This week's 'thought'
comes from a professor at my Alma Mater -- Gordon-Conwell Theological
Seminary -- David F. Wells. He is a gracious person,
a prolific writer, a rigorous researcher, and profound thinker committed to
pursuing truth. His book,from which I have taken this excerpt, is entitled:
"God in the Whirlwind." In it he points out some
of the cultural trends that have affected Western thought and society and also
influenced the modern-day Church. I know it's a bit lengthy, but please don't
let that deter you! I believe you will find it well-worth your time in
reading it -- whether you agree with all of what he says or not. Enjoy."Many therapists are now finding that although young people grew up in good homes, had all they wanted, went on to college, and (perhaps) entered the workplace, they are nevertheless baffled by the emptiness they feel. Their self-esteem is high but their self is empty. They grew up being told they could be anything they wanted to be, but they do not know what they want to be. They are more connected to more people through the internet, and yet they have never felt more lonely. They want to be accepted, and yet they often feel alienated. Never have we had so much; never have we had so little. That is our paradox...
On
the one hand, the experience of abundance, of seemingly unlimited options, of
opportunity, of ever-rising levels of affluence, almost inevitably produces an
attitude of entitlement. Each successive generation, until recently, has
assumed it will do better than the previous generation... It is not difficult
to see how this sense of entitlement naturally carries over into our attitude
toward God and his dealings with us. It is what leads is to think of him as a
cheerleader who only wants our success. He is a booster, an inspiring coach, a
source of endless prosperity for us...
Purveyors
of the health-and-wealth "gospel" that is being exported from the
West to the underdeveloped parts of the world, seem quite oblivious to the fact
that their take of Christian faith is rooted in this kind of experience. Had
they not enjoyed Western medical expertise and Western affluence, it is rather
doubtful that they would have thought that Christianity is all about being
healthy and wealthy. At least in the church's long, winding journey through
history, we have never heard anything exactly like this before...
And
while it is the case that we moderns have had this experience of plenty, it
also the case -- and this is the other side of the paradox -- that our
experience of plenty is accompanied by the experience of emptiness and loss. We
carry within us many deficits -- a sense of life's harshness, frustrations at
work, bruised and broken relationships, shattered families, inability to
sustain enduring friendships, lack of a sense of belonging in this world (teens
are committing suicide at the highest rate ever, and in 2012 in America, 53% of
children were born out of wedlock), and a sense that this world is vacant and
hostile.
So
we look to God for some internal balm, some relief from these wounds. We become
inclined to think of God as our Therapist. It is comfort, healing, and inspiration
that we want most deeply. That is what we seek from him. That, too, is what we
want most from our church experience. We want it to be comforting,
uplifting, inspiring, and easy on the mind. We do not want Sunday (or perhaps
Saturday evening) to be another workday, another burden, something that
requires effort and concentration. We already have enough burdens and
struggles, enough things to concentrate on in our workweek. On the weekend, we
want relief.
It
is not difficult to see, then, how this two-sided experience, this paradox, has
shaped our understanding of God... It is the end product of at least two
closely related mega-changes that have been underway in our culture since at
least the 1960's.
FIRST, in our minds we have exited
the older moral world in which God was transcendent and holy, and we have
entered a new psychological world in which he is only immanent and only loving.
This is the framework in which we now understand everything.
SECOND, we are now thinking of
ourselves in terms, not of human nature, but of the self. And the self is
simply an internal core of intuitions. It is the place where our own unique
biography, gender, ethnicity, and life-experience all come together in a single
center of self-consciousness. And every self is unique, because no one has
exactly the same set of personal factors.
It
is no surprise that we are now inclined to see life, to understand what is
true, to think of right and wrong, in uniquely individual ways. We each have
our own perspective on life and its meaning, and each perspective is as valid
as any other. And none of it is framed by absolute moral norms. This is where
the overwhelming majority of Americans live... And out of this has come what
Philip Rieff has called "psychological man." This is the person who
is stripped of all reference points outside of him or herself. There is no
moral world, no ultimate rights and wrongs, and no one to whom he or she is
accountable. This person's own interior reality is all that counts, and it is
untouched by any obligation to community, or understanding from the past, or
even by the intrusions of God from the outside. The basis on which lives are
being built is that there is nothing outside the self on which they can be
built. And this self wants only to be pleased. It sees no reason to be
saved. This is therapeutic deism, where morals are self-focused and
self-generated.
In
the aftermath of the 1960's, the words that came into vogue to describe all
this were individualism, narcissism, and the "Me" generation... In
time the new therapeutic preoccupations of this Me generation would, of course,
seep into the church -- although in less glaring and more sanitized versions...
The institutional aspect of the Christian faith, the church, came to be viewed
with skepticism. Credence was given instead to what is internal. Not to church
doctrine, which others had formulated. Not to church authority. Indeed,
not to any external authority at all. Rather, it is in private intuitions
that God is found...
Here
were the seeds that by the end of the 1990's had produced throughout the West
millions of people who were spiritual but not religious. In both America and
Europe, around 80 percent said they were spiritual, but were decidedly hostile
to all religions. They were opposed to doctrines they were expected to believe,
rules they had to follow, and churches they were expected to attend. They
resisted each of these...
The
impulses that began in the 1960's had by the 90's become dominant... Those that
followed the Boomers -- the Gen Xers and then the Millennials -- had exactly
the same habits... [Robert Nisbit in his book, "Twilight of
Authority" says] Across the board given our
self-preoccupation and our total self-focus, there is a retreat from what is
important to the community to what is important only to the individual, from
the weighty to the ephemeral, from others to ourselves...
There
come those times in a nation's life, Os Guinness has written, when its people
rise up against the founding principles of their own nation. This is one of
those times in America. It is far more dangerous than any terrorist attack. It
is, in fact, "a free people's suicide," as Guinness put it in the
title of his book.
Why?
Because what holds the republic together has never been simply the Constitution
and our laws. The law is an exceedingly blunt instrument when it comes to
controlling human behavior. There are many things that are unethical that are
not illegal. Most lying, for example, in not illegal but it is always
unethical. Our criminal and civil laws can control only so much of our
behavior. It is virtue that does the rest. And that is precisely
what is being eroded in this self-oriented, self-consumed culture.
Here
is the acid that is eating away at the nation's foundations, degrading
objective values, uprooting older customs, and leaving people with no clear
sense of purpose and, indeed, no purpose at all other than their own
self-interest. Under the postmodern sun, everyone has a right to their
own version of reality. When this comes about, any culture loses its ability to
renew its own life."
I share this not to
be pessimistic. I share it as a way of asking the one question that always
confronts the church in any such situation -- how will the Church
respond? What will we do? The overwhelming majority of people, and the
strongest influences of society are carrying us in a direction that can only
end in polarization and disintegration.
Yet the Scriptures
remind us that 12 men of faith (or 120 men and women of faith, if we look to
Acts 2) -- convinced of the Gospel, and the power of prayer, and aided by the
Spirit of God -- set out against all odds to change the world... and did.
Not without great sacrifice, and not without great cost to themselves
personally. But they did, and we can, aided and empowered by nothing more
than they were.
The times have set
before the Church a challenge. Will the Church rise gloriously
to the occasion?
In His Service,
Pastor Jeff
