A recent micro-controversy has poked up its ugly little head in Christian circles. A well-known and much beloved pastor said something with which some sensitive people did not agree, so they decided it was better to just throw the whole baby out with the bathwater than to try to be gracious and understanding in the matter.
I heard the controversial quote myself and knew that, while it wasn’t something with which I might agree entirely, I could see the point. The thing is, I’ve been listening to this guy’s podcast since way back when it was a radio program (quite literally decades) and I have a pretty good grasp on his theology. It’s rock solid. But apparently not solid enough that a certain group can look back on it whenever he says something that involves nuance and context.
That’s the way it goes, I guess. My initial thoughts were just this: if anyone really knew the guy halfway decently, they’d be far more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But no, it was straight to the stake for a good old heretic-burn for these people.
I think I get it now. When Elon Musk bought Twitter last year, there was a bit of a ruckus in some circles. Musk is of the mindset that freer speech is better. Really. The way to overcome bad speech is with good speech. We’re reasonable people, right? The way it’s supposed to work is if someone says something completely idiotic, a more-informed crowd comes back to correct them. I can get it if there are grey areas and variations – we won’t all agree on every point; but still, in the end, the cumulative knowledge of the collective should win out for the best of everyone.
But apparently, that’s not how it works in reality. While we’ve had evidence scattered about all of history, it all seems to be coming to a head lately with the rise of social media and its cramming of people into their own little silos. Nowadays, people are almost entirely unable to see the world through any perspective but their own (and the algorithms making sure that their own is all they ever see).
It’s not that we live among complete idiots. I won’t go that far. It’s just that we are – each one of us – both gullible and selfish to some degree. Some of us, to an extreme; while others, perhaps only slightly so. Over time, I’ve developed a perspective of self-centeredness that continues to hold true when put to the test. We would be hard-pressed to find a single human being on the planet who is completely giving of themselves. We all tend to err on the side of self-gratification, if only by a small degree – just enough cumulatively to keep the planet out of whack. Even if the degree of selfishness is slight, it adds up when you consider the population of the world is somewhere in the neighborhood of eight billion.
Still, too many of us fall for the illusion that we can make it all right – all we need are a few tweaks here and there. But the utter failures of those systems which were supposed to do the job (like communism and socialism), wherever they’ve been tried over the past century and a half, have proven us wrong. Because in the end, no one will willingly give up their piece of the pie if they can see a way to get an edge somewhere. It’s human nature.
So, is there a solution? Well, yes and no. Let me start with the “no.” We humans are never not going to be self-centered. You can call it the evolutionary characteristic of self-preservation if you want. My perspective is more along the lines of our inherent rebellion against (first) the authority of God, but for those who don’t believe in God, just plain rebellion against any kind of authority.
So, what about the “yes?” Well, the solution would be to submit oneself to authority. The problem though with some approaches (most of them, actually) is that the “authority,” even if that decided upon by the collective society, is still knocked off-kilter by the self-centeredness of those who live in the society themselves. When a group of imperfect individuals get together to create a system of self-governance, the result is imperfection. We see this especially in America; a nation founded upon the premise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s as free a society as has ever existed in the world, yet still filled to overflowing with all those warts and imperfections. I keep going back to Adams here: “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Given the means to govern ourselves, the best we could hope for is a people who could somewhat agree on a morality to keep our selfishness in check for the good of the whole.
But this just isn’t the case, and I don’t see it getting any better in this age of manipulation. The tech- and PR-savvy will rule the world at the expense of truth and real freedom, now more than ever. The solution then is not to turn to ourselves for more of the same, and especially not to turn to the variety of religions that we have made up to assure ourselves we still have some good in us. It is to admit defeat – that we are all at heart selfish and that we need something (someone) outside of our own invention to save us from ourselves.
I’m being gentle here because I know far too many people don’t understand that our ultimate issue is not our rebellion against the imperfect authorities of this world, but rather, our rebellion against the creator of the world. When put up before authority of our own making, we have no problem justifying ourselves in one way or another. When put up before the perfect moral standard of God, there is no justification good enough.
So instead, I try to get you halfway there. I say you’re not decent enough to your neighbor, let alone the ultimate authority to whom you’re actually accountable. You’re always going to be looking for nirvana or enlightenment or some kind of oneness with the universe or whatever, and you’re always going to fail. Because in the end, you cannot save yourself, and that’s what you’re trying to do with all of those religions (or lack of religion) that you make up. It’s a losing battle because you’re caught in a self-defeating loop.
Listen. Just turn to God and believe in Jesus Christ as the one who reconciles you to him when you cannot. The one who overcomes your inherent self-centeredness and who, despite your continuing failure to snap out of it, still changes you and makes up for the failures himself. Sure, it’s a narrow path, but it’s the one that accounts best for the reality in which we live.
