and consummation. But he's thinking of this in secular terms, this is a secular kind of eschatology. Marx is going to build on that, but he's going to filter it through purely economic terms. So, for Marx, the engine driving all of the problems of our world, is class-conflict. And so that future historical culmination for Marx is going to be the classless-society after capitalism finally collapses under its many different contradictions. Marx's theory said, "regarding capitalism, maybe some revolutionaries need to come along and speed up the process, but capitalism eventually will fall; it cannot sustain itself because of all of its contradictions. And then when that happens, then you'll eventually usher in the classless society". Critical theorists began to distance themselves from that because they just felt that the whole way culture and our different political institutions work together is more complex than that. And so, they wrestled with these ideas and went back and forth, they grew more hesitant about revolution because they saw its potential for lots of bloodshed. 

Critical Theory’s “Reason”

Nathan:

Hangon, question. When you gave your definition of critical theory, two parts if I remember correctly. The first one was saying that the sense of analyzing power within the system, but then the second one was that it's a worldview. Acknowledging the critical theory worldview we have now, what did those original guys think? So, you're talking about Marx's eschatology. Was there a pseudo-secular eschatology that went along with them? Was it about the wrestling with the ideas that was the point, or was there something they were actually working toward in its original theoretical academic iteration?

Cameron:

Yeah, and all very fair questions. Yes, now this is Cameron speaking, I would argue there is a secular eschatology there in Horkheimer and Adorno in the Frankfurt School. It's a little bit less clear than with Marx. Marx is just so straightforward and transparent about what he thinks is happening. For them, they used the word "reason" in a kind of mystical sense. For them reason didn't mean instrumental understanding of the world or harnessing different systems of logic to get what we want. They saw that more as pragmatism. For them, reason indicated some future ideal state where we were no longer alienated and we saw things as they actually were. Where we see beyond all of the contradictions that so many German thinkers had talked about. Think about Immanuel Kant who draws that division between the numinal and the phenomenal or if you want a simpler way of breaking it down, Francis Schaeffer's Upstairs, Downstairs.

Nathan:

All right, so that's a really helpful answer. On the other hand, that strikes me as anti-postmodern. So,

Cameron:

Yes, it should strike you as anti-postmodern.

Nathan:

Okay, so I just wanna make sure that I'm correct here, they had a vision of a time in which truth could be known universally?

Cameron:

Yes, they did. Elle was shocked when I was actually doing some digging. And so, my thinking here was really animated by a wonderful book called The Dialectical Imagination by Martin Jay.

Nathan:

I'm sure that's a bestseller.

Cameron:

Yeah, let me tell you, with a title like that, you just can't lose. You'll find it at stands at your airport. 

This book has the seal of approval from different critical theorists, including Herbert Marcuse (He's one of the endorsements on the back). Martin Jay is a fantastic scholar, he teaches at UC Berkeley, he corresponded with these guys, and he had a relationship with Theodore Adorno and Horkheimer I believe. So, he knows critical theory in a pretty deep and personal way. But that was one of the aha moments for me as I was reading it. Yes, they did believe truth could be known universally. Now, the older they got, the more despairing Max Horkheimer in particular got. But again, let's bring in the helpful aid of history here; most of these men were Jewish, most of them had been forced to flee Germany because of Nazi occupation, and they had also seen communism in Soviet Russia. Some of them had actually experienced incarceration because of that. One guy associated with the Frankfurt School (whose name is escaping right now) took a trip to Soviet Russia to hand in his communist card. He just felt it was good intellectual integrity to explain why I don't want to pay my dues anymore. He was imprisoned for six months there, and he was nearly killed and got out of there. So, these people had firsthand experience with the outworkings of some of these utopian visions and they grew more wary as they got older and Horkheimer in particular had a deeply despairing kind of tone. But, nevertheless, there is a sort of mystical vision embedded in what they meant by "reason". But even today I think that continues a little bit, even second wave critical theorists, deconstructionists, and all of these different post critical studies, they're all concerned with emancipation, with freedom, right? Freedom from tyranny and bringing greater degrees of freedom so that people can be free and so that we can usher in a society that is just and equitable. There's no real agreement on what exactly that would look like and what even human beings are. There is a lot of agreement on what we aren't, what we shouldn't be. We shouldn't be part of the patriarchy. We shouldn't be beholden to any of these old cultural conventions and gender norms, but what is a person actually and what is a person for? It's pretty ambiguous there. It's hazy, but there's still this utopian vision sort of hanging over all of this.

Nathan:

Yeah. Okay, that's a big aha moment for me. Thank you for that answer and also thank you for your research on this, because I would imagine there are a number of people listening who would be like, "thanks for doing that, Cameron, so I didn't have to". To borrow a term from classic postmodern terminology (It's funny to use the word "classic postmodernism"), according to them, there isn't this trans-signant signifier, right? There isn't this overarching knowable truth. Is the confusion of our time the fact that we're trying to live this out? What are we trying to do here now? I get it for the first group, you got Jewish people who grew up under Nazi Germany, they're critiquing power, they watch it come to fruition in Soviet Union. Marx picks up on this, thinks through it, it doesn't work out. But I get that and understand the critique of power. I don't understand what's animating the utopian vision. And I guess this is my fundamental struggle here is like, "It's easy to take things apart. Then what?". I don't know how to connect the postmodern academic field ethos that I feel like we've been living in for the last like 15 years summarized as "take everything apart" to the "what is it that we're trying to do?". I'm not suggesting "theory doesn't matter when it's only about pragmatism". It's rather, "It doesn't matter if you're making great time if you don't know where you're going or if you don't even think there's a destination". So, this is where I think people that think like me get a little sideways and say, "I understand where you're coming from and there's some value to what you're saying, but I need more than that".

Cameron:

Yes. So, broadly speaking, where critical theory can be very helpful is in showing us some of the inner workings of corruption in our culture. As Christians, we're going to be horrified by some of this and saddened, but not surprised. We, after all, would agree that human beings are fallen. So, this is where Christians end up looking like hardened realists, that's human nature in action. Conversely, many people who practice different forms of critical theory or who are heir to this school of thought are operating with an anthropology that posits human beings as either neutral or somewhat good. That's actually a devastating intellectual error to make. And it will set you up either for great naivete or despair. That's the end of the road there.

Nathan:

Can I give an anecdote here? I was at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Museum in Cincinnati a couple weeks ago with a theological variety of people and during the debriefing on the backside of that, those who I would consider to be more progressive or liberal could not process and could not handle what they saw in the imagery about slavery. And I was sitting there thinking like, "how in the world is this shocking to you?" We know about slavery, it was awful, it was broken, it was bad, and what it tells us about the world is that there is sin and it's real and look at what people have been able to do to other people. I was sad about it, but this shock and horror and appalled statements like, "I just couldn't believe"... You're like 67 years old! I was having a meltdown at people who I don't think were feigning shock nor feigning being appalled by it. But for me, because I'm operating from a standpoint of the brokenness of humanity and our capacity to do evil things, I actually have a vocabulary for that brokenness that I would say gives me a similar critique of unjust power structures. It's because it's a brokenness of a good thing rather than something we're trying to construct. So anyway, that just might be tangential, but in my mind the outcome of that is "if humans aren't bad and sinful, then the system must be wrong". And so, to me, it seems like there's a link there in that process of thinking that if a human is basically neutral or a good creature inherently, and there's brokenness and misuse of power in the world, then it has to be a system's fault because it can't be an individual's fault. Am I way off base there or is that fit with what you've been learning too?

Cameron:

Yeah, the question really is, "is society the corrupting influence" or "where do we locate responsibility here"? The early guys discovered that education alone is not the answer. There are plenty of people who had all the culture, all the education they needed, and still were perpetrating horrendous crimes. So, I think there's a predisposition to operate as though human beings are in that neutral / basically good category. One of the many major deficiencies for critical theory, as if you can call it a school-of-thought, has to do with its way of looking at human nature. Because it's unwilling to see human beings as fallen, which makes sense again. These people are not thinking in terms of a Christian worldview, so why would they? But when you take away that piece, so much about human behavior looks incomprehensible.

Modern Critical Theory

Nathan:

I'm going to ask you a mean question because I know you have another half hour that we should go through to jump from that point in time to this point in time. But can you start to turn us in the direction towards where we're at in a modern sense? And give a critique then saying, "given this history, here are the misguided elements of it". So, if we don't want to be flippant with our critique of critical theories, but we want to actually put our thumb on the pulse and say, "here's our issue". You say number one, it's a false anthropology from a Christian perspective. Where do we go from here?

Cameron:

Yes. It's a false anthropology and where do we go is a very key question. I've tried to point out that utopia, the word itself from Sir Thomas Moore, means literally nowhere or no place. So, the idea that we could have some sort of a classless society or any kind of society with no human conflict whatsoever is a modern fantasy. Actually, it's probably not a modern fantasy. It's probably just a deeply human fantasy. Now there have been a number of social experiments down the ages of small colonies and communities where people tried to have some kind of a utopian society and they were disastrous. Again, because of the underestimation of human nature. So, my sound bite for this, (I'm always wary of sound bites), is that critical theory can do a lot of damage on its way to nowhere. Can we gain some key insights into covert power structures and the ways in which power is consolidated in a given society? Yes, actually we can. There is a lot of insight to be gained there. And you can gain insight from this kind of stuff without buying into all of its assumptions. That's worth pointing out because our society is so polarized right now. That's why folks are tempted sometimes to think along the lines of, "Cameron said some positive things about critical theory. So, I guess he's a critical theorist". Well, no. I've said some positive things about Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud before but I don't buy into their key assumptions. I have massive disagreements with them and part ways with them on major issues, but I can still glean insight from them. The same is true of critical theory. It's not a valid notion to say, "you said that we could gain some insight from critical theory, therefore you're compromising". That's a polarized kind of ideological way of looking at it. You can gain some insight from this without buying into all of its assumptions. And so, I think that's worth bearing in mind. I do think its core assumptions of the hazy anthropology and the notion that the status quo is necessarily unjust, are deeply, deeply flawed. And I think the outworking of trying to tear up all of our traditions, which critical theory seriously accelerated, has been very damaging. So, I wanna be clear about that.

Nathan:

Yeah. Who gets to decide who the supposed modern power holders are? Because that seems to be what makes Christians, I think rightly, concerned. Like when, you see these charts saying, "here's what it means to be an oppressor". I think I've shared this story before; I was at a well-known university. You have to have good test scores to get in there and somebody who's a black student was talking about being a victim and then she said, "but I also have to recognize that I'm an oppressor because I can see and that makes me an oppressor of people who are blind". And when she made that statement, I was like, "Ooh, okay, that's helpful because now we're talking about very different definitions of what it means to be an oppressor". So, are you inherently an oppressor just because you're able bodied? Now, does that give you certain privileges and distinct advantage and a lot of things? Absolutely. But where did we get this binary between oppressor and oppressed? Where you can only fit on one side of the spectrum in certain categories. Where does that fit into this whole conversation? Because who gets to define what the categories are? This seems to be the most contentious part of this in its modern application.

Cameron:

I think in general; the notion was that whatever structures are dominant at the time, whoever is in power, the status quo, major institutions, that represents the ruling powers. That's why there's a lot of suspicion of tradition and classical ways of doing things. And that's why if somebody is holding a kind of cultural power and force, they're associated with that kind of unjust power. It gets a little hazy.

Nathan:

So, wait, is power always unjust in this system?

Cameron:

Power is usually represented as problematic in this system. At the least, I haven't seen too many indications of a view of power that sees it in positive terms. There is no well-used power. Again, the notion is that we work our way toward a society where it's largely a classless society or something like a classless society where you don't have these major players. Everybody is on equal footing, so to speak. You have to speak in sort of generalizations here a little bit, but somewhere along those lines, yeah.

Nathan:

Well, thank you for your speaking in generalizations because we asked you to summarize like two days’ worth of work in about 45 minutes. So that was a Herculean task and a mean thing we did to you there. But I think I found it to be helpful and a lot of other people will too. Just one last question to make sure I'm hearing you correctly. I think that I've felt that some of my frustration has been not on the modern version in which we can dissect injustice and power, but it's that we almost are operating with categories of sin without categories of forgiveness. And so, we have the ability to say what is wrong, but we don't have within these theories, the mechanisms for restitution, reconciliation, for community, for the collective, or for building. So, I think that's where my Christian faith on one hand, we can point out misused and abused power, the prophets spoke about injustice, Jesus hammered on and railed against injustice. But it seems like it lacks the ability that Christ and his life, death, and resurrection model for us. The ability to go beyond that and to say, what does it mean for God to reconcile the world to himself, to make us ambassadors, and give us a ministry of reconciliation.  Putting things back together and having an actual vision for where we want to go. So, I really liked the way that you summarize there, there are parts of this that I can recognize and say that has some validity to it. But I dare not succumb to a false anthropology nor a lower theology of anything that would exclude the ability for us to (not by our own bootstraps, but because we have a higher moral purpose and moral vision) be able to offer forgiveness to people who have transgressed and to say, "whoop, all right, we're going to fix this up and put this back together and work toward justice now". I'll give you a chance to correct me if I'm wrong on any of that feeling, but I think largely speaking Christianly, this idea that forgiveness is real, that reconciliation is a real possibility that puts me at odds fundamentally with where I see a lot of these streams of thought going.

Cameron:

I think that's helpful. Yeah.

Nathan:

Alright. I'm getting the nod from Cameron.

Cameron:

You're getting the nod. Yeah, so thanks for hanging with us. Hope we've given you some food for thought, helped you to process a little bit. A lot more could be said as always, but we've said a lot more than we usually do in an episode here. So, thanks for sticking with us. You've been listening to Thinking Out Loud, a podcast where we think out loud about current events and Christian hope.

Medically Assisted Death and the Sanctity of Human Life

Listen to Episode

Please note, this is an A.I. transcript of the podcast Thinking Out Loud Together. As such, it will lack the polished quality of an actual blog post. It’s provided for those who prefer reading to listening. Special thanks to Mark for volunteering to humanize the process by shaping the wording into a more readable format.

Cameron:

Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your cohost, Cameron McAllister.

Nathan:

and I'm your co-host Nathan Rittenhouse.

Cameron:

Nathan, I wanted to begin on a pretty sobering article here. I actually found reading this one pretty distressing. There is a movement in Canada right now to expand the laws surrounding medically assisted suicide. And that expansion would move to include people suffering from mental illness and also people who have an incurable sickness that is not necessarily terminal. It would also include, and this is gonna sound kind of ominous, because it is ominous, it would also include mature children, that would be young people who are under the age of 18. If it can be demonstrated that they're making a rational and informed decision. That would put Canada at the cutting edge of medically assisted suicide, I think even ahead of places like the Netherlands and Belgium. So that's moving forward. The push is to get this to happen by 2024. And the article (appeared in Reuters and I'll link to it in the show notes) begins by profiling a woman who is 49 years old who has been struggling with anorexia for her entire life, has received treatments throughout her life and has not found them helpful or beneficial and so, she basically says she feels like she has lived her life, every day is hell, and she doesn't want to be alive anymore. People like her are kind of the primary examples for this expansion. And I thought that the article brings up a number of fascinating assumptions that we really should interrogate a little bit here and discuss. So, I know that this is one that I just kind of dropped in Nathan's lap here, but I've always really appreciated your perspective, Nathan, on medical ethics. In fact, I think this is one of those areas where you really shine, especially on the area (it's going to sound funny) of death. Nathan's got some really good thoughts on death and a good death.

Nathan:

Oh yeah, I want to be a specialist there. A bunch of things pop into my mind here. Obviously, we're gonna pull in here a whole additional moral grounding for our ethical decisions and the choices that we make because we're speaking here as Christians. Okay, Canada's maybe moving faster in a direction than some other countries, but a lot of European countries have made headlines with similar types. So, you're making baby steps in a direction. And there's this whole thing where people get paranoid about something and say, "that's a slippery slope argument". Well, sometimes there actually are slippery slopes. You start down a direction of a path and then you just kind of keep slowly changing the dynamic of what that definition is until you find yourself in a spot where you don't want to be. So, this does seem to be one of those categories that there are certain lines that, when it comes to the sanctity of human life, once you cross over that threshold you've already cut the brakes off of the vehicle, because of the moral calculus that you're using. So now it's just a matter of the speed at which it rolls down the hill. So, I think one of the crazy things is that living in the 21st century we’re not that far removed from a time in which entire countries decided to "cleanse" themselves of the undesirables as it were. And so the distance between "I get to choose when to end my life", and "somebody else gets to choose when to end my life", is not as big of a leap as you would think if you get outside of an American ideal of the individual being, or I would say Judeo-Christian ideal of the individual being inherently valuable whether or not they're producing X number of widgets per day. So, I think just looking in the rear-view mirror of history of anything we do that "morally justifies" the elimination of a life, whether its one's own life or another’s, is a step [in the wrong direction]. Just looking at human nature and the way that things have played out in the past, that whole thing should give serious pause, even if you aren't looking at this as a Christian. First, I get to decide when I don't get to live, and then somebody else gets to decide when I don't get to live. We could talk the whole show just about the history of humanity "eliminating" other humanity and burdens from society. Second one is, I'm trying to think about super rational decisions that I made before I was 18 years old. We use that as a threshold for decision making for a whole lot of reasons. So that one's a little nefarious there. And then the other thing is, if you're gonna let people who have a diagnosed mental struggle be the ones who make a decision about the value of their own life, it's kind of like asking a drunk person to judge whether or not they think they can drive. We say there's an impairment here where you're not thinking correctly about the value of your own life and the possibilities on the other side of that. So those are, on the surface level, first glances at things that would be yellow flags for me. We'll get to talking about the sanctity of life and the value of it and whether or not you're your own and you get to choose and all of that. But what I can't quite wrap my head around here is there's an odd balance of prioritizing the individual and saying, "it's your life you get to decide", individual choice verses a collective sense in which the individual doesn't matter to some degree. So, we're living in a culture, where there's a huge tension that says, "the individual doesn't matter" but also "the individual matters so much that they can make the choice about their contribution to and their value". So, to me, that seems to be an odd. 

And then just one more thing before you jump in on that. Some of these things, particularly around Anorexia and mental illness, are so easily culturally manipulated. I read an NPR article last week where they set up eight tick tock accounts acting as if they were 13-year-old girls and all eight accounts within 30 minutes of existing had multiple advertisements for anorexia, weight loss, and suicide. These ads were not trying to prevent it, but rather it was a thing that was being pitched. So, NPR is saying "what kind of social media world are your kids living in"? If you register as a 13-year-old girl, you're going to start getting content for self-image stuff and self-worth stuff. So, I think that's another one that I want to add in there, to just look at the whole package. They'll say "all due respect to individual choice" except for the fact that what you think is an individual choice is easily manipulated and cultivated by the screens and the culture and the people around you. So those are the first things that I see that make me say, "I can't really detach myself as a Christian from this, but I haven't even made a divine, Imago Dei, argument yet". There are other significant ethical hurdles that should be red flags here for any secular government.

Cameron:

Yeah, and I think just to amplify some of what you said, Nathan, these observations are legal, prudential, and historical so far right now, not explicitly Christian, and yet they make perfect sense. Regarding an actually slippery slope, a couple of other social critics, none of them identifying as Christian (that I can see in the article), make note of some of those very items. One of them said, "all right, yeah, so we started off with medically assisted suicide for only people with terminal illnesses. Now that's being expanded all the way to include people with mental illness. So, the slope clearly is slippery". On the manipulation note, there's a history of that too. Particularly, Amsterdam comes to mind (and this is increasingly the case in Canada as well), where many older people who require assistance in a living facility or medical assistance of some kind feel increased pressure to terminate their lives. Because they see themselves as a "drain on the system", as an "impairment", an "obstacle". As an aside, think about the way we talk about the elderly in the United States. I think America has a pretty poor track record of the way we look at older people. So, those are obviously massive items of concern. 

Now you're talking about young, impressionable, people who aren't even adults and people, as Nathan mentioned, struggling with mental illnesses. Clearly many of them in an impaired frame of mind are being asked to make decisions of this gravity and this magnitude. So, all of those provide ample cause for concern. But I want to first press a little bit into that tension that you just mentioned, Nathan, because I would say we're bordering on a contradiction here. On the one hand, the individual is so sacrosanct, "I get to do whatever I want. I am the master and commander of my ship. I am a modern man or a modern woman in charge of my destiny". But I think one of the most probably radical outworking of what sociologists call "expressive individualism" is to take a life, whether it's your own or somebody else's. And I know that this is not directly related to what we're talking about today, but I can think of another dark outworking of this. And this is Cameron going into theoretical mode. So, make some, just make some allowances here.

Nathan:

Brace yourself, everybody.

Cameron:

It's a theory that I have, I think that some of the mass shooting incidents that we see have, in some ways you can look at them as a kind of radical, horrifyingly unhinged expression of individualism to where a person feels such an intense need for self-expression and to be seen and to be heard that they lash out in that kind of a way. I do think, we've talked about this before on the show, Nathan, that some of the kinds of crimes that we see, there appears to be no clear motive. Let's say somebody just walks into a public setting like a shopping mall or a movie theater and decides to take as many lives as they can. That does seem to me unique to our day. Not that people haven't been killing people since time immemorial, but that there appears to be a senselessness to it. I think in some ways you can see this as people desperate to express themselves any way they can be seen and be heard. And the other way, of course, is you take your own life. And often these people who do go on these killing sprees do end up turning the gun on themselves. So, I think you have on the one hand, this view of individualism that has gotten so out of control, all limits are thrown out the window in some cases. But then on the other hand, it results in this cheapening of life where people are treated as expendable. And when I say this, I do not mean to trivialize or diminish the level of suffering that people experience.

Nathan:

Oh, that's an important thing to say. Yeah, we're not going there.

Cameron:

We have to take that seriously, but the notion that life, life with pain, and even life with very serious pain is not worthwhile or is unlivable or that it's something that should be eradicated; that notion seems to me to be another thoroughly modern assumption because human life is necessarily going to be fraught with pain and suffering. The notion that if your feelings take a downturn and if life is very, very difficult, you should have an option to forfeit your life; it's simultaneously a radical kind of individualism and also an amazing trivialization of human life.

Foundations of a Right to Death

Nathan:

Okay, well, let's take what you just said there at the end. So, there's a pro-life movement, we talk about the right to life. And what we're talking about here is a right to death. I think the pro-life side of things, for the most part, operates foundationally off of some idea of the sanctity of life. I'm bringing in sanctity here, meaning that it has the divine referent to the standard of what it means to be [moral]. What do you see as the moral grounding or what are the moral or ethical principles at play that animate the right to death?

Cameron:

Moral principles, as far as I can see, that are at play are the attempt to honor the individual's freedom, to honor their quality of life, and to honor their dignity as a human being. Now, I'm playing devil's advocate. I don't agree with any of these, just to be clear.

Nathan:

Okay, hang on. But what I'm saying is where do you get the foundation? So, what are the assumptions that produce the foundation for the idea of honoring the freedom of the individual?

Cameron:

Well, so you are on borrowed credit. So, the great irony is you're on borrowed credit from a Christian view of human life. And you're on borrowed credit to sponsor something that is fundamentally opposed to the Christian conception of human value. 

Nathan:

Yes, that is a very concise way of saying what I think I've been trying to maul around in here a little bit. So, say that one more time just so we can all follow along.

Cameron:

Isn't that crazy? Okay, so the "right to death" as it's presented here, especially in laws like this in Canada, is on borrowed credit from a Christian view of the sanctity of human life, but it is itself fundamentally at odds with the Christian view of the sanctity of human life. So, it puts you in a very odd position. This is where it's important to stress just how much you lose when you walk away from Christianity. And I'm not talking about just us walking away from Christianity in our individual lives. I'm talking about; when the wisdom of the Judeo-Christian tradition is withdrawn from a society, an amazing impoverishment takes place.

Nathan:

Yeah, okay, so all right, well let's go skiing here. Let's just go down the slippery slope a little further. Because you say, "the idea of the right to death is on borrowed credit". So, what happens then when you run out of credit on that? Like what then is the next step?

Cameron:

Those are the frightening scenarios that are not that outlandish and that have a historical precedent as you just pointed out.

Nathan:

Well, that's what I'm saying. It's not slippery slope in the sense that if you start at the bottom and work your way up the hill, you know what you can slide back down to. And so, this slippery slope seems to me to not be speculation of the future but rather it would be sliding back down to what our past has wrought.

Cameron:

Well, what makes this insidious, Nathan, is the language that's being used. I like Dallas Willard's way of saying "the devil loves to get a hold of words" and euthanasia programs of the past, some of these radical like the final solution, they obviously have very [positive soundings names]. This runs the risk of sounding like I'm speaking in trivializing terms, but I'm not, I'm just trying to be descriptive here. These terms now have bad press (That's a radical understatement of the complete and total heinousness of them). They have bad press; you have movements like this that dress themselves up sometimes in humanitarian language and garb. Even the acronym for this program in Canada is MAID, Medical Assistance in Dying. I'm pointing that out and bringing MAID up because MAID is a word that signifies help and assistance and care. And this is the opposite of that, this is murder. This reworking of right to death, MAID, "we want to honor the dignity of the individual", "we want to alleviate suffering". Just imagine a shift more and more into, "you're not in a position to be able to make this decision for yourself, but we have your best interest in mind. We are doing this because out of care for you and your quality of life, which is so fundamentally compromised, that we want to 'help you'".

Nathan:

But why does it have to be yours [best interest]? Why can you not just say "you know what this person is eating into their retirement and our inheritance, their carbon footprint, and they're not producing any widget. For the better of the collective, it is better for the individual to go"? I mean we don't even have to ground it in "what's good for the individual". Let me just do a little etymological reminder here. So "Thanos" (you Marvel fans will know) is Greek word for "death". And "eu" is the prefix for "good". So "euthanasia" is "a good death" and we'll want to come back here in a second and talk about what is the concept of a "euthanasia", a good death.

Cameron:

M.A.I.D., Medical Assistance in Dying, this sounds like something out of a dystopian novel. This sounds like the N.I.C.E. institute in C.S. Lewis's "That Hideous Strength" or something like that, but this is real. 

A Good Death

I think we might need to take a detour here really quickly, Nathan, because I actually think this is a big deal and it's more than a footnote, it's a huge contributor to some of the confusion on this topic. We now have medical technology that can keep people alive much longer and sometimes beyond the point of 'natural death'. That's introduced a number of very serious questions, so I think we need to also include the question of those who simply choose to die a natural death and to come off of 'the machinery' or anything like that. I think that's very important here because we're going to have to draw a distinction between somebody where you're prolonging the inevitable in some cases (the lines get gray here sometimes) and somebody who is actively seeking death.

Nathan:

Yeah, I don't know. I guess in my mind there's a very clear distinction between the [two where one is the] natural course where your body naturally is going or the Lord taking you. And so ultimately, I would reroute this all back into "the earth is the Lord's and everything in it", even clear down to Paul, "you're not your own", "you were bought with a price, therefore, honor God with your body". So, for me, yes. We had a really great friend of the show, a donor and contributor, prayer buddy, and supporter who died just a few months ago in his 80s, who had gone through some significant cancer, some crazy treatment, and it worked. And he was granted a few more years of life and that was great for those of us who loved him and his family and who got to know him better. Then everything kind of flared back up and came back around in a way that he said, "you know what, I've had a good life and I can't do this to my body or my family for such a low chance of it working again; the chaos that the treatment would cause here". So, he chose to rest out his days. That's not killing yourself. The way to ask is, "who is the agent that causes the death?". And if it's time, the natural course of history, or an act of God; then you aren't the agent that causes your death. That's very different than somebody else mixing an IV for you or pulling the trigger. So, for me, I think you're absolutely right. As Christians, we want to see both ends of this. Death is not the boogeyman. It comes back to "what is a good death"? Because a good death can include leaning into the inevitable even when there's pain. So, your point is well taken, but I'm saying you can fall out of bed in both directions here like "I must avoid death at all costs when I'm 102 years old and have a brain tumor". In my mind, it's easier to make the distinction when I ask the question "who is the agent that is causing what change"? That helps me.

Cameron:

That's a clear way to put it. But I think the big question here, hovering over all of this for every person, and this is where we come to the place where Christians are foreigners and aliens, resident aliens, but as Christians, of course, we would maintain, we have, we have no right to take our own lives. We have, of course, the ability to allow nature to take its course, an act of God, to wait it out, all of that of course. We are mortal and that will happen at some point, but we don't have the right to take our own life because our lives are not our own. And I think that's the great place of contradiction for most modern assumptions. The default would be "your life is your own", "your body is your own property", "you're free to do with it whatever you want", "use it however you want", "rewire it however you want", "remake it however you want". That's the big point of philosophical, theological, and existential departure here.

Nathan:

You know, there's another layer here, a good death is a privilege, it's not a right. And I would say, I'm just thinking out loud here, (I wasn't even trying to make a pun) that the role of community in a good death is very high. Having family, having community around you, having friends, having a church family who can care for and support for the broad array of things that start to disintegrate toward the end of your life. I was thinking of several years back when my mom's dad was dying, he was 87, at a big Thanksgiving meal. He knew he was dying, tumor spreading all of this, he was sleeping on a sofa and all of his great grandsons were driving little trucks and tractors all over his body, they were using them as a road system. Everybody is laughing and cleaning up from Thanksgiving and all of this, and so here was a man whose body was exhausted a who his great grandchildren were crawling all over. And I can't help but think that he was delighting in that, in a certain sense of just resting. And that was part of the decision he made. He said, "there are more treatments that I could do, but the Lord has been so good to me, and I feel so loved, and I'm ready to go". And so, I think its interesting that, "I feel so loved, therefore I'm ready to go", is not something that you can get through a chemical injection. So, we're kind of reducing the idea of a good death down to the painlessness by which we slip away on our own terms, rather than as a Christian pulling that more broadly back out into seeing the significance that we have as our membership in a community of which none of us are our own, and where there's a mutual affection and support. And I've been blown away just here in the last couple years of recognizing the phenomenal amount of pain that a person can joyfully endure when they're deeply embedded in good relationships. And I think this is the place where the church has the potential to shine in the future and has in the past. We're looking at an epidemic, you see this kind of headline starting in Japan of the people who are dying literally alone with no family, all the way down to you see the news story headlines now that we live in a country as Americans where 30% of households are single individuals. So, there's a sense to me (I don't know if this is a causation or correlation) where I think some of this push that Canada is leading the edge on is an indicator of the chronic isolation and loneliness that we're now experiencing as humans. And I don't know quite how to make that connection there (I haven't thought through this at all until 18 seconds ago), but it seems to me that there is somehow a connection between how we form and shape community, how we see our identity, and then therefore what our concept of a good death is. Help me out there. Is that there or am I just trolling for something?

Cameron:

I think what strikes me about that, Nathan, is that need for community in a good death, that also means that we have to be willing to walk through suffering and death with other people. There's a serious aversion to that in North America. It used to be the case that a lot of the elderly would end up dying in a home with their family, surrounded by family and friends, it's not the case now as much (we've talked about this on the show before). A lot of people are in assisted living facilities where they're dying and suffering and they are, at the risk of sounding insensitive, carefully screened off from everyday life. 

Nathan:

Yeah, but the cultivation of that experience is not for the individual who is suffering. The cultivation of that experience is for everybody around them. So that's where the indictment is on us, am I unwilling to look at something that could alleviate the hurting of somebody else?

Cameron:

That's exactly it, and we have to be willing to bear one another's burdens on this one. Here's something that's interesting, when you're caring for somebody who's dying and in the throes of sickness and suffering, it's obviously not a glamorous experience, of course. It can be harrowing, but it is a kind of sacramental experience, I think.

Nathan:

Oh yeah, so there's a weird thing that my dad said, he has attended a lot of people in their last minutes. Maybe you only get a Christian to say this, but he said this one time when he came back from being with somebody as they died in the family, "you know, death is just such a special time of life".

Cameron:

There's a paradox for you right there.

Nathan:

How weird of a statement, but if you're a Christian looking at it, it is a step in something bigger, it's not an end, it’s an insane statement if you think death is the end, it makes total sense if you're looking at this as a Christian.

Cameron:

It's moments like this which help us to appreciate that we, as Christians (those of us who follow Christ), have a completely different way of looking at the world and reality. And it does, and it will look crazy to many people whose default setting is that "death is the worst thing that can happen to you" and that "suffering is to be avoided at all costs".

Nathan:

Also, that "death is the best thing that could happen to you".

Cameron:

Yeah, because it saves you from suffering. Yes, in this construal.

Christian Response

Nathan:

So, let's loop back here for a second. If you're looking at life from a totally humanist, naturalistic, secular perspective, all of this makes total sense. We view humans and their value for the necessity or the productivity that they have. That's kind of the deal with communism, right, like "what is your economic value". There's a sense in which we're returning to things that, in the modern West, we've fought pretty hard not to have ideologically. But, if you get to a purer atheist, non-sacramental, non-sanctity-based ethic, all of this makes total sense. None of this surprises me at all. It surprises me that it's taken this long to get around to it. So, it’s our go-to line, right? They can make us sad but not surprised if you're a Christian. So that's that. 

So, what then are the practical steps of rebellion within the subcultures in which we live that take a stand against this trend? Because the laws are gonna be what the laws are going to be. Everything that Christ asked me not to do are perfectly legal in one form or another. So, this is a sense in which the Christian has to make decisions of saying, "just because it's legal and I can do this, doesn't mean that I should, ought to, or will do this". So, we can draw the lines on our own boundaries of how it is that we live in and how we think about the end of our own lives. But then what are those other little steps that we can do that create the culture of vitality around how we view and treat humans? Steps that form a bit of rebellion against a culture that wants to trend back in this direction.

Cameron:

Yeah, welcoming, bearing one another's burdens, walking with people through their suffering, not sending away family members, talking openly and candidly about a good death, recognizing that death is not the worst thing. I mean, doing that takes training and practice. This is part of, that's a core part of discipleship, by the way, is training out of ourselves the notion that self-preservation should drive everything that we do and recognizing that there is more to life than just simply feeling good all the time. To put it in very down-to-earth terms, in some ways, I think the reigning philosophy of so many people nowadays is just that a good life is a life where you just feel good most of the time. Feel good at a maximal level. And that's why you drink what you do, that's why you eat what you eat, that's why you work out, that's why you sleep with people you want to. And it makes a certain amount of sense again, but feeling good all the time is completely unrealistic and doesn't fit the parameters of the world in which we live at all.

Nathan:

Well, we're 35 minutes into this and I just figured out something. If you live in a culture that doesn't know what a good life is, we're not going to be able to, as a culture, define what a good death is.

Cameron: 

Yeah, that's a good way of putting it.

Nathan:

Pursuing abundant life, whatever age you are right now as you're listening and thinking about what the actual parameters are of what makes life good, will deeply inform then what you consider to be a good death.

Cameron:

I think that's well said and I think that's a fitting point of closure for this particular discussion. But this is a topic that I think we're going to probably come back to again. The article is in some ways distressing and there are elements of it that can seem shocking. But, as Nathan said, the truly shocking thing is that this has not happened sooner. I think sometimes we don't realize how much restraint is happening because if things went their natural course with the way we think here in the West, you'd see a whole lot more of this a lot sooner. So, Nathan's right. We need to think about and pray about and work together creatively in our communities, in our churches on how we can holistically and wholesomely rebel against these life denying trends and uphold the sanctity of life. In our homes, in our marriages, with our friends, with our children, with our brothers and sisters in Christ, in our churches. May we all be empowered to do so and let's be thinking about that. We hope that this has had some uplifting moments in it as well, genuinely uplifting moments of hope for you, even as we look at some trends that are pretty dark. Thank you so much for listening. You've been listening to Thinking Out Loud, a podcast where we think out loud about current events and Christian hope.

When Is a Body Not Just a Body?

Listen to Episode

Please note, this is an A.I. transcript of the podcast Thinking Out Loud Together. As such, it will lack the polished quality of an actual blog post. It’s provided for those who prefer reading to listening. Special thanks to Mark for volunteering to humanize the process by shaping the wording into a more readable format.

Cameron:

Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your cohost, Cameron McAllister.

Nathan:

and I'm your co-host, Nathan Rittenhouse.

Cameron:

There is a ghoulish story that some of you may have caught, and Nathan wants me to introduce this.

Nathan:

Well, when I saw it, I was like, "Oh, this is Cameron right here. I'm going to go to bed."

Cameron:

There you go. Not sure whether I should be flattered or insulted there, but yeah. This happened at Harvard medical school, very prestigious institution, and I imagine that this is a huge embarrassment to leadership. This is one of those stories; I'm sure one day there will be podcast about this, possibly a true crime series. It's just a wild story. This husband and wife team, it turned out, were selling body parts. And there was a ring that they had going with, I think at least two other people, maybe three. The body parts, of course, these are from people who had donated their bodies to science. The hope was that their bodies were being used for research. So [that] was a noble aim, but this hideous side hustle was going on. And I think, lots and lots of money was involved. I mean, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Nathan: 

Oh, yeah, we're over six figures in some cases. It wasn't a menial amount of change. But skulls, skin, bones, fetuses, various. Yeah. All that category.

Cameron:

Yeah. So obviously a disturbing and very sad story and leadership are now in the process of (imagine if you had to make this phone call) contacting family members and trying to spell this out, work this through and figure out the next step. So that was one of the thoughts that came to my mind.

Nathan:

Oh yeah, "your husband's skull is now in a tattoo parlor in Minnesota".

Cameron:

And again, if you haven't already gathered from the nature of this story that, if you want to dig any deeper, you've been warned. I’m trying to figure out a delicate way to say this diplomatically: One of the culprits involved is a fairly exotic looking person and, I mean, facial tattoos and looks like kind of prosthetics, horns, spikes in the head, all of that. When we saw that picture, Nathan, I think we joked about this; I thought of Oscar Wilde's famous quote "By the age of 40, you more or less have the face you deserve." (Dallas Willard brought this to my attention).

Nathan:

And this guy is 40, right? Or something like that.

Cameron:

He's 40, I think he's just 40. If you see his face, a lot of work went into his face, but it's kind of interesting to think about that as you see him.

Sacredness of Bodies

Nathan:

So, let's loop around here from another angle and talk about human bodies and human body parts for a minute and then maybe we can tie this back in. Because I think there probably is a connection between how he styles himself and his moral compass as it relates to physical bodies. So, here's a fun one just to get us started on this. Right after my grandfather graduated from seminary, there was a man who had an amputation. And he came to him wanting him to have a funeral for his leg. And that is an interesting [idea].

Cameron:

Oh, wow.

Nathan:

Process that... just think through that for a second. That's not exactly what a funeral is. At a funeral, we're committing somebody's spirit in the hands of a loving merciful God. There's a spiritual component to laying someone at rest, so, it's not a funeral. Now, I think you can help somebody dispose of a body part as a part of the grief process. There's a lot to that which would be pastoral and ways in which you could be helpful to somebody in that situation. Maybe you wouldn't call it a funeral, but you can see the tension that we're setting up here when you detach a human body part from the body. Obviously, that is no longer that person. There's a sense in which selling somebody's bones for bone art is morbid, but I hope to be able to push in and say 'why' we think that's true. Because, naturalistically speaking, it's not. Other cultures keep the bones of people or keep ashes on their mantles. Is that too much? Is it merely the honoring or the way in which you possess them? There's a whole lot of interesting avenues here. You could say "well, I think this is gross and important". If you do, you need to say why. And we also need to say why that's different than a lot of other ceremonial and burial practices. So those are some of the [seemingly] surface level issues that get very deep very quickly. 

I'll just lay this out here and then get you to jump in on this. Okay, think of all the horrendous ways that people have died; burned in fires, eaten by wild animals, tortured, mutilated, dissolved by acid, lost at sea, all sorts of stuff. And my understanding and confidence in Christ is His ability that when He restores and redeems and renews all things, that the physical restoration of your body is not going to be a problem for the Almighty, regardless of how you physically deteriorated or decomposed or mummified or embalmed or whatever. So, I have zero theological philosophical [concerns]. So, on one hand, there's a sense in which at a theological level, it doesn't matter what happens to your body after you're dead. On the other hand, what we do and how we think about human bodies as the living, says a lot about what we think about the sanctity and the value of human life and proper honor and respect and care [of others]. There's a two-fold part to this. On one hand, it doesn't matter at all. On the other hand, it matters deeply for the kind of people we are and the way that we think about and what we would do with human bodies. Does that seem right to you, Cameron? Is that a possible dichotomy to make there?

Cameron:

Sure. And when you say, "it doesn't matter", you mean in the sense that it doesn't pose an insuperable challenge to our Lord when He grants you a resurrected body.

Nathan:

Yeah, you have cultures where if you aren't buried properly your afterlife is messed up. And Christianity just doesn't have any of that. If I die along the road and vultures eat me, it doesn't matter to me.

Cameron:

Yes, correct, that's very true. And again, apologies. We're in dark territory here. We're talking about burnings and mutilations. I believe it was the Apache Indians who believe there are two ways they could be cursed and not allowed into paradise, scalping and strangulation. That's one of the reasons why scalping, for instance, became a big practice, sadly. So that's just to point out there are other beliefs, and that's one among many, as Nathan was saying. There are many belief systems who tie the eternal destiny of the person and their soul to the fate of their body. And Christianity does not do that. 

Nathan:

Oh yeah, coins in the eyes, in the mouth, the things pharaohs were buried with for the afterlife, there's a whole complex. Even the Old Testament, you see them hanging up bodies rather than burying them and the warriors going and taking the body down and burying it. Joseph of Arimathea does that for Jesus. That wouldn't have had the same theological consequence to it, but you see that as something that cultures make an effort to appropriately honor, even if they don't put it in the category of helping this person transition into the next life.

Cameron:

And so, what we see here, I would call a desecration. And the question is, why though? Why is this a desecration?

Nathan:

Yeah, okay, that's a good way to distinguish what we're trying to grapple with here.

Cameron:

Yeah, so I'm going to bring in a story that Hans Boersma brought up once, which I think is very helpful and actually quite convicting. I think it'll be convicting to some of us. Hans Boersma, theologian, he talks about the Bodies Exhibition. Nathan, do you remember the Bodies Exhibition?

Nathan:

Oh, this has been a while.

Cameron:

Yeah, and I believe, if I'm not mistaken, it's still going. This is an exhibition ostensibly devoted to the celebration of the wonders of the human body. It displays pieces of the body, of real human bodies from cadavers. Boersma describes being on a field trip with a Christian school and they had gone to this body's exhibition and the verse sort of sponsoring this excursion was, "we're fearfully and wonderfully made". And this was supposed to be a celebration of the beauty of God's creation. But Boersma pointed out that he felt it was the opposite, he felt that this was more of a desecration. He pointed out that this basically showcased the materialistic assumptions of our age where human bodies were displayed as nothing more than organs and dismembered pieces, basically like a kind of advanced organic machinery. And that this was a very hollow way to look at human beings. In actuality it did the opposite of honoring people, but rather ended up doing a dishonor to them. I bring that up because I remember when, years and years ago as in my early 20s, I did go to the Bodies exhibition. I've seen it, and I remember being very captivated. For instance, by the human ear, the inside of the ear and just the amazing features of that, the intricacy.

Nathan:

What does that look like? Do they have a bunch of ears lined up or what? I mean, how do they display the ears in the human body exhibition?

Cameron:

They have all the inner organs preserved and sort of encased so that you can walk around them and get a 3D perspective. They're preserved in such a way to capture. There's discoloration and all of that, because the bodies themselves are very old (I can't remember the precise history). But they've painstakingly brought them to a place where you can see what they would look like were they in a functioning human body. It's a display of the intricacy basically. 

My point in bringing that up is, that thought that occurred to Boersma never crossed my mind at that point. I just thought, "oh wow, this is very interesting, this is very scientific". And it wasn't until years later that I read Boersma's book. And he brought that up and I felt a mounting sense of shock and conviction. A conviction because of how desensitized I am and how that. This may ring true for some of our listeners here, I think his response was a deeply Christian response; he had the proper sensitivity of a Christian in that moment. I think my response when I was there, all those years ago, was very callous but I didn't realize it. That's what was so insidious about it. 

Now this story that we're talking about is highly dramatic. Obviously, we can say laws have been broken. These people's bodies were donated in good faith to science, so these people violated the law and they violated the wishes of these people. We know that those laws were transgressed. It's easy to point to the legalities of this and say “aha, well, here's where you have a clear problem". But beyond that? In our kind of materialistic culture, I don't know that we would have that much equipment to really prick the conscience of somebody here. Because after all, think about the story you just related about the gentleman who came to your grandfather saying, "hey, can you have a funeral for my leg"? So, I mean, "It's just a broken off limb. It's a broken off body part. It doesn't mean anything". I think that's the way we default to thinking sometimes. And so, imagine the minds of the two people who are working at Harvard Medical School as managers in the morgue who were highly educated themselves. I imagine that they probably took kind of a rationalistic view. I'm not trying to be too speculative but imagine what they were doing and why they might say, "We're not hurting anybody. These are body parts".

Nathan:

Alright, so let's talk about this because this loops back around to what I was going to say when you look this story up, you're going to see the face of the guy who is one of the main buyers because it is a little bit of a shocking character. You have people who work with dead bodies all the time. There would be a desensitizing process that would happen there if you were potentially a morgue worker. In the same way that if you worked in a slaughterhouse to some degree, you probably get desensitized to dead hogs, you know? On the other hand, you have the buyer who has a reductionistic, naturalistic view of humanity already, then you look at the modifications. His view of his physical body matched very nicely with a view of physical bodies that I'm sure there was no prick of conscience about either as far as what is appropriate to do with the dead body or living body. I see integrity there. This will be a reminder that you can have integrity in bad ways around false premise. There's consistency, integrity, and a continuity there for sure.

Cameron:

Consistency, integrity, not the good kind, but yeah. When we look at these kinds of developments, there's a recurring theme in some of our recent podcasts, Nathan. We keep coming back to ancient mindsets. We talked about shamans in our last podcast. I tried my best to draw some parallels between the practices of a shaman and some of the practices of our own contemporary culture to illustrate that we haven't changed that much. And here again, we began by talking about a bunch of ancient assumptions about respecting the dead, burial rights, all of that. You could really lose yourself in all of the amazing elaborate rituals of the past (especially ancient Egypt would be probably a supreme example, of course). But every time we look at that, we think, "oh, it's so distant, it's so remote, so exotic. We've outgrown all of that". And yet you see a story like this and you can say, “yeah, but have we really outgrown that?”. Those people who have, "totally outgrown it", display behavior that we recognize as a heinous departure from the way things ought to be. It seems to be a basic assumption of humans, by the way, that there is a high degree of respect and sacredness to somebody who has died, dead bodies, how burials are handled, all of that. And to have such a callous and cavalier attitude strikes most of us just in terms of common sense. Because this has been the basic assumption of humanity down the ages as something that is very wrong. No matter how enlightened or grown up supposedly we are.

Similarities in Culture

Nathan:

What do you think of this? I think people think of Halloween spirits, ghosts, disembodied spirits as being creepy because you use the word "darkness" earlier and that's proper. When you separate out a spirit, you have a spirit detached from a physical body, you think "ah, something's not right there". When you have a dead body, we should be hardwired to be like, "yeah, and that's not right either. They're not spiritually there". There was kind of a morbid joke that went; "When you have a funeral at church and somebody is in their coffin for the Sunday afternoon, do you count them in the attendance that morning?". Well, no, you don't. 

Their body is there in the library or wherever you store your bodies at church before the funeral. But they aren't there. So, there are two sides of this. One is a spirit without a body and one's a body without a spirit. And both of those are not right. We should have an uneasiness about both of those for humans. If we feel uneasy about it, it's because we are built for an integrated mentality when we're looking at what it means to be a human, and both of those are incomplete. Even when you look in Revelation at the idea of the spirits under the altar, the post final resurrection, there's still a longing for a completeness that hasn't happened yet, even for those who are in the presence of God. This reunification of the body and the spirit is what the resurrection perfectly is, that's the ideal. So, both sides of that; spirit without a body or body without a spirit, should seem not right to us.

Cameron:

And we live in a developed nation where you will drive down the road and it's a routine site for us to see the dead bodies of animals. Roadkill, that kind of thing. We do not live in a country where you routinely see dead bodies of people on the street or otherwise. It is our practice here, as soon as somebody has died, if a body is discovered, to immediately ensure that the body is properly taken care of and that a proper burial takes place. We don't think about it in these terms often but that is a nod to the sacred. Because if you travel internationally enough, you're gonna know that is not always the case. There are certain nations where you can go (one of them that comes to mind would be certain regions of the slums of India) where there are dead bodies on the street. And it's a real act of service, for instance, when Christian missionaries try to ensure that those bodies, those unclaimed who belonged to people, are properly buried. That's a real act of service because it's a recognition of the sacredness of a human being, that a human life has been lost. Even if this was a person who happened to be among the poorest of the poor, a person of no social standing so to speak.

Nathan:

Let's work this backwards, I think there's more to it than that. All right, let me say this sentence and then let's see if we can unpack it, "How you treat a dead body says a whole lot about how you would treat a living human".

Cameron:

I think so, I think there is a connection there. Let's go back to the face of this 40-year-old man who is a person made by God in the image of God. Granted this guy doesn't think that, okay, so let's extend him that courtesy and say he's not a Christian, he's not going to behave like a Christian. It would be silly of us to expect him to behave like a Christian. Now we can't expect him to be a Christian, but we can and should expect him to behave like a decent human being and abide by the laws of the land. What he did to his face makes sense if you think that we are in charge of ourselves entirely. We're rational people in charge of our destiny, that the bodies we have are our own. If Christianity is true though, your body is sacred because the Lord made it. The life that you have, the breath in your lungs, is a gift from the Lord. The time that you have, everything that you have; this is part of what it means when the expression "all is grace" is used. This is part of what that means, everything you have is a gift from on high. It's a gift from the Lord. A thought like, "I didn't choose to exist. I didn't ask for all of this.", these are very novel statements. In the history of humanity, people have not talked like that, not until recent years. This is perhaps a little speculative, but I would say those are distinctly modern things to say. We feel this degree of ownership sometimes. But if Christianity is true, such statements are utterly out of keeping with reality. Your body matters and the way you treat bodies matters, including dead bodies, this is the creation of the Lord. As Nathan said at the beginning of this podcast, "Christianity is not a disembodied belief system". When those who belong to Christ die, we are promised a resurrection body.

Nathan:

So, taking what you've said there, let me make this awkward. Let's take a little excursus on cremation here. Which is very common practice. I think most people don't think about this in this way. It is primarily done because it's highly efficient and there's an American pragmatism and efficiency that comes with it that. And look, I know every single person listening to this has known somebody who's been cremated or maybe even a loved one has been cremated. I recognize that I'm putting my fingers on some touchy things here. But I don't know that it would be bad for us to not rethink that as Christians. Maybe there are circumstances in which that's appropriate. And again, it doesn't matter for their eternal destination, but what we're willing to do with somebody else's body after they die says a whole lot about us. I'm not at a point where I would make a big bold statement on what you should or shouldn't do there, but I think it's worth thinking through. Coming from being related to people who do a lot of funerals, there's psychological closure for the family of the body. But then there is an extra level of respect of committing somebody's body to the ground and into the hands of a merciful God rather than keeping them on the mantle or dumping them in a river. Maybe different families will come out at different places there, but I think there is some room for us as we push forward, culturally speaking, to think about consistently applying our concepts of the sanctity of life. I know there are financial things and all sorts of things, so all the appropriate caveats there, but I wouldn't do it just because it's the cheapest or the fastest or the most convenient. That might not be what's best for you in honoring the humans that have lived among you.

Cameron:

Part of what the outworking of this episode is, is again to show how Christianity ought to structure our complete view of reality and how we live our lives. And I keep going back to 21-year-old kid Cameron at that exhibition, completely unperturbed by what I'm seeing and walking seamlessly in lockstep with the assumptions of my culture rather than having a Christian mindset on it. And that's just an illustration of how easy it is for us to fall into step with our cultural assumptions.

Nathan:

Alright, let me make it even weirder. Let's ratchet this up a notch. What about eating humans? I read a book, did you read the book on cannibalism a year or so ago? The premise was there are 1,500 species in which eating your same species is not a problem. Only one species has a problem with that and that's humans. It's interesting philosophical book, but I'm not out for soil and farming humans here. But in a survival situation, plane crash in the Andes, wreck of the Whaleship Essex, there've been multiple times in which people have needed to eat other people to stay alive. Is that morally different?

Cameron:

Again, yeah, I mean, that flows from this general topic because we're talking about the way we think of human beings. And again, the question here is, "what is the difference when it comes to a person?". If human beings are just a very complex animal or "one of the animals with big brains" as some have said, then I don't think you're gonna be able to make an argument against cannibalism in certain exceptional circumstances. If, on the other hand, human beings are distinguished among all creatures on this planet... (And human beings are creatures, we are. There is the animal side to human beings. in the sense that we're living carbon-based life forms) But if human beings are made in the image of God, then no.

Respecting Bodies

Nathan:

Okay, because I'm thinking through this in a couple different ways. Say we're in a plane crash, I die, and I give you permission to eat my calf muscles or whatever. (All I got to say is I would be one stringy chewy man. I can't figure out what part of me would be the most tasty). There's a sense in which I would be happy for somebody else to use my body in a way that saved their life. I think when people donate their bodies to science, that's also what they're doing. They're not being morbid with their own bodies. I was saying, "my head doesn't matter". They're saying, "I can contribute my body in a way that ultimately will lead to the preservation [of the human race], medical research". They're giving their bodies for the betterment of somebody else's life. 

Cameron:

A self-sacrifice.

Nathan:

Yeah, well, except for the fact that you're not being killed in order to do it. So obviously I would never kill somebody. I don't think you should kill me to eat me, but if I'm already dead and you needed me, then my body is a gift. In my mind, I can make a distinction there even though it sounds really gross and morbid. If you were dying of hunger, you'd probably rethink your convictions on that as well. So, I don't know, I muddied the water there... I think there is a distinction there for how the body is used afterward. Can it be done with Thanksgiving and honoring a life for the sake of others? And I see that as a yes. I don't see 'a novelty in a collection in somebody's basement' as fulfilling that.

Cameron:

I think a key word here that we haven't used yet would be 'respect'. Respect needs to enter in, in the sense that human beings are sacred. If the sacredness of human life is ensured, that can apply to a number of highly complex situations. And this is a world filled with complex situations, as we've abundantly illustrated in this episode. We do inhabit a world where there are plane crashes where some die and others survive in very austere regions with no food. We do live in a world where, apparently, people who are in charge of Harvard Medical School sell body parts to others for their private collections or for their museums. This is not an ideal world; this is the world where this kind of stuff happens. So, how do we think Christian-ly about it? It seems to me if human beings are made in the image of God, we need to recognize the sacredness of human life. And that is going to be a key, that will be a key consideration in all of the various situations that confront us. From going to an exhibition, to looking at a story like this, to confronting some of the questions that ethical philosophers love to throw at you (By the way, if you ever look through an ethics textbook, you're going to get schooled in some pretty morbid scenarios because these are usually the way to get the wheels turning). Sadly, again, we live in a world where those moral dilemma situations are usually not made up, they're real.

Nathan:

Yeah, so I'll stop talking but I just keep thinking of interesting questions here. I would say that our modern films are very okay with people getting killed. That's a standard feature. So, there's a desensitization that comes there but I'm trying to think of where are the places where we're forced to reckon with what then happens to our bodies? In a lot of those [movies] somebody gets shot quick killed, and there's this idea that "they deserved it and there's justice", but then the treatment of the body afterward isn't a big consideration.

Cameron:

Well, you set me up for this because, I confess I didn't read the cannibalism book, but a huge part of the plot of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein involves the desecration of human bodies for the purposes of our own selfish gain and aims. Remember? It begins with grave robbing. That's how the story starts.

Nathan:

That's right. A grave robbing isn't anything new that's documented.

Cameron:

Not at all. And it has close connections with the scientific community because again, people wanted to do research on human bodies.

Nathan:

Oh, when they when they dug the Panama Canal, they pickled those dudes that died of yellow fever and often shipped them back and sold them for medical [purposes].

Cameron:

Is that right?

Nathan:

I mean, imagine that pickling a human in a barrel and shipping it. I mean, it's... there you go.

Cameron:

Everything from that to the horrendous experiments carried out by Joseph Mengele at Auschwitz and all of that. Those are some of these are extreme examples, but for a lot of stories that involve the desecration of human bodies, the moral is usually that some sacred law has been transgressed, some line has been crossed. The subtitle of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is 'The Modern Prometheus'. This is just an aside from Cameron but the two central horror stories for modern people are 'Frankenstein' and Robert Louis Stevenson's 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'. So, I think those are our two major scary and frightening works of the imagination that really get at the heart of so many of the conflicts that we see. And Frankenstein just happens to involve the desecration of human dead bodies and grave robbing.

Nathan:

Let me try to summarize what I think we've been trying to say here and then you tell me if this is correct. Say you're a living person and you have to make a decision about a dead human body. It does not change their eternal outcome or whatever's happening in the future for them; that is safely in the Lord's hands. However, the decisions that you make says a whole lot about who you are, the type of person you are, and the type of person you're becoming. And so, if paying attention to the approach that Cameron and I have as it comes to discipleship, there's very much a virtue ethicist foundation here. This idea of being conformed in the image of Christ. The type of person that we're becoming through the choices and the decisions that we're enacting and as we're led by the Holy Spirit are forming us into a certain kind of person and that there's a telos to that, a direction that we're growing in. So, you can't destroy somebody's eternity by the way you treat their body after they're dead, but you can very much change your character by the flippancy that you expressed towards something that was created, that was beautiful and good because God made it so and said that it was. 

So that's the distinction that I want to leave us with here. We shouldn't have an undue view or a morbid view, we're not petrified of dead bodies, it's a part of life. We celebrate the resurrection because Jesus broke the death barrier and promises that he can make all things new. A deep hope in the resurrection gives us, on one hand, a real sense of peace, rest, and carelessness about what happens to our bodies after we're gone, a "I don't care what happens". However, that sanctity also then implores us and challenges us and gives us parameters about how we treat and honor physical bodies of people after they have passed. That says a whole lot about us, a whole lot of what we think about who God is, and a whole lot about the way in which we will ultimately end up treating our own physical bodies and the physical bodies of those around us. 

I hope this has been helpful to you. It's kind of been a little bit dark, but I hope it’s been hopeful when we think about the reality of death, the reality of the resurrection, and about some challenges along the way. But let's beware of subtle forms of desecration in our own lives. Keep thinking on that, I certainly will. You've been listening to Thinking Out Loud, the podcast where we think out loud about current events and Christian hope.

In Which We Talk Golf?

Listen to Episode

Please note, this is an A.I. transcript of the podcast Thinking Out Loud Together. As such, it will lack the polished quality of an actual blog post. It’s provided for those who prefer reading to listening. Special thanks to Mark for volunteering to humanize the process by shaping the wording into a more readable format.

Nathan:

Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your cohost, Nathan Rittenhouse.

Cameron:

and I'm your co-host Cameron McAllister.

Nathan:

Today we are going to talk about golf, but I want to confess right off the bat, I've never played golf Cameron. Have you played golf? Are you a golfer?

Cameron:

Never.

Nathan:

Okay, great.

Cameron:

I'll aim to keep it that way, by the way. I know some of you listening will take that as a challenge.

Nathan:

When I was a kid, we used to take golf balls and put them on fence post and then shoot the golf balls off with our .22 rifles. So that that's the extent of my shooting golf experience and I know you know multiple people are shaking their heads and rolling their eyes there. But we want to talk about golf. 

You've seen the headlines, the whole PGA / LIV thing. I've seen some reference to it on just about every news source. And I think because this has to do with perceptions of international policy, of hypocrisy, of morals and money, that we can discuss philosophically the situation surrounding this, even though we haven't played golf. (We want to be totally upfront about what we don't know. Which, for those of you who have listened to the show for years now it should be very clear to you, that category is huge) 

First of all, everybody pronounces it, “live” golf. L-I-V is the Roman number 54. So, I guess that's a new thing where you can sound out Roman numerals. But anyway, Saudi Arabia funds this alternative. or slightly competitive association to the PGA, which is the professional golfer’s association. I think even if you don't golf, you've heard of the PGA tours; you've seen it on TV, you've heard references to it, you see advertisements for things sponsored by PGA golfers. It kind of was the big deal. And then Saudi Arabia comes along with $600 billion and was like, "Hey, we'd like to start something like this" and start LIV golf. And, because they have a lot of money, they can offer massive salaries to professional golfers and say, you can come play for us and play less, have a less demanding schedule, and make more money. There were golfers who said, "let's do that" and when they did, the PGA came out and said "These guys are banned forever from playing PGA. They're total sellouts. Look at the moral insanity of Saudi Arabia". So, this PGA was really focusing on saying "the majority of the terrorists from 9/11 were backed by Saudi dollars" or "Saudi Arabia has been executing journalists". So, they really painted anybody who joined LIV golf as total moral sellouts and they weren't allowed to play PGA golf. So, they made really strong public moral statements of condemnation. 

Then you had some PGA golfers who didn't go and turned down LIV. Tiger Woods could have made between $700 million to $800 million by making that switch. And others were in the $400 million range. I mean, $700 million is a lot of money. And some of these guys said, "no, we're sticking with the American traditional value. This is classic golf; this is what golf is all about. And their style of the game is different and they have some different types of tournaments and stuff with LIV golf. We're not going to do it." Well, fast forward a year and you come back around and now LIV golf has essentially bought out/merged with PGA golf. As you can imagine, when you have hundreds of millions of dollars at stake and you've made extremely clear public moral indictments and statements, then to suddenly flip around; people are... Yeah, ticked. I don't know what the golfing term is there, but that's the situation at play. And I think people will be talking about this for a long time to come. This will be a reference point in history. This is like when we talked about woke capitalism and the movements Nike was sponsoring in the United States while clearly turning a blind eye to the NBA in China. We've seen this before. And there's a larger geopolitical guise here. Saudi Arabia is throwing money around in order to raise its international standings. Biden said he was going to make Saudi Arabia a pariah in the international community and here's the way that they could just throw millions and billions of dollars at stuff without doing any diplomacy and raise their international standings. You see Qatar doing this same thing with the World Cup last year. So, this isn't totally new.

Cameron:

We talked about that one, yeah.

Nathan:

We talked about how Saudi Arabia has paid some ridiculous sums of money to buy soccer teams and to buy professional soccer players to play for it. It really sees sports as a way of raising its international profile by just having a ridiculous amount of money. And so, some people are like, "Well, I don't see what the business model is here". Wrong question. Saudi Arabia is not trying to make money with a business model around golf. They don't need to. They can just straight up buy it. And you either dance to the dollar or you don't. But at this point, I don't really see what the alternatives are for anybody who's a professional golfer. Outlining that whole great big kerfuffle, what strikes you as interesting in this story, Cameron?

LIV – PGA Discussion

Cameron:

Yeah, I think of two terms that are helpful here as well. First, "sports washing" has been used to describe this as a massive PR campaign. It's not a business deal, it's a political move. It's a PR move to boost the credibility and the stakes of the nation, as you've said. And second is the term "blood money". That this money is blood money. That term has been used by leaders of the PGA who have now changed their tune. And as you mentioned Nathan, we've seen this before when we talked with other companies who will give you the impression that they're standing on principle, but when there's a financial advantage, suddenly the principles change and the tune changes. 

Let me just use some controversial language for a second and then we can unpack it. What strikes me is interesting here, Nathan, is Free market capitalism doesn't have the resources to deal with this kind of moral dilemma. In other words, if you have a situation like this involving a deal that could be massively lucrative, it would seem to be good sense. Well, you go with the deal. This is financially advantageous. Everybody wins. We're back to one of the questions that we've talked about throughout this podcast, questions that arise when you have some kind of a victory, it might be financial, it might be military, but you've got that victory and also you've got a moral defeat simultaneously. So, I'm saying right now, if you have in your head a kind of a vision of "might makes right" or "the bottom line is the main controlling item here", then you're not gonna be able to marshal too many arguments against this. Because the only way to really prevail in a situation like this is to take a loss in some way. It will come with a cost. I think we've got a way of understanding rational behavior and thinking that is very influenced by economics. I think most of us, without meaning to and without even thinking about it, when we think of "rational behavior", we translate that into "self-interest".

If that's your default setting then you could look at a Tiger Woods and other players and you could say, "wow, that's very noble". But the cynical side of you could also say, "yeah, but nobody's going to hold out on that kind of offer indefinitely". Here we are. I'll leave it there for right now.

Nathan:

Yeah, okay, so let me throw in another term here. Let's talk about "conscientious capitalism", because I would say that if you surveyed the last several decades, or even a century or so, of American evangelical economics, that it would probably be leaning heavily in the free-market enterprise direction (With the caveat of saying that Jesus spoke about money a lot). And that does seem to mathematically make the most sense on a whole lot of things, you have this sense that this free market capitalistic thing is definitely good for the country economically. However, what do you do when you have moral limits to that? Or where does the conscientiousness come in? This is where we get into the difficulty of the word "good", right? Consider the Chesterton quote saying, "a man who can shoot his mother at 300 yards is a good shot, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's a good man". Or you would say, "You know what, I bet sex trafficking is good business. There are people making a lot of money, selling other humans for sex and smuggling drugs. Its good business". So, if you're looking at "good" just in economic terms how do you then draw the line of "I'm not going to be part of this". I say this just to say the conscientiousness of the capitalistic nature of how we envision ourselves culturally right now will start to fray as we lose a definition of conscientiousness and morality. It'll be "well, who cares? $700 million. I can take some hits on Twitter for $700 million". So, I guess my question is, will we see just a whole lot more of this? Because we don't really have the principles to push back as much as we once did.

Cameron:

Yes, and that's what I'm pointing to when I say that basically our systems as they now stand don't have those resources. The cultural mores have shifted so dramatically that it's increasingly difficult to resist this kind of push. This is what Wendell Berry in The Need to Be Whole talks about, he's helped me to pay a whole lot more attention to words like inevitable, necessity, or "well this is just the way things are progressing and it can't be otherwise" or realistic. The word realistic, we have to be realistic here.

America’s Loss of Principles

Nathan:

Well, let me be realistic here for a second and tell you what I'm thinking about this. Because you would say that we don't have the moral resources to put a boundary on behavior in terms of money. However, you know who does? Saudi Arabia? Qatar? I mean, look at the whole controversy around the sale of alcohol in Qatar. And Saudi Arabia is slightly loosening their standards. I mean, women can drive now, that's nice. And they're playing some music at some of these things. But I would say that the US doesn't have a national concept of a moral oughtness that we're working toward, whereas Saudi Arabia still very much does and is using money. So, I guess the point I'm saying is that you can say "okay, here we come, PGA golf, we're coming at this as totally market driven decision." and there's also lawsuits and other reasons that they wanted to get around this. But we're coming to this from a pragmatic reason. But now we have people from Saudi Arabia leading and sitting on the board of some of these organizations. And that is not a morally equivalent pairing. Because one of these institutions is coming in with a very rigid moral foundation and worldview and way of seeing reality. And one isn't. And I would submit to you that if one has more money and a deeper religious and cultural ethos of oughtness, we can all guess which one's gonna eat the other one's lunch.

Cameron: 

Right. And we think that there's a parallel in how other people are going to deal with money and be driven by that kind of ambition and that kind of interest. But of course, this is where one of those classic misunderstandings comes in over and over again. And we really do face this in America as a nation when we're dealing with Muslim countries. When you have a nation devoutly Muslim and you have in effect a theocratic society, then you do have a powerful moral motivation and code that underwrites everything that's done. Nathan, you were mentioning to me not only the sale of alcohol, but also the destruction Opium fields that's come about as well. Putting a price tag on that, that's a massive amount of money.

Nathan:

Yeah, so let me catch people up on that. Now that the Taliban is back in control of Afghanistan, they've destroyed 99% of opium production. That was a super lucrative part of the economy for Afghanistan, specifically rural Afghanistan. So bad news, all you heroin users, the price is probably going to go up. Well, actually that's not true, but if you're a heroin user in Europe, you're probably going to get less pure heroin. So, I'm hoping that we don't have a whole lot of listeners to this podcast that this is going to impact financially. But all jokes aside, basically what you see is the Taliban having a moral aversion to something and wanting to raise its international profile as well and saying "We're going to take a massive financial hit in order to do what we think is the right thing. Even if it leads to significant economic turmoil within our country".

Cameron:

But that's behavior that from a spiritual standpoint is comprehensible.

Nathan:

Well, and it's a little bit, it's weird to say that about the Taliban.

Cameron:

It is.

Nathan:

Like, I find myself, "oh, the Taliban has principles". Well, yeah, we might not agree with the principles, so, if you're listening to this, we're not agreeing with the Taliban.

Cameron:

We do not agree with the Taliban.

Nathan:

We're bringing clarity to the concept of what it means to act as if you have principles.

Cameron:

We don't agree with the Taliban. Do they have principles? Yes, very powerful principles. So, I'm gonna give you some analysis from a gentleman whose name now escapes me. I will try to hunt this report down. This was years ago. I read this report from an anthropologist at the University of Michigan. It's a lengthy report, 20,000 words. So, this is a robust essay, but this was written at the height of news coverage of ISIS. The Reign of Terror is pretty close, right? So, this anthropologist was very shrewd in his observations. First of all, he pointed out how clever ISIS were with their media and the way that they made their public image, this terrifying public image. They have been able to give the impression that they're much more powerful than they actually are. Don't get me wrong, because of the ruthlessness of their tactics, they were quite powerful. But he just meant, for the most part, they were outmanned, outgunned in every conceivable way. They weren't as powerful, but it didn't matter from a publicity standpoint. They were really good at conveying this terrifying image because they were doing horrendous things. But he pointed something else out that I thought was really very insightful. This guy's an atheist, and he was trying to answer a little bit of the question of how some of these radical groups were recruiting lots of upper middle class Western kids. And he basically said that "because when you have a group like ISIS and they have this really powerful moral vision", that's the word he used, moral vision, "animating their efforts, you are going to see an outsized power that's incommensurate with their small numbers that manifest itself because of the level of commitment". So, in other words, you have people here who are willing to die for this cause. And the behavior of martyrdom is not comprehensible to your average American. 

It just doesn't translate to us. This is not original thinking from Cameron, I'm drawing my thinking from a guy named Craig M. Gay who wrote a book called The Way of the Modern World. And he's the one who talks about the default understanding of rational behavior as self-interest. So, the logic of martyrdom runs entirely counter to that. Now, it is a logic. It's a very powerful way of thinking, but it is largely incomprehensible to those of us who basically think you want to live in a way that caters to your self-interest and live in a way to accumulate as much of an advantage as you can.

Nathan:

Hang on a second. Can I interrupt here? Because I think if you look at America in World Wars and even up through Iraq, Afghanistan, I think there was a moral vision of America and something that was worth dying for. So, because people still sign up to go do that, I don't want to say that it has never been there. So, when he says "it's incomprehensible to Americans" I would put that to recently modern Americans. We're using very broad terms here, culturally speaking.

Cameron:

Oh, today. Yeah, not, and not all Americans by any means, but broad terms, default setting. Meaning if you're not conscientious of the way you're living, you kind of slide into this mindset these days and it's a relatively recent one. And obviously, he's, he's a secular anthropologist. He's able to think in these terms and understand a little bit. And Nathan, this is all getting very serious very quickly. You mentioned the sex trafficking industry as hugely financially lucrative. Well, that's obviously a massive illegal operation. Let's think about the porn industry, which is a massive economic player. A very uncomfortable exercise, which some of you have done before, is to do a little research on which major companies are in some ways in partnership with the porn industry. It's a lot of them.

Hypocritical Use of Moral Principles

Nathan:

Okay, let's make this worse. Bud Light has a dude in bubble bath and everybody loses their mind. What would it take for people to get fired up and boycott porn? We can look at LIV golf and PGA and be like, "look at the hypocrisy, people would sell out for money". You're like, "okay, let's turn that around a little bit and look at what we are, as a culture, willing to sell out for all the time".

Cameron:

Now, on that note, it's also worth pointing out that the problem of moral hypocrisy, of course, is a human problem. So, I do want to be an equal opportunity offender here and point out that in Saudi Arabia and in Islamic nations, it's continually found out, by the way, that porn is a huge problem. Granted, the penalties associated with porn consumption are way more grave.

Nathan:

Well, you could just look at what was found with Osama bin Laden.

Cameron:

Exactly. Yeah, some of you will remember that hypocrisy with Osama bin Laden. So, when you hear me saying these people are operating with very definitive principles, don't hear me saying that they occupy some kind of moral high ground here. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that they're animated by a religious, theocratic in this case, vision that for the most part curbs those appetites. But human beings are human beings.

Nathan:

Okay, so we can look at levels of hypocrisy there. And whether you're giving up $700 million or $7, hypocrisy is hypocrisy. However, what happens to the golfer who says, "look, my life is about making money, and this is where I can make the most money? Next question". Do we have a culture that would actually condemn that? I mean, you'd hear some screaming on some more conservative channels, but are we at a place where you don't need to be a hypocrite anymore?

Cameron:

Yeah, that's part of what I'm getting at when I'm saying we no longer have the cultural resources to respond to somebody who says that.

Nathan:

And this is why this one is uniquely weird, because all the people who morally condemned LIV golf now just joined it within a year.

Cameron:

Right.

Nathan:

So, usually, our hypocrisy comes from condemning one thing in one category and then turning around and participating in another version of it in a different category. That's hypocrisy. LIV and PGA is a little more in your face because it's the people who condemned it who joined it within two years. This one is much more of a "it's right there, everybody can see it" but it's a type of a thing, not a unique instance.

Cameron:

It also raises the question of how sincere their initial refusal actually was, whether this was more of a publicity stunt possibly. Now, that sounds very cynical, but the very quick turnaround seems to point you in that direction. Speaking more broadly, the moral failure is being exposed right now in our culture. Consider a rock star when several women come out with terrible allegations against them or something like that. Let's say this person had a publishing deal. Now suddenly the publishers have to come out with a statement saying, "our trust has been fundamentally violated". 

So, I have in mind a specific example here that I'm going to give to you because Cameron's a metalhead and Cameron knows these metal worlds, but there's a German industrial metal band called Rammstein. Their message has been consistently throughout all of the years, unbelievably perverse, vile, and sickening in every possible sense of those words. So

Nathan:

I like just the calm tone in which you hammered in those adjectives.

Cameron:

Just an unabashedly vile vision from the visuals of their music videos to their lyrics to their antics on stage at a concert. Allegations have come against their singer. And it's very interesting to watch. He had a publishing deal and the publishers are dropping him. "We are just so horrified to hear about this behavior" and you know, "trust has been fundamentally violated". So, I know these are allegations and we don't know precisely what's transpired, but if you've been paying attention to the man's lyrics, the way he conducts himself and every other facet of his life, there's nothing even remotely surprising or inconsistent (sadly) with this behavior at all. So, my point is about the publishers, do they not know that? Of course they know that. I mean, these people are staffed with savvy clever marketers and all that. My point is this all begins to look more and more like one big publicity campaign. I don't think this is cynicism, I think this is realism at this point. The idea that this is about morals and principles looks more and more like a charade as you see people turn instantly. So, on the one hand, that does sound a little bit like the Nike kind of story we talked about years ago when they said, "Oh yes, we want to stand up for these people's rights and we are conscientious". We don't want to exploit anyone until it hurts us financially and then if you can't beat them, join them. 

That kind of mentality, that's part of what I'm getting at where our culture no longer has the moral resources to deal with this. I'm just speaking in impersonal terms of the culture and the way market mindsets work these days. It's not a moral way of thinking. It has everything to do with advantage and financial incentives. Money is almost seen as the final symbol of all that is most essential and real. You can measure it in dollars.

Nathan:

I'm just trying to think here if the vast majority of conversations about morals and principles is always used as a critique. I'm not sure that I've seen a positive vision of someone saying, "that's a really good and principled person". It's almost always used in the negative of this person. I used morality as an attack platform against something else that I don't like. So, it seems to me like it's being used as a single sided weapon sort of. It's kind of my last resort. When I'm getting beaten, then I just accuse the other person of breaking trust or I accuse the other person of being a shady character. Morals matter to me only when it's convenient to me and I use it to elevate my image as a righteous person in the face of this other person who's my enemy.

Cameron:

I have no other cards to play, so now I'm gonna play the Moral card.

Nathan:

Yeah, it's kind of like last resort.

Cameron:

You know, and it also does bring back to mind Alistair McIntyre's word "emotionalism". He wrote After Virtue in 1981 but he's been saying that; for a while, we have been using moral language but what we're really doing is we're just disguising personal preference in moral language. And this is why our moral conversations are, as he uses the word, "interminable but irresolvable", we can't do it. It's very hard to argue with him on that one, especially if you listen to political speeches or if you read these PR statements from companies who have dropped somebody from their publisher, you’ll get a lot of moral language, but really, it's disguising personal preference. And that's because we don't have a shared moral standard.

Living in a Principle-less Society

Nathan:

So, what do we do then? I was thinking there's a kind of a two-fold move here. I was thinking when Jesus was talking to his disciples about who's the greatest in leadership and power. He talks about; this is how the Gentiles do it, they lord it over each other. There's a way in which I think we can look at some of this stuff and say, "and that's the way the world works kids". Jesus saw this, "this is how the Gentiles do this". But the next line is very important here. We live in a time in which people often say, "it is what it is", but as a Christian we live with a sense of "it is what it is, but it isn't what it ought to be". And so, it's that concept of oughtness that is different. 

When Jesus says "look, this is how the pagans and the Gentiles do it, but not so with you", this switch of Jesus having a very clear vision of how the world operates, that's what we're just doing here. We're looking at this and we're analyzing, we're saying "this is how the world operates". And then as Christians were saying, "but not so with us". And then he goes on to say, "whoever wants to be the greatest must be the servant of all", that whole speech of where he's shifting around and saying, "this is how the world works. This is how, as my follower, I want you to behave". So, I think we can look at a topic like this and be not losing sleep over this. I'm just pointing out some curious things as they fly by in my life and say, "Well, yep, that's an indicator of how the world actually works". But just because I see it as an indicator of the way that the world actually works does not mean that it becomes paradigmatic for me. It doesn't become the paradigm by which I try to emulate. It's not a goal for me. I think through the, "but not so with you". And I think about everything that Jesus taught about finances and money and everything else in life and get my moral vision from Christ and recognize that it is fundamentally incompatible with the majority perspective of the world. 

And so, once we parse that out, then that puts us in a totally different platform where we can comment on, critique, point to, describe, and explain whatever is happening between Saudi Arabia and PGA. But on the other hand, we can also see that as not an infringement or a temptation for us, because that's not where we're really orienting the needle of our moral compass. So, I'm not bent out of shape about this. It's just a reminder to me, once again, that "This is how the world does that". 

How then do I make decisions in my life that are compatible with the things that Jesus said? How do I root and become a principled person of integrity that can generate trust in my family, in my community, in my church, with you Cameron, with those of you who are listening, and in my interactions around me. So just because we see the breakdown of things sometimes doesn't mean that the opposite isn't true. And so that's what we're striving to build with lives of consistency and integrity. We can shake our heads at some things but also use them as reminders of the directions in which we want to grow.

Cameron:

Yeah, that's well said. With regard to the whole "it is what it is" mindset, it's true to say, "we're looking at the world and this is largely how it works in the United States". It's true to make that observation. It is false however to say, "therefore we need to play along. If you can't beat them, join them. I'm just being realistic". 

Nathan:

"When in Saudi Arabia, do as the Saudi Arabians do" doesn't have the same fun sound to it.

Cameron:

Right. Which is why I tend to be wary of the way people use the word realistic sometimes, "I'm just being realistic". No, it may be "the way things work around here", so to speak, but that doesn't mean that you must be a part of it. And in fact, if you are part of the kingdom of God then you are part of a people set apart for the Lord and you do have a moral vision and you do have consensus on that vision in the church and you have a rich moral language that has sense because there is consensus on it. And you also believe human life has a telos, has a purpose that goes well beyond profits and dollar signs. It's recognizing that (this has always been the case; this is nothing new) being a Christian is going to come with a cost. Being a Christian always comes with a cost. Even during times of cultural and financial stability, self-sacrifice is part and parcel with the Christian life. 

Why? Because you're part of the Lord's kingdom. And the Lord's kingdom is at fundamental odds with what Augustine called the "kingdom of man", the way of the flesh, the way of the world here, which is usually centered on pride and self-interest in some way, shape, or form. So, the gospel brings you into conflict with those systems and those worldly powers, and that's okay. That's why we need each other and that's why we need the empowerment of our Lord and His Holy Spirit. And with all of those things in place, you can do it, and you'll be just fine. 

So yeah, you don't need to lose any sleep over any of this. You can be concerned, you can be saddened, but you don't need to be in despair. This is a common refrain for thinking out loud but we're getting older so we repeat ourselves and we can just console ourselves by saying "we're being consistent". But there's no reason to feel any sense of despair here. It is interesting to watch these kinds of events unfold and to recognize that the culture doesn't have the moral resources to deal with these kinds of dilemmas any longer. We truly are a cut flower society as Os Guinness has said. Now we've removed the flower from all the roots that have nourished it and that flower is undeniably in its wilting stages. But don't be afraid. Continue to follow your Lord, press into your churches with fellow believers, worship the Lord in spirit and truth, and all shall be well.

Learning to Leave the Growth to God

Speaking metaphorically, the apostle Paul describes our ministry efforts in terms of planting and watering seed (I Corinthians 3:6-9). In the recent past, we’ve focused a great deal of those efforts on the presentation of our planting and watering to the exclusion of depth. Cultural relevance was the object of the game and to that end we filled our sermons, talks, and answers on Q&A panels with as many pop culture easter eggs as possible, working hard to build bridges for the world outside the church. 

But bridges are only helpful if they’re crossed. Acts 17 features some sensational bridge building, but Paul doesn’t stop with the altar to the unknown God. He proceeds to move beyond it to proclaim Christ and his resurrection, thereby losing some members of his audience, as is inevitable whenever we get specific about Jesus.  

On a sobering note, Paul makes it clear that the fruits of our labor will be tested: “Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. (I Corinthians 3:12-13)” 

Looking on the large-scale decadence of so many influential churches in North America, we’re in a unique position to appreciate that our slick presentations have not fostered men and women of spiritual maturity. Why? Because by and large we still don’t believe Paul when he says, “If anyone among you thinks he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. (18)” This age is precisely what is passing away. It’s characterized by restlessness and desperation because it’s shot through with impermanence. We, however, are the men and women who await the Day of the Lord, the Day that will bring every hidden thing to light and we are to live in the light of that reality, rather than the twilight of this perishing moment. 

How do we escape the morass of performance and worldly wisdom that’s infiltrated so many of our ministry efforts? Dallas Willard once remarked that he stopped trying to get people to do things, to somehow cajole them into eternal life. Instead, he focused on planting and watering and left the growth to God. It’s high time for us to do the same.

The Book of Life Is More Than a List

I was recently in a bible study on the biblical concept of “a name.” Part of the lesson included Rev 20:15 where most translations read something like, “anyone’s name who was not found in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.” I randomly noticed that the word “name” doesn’t actually appear in the verse. It is more literally something like, “and if anyone was not found written in the book of life, they were cast into the lake of fire.” Clearly the “name” is implied there and it makes sense to translate it that way. Several other passages in scripture clearly use the idea of our name being written in the book of life. I’m not arguing or disagreeing with any translation committee here, I’m just noticing a difference that helped me wonder. I think I’ve always thought of the book of life as a sort of registry. A book of lists. Revelation 20 speaks of books plural, and the fact that there is a book of life means that there are other books too. Heavenly records of the stories of people, so to speak. This would fit very well with the Old Testament theme of referring to the actions of kings as written in the annals of the kings, or that scripture diligently seeks to produce an historical record of the people of God. 

Given that part of what Jesus is up to in this world is to “purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good” (Titus 2:14), it would make sense that the book of life is a narrative record of the people of God. If this is in fact the case, then being found in the book of life is not about having your name on a heavenly list, it is about being a participant in the story that God is unfolding in reality. 

The biblical concept of “a name” is a deeply integrated concept of identity, reputation, and at times a call to action or a reminder of something about who God is. My name is Nathan. In our culture a name is just a label. In the biblical way of thinking, ‘Nathan’ meant “God has given.”* That isn’t to say that all Nathans are God’s gift to humanity, but it isn’t hard to imagine a couple living embedded in a religious community who saw themselves as the people of God giving Him thanks and seeing a new little life as a gift from God. That little baby didn’t need a label; it needed an identity because it was joining a story. 

The same is true for us. We are born to join a story. I have a hunch that realizing this makes more sense of the Book of Life. Even when we read Rev 20:15 with the word “name” added for clarity, taking into account the richness of the biblical importance of a name, it is bigger than being part of the “roll up yonder.” Having your name written in the Book of Life is not simply about being part of a cosmic census—it is the record of your participation in what God is doing. 

Life is a great adventure, but let’s never lose sight of the fact that it was meant to fit into something bigger and richer, a story recorded in the Book of Life.

*I was named after my second great-grandfather who was dragged to death by his horses. Thanks, mom. 

The Spiritual Disciplines as a Means to an End

If the spiritual disciplines are indeed time-tested strategies for bringing one’s entire personality into cooperation with the will of God, it’s clear that they’re means to an end, the end being a Christlike disposition. In this sense, the ideal would be to practice a given spiritual discipline until it’s no longer necessary. For instance, Dallas Willard once said, “I fast so that I can be content even when I don’t get what I want.” It’s conceivable that you’ll reach a point in your spiritual maturity where this kind of patience flows naturally from your character. For that to happen, however, you need a vision and you need a plan. The spiritual disciplines are the gritty elements of the plan. They’ve got more in common with a weight room or a shop class than they do with a spiritual retreat center.

The most well-known of the disciplines are: prayer, solitude, Scripture reading, Scripture memorization, confession of sins, fasting, acts of mercy done in secret. These are the classics and when they’re undertaken in the right spirit—the intentional pursuit of Christlikeness—they can help to bring about the same kind of dramatic transformation in our character as we see in our physical bodies when we subject them to healthy disciplines. Once again, the body is the locus of your spiritual life, the conduit through which it flows. You can’t fast, pray, read, confess, profess, or serve without your body. Being the hands and feet of Christ means you’ll need your actual hands and feet. 

Stated simply, we all need to be practicing the spiritual disciplines if we want to become the kind of people who respond like Jesus in all of life’s circumstances. The glaringly obvious fact to point out here is that our Lord himself was a practitioner of the disciplines. If Jesus needed them, we definitely need them. Though I recommend keeping the classic disciplines in a regular rotation, as you go, you’ll find that there’s ample room for creativity. The reason for this is simple: You’ve got a peculiar personality and this means that certain disciplines can be modified to address your specific needs and shortcomings. Let me offer a personal example. If you know anything about me, it’ll likely come as no surprise that I’ve got a melancholic temperament. For the most part, this is a good thing. It’s part of what helps me to feel things deeply; it enriches my sense of life’s radiance and complexity. But it also means that I can be quite gloomy. Because of this disposition, celebration is often a discipline for me. I have to consciously choose to dwell on joyful and mirthful subjects. So, on the creative disciplines note, here are a few of mine: enjoying a lavish meal with friends, cooking something extravagant (I like to cook), playing music (no metal and absolutely no Joy Division on these days per my wife), and enjoying lighthearted art (I generally favor “confrontational” or “challenging” art: King Lear is my favorite). 

Now it’s your turn. For some of you, this will be familiar territory. You’ve already got a refined approach to the disciplines. For others, this may be an exciting twist, and opportunity to bring your entire personality to bear on your spiritual habits. What I’ve tried to stress in these posts is the centrality of your body in these undertakings. Why? Because we all know that in every other arena of life, an attitude of total passivity yields no lasting fruit. Taking a leaf from Dallas Willard who was in turn simply recovering the basic attitude of our Lord, I’m suggesting that the same principle holds true for the spiritual life. Do nothing and nothing will happen. Pursue Godliness and you’ll take the world by storm.

The Centrality of the Body in Our Spiritual Life

Your body is central to your spiritual life. In fact, to say it’s the locus of your spiritual transformation is not an understatement. 

Lately, I’ve noticed an odd disconnect, though. A growing emphasis on healthy lifestyles is leading to a fitness revolution, especially among young people in North America. Take a look around. People are in better shape than they’ve ever been. Chiseled bodies used to belong mainly to bodybuilders and famous actors. Now it’s your neighbor jogging down the street. Recall Dallas Willard’s “VIM” acronym: With the vision, intention, and means, it’s possible to transform your body, inculcate healthier habits, and an overall healthier lifestyle. 

And yet we’re more psychologically fragile than we’ve ever been. Today, our tacit assumption is that any kind of emotional distress is deeply harmful. Life, of course, is filled with emotional distress, some of it bad, some of it helpful and necessary. For instance, developing the mental fortitude to countenance foreign viewpoints and ideas is often deeply painful, but also richly rewarding. In fact, learning any new skill, from carpentry to calligraphy, is going to require overcoming various levels of resistance. This is good, necessary pain. Building a shoddy birdhouse or having a political disagreement with your in-laws should not be an occasion for despair; it should be an opportunity for growth.

The theologian Stanley Hauerwas once quipped that the great enemy of the North American church is not secularism, but sentimentalism. How else to explain our total shock when things go drastically wrong. Have we forgotten that this is in fact a fallen world? Do we really think our households will somehow be the glowing exceptions—that we alone will make it through unscathed to perish quietly in our sleep? If pain is inevitable, any approach that tries to deny it or conquer it is a fool’s errand. Hear me carefully: I’m recommending neither a path of stoicism nor masochism. Instead, I’m suggesting we begin with a realistic mindset about the human condition and prepare accordingly. If suffering and death are inevitable—a question not of if but when—we need to prepare to respond with righteousness when that day arrives.

The odd disconnect I’m highlighting involves the failure to recognize that our hearts and minds exhibit the same plasticity as our bodies. True, the burgeoning field of neuroscience now pays a great deal of attention to this phenomenon, but most of the general public have yet to internalize its findings. The reason is simple: We don’t take our spiritual lives seriously. 

But I’m here to remind you that your spirit is every bit as transformable as your physical body. I’m also going to make the case that this endeavor can’t begin anywhere other than your body. As Willard points out, your body is your little “power pack” for navigating this world. It’s the basis of all your activities and interactions. So, if you want to make Christlikeness your goal (vision), you need to make obedience to his commands central (intention). As you may have noticed, simply trying to imitate Christ’s actions in the moment of crisis is every bit as pointless as trying to replicate the success of a famous athlete by aping their actions on the field or court. Behind major feats of athleticism lies an intense regimen of discipline and practice. The same holds true for Christlike behavior. Hear me carefully as I draw once again from Willard: If our aim is simply to imitate Jesus’s actions, we’ll either end up as legalists or give up in deep frustration. Rather, our aim needs to be to become the kind of person who follows Jesus’s commands, especially in times of crisis. In order to do that, we have the spiritual disciplines (means). These wonderful strategies for inculcating Christlikeness have the potential to transform your spirit every bit as much as a gym can serve as a means of transforming your physical body. 

Next week, we’ll dive deeper into the disciplines, but let me leave you with a few of the most important, namely, solitude, Scripture reading, and prayer. Practiced with consistency, these three alone can revolutionize your attitude and behavior. Solitude will be painful at first, forcing you to confront everything you’re drowning out with the incessant noise of our culture. (In my experience, it’s usually more than you think.) Once you’ve faced the reality of your actual inward condition, you’ll be in a much better position to hear from God, which is where Scripture comes in. The central place that our Lord has chosen to speak to us is in his word. The problem is often that noise and overfamiliarity make it hard for us to hear. We’re simply too distracted. Once you’ve “cleared your ears,” so to speak, God’s word will reach you in new and penetrating ways (Hebrews 4:12-13). Finally, prayer ought to be the central activity of our days. Not only does it give us the chance to hallow the name of our Lord, confess our sins, ask for what we need, and surrender our wills to him. It helps us to cultivate a constant awareness of God’s presence. This is part of what Paul is getting at when he instructs us to “pray without ceasing” (I Thessalonians 5:17).

If you’re not doing so already, give these disciplines a try for the next week and see what happens. I think you’ll be blown away. 

Okay, we need discipleship. Now what?

My last blog post ended with these words: “What if Christians pointed beyond the gym, the mindfulness, the healthy lifestyle–yes, even beyond the notion that we can rewrite the essential biological and spiritual markers of our personhood–and pointed instead to discipleship to Jesus Christ, not merely as a set of fulfilling spiritual habits, but as the road to a power that leaves all our earthly endeavors in the dust? We are made to be like Jesus here and now. Why not start today?”

The exhortation runs the risk of sounding intimidating, rather than encouraging. Why? The answer is painful, but we need to face it directly. The truth is that we don’t have much guidance here because most churches in North America don’t make discipleship a priority, preferring instead to focus on effective communication of the “right” information. It makes sense: Sharp communicators draw crowds and solid information builds credibility. In my book, I call this the “information saves” mindset—the notion that the right information necessarily translates to the right behavior. This mindset has led numerous self-identifying Christians to believe that discipleship is an optional feature of the Christian life. 

Before we proceed, however, we need a basic definition of discipleship. In simple terms, a disciple is an apprentice to someone. Think of a plumber, or a blacksmith, or a carpenter—all trades that require a time of careful observation followed by hands-on experience. The apprentice will begin by observing his master, but eventually, he’ll need to pick up a few splinters and develop his own calluses. Similarly, Christian men and women are Jesus’s apprentices, seeking to become like him not by simply knowing about him (plenty of atheists are in this category), but by obeying his commands. In our day-to-day lives, the basic litmus test of whether we accept the authority of a given expert is measured in terms of our willingness to follow their instructions. This principle holds true with physicians, auto mechanics, and tax attorneys. Why would it be any different with our Lord? But once again, since most of our churches don’t make obedience to Christ their first priority, many of the folks filling the pews simply assume that the only thing necessary for the Christian life is knowing enough about Jesus, rather than knowing him. This is a bit like doing copious research on a prescription from our doctor without ever taking the medicine. By focusing exclusively on the mastery of propositional knowledge about the Christian faith, many of our churches have unwittingly divorced obedience to Christ from faithfulness to him. But what is a Christian if not a person who aims to do what Jesus said? 

The practical results of this truncated approach to the Christian life become obvious in times of crisis—moral failure, mounting fear and anxiety in the face of life’s inevitable troubles, and helplessness in the face of serious temptation. Consider Scripture’s ecstatic descriptions of Christian transformation and compare that to the professing Christians in our communities. By most accounts, the contrast could not be more pronounced; we simply don’t see transformation in our churches. Is the problem really that we just need to read more books, go to more conferences, and listen to better podcasts? Please don’t hear me disparaging these marvelous resources, by the way. When it comes to Christian resources, we truly have an embarrassment of riches. But mere information won’t be enough. At a certain point, you have to stop studying workout regimens and healthy diets and actually begin exercising and eating well. Knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient. You have to practice what you preach and what is preached to you. 

Dallas Willard has a helpful acronym here: “VIM.” It stands for “vision, intention, and means.” If we want to obey Christ, we need a plan just as surely as we would if we were undertaking a home renovation project, a new diet, or fitness training. This is part of what Jesus is getting at when he instructs us to “count the cost” of pursuing discipleship to him (Luke 14:25-33). The examples he gives (a major construction project, a battle plan) couldn’t be more practical. I’m aware that using this kind of practical language in conjunction with the spiritual life may sound disorienting, but may I suggest to you that the reason for this is that we’ve successfully elevated Christ into irrelevance in our practical lives. Many of us have a sacred category (God, church, our spiritual habits) that’s carefully cordoned off from our everyday lives. The motivations behind such a maneuver may be noble, but the results often lead us to disbelieve in the practical realities of the spiritual world. Just look at our general approach to prayer. When we’re confronted by some of life’s routine challenges (death, relational breakdown, illness, unemployment, financial uncertainty), prayer is often our “last resort,” the place we go after we’ve exhausted all other options. 

How do we begin to pursue discipleship to Christ? Start with the vision of being a person who has been transformed into His likeness. Dallas Willard once remarked, “Christ’s commands are either easy or impossible.” It’s a statement worth turning over in your mind for a while. See what you think of it. The vision is to become the kind of person for whom Jesus’s commands are routine and easy—a natural outworking of one’s inward condition. Do you believe that’s possible? If so, we need to make it our intention to pursue it. That will involve planning and goal-setting. Fortunately, the Lord has given us tools for just such a pursuit. The church calls them the “spiritual disciplines.” As Willard has said so well, these are time-tested strategies purposely undertaken to bring our entire being into cooperation with God’s will. Though there’s lots of room for creativity here, we can name the most famous disciplines: prayer, solitude, fasting, scripture reading and memorization, acts of mercy done in secret. Notice how all of these practices involve your body. In the next blog post, we’ll explore the importance of that fact, as well as some of the practical means to a goal of Christlikeness. 

Discipleship as the Answer to Our Cultural Identity Crisis

Dallas Willard once remarked on the inevitability of a spiritual formation, punctuating the observation by saying, “Hitler had a spiritual formation.”

The statement offers a profound clue about the awesome nature of human freedom. Transformation isn’t optional. For better or worse, we really do have a hand in what we become. On a practical level, this is widely recognized: coaches and fitness trainers talk about consistency, the right mindset, and attitude. Dieticians sound much the same. Psychologists talk of neuroplasticity. Trans-humanists dream of a “post-humanity.” Your primary care physician might have some choice words about your “lifestyle.” The words “Transform Your Life” are painted across the walls of my gym and the laboring bodies filling that space stand as sweating examples.

In our age of convenience and technical mastery, that same zeal for technique has been transferred to human identity. If Disney movies have long promised that we can be whatever we want to be, our manifold tools seem to put that fantasy within reach. Make no mistake, there are grim aspects to this drive, as the increasingly radical experiments in human identity make plain. But there’s also an opportunity here.

If Christianity is true, you were made “a little lower than God.” As I John 3:2 tantalizingly puts it, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” 

The transformability of human life points to our divine origins. From this standpoint, all of our efforts to change our lives are tiny intimations of this fact. What if Christians pointed beyond the gym, the mindfulness, the healthy lifestyle–yes, even beyond the notion that we can rewrite the essential biological and spiritual markers of our personhood–and pointed instead to discipleship to Jesus Christ, not merely as a set of fulfilling spiritual habits, but as the road to a power that leaves all our earthly endeavors in the dust? We are made to be like Jesus here and now. Why not start today?

Should We Be Afraid?

Lately, I can’t stop thinking about Jesus asleep in the boat. The storm is surging; the vessel is filling with water; the disciples are scurrying. 

This is a historic scene, not some vivid illustration, but let’s pause for a moment to acknowledge its fittingness as a metaphor for our cultural moment. Though not facing brutal persecution, our North American churches are increasingly embattled and enduring opposition both from within and from without. The storm is raging, one might say, the boat filling with water.

Before drawing some modest conclusions, I’d like to offer up three questions for meditation. My hope is that we do turn these over in our hearts and minds for the next little while, especially as we look at the news or navigate the latest tensions and battles in our local congregations: “Is Jesus worried about the state of our world?” “Is he surprised?” “Are those of us who recognize our Great Shepherd in any real danger?” 

If Christ is who he says he is, the answer to each of these questions is no. To be sure, this isn’t a recipe for complacency or quietism, nor is it a form of mystical denial. It is instead an invitation to basic Christian faith. When the disciples rouse their teacher from his slumber and plead with him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?,” his response is stark: “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” Tellingly, these words arrive after he has calmed the storm. The implication is clear: The disciple’s fear of the raging storm is misplaced. 

The passage doesn’t close in the absence of fear, though: “And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’” May I humbly suggest to you that what is needed today is not a greater fear of the manifold challenges facing us–eroding social fabric, rising crime and violence, aggressive sexual ideology, division in our churches, wars and rumors of wars–but instead the fear of the Lord. After all, he’s the one in charge–not us. 

Some Further Thoughts on Pride Month

Wisdom is not the same thing as cleverness. The former has to do with conforming the soul to reality; the latter unites keen perception with a quick wit, often at somebody else’s expense. For those of us who subscribe to a traditional sexual ethic, Pride Month offers the temptation to retreat to cleverness in an effort to show up the deficiencies of our cultural opponent’s views. It’s revealing that said cleverness rarely makes an appearance in our face-to-face interactions, but is instead reserved for our online personas. This behavior makes sense, of course. The online antics of Pride Month are filled with sharp takedowns and acerbic wit. The image of the serpent swallowing its tail suggests itself here. If we merely match said antics, will we ever speak to anyone we hope to persuade? Is persuasion even a goal here? 

In his sadly under-read An Experiment in Criticism, C.S. Lewis admonishes readers of literature to “Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.” He goes on to point out that one of the main motivations behind our reading is to “see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own.” Yes, I’m suggesting that reading great stories can help us during Pride Month and beyond. If we want to speak to those who inhabit mindsets and lifestyles that are foreign to our experiences and beliefs, we need to strengthen our empathy muscles. I also want to second Alan Jacobs’ argument in his recent release, Breaking Bread with the Dead, and point to old books as a great place to start. Slip into a suit of armor; follow Virgil and Dante into hell; step into a drawing room with Miss Bennet. All are imaginative exercises that will require you to get out of the way in order to better appreciate the author’s vision and understand these strange characters. 

Your neighbor in the biblical sense is often a strange character. She will require more than arguments and clever takedowns; she will need your love and understanding. Am I recommending that we downplay our convictions in order to persuade folks with whom we have serious disagreements? No. I am simply offering literature as, among other things, a delightful training ground for seeing our neighbors as human beings, rather than mere personifications of our disagreements. 

Wanna speak across cultural dividing lines? Maybe start by reading Pride and Prejudice.

Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, Your Spiritual Formation, and Pigweed

For several weeks the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard defamation case bubbled along far out in the periphery of my judicial awareness. Then, I must confess, I succumbed to the inner machinations of some algorithm and gave it about 10 minutes of attention. Oh man, that was a mistake. The whole situation is a collection of strangeness that twists itself together into something far more fascinating than just the latest Hollywood drama. The actual character of actors is now on legal trial while being gleefully hammered out in the court of public opinion. Well, actually, I guess this is pretty standard for Hollywood.

Here's the catch. It is standard, but it isn’t just standard for Hollywood. Complicated character flaws are standard for humanity. I’m in the process of reading Rebecca Deyoung’s Glittering Vices, A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and their Remedies (I would highly recommend it by the way). When we look at what she persuasively argues are best described as “Capital Vices,” we start to see them everywhere. She uses “sin” as an activity and “vice” as a component of our character. It turns out that when you have the resources of a global church that have communed with God and interacted with millions of humans for a couple thousand years some rather perceptive insights on the human condition float to the surface.

Deyoung uses “Capital” in a classic sense that is more akin to “fountainhead.” The Capital Vices are the flaws of our character that are source material for much of the chaos we generate in our personal lives. It won’t shock you to hear that “don’t chop off fingers with a broken bottle,” or “don’t do cocaine” aren’t on the Capital Vices list. No, the power of looking deeply at traditional vices is that they really do describe the source material in our inmost being that lead to levels of creative dysfunction that sometimes make it to a nationally televised trial.

It turns out that if you take the basic human vices and add fame and fortune, you’ll get a real show. Lest ye be smug, the problem with vice is not the scale of the fruit that it produces, but the fact that it exists at all. The warping of our character away from Christlikeness doesn’t operate in quantum leaps, but on a continuum. Whatever Depp and Heard have or had going on, chances are you do too. Okay fine, so you don’t have millions, a penthouse, and global fame. But pride destroys many people who don’t. The size of the fruit may vary based on externalities, but the vice at the root is known to the Lord in us all.

Ironically, prophetically, or accidentally, my parents named me Nathan David. How do you like that? I have the conflicting prophet and king all in one name! Every time I’m about to rail against someone else’s sin in Davidic fashion, there’s the Nathan saying, “You are that man.” I’m not accusing you, implicating myself, or asking us to throw up our hands in despair because of the brokenness of humanity. Far from it. Fortunately, the Lord has provided the resources to confront these, and is willing to provide the power for vice to be confronted and rooted out in our lives. The point I’m making is that what we shake our heads at in the Depp/Heard case is the very grown-up version of what is festering in the hearts of billions.

Speaking of festering, my wife and I recently purchased a couple tons of compost for our high tunnel this spring and as the crops began to grow my wife noticed a little weed that had a thorn on it. This was new. Apparently, the seed came along in the compost. We looked it up. It’s called Spiny Pigweed. I won’t go into the details, but I can assure you we don’t want a garden full of it. So, knowing what it can become when it is full-grown, we rip it out when it is little.[1]

My life isn’t like Johnny Depp’s, yours probably isn’t like Amber Heard’s, but my challenge to us all is that while we watch the weed[2] infested trial that our country can’t take it’s eyes off of, lets grieve because of sin in the world that makes the news, and repent of the vice in our own lives. When we see it in its grown-up form we realize that we don’t want it. Let’s ask the Lord to search our hearts and see if there be any wicked way in us.

[1] See Barney Fife’s analysis of the concept at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU5iLiEySyk

[2] No pun intended

The Practical Necessity of Hope

Dire circumstances show us that hope is not a luxury. We need hope like we need food and oxygen. It’s practical nourishment for our spirit and without it we perish.

I make these remarks as we contemplate our latest national atrocity. What would drive an 18-year-old to such unspeakable acts? I suspect the question isn’t fully answerable this side of eternity. What does seem clear is a gnawing sense of hopelessness of terrifying proportions. It’s as though this young man stared into the abyss and reached a relentless determination to inflict as much of that emptiness on the world as he could. 

In his sadly forgotten book, Images of Hope, William F. Lynch remarks on a question he would ask people who found themselves in the throes of despair: “Do you remember what was badly worrying you three weeks ago?” Few could answer and the ones who did managed only after considerable effort. It’s a profound question because through it “the imagination has liberated men who were ill from the troubling event, not by denying it but by enlarging the areas of reality.” He concludes by saying, “In fact, one of the principle ways in which hope becomes steadier and more mature, less subject to rise and fall as life moves on, is that it develops precisely this quality of being able to live contextually. It comes to know that things have contexts and are not absolute, atomic units.”   

It’s a simple procedure. Compass the source of anxiety and thereby prove its limits. Note that this is one of the reasons COVID-19 (especially in its early stages) proved to be so psychologically menacing. No clear end in sight. But what if that “no clear end in sight” dominated your mind and heart and what if its target wasn’t just limited to the pandemic, but the world in general? And what if you thought there was nothing beyond this world, even if you couldn’t spell this conviction out as a clear philosophy? You just took for granted that the world is all that there is. If the world seems to be in a state of collapse, there’s no hope. You can’t draw a circle around your problems. It’s not idle speculation to note that this is a dangerous state of mind, but I think we’ve reached a cultural moment that’s making it more ubiquitous. 

To use Paul’s laconic phrase, “the form of this world is passing away.” Throughout history we reach moments that make this fact unavoidable. I believe we are in such a moment. Despite all of our affluence, convenience, and myriad distractions, the widespread cultural disintegration of our nation is knocking insistently at each of our doors. It’s an opportunity to recognize the practical necessity of hope in Christ and His reign and kingdom. He alone can draw a circle around all earthly turmoil. He has done so decisively through the blood of his cross. There is no salvation apart from him. The only answer to our growing sense of hopelessness is to fall at his feet.

God Did This to Me Because of Us

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks once pointed out that groups respond to adversity and cultural difficulty in one of two ways. One is to say, “What did we do wrong?” The other is to say, “Who did this to us?” Rabbi Sacks points out that most of today’s groups go with the second option. He goes on to point out that historically Jews have been labeled as the group that is the cause of another group’s problems. Sacks’ point is that when one group looks for a scapegoat, danger is just around the corner. 

It just so happened that shortly after watching a video of him addressing this I was reading the biblical book of Lamentations. The author, presumably Jeremiah in the Hebraic prophetic tradition, has some of the most beautifully descriptive and heart-wrenching depictions of suffering, longing, and lament. It struck me as I watched the pronouns bounce around between “us” and “me” that Jeremiah perfectly blends the two categories Sacks points out and offers a third.

The origin of the lament comes from the fact that Assyria is hauling Israel into exile. On the surface, this gives a pretty clear “Who did this to us?” type of answer. Surprisingly, the prophet rejects that notion and claims that God is doing it to Israel, using Assyria as an instrument of punishment for Israel’s sin. So, “sin against the living God” answers “what did we do wrong?” and “God” answers the “who did this to us?” question. Interesting that there is little actual agency assigned to Assyria. 

A cynical read of this could be that denying the actual power, authority, and agency of the enemy who is crushing you is an interesting coping mechanism. But another read could be that the “who did this to us?” is a byproduct of “what did we do wrong?” and that real agency, causation, and justice comes from outside the whims of warring groups. Please keep in mind that Lamentations does condemn the unjust actions of people and nations. The fact that God is using Assyria does not mean that Assyria isn’t responsible for their actions. The point here is that the prophet does not immediately jump to condemning another nation. He is considering the plank in his own eye first. 

Sure, we often tell ourselves stories that help us cope, but Israel had a history that Jeremiah could use in this circumstance to find hope. Sure, he felt that the destruction of his nation was due to the sins of the people. Sure, he felt that the Assyrians were ruthless, but he was simultaneously more worried about what God thought, and more hopeful because of what he knew about God. 

Right in the middle of line after line of “my eyes overflow with tears” he writes, “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope.” He then goes on to reflect on the Lord’s great love, compassion, mercy, and faithfulness. The application of this reality is that after repentance, “therefore I will wait for him.”

Prophets help us remember who is really in control of the world. That can be both a sobering reminder of the fact that “The Lord is righteous, yet I rebelled against his command,” and a foundation for hope since, “men are not cast off by the Lord forever.” 

This may not be universal medicine, and I’m not promoting victim-blaming, but I think there is a real challenge here for believers. When we find ourselves wanting to blame some “other” group for our collective and individual woes, we may need a gentle reminder about the big “Who” who is actually running the world. We need to make sure we are in right relationship with the Lord before we lose sleep concerning the little chaos-causing “whos” in the world around us. It turns out that the Lord knows how to deal with us all. Let’s repent of our part and wait on the Lord to do his. 

On the Beauty of Ordinary People

In his 55 Maxims of the Christian Life, Fr. Thomas Hopko tells us to “be an ordinary person.” It’s not a message that’s generally preached from our major platforms. Just the opposite, in fact. We’re encouraged to engage the challenges of our culture with the extraordinary skills at our disposal if we would only read the right books, go to the right conferences, and listen to the right people. In a word, be extraordinary. 

But what if you’ve been to the conferences, heard the podcasts, and read the books, and your biggest takeaway is that you’re not strong enough, smart enough, and creative enough to meet those challenges? What if you walk away overwhelmed, guilty, and discouraged, rather than challenged, excited, and motivated?  You’re just an ordinary person after all.

Our vision at Thinking Out Loud is to see ordinary Christians advance the credibility of Christ. Part of the problem is that we need to recover the dignity of the word “ordinary.” I define an ordinary person as someone who can’t afford to overlook the significance of regular life. While it’s true that many folks simply don’t have the luxury of “dreaming big” and purchasing space from the daily necessities of their circumstances, this definition is not tied exclusively to socio-economic factors. Instead, I have in mind the spiritual recognition that the Lord’s hidden hand is in every situation of our lives, from the most seemingly important (marriage, birth, career advancement) all the way to the most seemingly trivial–a busted hot water heater on an already stressful day. 

I used to work for a massive Christian ministry. I had access to sophisticated technology, numerous creative minds, and, most important of all, an office with a door. Now I work from home and things are very different. For one, my office no longer has a door; it’s a spare room above the garage from which I can hear even the most minute noise on the other end of the house. My writing is frequently interrupted by the sound of little footsteps and it’s possible you’ve heard some high-pitched voices in the background of a podcast or two.

I used to use the phrase “marooned in the wilderness of my home.” I’ve come to see how very wrongheaded this was. One evening, I was sitting in the living room with a book in my hands when the sound of my wife and children singing a bedtime praise song drifted down the stairs. Her beautiful voice backed by their little faltering notes, the plainsong of our nighttime routine. It may have been ordinary, but it was exquisitely beautiful and it was God’s grace to me in my cluttered living room on that balmy evening. 

Be an ordinary person because in truth, none of us can afford to overlook the significance of the regular circumstances into which God in his mercy has placed us. We can waste our time trying to escape, or we can trust our Lord and choose to be fully present. 

3 Dimensions of Reality

According to Peter Kreeft, God in his mercy struck Blaise Pascal down at a young age before he could turn his “pensees” into a dry academic tome. Instead, we have the brilliant sketches that fly off the pages like sparks. Once when I was a teenager, I wandered into my dad’s study in the subterranean layer of our basement–that favorite haunt of adolescents–and pulled Pascal’s book off the shelf on a whim. I stood transfixed. Reading Pascal for the first time is always an electrifying experience. 

Lately, I’ve been drawn to one of the man’s more cryptic thoughts: “The motions of Grace; the hardness of the heart; external circumstances.” I first encountered this haunting saying in the epigraph to John Updike’s Rabbit, Run, a book that brings Pascal’s words to stark life. 

The motions of Grace: This is God’s good world and in Christ “all things hold together.” The word made flesh actively sustains his creation. Our Lord’s creative sustenance is present-tense. Moreover, his hidden hand is in all the circumstances of our lives, no matter how seemingly bleak. Kierkegaard famously observed that life is lived forwards and understood backwards. He’s right: We usually have to look backwards to see how the Lord was working in all of the situations where he seemed most absent. Frederick Buechner calls this practice “listening to your life.” Try it sometime. It’s a recipe for discovering the motions of grace.

The hardness of the heart: Why don’t we see the motions of grace? In a word, our hardened hearts cloud our vision, closing us off from the healing reality of Christ’s immediate proximity. But here’s the thing: He’s right there, whether we recognize it or not. It’s also worth pointing out that a statement like “in him all things hold together” is an article of faith–not just an intellectual commitment. It’s a confession of the heart, rather than a mere argument of the head. I highly recommend saying out loud, “Jesus is here,” especially when you feel deserted. 

External circumstances: If we limit our gaze to “life under the sun,” the view is shot through with impermanence. Nothing is new, nothing is safe, and nothing lasts. In our cultural moment here in America, the discipline of history is becoming very important. Whether we’re religious people “deconstructing” our faith tradition, or disillusioned citizens examining the compromised DNA of the American experiment, we’re coming to recognize the vital significance of historical consciousness. But history that examines only “external circumstances” is a remarkably barren field and can yield an abiding sense of cynicism and even despair. What do we do? 

Consider these wise words from George Marsden’s Fundamentalism and American Culture: 

“Since God’s work appears to us in historical circumstances where imperfect humans are major agents, the actions of the Holy Spirit in the church are always intertwined with culturally conditioned factors. The theologian’s task is to try to establish from Scripture criteria for determining what in the history of the church is truly the work of the Spirit. The Christian historian takes an opposite, although complementary, approach. While he must keep in mind certain theological criteria, he may refrain from explicit judgments on what is properly Christian while he concentrates on observable cultural forces. By identifying these forces, he provides material which individuals of various theological persuasions may use to help distinguish God’s genuine work from practices that have no greater authority than the customs or ways of thinking of a particular time and place.”

Marsden’s admonition aptly summarizes Pascal’s words. When we survey the historical landscape, let us never forget the three key dimensions of reality: “The motions of Grace; the hardness of the heart; external circumstances.” When we take a critical look at the historical underpinnings of our particular faith tradition, let us never forget the three key dimensions of reality: “The motions of Grace; the hardness of the heart; external circumstances.” When we survey the brittle landscape of our own lives, may we never forget the “motions of Grace; the hardness of the heart; external circumstances.” 

On Cultural Over-Engagement

Thus a master of any art avoids excess and defect, but seeks the intermediate and chooses this—the intermediate not in the object, but relatively to us.

                                            -Aristotle, Ethics, 1106b

Ecclesiastes 1:9 tells us, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” If we turn to chapter 3 of that same book, we’re informed that God “has set eternity” in our hearts (3:11). We live our lives in the space between these two verses. It’s an existence characterized by massive tension, a wizened sense of world-weariness laced with a wide-eyed hunger for transcendence. It’s why we’re captivated by jaded cynics and unflappable optimists alike. Here’s gloomy Nietzsche with his feet firmly planted in 1:9, blathering on about “eternal recurrence.” And here’s shimmering Pollyanna with her grinning band of disciples strolling through 3:11, where we’re assured, it’s always Friday! Then there’s the rest of us, trying as best as we can to keep our balance in the midst of all these crosscurrents—spiritual nomads in a finite culture. 

It’s this context that the writer of Hebrews has in mind when he warns of the removal of things that can be shaken “in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. (Hebrews 12:27)” For those of us who wish to remain unshaken, we need a more felicitous word than balance. A technical and sometimes stuffy word, balance belongs to athletic wear and instruction manuals; what we want is poise. Why poise? To watch the wavering zigzag of a child learning to ride a bicycle is a lesson in the basic dynamics of balance. Watch that same child move beyond those faltering motions to a graceful glide and what unfolds has more in common with poetry than physics. Balance describes basic competency. Poise describes grace. A ballet student has balance; Gene Kelly has poise. For our purposes, those with poise are the ones who remain unshaken in this space between time and eternity. 

Since our churches generally display no more poise than the rest of the world, they’ve adopted some ingenious strategies for avoiding it. Broadly speaking, these strategies tend to terminate in one of two extremes—namely, assimilation or isolation. For the sake of clarity, let’s picture these strategies as two distinct figures: the flaneur and the hermit. On the one hand, those with a high degree of savvy offer deep insights into the spiritual underpinnings of our cultural landscape, deftly pointing to the eternal longings erupting from our screens and speakers. Ideally speaking, these men and women are following in the apostle Paul’s footsteps by pointing to altars to unknown gods and allowing the poets of the age to adumbrate our deepest spiritual yearnings.

In a sense, a good deal of cultural apologetics involves variations on the phrase, “as even some of your own poets have said.” But the line between penetrating insight and seduction is a thin one. Paul was interested in the unknown god; he wasn’t captivated by it. Indeed, the uncompromising conclusion of his sermon cost him members of his audience: “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. (Acts 17:30-31)” 

For Christians who are keen cultural observers, the altar to the unknown god can be immensely attractive. The temptation here is to mistake the site of worship for the destination. It’s easier to loiter with unbelievers in the ambiguous terrain of an unknown god than it is to come under the stark and watchful gaze of Christ, with his bodily resurrection and his righteous judgment. If past generations of Christians were prone to burying their heads in the cultural sands, our own sensibilities incline us in the opposite direction toward an excess that keeps our vision murky.

Here we encounter the figure of the flaneur. Dreamed up by the French poet Baudelaire, the flaneur loafs on the crowded city streets, drinking up the surrounding spectacle and relishing its urbane aroma. If you want to know where to eat, what to watch, who to read, or who to listen to, the flaneur is without peer. But when it comes to the prophetic task of bringing Christ’s commands to lawless hearts, this figure is entirely too passive. If Paul risked the scorn of the crowd at the Areopagus, the flaneur prefers to get lost in its sea of bodies, most of whom show up for the sole purpose of “hearing or seeing something new.” We don’t want to overlook the spiritual significance of our cultural artifacts, of course. But we also don’t want to overestimate it. In stark terms, the road of cultural overestimation ends in assimilation, not transformation. The sad fact is that many of our most insightful Christian cultural exponents end up becoming virtually indistinguishable from their secular peers. Both remain captivated by unknown gods, while turning a blind eye to the inconvenient demands of the Lord of all creation.