How did we arrive at our current cultural moment?
Old-timers might marvel at the outrageous beliefs and behaviors of today. But if they’re honest, they saw it coming, so slowly creeping along through the ’50s, 60s, and 70s that it seemed it would never get here, certainly never catch on, nor infect anything larger than fringe populations.
What we’re witnessing now is nothing less than the emergence of an autonomous self becoming the standard of all reality. It is a self free of the burden of objectivity and evidence, independent of any external authority.
It began seed-like with philosophers from the 17th to the 19th centuries, all of who had a distinctly atheistic bent and an unqualified trust in themselves.
Descartes famously said, “I think, therefore I am,” thus establishing self as the ground of all certainty. Marx denied the existence of any transcendent force outside the individual and that such things as God and scriptures were mere tools of political and economic oppressors. Nietzsche believed that unless an individual gives vent to the beautiful beast nature has made him to be; it is a travesty. Freud’s extensive work posited that the cause of all our problems stems from guilt over suppressed sexual drives.
At the end of the day, this coalition assured us the only truth was in you, and especially the sexual you, no matter how foul and objectionable that sexual truth might appear. Any external attempt to say otherwise was political, religious, or class interference, plain and simple. And, as Marx might add, an interference that should be overcome by all means necessary, including violence.
Though most of us have never read the seminal works of these writers, almost every undiscerning soul lives in a default state of obedience to their writings. This is why the concept of the authoritative self, with its own truth, has spread, shaping and dominating our world. Paul would have referred to it as the “wisdom of this age” (1 Cor. 2:6).
How did this proliferation happen if we weren’t all consuming their hefty, philosophical works? Without resorting directly to spiritual explanations, their weird popularity has occurred through a complex chain of interrelated events.
Christian philosopher Carl Trueman has pointed out in his book Strange New World that the dystopian wisdom so much in vogue today has found reinforcement through the heady technological developments of the past 140 years or so.
And the name of the game is plasticity. By harnessing modern communications, entertainment, medicine, and transportation, we have learned we can change things in our world that was once upon a time “fixed” in place. Distant journeys that might have taken weeks by ship now take only hours by plane. Communications that might have needed a week or more through the mail can be held in seconds with a cell phone. Even the simple enjoyment of music that once required us to get dressed up, and travel to a symphony hall, can be had at home alone with electronic devices. Medical emergencies often treated as risky, if not fatal, are solved today through routine procedures.
These advances extend laudable benefits to humanity. But, they also create the illusion that we can change anything we want by mere whim, including the nature of reality itself. The latest of these involves the alteration of biological gender based on subjective feeling.
It shows no sign of stopping there. A journalist recently spoke about a woman at work who identified as a tiger. The woman wore toy tiger ears and a tail to work. It was no joke. She expected everyone in the office to respect her chosen identity, a delusional expectation, to be sure.
But in five years, it will be hard to say that everyone will so easily discern it as delusion.
The mantra “Follow the science” was coined as recently as the pandemic. Many of the same people who touted it, though, at the same time essentially promote “Follow the fantasy.” Politics and preference govern whether they invoke science or not, and thus truth becomes playdough in the hands of an authoritative, autonomous self.
This mindset is so contradictory to real life that we wonder how to respond to it. How do we assist the church, at least, from being drawn into the downward funnel of these influences? We all know how conservative sources do it. They appeal to common sense, western values, pragmatic sciences, and patriotism.
Believers in Christ, however, have something more to offer.
Consider John 1:1. The phrase “in the beginning” seems a direct refrain of Genesis 1:1—”in the beginning.” but it is not simply a retelling of the Genesis narrative.
Instead of dwelling primarily upon the creation story, as Moses did, John handles “the beginning” by overlaying it with New Testament apostolic revelation. And rather than start with what God did, John begins with what He is.
“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”
Think about it. Before anyone else’s words, their self-definition, their self-expression, their interpretation, their ideas, their words, was the Word.
He was in the beginning with God (John 1:2). The Word is a Person who defined God from the very start.
Though John did not attempt to teach a class on Genesis chapter 1, interpreting it point by point, His general allusions to it are unmistakable.
Each time, for instance, that God spoke in that chapter, “Let there be…” it was the Word, Christ, as the power in whom all creating acts took place. Just as John 1:3 goes on to say,
“All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.”
The rules of matter and substance were thus established in Him, not anyone else. Certainly not the vain imaginations of human philosophy or any supposed power of liquidity in ourselves.
John tells us next that “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (v. 4). As life unfolds in Genesis 1, it does so according to the physical order. But John 1:4 adds that anything called “life”—physical or spiritual—is found in Him.
The very shape and definition of life are thus established in the eternal Son of God, not according to the shifting moods of human beings.
Not even the smart ones. Or the angry, loud ones.
God also said, “Let there be light,” in Genesis 1, again referring to physical properties. But when John speaks of it, he portrays light as a distinctly moral property, calling it the “light of men.” This light, according to him, is in Christ, who is the residence, the depository of all truth. Reality is not a self-made, malleable product in the hands of those who have been created. In fact, when any alleged truth is separated from Christ, the best we can hope for is corrupt reasonings.
Paul warned us that “the wisdom of this world is folly with God” (1 Cor. 3:19). Christ, however, is “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24).
And this is what we hold up before the confused modern self.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on John Myer
Featured Image by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
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