Secularism is Here to Stay. So is Jesus.

We need to see our situation AND God's faithfulness

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And now, for today’s issue:

At the start of the 20^th century, an eager young politician named Samuel Ealy Johnson Jr. bought a plot of land in the hill country of Texas. This was done in the same century as the California Gold Rush, which had seen thousands of ambitious young Americans either make or lose their fortunes, hitching their prospects to salted-pork jangling wagons as they set out for the western coastline. 

Texas, at first blush, seemed to offer the same promise: sweeping acres filled with prairie grass, land for the taking, and cheap. And so, Johnson Jr. snatched up as much of this land he could afford, dreaming of rebuilding the ranch his father - Johnson Sr. - had envisioned. 

The only problem was, Johnson Jr. didn’t look squarely at the situation. Maybe it was because he didn’t want to, or maybe it’s because he didn’t have the time as an aspiring politician, real estate agent, investor and father, OR maybe it was because the brim of his ten-gallon hat interacted with the sun’s light just so at high noon that it skewed his depth perception and jaded his normally good, sound judgment of the matter. Well whatever it was, Sam looked at the open country, filled with lush grass, and concluded: we might as well start a farm, make an investment, and settle down. 

The biographer Robert Caro relates a visit to the Sam’s Johnson Family Ranch. A local from the hill country - a woman named Ava - escorted him to the location, then promptly ordered him to kneel, demanding: “Now stick your fingers into the ground.” Here’s Caro:

And I stuck my fingers into the soil and I couldn’t even get them into the ground the length of my finger. There was hardly any soil on top of that rock. There was enough to grow the beautiful grass but not enough to grow cotton or graze cattle.

As it turned out, the lush prairie grass hadn’t grown out of lush soil. 

It had grown because of constant brushfires, sweeping through the plains.

Caro continues:

Ava said to me, “Do you understand now? Sam didn’t really see. He didn’t want to see. It looked so beautiful.” In other words, she was saying, he didn’t see the reality of it. The reality - the hard unblinking facts. He deluded himself.

And so, the land Johnson sank his money - and fortunes - into, became a money pit. The aspiring politician became the laughingstock of the town: bankrupt, humiliated, always being chased by creditors, then eventually turning to drink to salve his wounds. 

If you haven’t guessed it yet, Samuel Johnson Jr. was the father of president Lyndon Johnson, who’s political success was due, in large part, to his ability to do what his father couldn’t: look at the hard, cruel facts before him. He was, Caro writes, a brilliant “vote counter”. Caro again:

Of all his political abilities - and he had so many remarkable political abilities - one of the most valuable was his ability to count votes. To know in advance which way a congressman or senator [is] going to vote….Vote-counting is not only a vital political art but one that’s really hard to master. Very few people can master it because…it is an art peculiarly subject to the distortions of sentiment and romantic preconceptions….Most people tend to be much more optimistic in their counts than the situation deserves. [But] Lyndon had seen firsthand, when his father failed, the cost of optimism, of wishful thinking. Of hearing what one wants to hear. Of failing to look at unpleasant facts…He lived with his mistake, his father’s one great mistake, all his youth.

This ability to look squarely at our situation is what business guru Jim Collins calls “the Stockdale Paradox”: those who are able to see the ugliness of our situation are the most likely to get us out of it. 

And that’s exactly what I mean, when I say Christians need to engage:

We need to accept the brutal reality of our situation. 

The New Secularism is here. 

It’s not going away. 

The Times

This portion of my series, “Engage”, is about facing reality.

There’s an interesting little shoutout in 1 Chronicles (actually there are like a dozen of these tantalizing little descriptors) about some of the men “from Issachar” with wisdom enough to help King David build his empire. They were, the author of Chronicles writes, 

“Men who understood the times and knew what Israel should do—200 chiefs, with all their relatives under their command.” 1 Chronicles 12:32

Leaving the weird family dynamics here aside (not to say I’m not intrigued by this “he had all his relatives under his command” situation being described), there are two related principles here. These men:

A. Understood the times. And, therefore, they:

B. Knew what Israel should do. 

As Oxford New Testament scholar N.T. Wright has said, the first two questions any worldview - Christian or Non - has to ask are:

1. Where are we? And

2. What time is it?

It’s only after we can answer those two questions that we can answer the question, “How, Now, Shall we Live?” This is a theme in scripture: God raises up men (and women) who have a real sense of the times, born by some alchemical combination of their own experience, wisdom and skill. 

Take Moses. Why was Moses chosen to be the leader of God’s people? 

Because there’s something singular about Moses’ life: he knew Israel, sure. But unlike every other Israelite, he also knew Egypt. He’s the lone Israelite who’s been educated by the Egyptians: he knows their language, religion, customs, philosophy, gods, proverbs, folklore, superstitions, foibles, insights, technology…he, in other words, has engaged the Egyptian world in a way no other Israelite has done. 

Evangelicals have been quick to downplay all this, pointing to Moses’ claim that he was “slow of speech”. But not so fast. Because for one, this statement by Moses sounds suspiciously like when my kids tell me they “don’t know how” to take out the trash.

Moses, like any of us, doesn’t want his neck on the line. 

But for two, here’s a New Testament interpretation of Moses, in Acts 7:22: 

“Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action.”

Why was Moses chosen? Because of his deep engagement with Egyptian culture as well as his devotion to God. But if you’ve grown up in the evangelical church, you’ve probably spent far more time looking at the verse about Moses’ weakness than his cultural engagement. Why? Well, there’s a whole history here as to why evangelicals, in particular, tend to disregard Luke’s reading of Moses as a man suitably educated for his job. As Notre Dame historian Mark Noll has written, American evangelical history - for a whole bundle of political/social/demographic reasons, including but not limited to the need for Quickie Lube conversions in a capitalistic market and our early anti-establishment American sentiments - has tended to minimize positive cultural statements in scripture (see “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind for a scintillating case on all this). 

But that aside, my point here is more basic: the scriptures are very much for cultural engagement. 

Take Paul, an almost identical parallel to Moses. Paul is a trained rabbi, having studied under the most elite rabbinic scholars of his time, so he knows the Hebraic language, rabbinic tradition, etc. But he’s also a Roman Citizen. 

Now, when he stands before Roman court, notice Paul doesn’t cite the Old Testament’s 9^th commandment about giving false testimony against him, but Roman law:

As they stretched him out to flog him, Paul said to the centurion standing there, “Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been found guilty?” Acts 22:25

Why does Paul do this? 

Because Paul is savvy. 

He knows Roman law and culture well enough to know that anyone who flogged a born Roman citizen without trial would be in huge political trouble. And so, the Centurion quickly - and with sweaty quaking palms, no less - releases him. 

Paul pulls a similar trick when he stands in the Roman marketplace, the Areopagus. He begins his public conversation not, again, with the Old Testament but with the local beat poet, Epimenides: 

“In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, “'For we are indeed his offspring.” Acts 17:28

Paul was, in a word, engaged. He lived in a society not unlike our own: Roman society was proudly religiously pluralist, anti-children, pro-sexual expression, and quickly globalizing thanks to the technology of Roman Roads. 

What’s Paul’s response?

Agility. 

“To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews….To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law…I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.” 1 Corinthians 9:20-22

Paul isn’t lobbing truth bombs at Roman culture, or putting up picket signs outside the Synagogue. He does the hard work of understanding the cultures surrounding him “that by all possible means I might save some.” 

The first step to subversion (or conversion, as it were), for Paul, was this:

Get engaged. 

Double Vision

Jesus, after telling a tricky parable about the coming Messiah, bemoans his own generation:

“For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.” Luke 16:8 

Christians, says Jesus, are to be “As shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). That’s twice Jesus says Christians really ought to be more shrewd than they’re being. And yet it’s a distinctive kind of shrewdness. It’s not the cleverness that lets you get away with evil, but the cleverness that lets you get away with good. That’s why Jesus says we must be:

Shrewd like a serpent without being evil like a serpent. 

And:

Innocent like a dove, without being stupid like a dove. 

In other words, given the choice between being evil or stupid, choose neither. 

Be good and wise. 

Sadly, this seems to be the false choice we’re given as evangelicals: “I wash my hands of the world (false innocence)” or, “If you can’t beat em’, join em (false shrewdness).” 

Some popular voices today tell us we need to look at the hard facts of secularism, then keep our heads down: “Just do church. Preach the gospel. Take communion. Don’t worry about what the world is like.” I’m sympathetic, but it’s a soft pass for me. That’s innocence without shrewdness.

Others say we need shrewdness and innocence is for wussies. In fact, a friend just texted me this morning asking my opinion of one of these Christian pundits, who makes a living telling people the world’s on fire so Christians need to “man up” and stop trying to be winsome (which is by the way just a fancy word for “gentle”, which is a literal fruit of the Spirit of God) and become more like…1960’s style white male fundamentalists who rejected the narratives of our black/brown brothers and sisters and only care about life that’s in the womb, not life outside it (he really did get that specific). That, he said, is courage, and see, that’s where he lost me. 

So I texted my friend: “My only issue with this essay is that it could have also been written by Lord Voldemort.”

“Actually,” he said, “That’s pretty much spot on.”

Do you hear the true calling of this pundit? It’s not a call to engagement. It’s just a call to “the way things were.” It’s a call for Nostalgia. It sounds like cultural engagement, but it’s not. 

And look, I get it. I see the draw of nostalgia, which is why I half begrudge the fact that I am a Stranger Things superfan: I know exactly how a show like that came about. 

“What do mid-30’s people want in a show?”

“Well they hate their life and they think if they could just go back to the way things were it would be all better.”

“Exactly so how about something with old horror tropes, synth music and actually…let’s literally just copy 80’s film plots for each season.”

“Nailed it.” 

And, dear reader: it worked. I love it. 

Nostalgia is powerful. It’s potent. And it’s dangerous. 

As Brene Brown has written (shoutout to Kim McDonald for this one)

“We define nostalgia as a yearning for the way things used to be in our often idealized and self-protective version of the past.”

Ouch. 

But I have good news: there is a better way to engage the world than nostalgia, or cloistering up in our churches whilst plugging our ears to the world. We can be both “innocent as doves” and “shrewd as serpents”.

In fact, let me show you a beautiful model of this kind of “shrewd innocence”. 

In Psalm 23, David writes,

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff comfort me.” (Psalm 23:4)

I admire David’s double vision, here. 

On the one hand, he looks squarely at his situation: he is in the valley of the shadow of death. He doesn’t gloss it over, or plug his ears to the situation. He’s really facing death, and not only that, he’s having intense feelings of being “overshadowed” by it, like death is a wet cloak over his soul. In other words, he’s not stupid. In fact, he cleverly escapes Saul, his persecutor, as well as Absalom, his son, through a series of shrewd political moves. 

And yet, he says: “I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

Why isn’t David anxious? 

Because God comforts David. David understands evil, but he’s innocent of it (at least in this situation). He’s processing in faith. How? Well, look at the picture David is painting: God is pictured as a Shepherd, with a rod and a staff. Did that blow your mind? No? Well, think about the imagery: why does God - the Shepherd - need a rod and staff? 

Because God isn’t outside of the valley, looking down. 

God is right there with him. He’s in the valley. He’s placed Himself in David’s situation.

God is present in the midst of David’s politically tricky, hostile, emotionally complicated life. 

And Jesus - our Good Shepherd, went all the way down into the Valley of Death. He is the Good Shepherd, who “laid down his life for the sheep.” Jesus, the resurrected King, isn’t twiddling his thumbs about secularism. He’s seen it all. He’s experienced the world at its darkest, and conquered it. 

He’s in this situation with us. 

David is able to see the hardship he’s in. David isn’t naive, or falsely optimistic. He’s shrewd. But David is also able to see God’s faithfulness. 

Secularism may be here to stay, but Jesus hasn’t left the building.

He’s right here. 

He’s engaged. 

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The Weekly Roundup

If you’re enjoying my series on Christianity and Secularism, I made this “Reject Nostalgia” Podcast Mixtape for you, with 25 podcasts that introduce some of the big themes I’ll be touching on. Enjoy (I’d only ask that this be for subscribers only. If you’d like to share it, please encourage a friend to join The Bard Owl!)

Faith

E.R.’s weekly poetry is a real treat. She wields a rare combination of poetry that is raw, creative, whimsical and theologically reflective. This poem goes in unexpected (and weird*) directions, then ends with surprising depth.

*Weird, for me, is a great compliment.

VI. Grandma's Fax Machine Is in the Cloud

Politics

As someone who leads a Faith and Work Cohort and doesn’t sympathize too much with the complaints lobbed at the movement lately - which just seem as whiny and privileged as the privilege they’re critiquing - I found Charlie Clark’s “Two Cheers for the Faith and Work Movement” a pretty sound assessment.

What Lynn’s book demonstrates above all is that the faith and work movement has not fallen far from the creative class tree. The millennial hustle culture’s Business Grindset is no less toxic (nor less cringe) when it comes carrying a cross. Yet much of what re-integrating theology has to say is Actually Good. No one wants to go back to the fundamentalist work ethic. Everyone wants their Monday to matter to God.

Now if the faith and work movement would be perfect, what would it need to do? First, it might recognize that if its precepts only work for highly agentic workers, then perhaps that’s because God meant all workers to be highly agentic. Perhaps there is a Christian duty to oppose the domination of workers by algorithms and other inhuman systems. Second, if its adverbial prescriptions are leaving room for workist syncretism, (Once again, what would it mean to speculate in credit default swaps “redemptively”?), then it should start making some nounal, verbal judgments about what constitutes justice and what constitutes idolatry. The faith and work movement could embrace proposals that would be signs of contradiction to the modern economy: demand a family wage for toilet cleaners, put a human-scale limit on both executive compensation and executive hours, ban usury or at least Sunday brunch. All this could happen. In the meantime, it could be worse.

The problem I see in this critique, by the way, is that there’s another possible explanation for why the “faith and work” movement tends toward those with more “agentic” (sorry but that’s a silly word) capacities. It’s because it’s actually much EASIER to trace the line from service-oriented jobs to our faith. The more paper pushing you do, the harder it is to see how faith and work integrate.

Books

I have such mixed feelings about “The Maid”, the firsthand fictional account of a hotel maid who witnesses a murder. The writing was fantastic, so much so that I still feel closer to the protagonist than any book I’ve read this year. The relationships, setting, twists and turns are so fun. It made me laugh and eager to turn each page. For me, however, the ending was not as satisfying as I would have liked. I’d still happily recommend it.

Culture

I was thrilled to see Jake Meador’s work in The Atlantic, with his article “The Misunderstood Reason Millions of Americans Stopped Going to Church”:

The theologian Stanley Hauerwas captured the problem well when he said that “pastoral care has become obsessed with the personal wounds of people in advanced industrial societies who have discovered that their lives lack meaning.” The difficulty is that many of the wounds and aches provoked by our current order aren’t of a sort that can be managed or life-hacked away. They are resolved only by changing one’s life, by becoming a radically different sort of person belonging to a radically different sort of community.

For Fun:

As a DC Talk fanboy, I tried to get angry about this “25th Anniversary One Man Band Rendering of Jesus Freak”, but I just couldn’t because I wound up laughing hysterically and watching it several times.