November means a lot of things to a lot of different people. For some, November is the month during which they experience the joys of long hours in the peaceful solitude and beauty of nature in autumn --- just long enough, that is, to shoot a deer with a shotgun and gut it with a knife while it hangs dead from a tree. For others, November is the month during which they travel to another state to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner and an afternoon of football with extended family. That is, unless your local NFL team is the Detroit Lions and/or the late-November weather is so harsh that your old beater-car can barely make it through the foot of snow and icy road conditions. For some people, November is the month during which to enjoy long, contemplative walks in the crisp autumn air, perhaps through an arboretum filled with vivid hues of orange and yellow. But I seriously doubt that I'll do any of those things this November. Just sayin'.
Instead, for me, November is one of two months (April is the other one) in which the demands of academic output and personal productivity skyrocket. Granted, I successfully fulfilled all my duties for October, but now here is what's on my plate for the next month or so (...just in case you're interested). First, I am preparing for and delivering my first academic lecture. This coming Monday evening I will be at the University of Michigan lecturing (for more than an hour) on the religious and spiritual lives of young people in the United States, ages 18 to 23 --- both qualitatively and quantitatively. Aside from describing sociological patterns regarding the religious worldviews among this age group today, I will also speak to several relevant cultural conditions that have, arguably, shaped the current state of religion in the U.S., e.g., consumer culture, mass communication technology, epistemological and moral relativism, suspicion of truth claims and institutions, therapeutic individualism, etc. (On this topic, see Smith 2009)
My return to Notre Dame on Monday night marks the start of my four week mad-dash to the finish line --- that is, term papers. This semester I am writing three term papers: [1] An extended methodological analysis of how I would/should go about conducting qualitative research on the strategic urbanization of American evangelicalism since the 1980s (think Driscoll, Keller, Chandler, etc.), specifically testing and expanding Christian Smith's "subcultural identity theory" of religious vitality in pluralistic late-modern society. [2] For Plantinga, I'll provide some thoughts on how post-foundationalist phenomenological epistemology can potentially contribute to the sociological study of religious experiences (see Alston 1991; James [1902] 2009). (huh?) And [3] The first draft of my masters thesis on the statistical relationships (or lack thereof) between religious affiliations, beliefs, and practices among young American Christians (ages 18 to 23) and their "buy in" to consumerism. (The best work related to this topic is Miller 2005).
b.
The Next Month or so
Faith in the Halls of Power
As a graduate student in sociology of religion at Princeton from 2002 to 2006, Michael Lindsay personally conducted interviews with 360 elite evangelical leaders. In the process, he uncovered the ways that powerful and influential evangelicals are shaping the public sectors of American life --- from business, politics, and academia to entertainment, sports, and media. This book is the result. In 2007, Faith in the Halls of Power was nominated by Oxford University Press for a Pulitzer Prize and, just last year, it won the Book Award (in the Christianity and Culture category) at Christianity Today. If you have not yet read this book, you are missing out on an insightful analysis of the web of "key players" in American evangelicalism. Rather than writing a summary of it, I figured I would just quote the description from Lindsay's website (HERE):
"Drawing on personal interviews with an astonishing array of prominent Americans --- including two former Presidents, dozens of political and government leaders, more than 100 top business executives, plus Hollywood moguls, intellectuals, athletes, and other powerful figures --- D. Michael Lindsay shows first-hand how they are bringing their vision of moral leadership into the public square. This riveting volume tells us who the real evangelical power brokers are, how they rose to prominence, and what they're doing with their clout. Lindsay reveals that evangelicals are now at home in the executive suite and on the studio lot, and from those lofty perches they have used their influence, money, and ideas to build up the evangelical movement and introduce it to wider American society. They are leaders of powerful institutions and their goals are ambitious --- to bring Christian principles to bear on virtually every aspect of American life.
"Along the way, the book is packed with fascinating stories and striking insights. Lindsay shows how evangelicals became a force in American foreign policy, how Fortune 500 companies are becoming faith-friendly, and how a new generation of the faithful is led by "cosmopolitan evangelicals." These are well-educated men and women who read both The New York Times and Christianity Today, and who are wary of the evangelical masses' penchant for polarizing rhetoric, apocalyptic pot-boilers, and bad Christian rock. Perhaps most startling is the importance of personal relationships between leaders --- a quiet conversation after Bible study can have more impact than thousands of people marching in the streets. Faith in the Halls of Power takes us inside the rarified world of the evangelical elite --- beyond the hysterical panic and chest-thumping pride --- to give us the real story behind the evangelical ascendancy in America."
b.
Kavanaugh on Functional Gods
"A 'gospel' is a book of revelation, an ultimate source or reference wherein we find ourselves revealed. A gospel is a response to the questions of who we are, what we may hope for, how we may aspire to act, what endures, what is important, what is of true value. A gospel, then, is an expression of who or what is our functional god.
"No longer are people so much concerned with the issue of atheism. We used to hear questions like, 'Do you believe in God?' But today it is no longer a significant question (if it ever was one). The question more crucially before us is, 'What god do you believe in?' The myth of the 'value-free' science, much less any other human enterprise, is dead. Everyone, any scientist, any philosopher, any politician, economist, or blue collar worker, has a functional god or some ultimate basis of value. It is not a question of whether to believe, whether to value, but what to believe and value. In other words, once our pretenses of neutrality are given up, where do we really find ourselves and our destinies revealed? What is our book of revelation? What is our gospel?"
Following Christ in a Consumer Society [1981] 2006:25
b.
A.W. Tozer on the Reality of the Unseen
"Now by our definition also God is real. He is real in the absolute and final sense that nothing else is. All other reality is contingent upon His. The great Reality is God who is the Author of that lower and dependent reality which makes up the sum of create things, including ourselves. God has objective existence independent of and apart from any notions which we may have concerning Him. The worshiping heart does not create its Object. It finds Him here when it wakes from its moral slumber in the morning of its regeneration.
"Another word that must be cleared up is the word reckon. This does not mean to visualize or imagine. Imagination is not faith. The two are not only different from, but stand in sharp opposition to, each other. Imagination projects unreal images out of the mind and seeks to attach reality to them. Faith creates nothing; it simply reckons upon that which is already there. God and the spiritual world are real. We can reckon upon them with as much assurance as we reckon upon the familiar world around us. Spiritual things are there (or rather we should say here) inviting our attention and challenging our trust.
"Our trouble is that we have established bad thought habits. We habitually think of the visible world as real and doubt the reality of any other. We do not deny the existence of the spiritual world but we doubt that it is real in the accepted meaning of the word. The world of sense intrudes upon our attention day and night for the whole of our lifetime. It is clamorous, insistent and self-demonstrating. It does not appeal to our faith; it is here, assaulting our five senses, demanding to be accepted as real and final. But sin has so clouded the lenses of our hearts that we cannot see that other reality, the City of God, shining around us. The world of sense triumphs. The visible becomes the enemy of the invisible; the temporal, of the eternal. That is the curse inherited by every member of Adam’s tragic race.
"At the root of the Christian life lies belief in the invisible. The object of the Christian's faith is unseen reality. Our uncorrected thinking, influenced by the blindness of our natural hearts and the intrusive ubiquity of visible things, tends to draw a contrast between the spiritual and the real; but actually no such contrast exists. The antithesis lies elsewhere: between the real and the imaginary, between the spiritual and the material, between the temporal and the eternal; but not between the spiritual and the real. The spiritual is real."
b.
Ephesians 4:17-24
You must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.
You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
b.
Smith on "Why Christianity Works"
In an article recently published in Sociology of Religion (2007:165-178), Christian Smith attempts to answer a simple question that has a complex answer: Why has Christianity as a religious tradition survived for two millennia (and counting)? In other words, what makes Christianity "work"? Why is the Christian faith surviving and, sociologically speaking, thriving in a late-modern supposedly secularizing world? Rather than focusing on the structural forces that shape religion and on factors that explain variance across religious belief and practice (as has traditionally been done), Smith here uses "a phenomenological approach that focuses particularly on emotions, seeking to explicate the recurrent, characteristic, and subjective experiences of many Christians that help to explain their ongoing commitment to and involvement in the faith." Throughout the article, then, Smith explains eight social psychological mechanisms that are inherent to the internal logic of "doing Christianity." These mechanisms, Smith argues, "persistently produce events, interactions, and feelings in and among people [that are] compelling enough to keep the tradition flourishing despite many countervailing forces."
Here is an excerpt:
"Christianity is not only about a constantly affectionate God or about human sin. It is more fully about God embracing without reservation this desperately sinful, defiant world. It is about a holy God of burning moral purity dealing with the cancerous evil that has, through willful human pride and rebellion, polluted the world and human hearts. The Christian God does not simply love goodhearted people with a happy-go-lucky abundance of benevolence. God himself must at an unspeakable price overcome the hateful, hideous power of sin that has overcome creation. God's love for people comes at a cost beyond measure: divine incarnation, humiliation, rejection, crucifixion, execution, and the grave. It comes at the price of the murder of God, of the unutterable separation of the Son from the Father. For all of the world's deceit, hatred, anger, cowardice, betrayals, and brutalities --- with which all of us, Christianity teaches, as members of the human race are collectively bound by the power of sin --- all that was and is perfect and beautiful and true was slain to redeem and rescue. The entire flock was left behind to find the one lost sheep. The floor was swept over and over to find the one lost coin. The amount offered to pay for the healing of the attacked Samaritan was without limit. The Son of God was scourged and tortured and executed to deliver the one lost sinner.
"Unbelievers can find such ideas and images bizarre, irrelevant, confusing, and sometimes repulsive. This is understandable, though not relevant for the argument here. What is relevant is the effect that such beliefs and experiences have on those who do believe and experience them. As with God's love, the Christian experience of God's grace and forgiveness can be moving beyond description. Having owned, named, and confessed personal sin and recognized solidarity with the sin of all humanity, the believing confessor looks for relief, release, absolution. God's grace and forgiveness beyond measure come full way to meet the repentant sinner. All wrongs are cast into the deepest sea. The blood of guilt is washed away and the offender emerges from baptism clean and pure. The forgiving divine father rushes from his watching post with tears and open arms at the distant sight of his returning prodigal son, caring nothing of the son's past rebellion and squandering. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound! Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing! Such overwhelming, euphoric lightness, freedom, and brilliance lift sin-sick Christian souls from the darkness and clothes them with God's own righteousness and friendship. The burden is removed. The sun shines again. The future is open and free. These are the kind of liberating experiences that Christianity offers its believers, experiences which confirm, bond, and validate the faith for the faithful."
Read the full article HERE.
b.
Building Houses
Most people don't know this about me, but when I was a junior and senior in high school I aspired to someday become an architect. I have always loved to draw, design, dream, build, and envision. Plus I was good at math and had the painstaking perfectionism necessary to design full buildings and electrical circuits with just paper and pencil. (There are dozens of blueprints rolled up in my closet right now.) So architecture seemed like an ideal avenue through which to actualize these passions of mine in a tangible way. My senior year of high school, I excelled in classes on computer aided drafting, calculus, physics, and architectural drawing. In fact, architecture is the only reason that I even went to the University of Michigan for college, since Michigan State University does not have an architecture program and I certainly was not going up north to Michigan Tech. I was even granted preferred admittance and a scholarship to UM's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. It seemed that the first steps toward my goal were handed to me with ease...but I never did it. I never finished. I never even started.
Here's why: Ever since I can remember, I have always wanted to contribute to something greater than myself. In sixth grade, I remember reading a history textbook about men like Christopher Columbus, Alexander the Great, King Louis XIV of France, Sir Isaac Newton, Martin Luther King, Jr., Albert Einstein, and John F. Kennedy. I was awestruck by the fact that I was reading about these men 40, 100, even 500 years after they had lived and died. I wanted that. Years later, in a weird, subconscious, not-so-effective way, designing buildings seemed to me like a way that my hand-print and my name could be on the world 40, 100, maybe even 500 years after I had lived and died. In a way, I was my own Nimrod, aspiring to build my own Towers of Babel [Genesis 11:1-9] "that reach to the heavens, so that I may make a name for myself" [Genesis 11:4]. The biblical account of the Tower of Babel is a story about prideful humans building a beautiful monument to the glory of human worthiness and ingenuity. It was self-worship. Likewise, if I had become an architect, my buildings would have been nothing more than monuments to the glory of myself.
The summer before I moved to Ann Arbor to start college, I read a verse in the Bible that made me realize these wrong motives, and that instantly changed the course of my schooling, my career, and my life. In the book of Ephesians, the Apostle Paul writes: "Now all of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us. So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God's holy people. You are members of God's family. Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself" [Ephesians 2:18-20]. This verse says that because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, we --- all Christians everywhere, the Church --- are God's house. Not any physical building; the people. We are a spiritual building "built on the foundation of the apostles [the New Testament writers] and the prophets [the Old Testament writers]." So while scripture is our foundation, Jesus himself is our cornerstone --- the strongest and most important part of any building where all the walls and the floor meet.
It was through this verse that a profound truth struck me: the only building that will last forever is the Church. A building built by humans may last hundreds of years, and serve great functionality and purpose in the course of its life, but scripture tells us that, like all things of this world, "in the end it will be burned" [Hebrews 6:8]. Indeed, scripture tells us repeatedly that when Jesus returns, he will return not with peace but with a sword and with fire to destroy everything that stands against his kingdom [e.g., Luke 12:51, 2 Peter 2:6, Revelation 8:7, 17:16, 18:8-9, 19:11-16, 19:20, 20:10, 21:8]. For example: "But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness" [2 Peter 3:10-13].
Again Paul writes: "Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands" [2 Corinthians 5:1]. Luke recorded: "However, the Most High does not live in houses made by men. As the prophet says: 'Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me? says the Lord. Or where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things?'" [Acts 7:48-50; Isaiah 66:1-2]. Paul instructed the young church leader Timothy: "Although I hope to come to you soon, I am writing you these instructions so that, if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth [1 Timothy 3:14-15]. Peter wrote: "As you come to him, the living Stone —-- rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him —-- you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" [1 Peter 2:4-5]. The author of Hebrews wrote: "For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything...And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast" [Hebrews 3:4-6].
At the age of 18, with these verses and that epiphany, it became utterly clear to me that my life should not be spent building houses; rather, my life (which is not mine anyways) should be invested in building the Church. And I have been working on that mission ever since. In my own way. At times I feel that I am still an architect at heart. I like to craft, to build, to solve puzzles, to design, to envision. I need clear logic, direction, and precision. I notice pattern and structure (notice that all my paragraphs tend to be the same length). I catch every typo. I use both left and right justify in my papers even when my professors tell me not to because I can't stand ragged edges. It has been an interesting and rewarding adventure to apply these qualities over the past five years to the oftentimes abstract and inexact fields of philosophy and sociology --- particularly as applied to the study of Christianity, church, and culture. But as Erwin McManus once put it: "In the end, leadership is nothing less than spiritual. And spiritual leaders are essentially cultural architects." No matter what gifts, qualities, or quirks we each have, whether we are an architect or an artist at heart, Jesus can and wants to use us to build His house, the Church.
b.
"Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love."
1 Corinthians 16:13-14
b.
A Life Update
You may have noticed that I have been oddly silent on here, especially in contrast to the prolific writing and quoting spree I had during the middle of summer. Well, summer is over now (high temperatures this week in South Bend are in the 50s), and I have re-entered the hectic life of graduate school at Notre Dame. And I am busy --- so busy that I had to take a break and write about how busy I am. Here is what my life is looking like this month:
I am currently taking a full load of graduate courses at Notre Dame, mostly in sociology (of course) but also one in the Department of Philosophy. I am also working (i.e. earning my graduate stipend) in the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at Notre Dame. I am on a small team in the beginning phases of a nation-wide survey project of Christian secondary school administrators, teachers, and alumni. I am also working on the statistics and background reading for my masters thesis on the relationship between religion and consumerism among young American Christians. On top of this, I am working part-time for Docent Research Group doing cultural and theological research for pastors of large urban churches. I am currently working for clients in Las Vegas, Washington D.C., and Seattle. Speaking of churches, I am on the core-team of a church plant here in "North-West South Bend." Lastly, over the next two weeks I am preparing two presentations for the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion later this month in Denver.
So if I go a few weeks without posting on here, that's why. To be clear, I am not complaining. I am actually really enjoying it. I am learning a lot, meeting new people, and challenging myself. And unlike last year, I have found my temporary church home along with a weekly small group (and dinner!) to escape from the 200 yard dash between my apartment and my office. And if you are reading this from Lansing, please know that I will be visiting you eleven days from now. See you soon.
b.
P.S. I made this post symmetrical on purpose.
New Life Church
Take a look at what's happening at the University of Michigan
The shot at 2:20 is inspiring. They fill that place up every weekend...twice...and 90% of them are university students.
b.
...the integrity and seriousness of your teaching...
The Apostle Paul writes to Titus, instructing him to "...encourage the young men to live wisely. And you yourself must be an example to them by doing good works of every kind. Let everything you do reflect the integrity and seriousness of your teaching. Teach the truth so that your teaching can't be criticized. Then those who oppose us will be ashamed and have nothing bad to say about us."
Titus 2:6-8
b.
The Wisdom of this World
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate" [Isaiah 29:14]. Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.
[1 Corinthians 1:18-25]
b.
Polanyi on Thought-Problems
"Science starts with the solitary intimations of a problem, of bits and pieces here and there which seem to offer clues to something hidden. They look like fragments of a yet unknown coherent whole. This tentative vision must turn into a personal obsession; for a problem that does not worry us is no problem: there is no drive in it; it does not exist. This obsession, which spurs and guides us, is about something that no one can tell: its content is undefinable, indeterminate, strictly personal. Indeed, the process by which it will be brought to light will be acknowledged as a discovery precisely because it could not have been achieved by any persistence in applying explicit rules to given facts. The true discoverer will be acclaimed for the daring feat of his imagination, which crossed uncharted seas of possible thought."
-Michael Polanyi. The Tacit Dimension. [1966]2009:76.
b.
Polanyi on Perception
"Perception has this inexhaustible profundity, because what we perceive is an aspect of reality, and aspects of reality are clues to boundless undisclosed, and perhaps yet unthinkable, experiences."
-Michael Polanyi. The Tacit Dimension. [1966]2009:68.
b.
Commodifying Love
"Commodity logic is insidious. It preinterprets dimensions of our existence that we consider separate from economic calculus. I once overheard a young man's response to a criticism of his fiancee's appearance. In defense of his choice of spouse, he noted the many other things that she offered: intelligence, psychological depth, compatibility, companionship, and so on. While these are likely better measures of a potential spouse than appearance, the response shared with the challenge the same crass logic of exchange. Physical attractiveness and psychological compatibility are of course perennial factors in romantic desire, but this logic transforms them. Love is reduced to a calculus of maximum returns, relationships to an exchange of emotional commodities, persons to things. It is not a question of consciously choosing such evaluative criteria. This logic is our cultural default, the form in which we are most likely to cast our deliberations. The question of why we love someone is reflexively translated into a question about what we love about them."
-Vincent Miller. Consuming Religion. 2005:37.
b.
Psalm 51
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you. Save me from bloodguilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. In your good pleasure make Zion prosper; build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then there will be righteous sacrifices, whole burnt offerings to delight you; then bulls will be offered on your altar.
Have mercy on me. In this Psalm, David pleads and begs God for His mercy and grace after having committed adultery with Bathsheba. As Calvin comments, "His sin having been of an aggravated description, he prays with unwonted earnestness." In his prayer, David quickly turns to the great compassion of God, perhaps because "there is an implied antithesis between the greatness of the mercies sought for, and the greatness of the transgression which required them." He asks God to wash him and cleanse him from his sin. Again, Calvin: "Sin resembles filth or uncleanness, as it pollutes us, and makes us loathsome in the sight of God, and the remission of it is therefore aptly compared to washing. This is a truth which should both commend the grace of God to us, and fill us with detestation of sin. Insensible, indeed, must that heart be which is not affected by it!"
b.
Pope John Paul II on Consumerism
The manner in which new needs arise and are defined is always marked by a more or less appropriate concept of man and of his true good. A given culture reveals its overall understanding of life through the choices it makes in production and consumption. It is here that the phenomenon of consumerism arises. In singling out new needs and new means to meet them, one must be guided by a comprehensive picture of man which respects all the dimensions of his being and which subordinates his material and instinctive dimensions to his interior and spiritual ones...[A]lienation, and the loss of the authentic meaning of life, is a reality in Western societies too. This happens in consumerism, when people are ensnared in a web of false and superficial gratifications rather than being helped to experience their personhood in an authentic and concrete way...It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed towards "having" rather than "being," and which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order to spend life in enjoyment as an end in itself.
Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 1991.
b.
The Whole Elephant
Our society is pluralistic. By this I mean that our current cultural milieu is constituted by innumerable worldviews, religions, moral visions, subcultures, tastes, styles, preferences, lifestyles, and the like --- all of which, in one form or another, make claim to some significant degree of legitimacy. One needs only to turn on CNN or read your local newspaper to hear or read about the next people group or lifestyle orientation that is fighting for their legal place and "full rights" in U.S. society. In light of this pluralistic spectrum of worldviews, it seems that the only worldview or philosophical position that is now intolerable in our current setting is to claim that one has or knows "the Truth." In other words, anything goes except certainty and knowledge. We must tolerate everything except claims to exclusive truth or moral absolutism, or so the argument appears to go.
To affirm one's personal worldview, particularly Christian belief, as universal fact, then, has come to be viewed as an instance of arrogance par excellence. I find it odd that radical tolerance and relativism has come to be associated with a kind of epistemic humility. That is to say, (at least in the circles I run with) it is not uncommon to hear someone ask: "...but who are you to say that you know the Truth? Who are you to claim that you are more correct than anyone else?" Any person who spends much time earnestly ministering at a large public university, for example, is bound to be confronted with this counter-argument before long. I have seen far too many young evangelists sputter and die at this point in the conversation. Here is how you should respond: You must realize that when a person confronts you with such a skeptical or relativist stance, they are actually --- most definitely unwittingly --- presenting a false air of epistemic humility and tolerance.
Perhaps a twist on a common metaphor will help. A popular relativist argument for the existence of many paths to the same god is that we are all like blind men groping at and trying to comprehend an elephant. One man feels the elephant's trunk and thus believes that the elephant is long and flexible like a hose. Another man feels the elephant's leg and thus believes that the elephant is broad, round, and sturdy like a tree stump. Yet another man feels the side of the elephant and thus believes the elephant to be expansive and flat like a wall. The point of the relativist or skeptic here is that each blind man is in fact experiencing and understanding only a distinct part of a larger physical reality --- namely, an elephant. In the same way, they argue, each world religion and perspective is like a blind man groping at a larger spiritual reality, each philosophical worldview with its own degree and kind of legitimacy and understanding. Awww... how cute and sensitive and tolerant!! But we are missing a crucial part of this story.
There would be no story were it not for the fact that the person making this relativist claim thinks himself or herself to be in a privileged position of full sight. In other words, the person telling this story, and by implication making this claim, is supposedly the only person who is not blind! He thinks that he can see the larger reality of the whole elephant, while everyone else is only blindly grasping at its parts. So much for epistemic humility! In this sense, then, this supposed relativist is in fact making a very specific claim about the nature of spiritual reality. Simply put: there is no such thing as pure philosophical relativism. Everyone makes exclusive truth claims, including the person who (absolutely) thinks that it is intolerant and arrogant to make exclusive truth claims. As the Hungarian chemist turned philosopher Michael Polanyi once put it: "The emphatic admission of our fallibility only serves to reaffirm our claim to a fictitious standard of intellectual integrity...in contrast to the hide-bound attitude of those who openly profess their beliefs as their final personal commitment."
So now what? "In a pluralist society such as ours, any confident statement of ultimate belief, any claim to announce the truth about God and his purpose for the world, is liable to be dismissed as ignorant, arrogant, [or] dogmatic. We have no reason to be frightened of this accusation" (Newbigin 1989:10). This supposedly relativist accusation itself rests upon a set of exclusivist assumptions and claims about ultimate spiritual reality that are open to criticism and testing. These assumptions are bankrupt. The non-Christian, of course, is completely unaware of these assumptions given the safe and comfortable fitting of his or her claim within our pluralistic plausibility structure. But as Lesslie Newbigin points out, to make the claim as a Christ-follower to exclusive Truth is not to claim that one knows everything. Instead, Christians are merely claiming to be on the one correct Way --- the grace of Jesus --- and inviting others to join us as we press forward toward the fullness of the Truth, toward the day when "we shall know fully, even as we are fully known" [1 Corinthians 13:12].
b.
Is Hell Really Separation from God?
A colleague of mine who is currently working on his Ph.D. in Theology at the University of Aberdeen in the U.K. emailed me tonight with an interesting theological question. He asked: "Most Christians say that Hell is being 'separated from God.' And because He has created us to be in relationship, Hell will be a place where we will experience the loss of relationships, and primarily His. While I understand the intent of that statement, I am interested to hear what you would say about it and what scripture you use. Because if God is omnipresent and hell is a real place, how could God not be in hell? And should we, as Christians, say something different about Hell than the above mentioned statement? Is it inaccurate or not fully truthful?" Here is my response:
Good Question. My understanding of this issue comes primarily from two verses. First, "Behold, the LORD's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear" [Isaiah 59:1-2]. Secondly, we read in Revelation 14 that "another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, 'If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb [the Lamb being Jesus]. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever'" [Revelation 14:9-11].
From the first verse, then, it is clear that --- as is traditionally articulated --- because of our sin, we are separated from God. But I read this as not merely a physical separation, but rather a relational separation. In this sense, the separation is best understood as relational hostility [Romans 8:7] or enmity [James 4:4] toward God. At base, it is the lack of reconciliation. At the same time that the unregenerate are relationally separated from the glory and joy of God, however, we see in the second verse above that they also experience His horrific literal presence in Hell through the torment of His just wrath. God is obviously not "in" Hell in the same sense that unregenerate non-Christians are "in" Hell, not any more than the warden or executioner is "in" prison. Instead, God is sovereign over all of Creation, including the physical place called Hell. Hell seems to be a double blow —-- the unbeliever is separated from all that is good, gracious and glorious about the triune God, but in Hell he or she is also "present with the Lord" —-- but only His wrath and justice.
b.
End of Summer Update
I arrived back in Lansing yesterday afternoon from my first trip to San Francisco. I was there for five days for the annual conference of the American Sociological Association. I was placed on the panel for critical theory (which I love) and briefly presented based on a paper that I wrote a while back entitled, "The Embodied Spirit and the Internal Roots of Weberian Marxism." In short, it re-reads an old debate in sociology through a new lens of phenomenology, personalism, and critical realism and ends with considerations on the bondage of the human spirit.
More than half of the graduate students in the Department of Sociology at Notre Dame (I counted twenty-five) attended along with me, so it was a fruitful five days of professional development, community building, ethnic restaurants, intellectual exploration, urban dwelling, and networking among some of the most brilliant minds in American sociology today --- particularly a few scholars at UC-Berkeley. A few of us guys booked a room in an international hostel downtown which was far less expensive and more trendy than the Hilton where the conference was held.
Tonight and tomorrow I am studying as usual at Beaners in East Lansing, followed by one final evening of church and friends at Riverview for the summer. Sunday morning, I am driving (my new car) down to Ann Arbor for one last visit, and I plan on returning to Lansing on Tuesday evening. After one crazy day of hectic packing and last minute errands, I plan on driving back down to Notre Dame on Thursday morning and settling into my new apartment hopefully in time to make it to my 3:00 pm meeting. The following Sunday evening, the new church plant in which I am involved holds its first service.
It has been a good, albeit oddly quick, summer. I made sufficient progress in my program, including reading a quarter of my doctoral exam reading list, taking over 150 pages of notes (typed), and submitting my first article for publication. I have enjoyed several Sunday nights with friends at Crunchy's, a good number of trips to enjoy friends in Ann Arbor, time with family, an Avett Brothers concert in Detroit, and reconnecting with the eldership at Riverview. Thanks to all of you who contributed in some small way to making this summer great, and I will see you (maybe) in November.
b.
Smith on Faith, Self, and Capitalism
"People normally think of the economy and religion as two separate spheres of life that affect each other very little. In fact, however, American religion and spirituality, including teenagers' involvement in them, may be profoundly shaped by American mass-consumer capitalism. Capitalism is not merely a system for the efficient production and distribution of goods and services; it also incarnates and promotes a particular moral order, an institutionalized normative worldview comprising and fostering particular assumptions, narratives, commitments, beliefs, values, and goals. Capitalism not only puts food on the table, it also powerfully defines for those who live in it in elemental terms both what is and what should be, however taken for granted those definitions ordinarily may be.
"Consider, for example, how mass-consumer capitalism fundamentally constitutes the human self. There are many ways to conceive of what the human person is and should be: a fundamentally morally responsible agent, an illusion of individuality destined to dissolve into cosmic unity, a sinner being divinely redeemed and sanctified, and more. As an institution with a specific historical and social location, mass-consumer capitalism constitutes the human self in a very particular way: as an individual, autonomous, rational, self-seeking, cost-benefit-calculating consumer. This, of course, is not what human selves have always been, nor what they inevitably must be. This is also not the definition of the human self that most American religious historical traditions have sought to constitute in their adherents.
"One of the possible consequences of this capitalist constitution of the human self is the way it can reshape the character of religion itself over time. The more American people and institutions are redefined by mass-consumer capitalism's moral order, the more American religion is also remade in its image. Religion becomes one product among many others existing to satisfy people's subjectively defined needs, tastes, and wants. Religious adherents thus become spiritual consumers uniquely authorized as autonomous individuals to pick and choose in the religious market whatever products they may find satisfying or fulfilling at the moment. And the larger purpose of life comes to be defined as optimally satiating one's self-defined felt needs and desires, as opposed to, say, attaining salvation, learning obedience to God, following the Ten Commandments, achieving enlightenment, dying to oneself and serving others, or any other traditional religious purpose."
-Christian Smith. Soul Searching, 2005:176
Read more HERE or HERE.
b.
Smith on Therapeutic Individualism
"Therapeutic individualism is not so much a consciously and intentionally held ideology, but rather a taken-for-granted set of assumptions and commitments about the human self, society, and life's purpose that powerfully defines everyday moral and relational codes and boundaries in the contemporary United States... Therapeutic individualism defines the individual self as the source and standard of authentic moral knowledge and authority, and individual self-fulfillment as the preoccupying purpose of life. Subjective, personal experience is the touchstone of all that is authentic, right, and true. By contrast, this ethos views the 'external' traditions, obligations, and institutions of society as inauthentic and often illegitimate constraints on morality and behavior from which individuals must be emancipated.
"James Nolan observes: 'Where once the self was to be brought into conformity with the standards of externally derived authorities and social institutions, it now is compelled to look within... No longer is society something a self must adjust to; it is now something the self must be liberated from... Where once the self was to be surrendered, denied, sacrificed, and died to, now the self is to be esteemed, actualized, affirmed, and unfettered." In a society governed by therapeutic individualism, the traditional authority and functions of priests, pastors, parents, and lawmakers are largely displaced by a new authoritative class of professional and popular psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other therapeutic counselors, authors, talk show hosts, and advice givers.
"In the process, many activities and behaviors once defined as moral failures --- alcoholism, drug abuse, financial debt, domestic violence, gambling, family neglect, obesity, sexual promiscuity --- are redefined as either perfectly legitimate 'lifestyles' or as psychological and medical dysfunctions, diseases, syndromes, codependencies, or pathologies. The latter are then, for better or for worse, treated with therapy, medications, self-help seminars, support groups, and rehabilitation programs. Meanwhile, the self increasingly comes to be viewed as the victim of abusive or oppressive personal pasts and current social experiences that violate the self's right to personal health and fulfillment. Members of therapeutic individualist cultures are encouraged in various ways to 'get in touch with their honest feelings' and to 'find' their 'true selves'...
"Moreover, moral duties, pain, and suffering are not seen, as they traditionally often were, as an inevitable part of life to be endured or perhaps through which one should grow in personal character and spiritual depth. Rather, these are largely avoidable displeasures to be escaped in order to realize a pleasurable life of happiness and positive self-esteem. Moral decision making in therapeutic individualism is always profoundly individually self-referencing. Right and wrong are determined not by external moralities derived from religious teachings, natural law, cultural tradition, or the requisites of collective social functioning. Rather, clearly unaware that feeling itself is profoundly socially formed, individual subjective feeling establishes for individuals what is good and bad, right and wrong, just and unjust."
-Christian Smith. Soul Searching, 2005:172-173
Read more HERE or HERE.
b.
Spurgeon on Strength
"The labour of the Christian ministry is well performed in exact proportion to the vigour of our renewed nature. Our work is only well done when it is well with ourselves. As is the workman, such will the work be. To face the enemies of truth, to defend the bulwarks of the faith, to rule well in the house of God, to comfort all that mourn, to edify the saints, to guide the perplexed, to bear with the froward, to win and nurse souls --- all these and a thousand other works beside are not for a feeble mind or a ready-to-halt, but are reserved for great-heart whom the Lord has made strong for himself. Seek then strength from the Strong One, wisdom from the Wise One, in fact, all from the God of all."
-Charles Haddon Spurgeon
b.
For My Brother, the Engineer
"It is true that the engineer, perhaps the symbol of this age, is not so exclusively bent on profit-making as the industrialist or the merchant. Because his function is more directly connected with the requirements of the production job itself, his commands bear the mark of greater objectivity. His subordinates recognize that at least some of his orders are in the nature of things and therefore rational in a universal sense. But at bottom this rationality, too, pertains to domination, not reason. The engineer is not interested in understanding things for their own sake or for the sake of insight, but in accordance with their being fitted into a scheme, no matter how alien to their own inner structure; this holds for living beings as well as for inanimate things. The engineer's mind is that of industrialism in its streamlined form. His purposeful rule would make men an agglomeration of instruments without a purpose of their own."
-Max Horkheimer. 1947. Eclipse of Reason.
b.
31 Posts in 31 Days
July 2009 was my most prolific blogging month yet.
...18 of them were quotations, but you know what they say:
"The man who never reads will never be read;
he who never quotes will never be quoted.
He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains,
proves that he has no brains of his own."
-Charles H. Spurgeon
b.
Weber on Meaning & Worldviews
"It is the destiny of a cultural epoch which has tasted of the tree of knowledge to know that we cannot decipher the meaning of world events, regardless of how completely we may study them. We must, rather, be prepared to create them ourselves and to know that worldviews can never be the product of factual knowledge. Thus the highest ideals, those which move us most powerfully, can become valid only by being in combat with the ideals of other men, which are as sacred to them as ours are to us."
-Max Weber. Gesammelte Aufsätze, p.154. Quoted in Maurice Merleau-Ponty. 1955. Adventures of the Dialectic, p.26.
b.
Weinberg versus God
"I personally believe that the teaching of modern science is corrosive of religious belief, and I'm all for that! One of the things that in fact has driven me in my life, is the feeling that this is one of the great social functions of science --- to free people from superstition... From my own point of view, I can hope that this long sad story will come to an end at some time in the future and that this progression of priests and ministers and rabbis and ulamas and imams and bonzes and bodhisattvas will come to an end, that we'll see no more of them. I hope that this is something to which science can contribute and if it is, then I think it may be the most important contribution that we can make."
-Dr. Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist.
"Know this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, 'Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.' For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly."
-God, made Stevie Weinberg and Physics.
b.
Related Posts:
The Modern Narrative
Science Legitimizing Itself
Terry Eagleton coming to Notre Dame
Maybe I am a bit weird, but I am excited to hear that Terry Eagleton will be a "Distinguished Visitor" in the Department of English at Notre Dame starting this fall. Eagleton is a British literary theorist and critic who has written extensively on culture, literary theory, aesthetics, postmodernism, and, to a far lesser extent, Christian theology. According to John Sitter, chair of the English Department at Notre Dame: "Terry Eagleton's recurring visits over the next five years will provide extraordinary opportunities for Notre Dame students and faculty to interact with someone widely regarded as the most influential contemporary literary critic and theorist in the English-speaking world."
Eagleton's most recent book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution (2009, Yale University Press), is a grab-bag of commentary and criticism on the relationships between the Christian faith, modern rationalism, the "new atheists," left-wing politics, and humanism. It is derived from a series of lectures he delivered at Yale last year [and is a quick read, at a scant 169 pages 1.5 spaced]. I will certainly be attending a few of his open lectures. For a snippet of Eagleton's thought from a recent New York Times article, click HERE. Or, for a quotation on theology of culture from his 2000 book, The Idea of Culture, click HERE. Below is an excerpt from the preface of his new book:
"Religion has wrought untold misery in human affairs. For the most part, it has been a squalid tale of bigotry, superstition, wishful thinking, and oppressive ideology. I therefore have a good deal of sympathy with its rationalist and humanist critics. But it is also the case, as this book argues, that most such critics buy their rejection of religion on the cheap. When it comes to the New Testament, at least, what they usually write off is a worthless caricature of the real thing, rooted in a degree of ignorance and prejudice to match religion's own. It is as though one were to dismiss feminism on the basis of Clint Eastwood's opinions of it.
"It is with this ignorance and prejudice that I take issue in this book. If the agnostic left cannot afford such intellectual indolence when it comes to the Jewish and Christian scriptures, it is not only because it belongs to justice and honesty to confront your opponent at his or her most convincing. It is also that radicals might discover there some valuable insights into human emancipation, in an era where the political left stands in dire need of good ideas. I do not invite such readers to believe in these ideas, any more than I myself in the archangel Gabriel, the infallibility of the pope, the idea that Jesus walked on water, or the claim that he rose up into heaven before the eyes of his disciples.
"If I try in this book to 'ventriloquize' what I take to be a version of the Christian gospel relevant to radicals and humanists, I do not wish to be mistaken for a dummy. But the Jewish and Christian scriptures have much to say about some vital questions --- death, suffering, love, self-disposs- ession, and the like —-- on which the left has for the most part maintained an embarrassed silence. It is time for this politically crippling shyness to come to an end."
b.
Biblical Worldview Statistics
According to a recent research report published by the Barna Group, only 9% of all American adults have a biblical worldview. A biblical worldview was defined as believing that "absolute moral truth exists; the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches; Satan is considered to be a real being or force, not merely symbolic; a person cannot earn their way into Heaven by trying to be good or do good works; Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; and God is the all-knowing, all-powerful Creator of the world who still rules the universe today."*
Perhaps even more striking was the finding that only 19% of American adults who "have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is important in their life today" and who "are certain that they will go to Heaven after they die only because they confessed their sins and accepted Christ as their savior" --- hold a biblical worldview. That is, less than one in five "born again" American adults hold a biblical worldview. In specific, among "born again Christians," less than half (46%) believe in absolute moral truth; less than half (40%) believe that Satan is real; less than half (47%) reject the idea that someone can earn their way into Heaven through good behavior.
b.
*Note: This is an improper use of the word "worldview."
De Tocqueville on Freedom of Belief
"One of the most familiar weaknesses of the human mind is to want to reconcile conflicting principles and to buy peace at the cost of logic. So there are now and always will be some people who, having submitted to authority in some of their religious beliefs, still seek to exempt some of their other beliefs from it and let their minds float at random between obedience and freedom."
-Alexis de Tocqueville. Democracy in America. [1840]1969:450-451.
What do you think of that?
b.
De Tocqueville on Religious Authority
"...[Human persons] cannot do without dogmatic beliefs; it is most desirable that they should have them. I would add here that religious dogmas seem to me the most desirable of all. That can clearly be deduced, even if one only considers the interests of this world. There is hardly any human action, however private it may be, which does not result from some very general conception men have of God, of His relations with the human race, of the nature of their soul, and of their duties to their fellows. Nothing can prevent such ideas from being the common spring from which all else originates.
"It is therefore of immense importance to men to have fixed ideas about God, their souls, and their duties toward their Creator and their fellows, for doubt about these first principles would leave all their actions to chance and condemn them, more or less, to anarchy and impotence. That is, therefore, the most important question about which all of us need fixed ideas, and unfortunately it is the subject on which it is most difficult for each of us, left to his own unaided reason, to settle his ideas. Only minds singularly free from the ordinary preoccupations of life, penetrating, subtle, and trained to think, can at the cost of much time and trouble sound the depths of these truths that are so necessary.
"Indeed we see that philosophers themselves are almost always surrounded by uncertainties, that at each pace the natural light which guides them grows dimmer and threatens to go out, and that for all their efforts they have done no more than discover a small number of contradictory ideas on which the mind of man has been ceaselessly tossed for thousands of years without ever firmly grasping the truth or even finding mistakes that are new. Studies of this sort are far above the average capacities of men, and even if most men were capable of such inquiries, they clearly would not have time for them.
"Fixed ideas about God and human nature are indispensible to men for the conduct of daily life, and it is daily life that prevents them from acquiring them... General ideas respecting God and human nature are therefore the ideas above all others which ought to be withdrawn from the habitual action of private judgment and in which there is most to gain and least to lose by recognizing an authority. The chief object and one of the principal advantages of religion is to provide answers to each of these primordial questions; these answers must be clear, precise, intelligible to the crowd, and very durable.
"When people's religion is destroyed, doubt invades the highest faculties of the mind and half paralyzes all the rest. Each man gets into the way of having nothing but confused and changing notions about the matters of greatest importance to himself and his fellows. Opinions are ill-defended or abandoned, and in despair of solving unaided the greatest problems of human destiny, men ignobly give up thinking about them. Such a state inevitably enervates the soul, and relaxing the springs of the will, prepares a people for bondage. Then not only will they let their freedom be taken from them, but often they actually hand it over themselves."
-Alexis de Tocqueville. Democracy in America. [1840]1969:442-444.
b.
PS. Now if only I could post a summary of: Chaves, Mark. 1994. "Secularization as Declining Religious Authority." Social Forces. March. 72(3): 749-774 --- without a copyright infringement. It goes well with the above excerpt from de Tocqueville, although Chaves never referenced him. Anyways, the abstract is available online HERE and you should read the first eight pages if you have access to JSTOR.
De Tocqueville on Human Nature
"The short space of sixty years can never shut in the whole of man's imagination; the incomplete joys of this world will never satisfy his heart. Alone among all created beings, man shows a natural disgust for existence and an immense longing to exist; he scorns life and fears annihilation. These different instincts constantly drive his soul toward contemplation of the next world, and it is religion that leads him thither. Religion, therefore, is only one particular form of hope, and it is as essential to the human heart as hope itself. It is a sort of intellectual aberration, and in a way, by doing moral violence to their own nature, that men detach themselves from religious beliefs; an invisible inclination draws them back. Incredulity is an accident; faith is the only permanent state of mankind."
-Alexis de Tocqueville. Democracy in America. [1835]1969:296-297.
b.
"We are not less fluid than water..."
"...[T]he perfecting of faith is an arduous matter, and one of the greatest difficulty. This, also, we know but too well from experience; and the reason, too, is not far to seek, if we consider how great our weakness is, how various are the hindrances that obstruct us on every side, and how severe are the assaults of Satan. Hence, unless the power of God afford us help in no ordinary degree, faith will never rise to its full height. For it is no easier task to bring faith to perfection in an individual, than to rear upon water a tower that may by its firmness withstand all storms and fury of tempests, and may surmount the clouds in height, for we are not less fluid than water, and it is necessary that the height of faith reach as high as heaven."
-John Calvin, Commentary on 2 Thessalonians 1:11.
b.
De Tocqueville on the Bondage of the Human Spirit
"So the human spirit never sees an unlimited field before itself; however bold it is, from time to time it feels that it must halt before insurmountable barriers. Before innovating, it is forced to accept certain primary assumptions and to submit its boldest conceptions to certain formalities which retard and check it."
-Alexis de Tocqueville. Democracy in America. [1835]1969:292.
b.
The Modern Narrative
"Many years ago, our human ancestors huddled around fires listening to shamans and elders telling imaginative stories by which they made sense of their world and their lives in it. They told myths about the world's origins, and about how they as peoples came to be. They told legends about mighty heroes of old, about overcoming great adversity, about visions of the future. They narrated tales of moral struggle, about people good and bad, and about what happens to naughty children. They recounted myths about fairies, spirits, gods, and powerful cosmic forces. By narrating such fictional stories, our ancestors recounted meaningful explanations of a world that was to them mysterious and dangerous --- and entertained themselves in the process. As primitives, telling such stories, myths, and legends was the only way they knew how to explain the world and contemplate how to live in it. And such was the condition of traditional human societies of all kinds up until a few hundred years ago.
"But all of that has changed. We moderns no longer have to huddle around fires telling fanciful myths about creations, floods, trials, conquests, and hoped-for paradises. Science, industry, rationality, and technology have dispelled the darkness and ignorance that once held the human race captive to its fanciful fables. Today, through progress, enlightenment, and cultural evolution, we now possess positive knowledge, scientific facts, rational analyses. We no longer need to be a people of ballads and legends, for we are a people of periodic tables, technical manuals, genetic maps, and computer codes. We may tell fables to our children about wolves and witches and arks. But the adult world is one of modern, scientific information, facts, and knowledge. We have left behind myths and legends. We are now educated, rational, analytical. Indeed, by struggling to break out of the fear and ignorance of our ancestral myth-making past into the clear daylight of rational, scientific knowledge, we have opened up for the human race a future of greater prosperity, longevity, and happiness.
"Such is the story we moderns --- huddled around our televisions and computer work stations --- like to tell each other. This is the dominant narrative by which we make sense of our world and the purpose of our lives in it... We, every bit as much as the most primitive or traditional of our ancestors, are animals who most fundamentally understand what reality is, who we are, and how we ought to live by locating ourselves within the larger narratives and meta-narratives that we hear and tell, and that constitute what is for us real and significant."
-Christian Smith. Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture, 2003:63-64. Accessible online HERE.
b.
