For the Joy of the Journey

This post will end the True and Real series. I have wandered the landscape a bit but hopefully the discussion has raised an awareness of the possibility of faith that is true but not real.

My premise being that secularism’s disenchantment and rejection of transcendence, creates faith that is a mirage, true but not real. The essence of disenchantment is the absence of transcendence, most apparent in the absence of God. Without the divine, life loses its meaning and purpose. The only remaining option for meaning and purpose in a secular age comes from within, each individual becomes their own god. As transcendence is diminished, my religion becomes a commodity in a quest for meaning and purpose. 

I am increasingly convinced the current upheaval in evangelical Christianity is directly related to faith that is nothing more than a mirage. Faced with a pandemic and other realities, our faith has been tested and found wanting.
Timothy Keller gives credence to this proposition in his recent Atlantic article entitled “Growing Faith in the Face of Death”. Excerpts below reflect his struggle with his belief in the face of death. His term is abstraction, an apt synonym for mirage.

…our beliefs about God and an afterlife, if we have them, are often abstractions…. If we don’t accept the reality of death, we don’t need these beliefs to be anything other than mental assents. A feigned battle in a play or a movie requires only stage props. But as death, the last enemy, became real to my heart, I realized that my beliefs would have to become just as real to my heart, or I wouldn’t be able to get through the day. Theoretical ideas about God’s love and the future resurrection had to become life-gripping truths, or be discarded as useless.

When I got my cancer diagnosis, I had to look not only at my professed beliefs, which align with historical Protestant orthodoxy, but also at my actual understanding of God. Had it been shaped by my culture? Had I been slipping unconsciously into the supposition that God lived for me rather than I for him, that life should go well for me, that I knew better than God does how things should go? The answer was yes—to some degree.

American philosopher Jonathan Edwards argued, it is one thing to believe with certainty that honey is sweet, perhaps through the universal testimony of trusted people, but it is another to actually taste the sweetness of honey. The sense of the honey’s sweetness on the tongue brings a fuller knowledge of honey than any rational deduction. In the same way, it is one thing to believe in a God who has attributes such as love, power, and wisdom; it is another to sense the reality of that God in your heart.

Timothy Keller

It is comforting that I, like Keller, struggle “to bridge the gap between an abstract belief and one that touches the imagination”.
The antidote and ultimate vaccine for secularism is unseen reality. My spiritual quest is to seek and engage unseen reality. To put it in Christian vernacular… “Come to know God.” it is there we find meaning and purpose.

Still on the journey.

It’s been more than a month since my last “What is True and Real?” . This post continues the series. Richard Rohr’s latest post entitled “The Gospel Lens” is the basis for this post. Excerpts from Rohr’s post set a framework for some thoughts on worldview and continued discussion on “What is True and Real?”

The problem is …. Any time someone interjects with “The problem is…” I am immediately reminded “seldom is the presented problem the real problem” . The point being not to reject but always probe deeper.
It is with the expectation that you will probe deeper, I say …“the problem is extremism”  extreme : something situated at or marking one end or the other of a range

Everybody looks at the world through their own lens, a matrix of culturally inherited qualities, family influences, and other life experiences. This lens, or worldview, truly determines what we bring to every discussion.  When Americans identify money as “the bottom line,” they are revealing more about their real worldview than they realize.

Our operative worldview is formed by three images that are inside every one of us. They are not something from outside; they have already taken shape within us. All we can do is become aware of them, which is to awaken them. The three images to be awakened and transformed are our image of self, our image of God, and our image of the world. 

We would do well to get in touch with our own operative worldview. It is there anyway, so we might as well know what this highly influential window on reality is. It’s what really motivates us. Our de facto worldview determines what catches our attention and what we don’t notice at all. It’s largely unconscious and yet it drives us to do this and not that. It is surely important to become conscious of such a primary lens or we will never know what we don’t see and why we see other things out of all perspective.

Richard Rohr

Refrains like : “I just don’t know what to believe anymore.” or “I don’t believe anyone.” are clear indications of cognitive dissonance that prevails in our culture. I believe Rohr is correct in his assertion that our worldview “truly determines what we bring to every discussion” The third of Rohr’s three images in us that forms our operative worldview is our image of the world. The other two images … image of self… image of God…will be the subject of later posts. It is …our image of the world..I want to consider.

The refrains cited above and reasonable assessment of our culture testify to a culture defined by mistrust and doubt. Conversations quickly reveal distrust of governments, religious and educational institutions, corporations , media, science, experts of any ilk. Sadly, friends and family are often included as untrustworthy. Much like a friend quipped, decades ago, “I’m pretty sure you and I are the only ones right about this, and I’m not so sure about you.”

It should be no surprise in this secular age many believe there is only one reliable source for what is true and real … themselves. That would be troubling in and of itself, but the conversations I’m having are with Christians. Secularism is polar opposite of Christianity. It appears cultural warriors have been out flanked. Christians, as Rohr suggests, …would do well to get in touch with our own operative worldview“.

Our de facto worldview determines what catches our attention and what we don’t notice at all. It’s largely unconscious and yet it drives us to do this and not that.

We have a de facto worldview shaped by the secular age. I’ve written about that previously. Our operative worldview, primarily expressed in distrust, is being shaped by extremism.

Mistrust, skepticism, of the entities mentioned earlier is not new. Such is the nature of human interactions. We we are all well aware of human potential for evil. It is healthy to be skeptical but unmitigated distrust is toxic.

Distrust sows distrust. It produces the spiritual state that Emile Durkheim called anomie, a feeling of being disconnected from society, a feeling that the whole game is illegitimate, that you are invisible and not valued, a feeling that the only person you can really trust is yourself.
Distrustful people try to make themselves invulnerable, armor themselves up in a sour attempt to feel safe. Distrust and spiritual isolation lead people to flee intimacy and try to replace it with stimulation. Distrust, anxiety, and anomie are at the root of the 73 percent increase in depression among Americans aged 18 to 25 from 2007 to 2018, and of the shocking rise in suicide. “When we have no one to trust, our brains can self-destruct,” Ulrich Boser writes in his book on the science of trust, The Leap.

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Our biggest problem is not sin; it’s our broken ability to trust. That’s why we sinned in the first place. We didn’t trust in the goodness of God. The healing we most need is the healing of our broken capacity to trust. That’s the problem behind all of our problems.

J D Walt

The prevailing operative worldview is shaped by by a view of the world seen in the extreme. Facilitated by media and technology we see the world magnified to the extreme, an equivalent of bacterial bed buddies.

Information that is true, when viewed in the extreme is unreal. Unreal in the sense that it does not reflect reality. It is true but not real. Reality is the sum of all parts. Bacterial bed buddies are true but they do not reflect reality. They are one minuscule part of a vast reality, which when understood in proper perspective will produce healthy outcomes… enjoying freshly washed bed linens and sleeping soundly. Magnified out of proportion they produce anxiety, fear and disproportionate responses.

Rohr puts it this way: People with a distorted image of self, world, or God will be largely incapable of experiencing what is really real in the world. They will see things through a narrow keyhole. They’ll see instead what they need reality to be, what they’re afraid it is, or what they’re angry about. They’ll see everything through their aggressiveness, their fear, or their agenda. In other words, they won’t see it at all.

Society’s (our) gross misbehavior, comes from viewing a world distorted by extremism. Ever present media depicts what is true, but seldom real. We are lost in the desert desperately pursuing a mirage, living in panic, fighting bacterial bed buddies.

I have no optimism that secular society will embrace what is true and real. My hope lies in the transcendent reality of the Kingdom of God, where what is true and real dwells.

To that end, my prayer remains,
“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Still on the journey.