We all ask, ‘Why?’ Why do some men think themselves entitled to compete in women’s sports? Why do people seem to hunt out supposed micro-aggressions in order to be offended? Why have institutions suffered a drop in membership? Why is there such an increase in identity politics? There are many subsidiary responses, but the core answer is that when you turn your back on Christ, you turn your back on more than Christ.
What is truth
What we think determines what we do. At one time we said that all truth is God’s truth, but no longer. One of the most destructive aspects of our modern malaise is that we have abandoned the search for that truth. God’s good gift of rational thought has been replaced by emotion, and hard facts by wishful thinking. When the West turned its back on Christian teaching it abandoned that which held it together (Col 1:17) and as a result we are disintegrating as a coherent culture.
For Christians truth is vitally important; Jesus even describes himself as ‘the truth’ (Jn 14:6). Again and again in the gospels Jesus stresses the truthfulness of what he says. Just hours before facing the cross, Jesus prayed for his followers, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth’” (Jn 17:17). For the past 2,000 years we have used reason and logic in pursuit of truth. That there are differences between us is understandable; we are all fallen and have our own strengths and weaknesses, but we all try to use reason to develop our understanding.
Emotional truths
Today, logical reasoning is no longer the means through which we find truth. Ben Shapiro may say, “Facts don’t care about your feelings”, but for more and more people, after being processed through our universities and indoctrinated by our media, facts are very much subordinated to feelings. We no longer say, ‘I think’, instead we say, ‘I feel’. This is more than a semantic adjustment, it reveals a completely different understanding of life.
This is more than a semantic adjustment, it reveals a completely different understanding of life.
For all of human history, the individual adapted to the surrounding world and didn’t expect the world to adapt to him. We got on as best we could and when we encountered a difficulty we innovated and developed strategies to cope with unyielding reality. We developed agriculture, medicine and technology to manage living in the real world, and life improved.
Today people speak of ‘My truth’, and say, ‘That may be true for you but it’s not true for me’, and they expect the real world to adapt to their desire for happiness. We are taught that truth and authority can be found in our feelings and that the highest goal of any individual should be living by their internal truths. University lecture halls have become ‘safe spaces’ where students go to be affirmed and reassured in their emotional truths, rather than exposed to actual objective truths which challenge their emotions. Conspiracy theories sweep the planet because they represent what people want to believe.
The old understanding that truth was objective allowed us to cohere as a society. We may have differed in our values, but we all held to the same objective standard of truth. Now truth is internalised and every individual is their own source of truth and society splinters into competing identity groups concerned principally with their own emotional well-being.
The heart
Throughout history, individuals have found themselves at odds with their societies, but it is only today that the view has taken hold that it is the inner self which is truly authentic and the outer society is systematically wrong and unfair and should be forced to accept and celebrate the individual’s self-understanding. If a burly six foot bloke with a beard likes to think of himself as a woman then all of society must be forced to accept that he is a woman.
Conspiracy theories sweep the planet because they represent what people want to believe.
The moral calculus of our society has changed. The Protestant ethic which did so much to create the West was based on us subordinating our own feelings as we placed them under God’s authority. We accepted that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and beyond cure” (Jer 17:9), and we sought a higher authority.
This has been replaced by a belief that our hearts are the higher authority and source of our truth. As Oprah Winfrey, who helped popularise the concept, said, “I am guided by a higher calling. It’s not so much a voice as a feeling. If it doesn’t feel right to me, I don’t do it.” Descartes said, “I think therefore I am”. Oprah and her followers say, “I feel therefore I am.”
Institutions
We used to find purpose in external commitments within institutions such as our church, trade union or political party. With the rise of emotional or therapeutic truth, our commitment is to internal truths, and, as a result, commitment to all institutions has fallen. These external institutions have at best become our servants, whose purpose is to make us feel good about ourselves. If the institutions fail to give us immediate gratification, we have no real commitment to them and abandon them.
When we become the centre of our own universe everything crumbles.
The decline in church membership has many causes but a significant one is the rise of therapeutic truth. People have always had an interest in their own well-being but what has changed is that we now have the promise of ultimate fulfilment independent of God. The transcendent has disappeared as an authority to be lived by and has reappeared as an occasional assistant to our personal happiness.
In some parts of the Church, such as the prosperity gospel, God’s importance lies in His ability to grant us our desires. God becomes a servant to be used, not worshipped and adored.
“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes” (Prov 12:15). When we become the centre of our own universe everything crumbles.
The Rev. Dr Campbell Campbell-Jack is a retired Church of Scotland minister; now a member of the Free Church of Scotland. Check out his many incisive articles on his blog, A Grain of Sand.
