The unravelling of a relativistic society

The World and Me

When I refer to being ‘me’, I mean it’s usage to relate to the plural of what it means to be ‘us’ in a shared human lived experience. However, I also mean it in the ownership sense of our own individual formation. Who am I? And what are the principles shaping my becoming?

As I reflect on ‘us’ and ‘being me’, I do so as I read the story of the temptations Jesus faced. In one of these temptations, Jesus was taken to a high point and told that he would receive the whole world if only he would worship the Devil. Jesus’ response was swift, if the offer didn’t include God His father and Heaven, then the offer from the devil wasn’t enough. ‘The world was too small!’

And yet the repeated attempt to attain the world…

Attaining the whole world wouldn’t be receiving any particular thing, as that would begin to limit the ceiling once more. Perhaps the way to capture the world relates to myself and who I am and the way that I relate to the world. Freeing the inner self in relation to the world means the attaining must be based upon the outcome of my own decisions and choices. Control has shifted from ‘thou’ and ‘them’ to me. Give control upwards and it might not materialise, give it sideways and it might be trampled on, keep it to myself and destiny is where I walk. The unlimited life; I can play true or false with choices until I finally win. I just need to keep playing and the day will come. All prohibitions in becoming who I am meant to be are off the table.

The constraints of ‘objective truth’ or ‘conformity’ have been slain, dangerous villains deliberately out to restrict me getting to the bottom of the deck of cards. Their words silenced. Their beliefs attacked. At times I want objective truth for justice or for others to follow my interpretation of an ethical issue. However, for personal meaning, only choice must be spoken. At the bottom of the deck of cards lies myself.

How will I know for certain that I have obtained the world? It could be a ‘felt reality’ or ‘lived experience’, when I have really come to ‘know myself’ and am living in complete ‘authenticity’. No pretence. Except for what I choose to pretend to myself, of course. Hope doesn’t lie within the grip of community leaders or hiding behind the physical reality elusively or transcendentally. Hope is …me. The me that I someday will be! It’s a present hope but I can’t have it today. Why? because that makes me anxious. So, the present hope is a future one. I’ll ignore the contradiction.

The unravelling of me within an uncertain world…

Soren Kierkegaard interestingly developed a thesis about anxiety. Fundamentally, behind our anxiety, we are concerned about our own choices. If we are taken to a high point, looking out across a cliff edge, we aren’t truly afraid that someone will push us off the edge, we are scared by how we will act when we are in the place of fear. Perhaps as we begin to address the unravelling of a society that has placed its hope upon individual choice, that Kierkegaard’s insight has never been more relevant. We are drowning in the dizziness of choice, always one choice away from true happiness, but always one choice away from catastrophe. One by one, the threads of ‘the world and me’ are becoming undone. The contradiction of happiness today which is always happiness tomorrow and the me that I will find that I never did, lacked concrete when the knocks started to come.

The unravelling of our relativistic society is being played out in a myriad of ways. We thought we could tell people that they are only a physical being, that nothing supernatural exists and that religion is dangerous without consequences. The public spaces taught and preached it – from the university and the school, often distancing themselves from a Christian ethos to the atheistic soundbites of the digital space. But the reality is both young and old have lived out this philosophy. They put it into practice. It wasn’t just an idea of the philosophers anymore. Young and old ate it and became it.

We thought we could deliver ‘the real me’ through the exploration of life. But the problem of always being a choice away from true happiness and a choice away from catastrophe lies…the ‘stuck’. I can’t go back but there is no way forward. The allure of freedom and for too long never grasping it. Never really landing on something definitive or the freedom that I thought would lie at the end of the search. What have we really become? To some of the psychologists, we are the ‘anxious generation’. The digital age, online influencers and social media have been at the forefront of the pressures creating social anxiety. Much needs to be learned from the psychologists, but what has underpinned the experiences of the physical world and the digital world has lay a promise…

‘The promise was the world, relativistic truth and me.’

I can be anything I want to be and there is nothing within the universe to say otherwise. A world of plasticine. Play with it, stretch it. Make it square, make it rectangle. Throw it up in the air. It’s yours. But I couldn’t catch it?

The Experienced Problem:

I could never find this mystery being; the true self, attained through personal choice. It continued to evade me or stay in the shadows; the reality was – this was the unobtainable self.

One by one the threads became undone…

When Gen Z and alpha return from education, they no longer retreat into recovery or solitude. They enter the small and large world. Small enough to be accessible on their phone, but large enough that its content is never ending. No where to escape the social pressure of the day, the influencers, the noise, the addictions.

A world of choice is a world of pressure.

One by one the threads became undone…

At the end of the new atheist’s toil lay chaos. You are just a physical machine they said. Ignorant of the history behind the spread of western values through the teachings of the Christian worldview. Rather, religion was an enemy persecuting our information and the killer of your true self. So, we killed religion and chaos became our friend.

But now we are sick of our friend.

One by one the threads became undone…

The pandemic arrived. We can blame others for its origins or for failing to make the right decisions along the way for our protection. It sent us away from the community. Many of our responsibilities were no longer necessary, for months under lock and key. The one in control no longer in control. The arbitrariness of life all too clear. The inability to be in community is starting to question my individuality.

The self in control, now watches by. Alone.

One by one the threads became undone…

Not in Europe they said. War will be no more. It did and it has. Whether it will take just our money or our men and women remains to be seen. But a neighbouring country has the zero line, the line of defence.

Europe – The line is close. Who am I now?

One by one the threads became undone…

Awareness through protest or awareness through policy, it is clear the earth’s resources are running out. But what will keep the world at play? From entrepreneurs to technological solutions, we have the allure of creativity and the promise of life beyond the stars. The world and its resources are not enough. Is the threat of radiation and changes in gravity going to lead to my survival amongst the stars or am I going to sync my consciousness to the digital screen?

At best the response is uncertainty, a sense of arbitrariness and being unconvinced towards the best amongst us.

A final thread to be undone…

Living as a physical machine failed. So, we reached out, some to a counterfeit religion, some to a spiritual practice, some to the occult, some to objects like crystals. When we despair, we reach. 
We needed something spiritual after all, and our preferred spirituality will heal us. But we tried to keep the initial promise. The world and my practice can still be whatever I want it to be. I can still be in control. In control of my spirituality. In control of the thing bringing me healing, justice and hope. A new method, the same old promise. You can be what you want to be and there is nothing objectively true within the universe.

But what if my practice is controlling me? Taking more and more?

That is not what I was promised.

The awakening…

The awakening will happen as quickly as the realisation of the relativistic lie.

We were promised the world. We would attain it through the self that we would become and from the freedom of our choices. We attained neither the world, nor found ourselves and received only the dizziness of choice.

The awakening cannot stop in a secular valuing of Christian morals. If our values of human dignity, equality and goodness are not embodied by God Himself, they will come from a smaller, limited place.

But we’ve already tried from within the world…a great idea, a promise. And it lied to us, it was too small. It keeps us under the illusion of control, when we’ve already been found out.

We might think turning to an individual spiritual practice might be the solution to our desperation and our chaos. However, it’s the same old lie, just a new methodology. We can’t choose spirituality like it’s your favourite brand of chocolate at the end of a hard day.

It’s time for something solid and concrete.

And the early signs have begun. The Bible selling like never before and young people leading the way in exploring Christian faith.

Why Jesus?

Because the world is too small. Anything that settles for something less than His vision for your world and you will be too small. When we accept Jesus as our saviour we become part of the family of God. The rescuing of the world is on the agenda. God wanted to make the world and promises to make it new. But God’s vision also transcends the physical limitations of the world. The new heavens will unite to it. Jesus promises to set you free as you find your hope in Him.

True hope is tangible to the promises that have already been fulfilled. He came once, like the Prophets said. He wrecked havoc in the good way. The earth didn’t spit Him out. His Father raised Him through the power of the Spirit. But the ground as His witness groans for His return. If we look to the east or to the west, we see no one who achieved what He achieved. No-one who loves us and saves us a gift of grace like Jesus, uniting us to the family of God and including us in the vision for heaven and earth.

Being me?

I need to re-learn how I look up and how I look within. Looking up to the one who tells me who I am… made in His image. When I look within…I can connect to His Spirit there. Enough, signed, sealed and delivered. In the God family. Now I am free to forget about me. I can look to God and to others.

The world is not enough, the new heavens and the new earth will be. And in the meantime, we can supernaturally develop peace and joy for this world living in the presence of God one day at a time. 
He still loves it and us.

Breathe.

Sara Stevenson

Sources:

1. Charles Taylor, ‘The Secular Age’
2. Stephen McAlpine, ‘Being the bad guys’.
3. Jean Twenge, ‘Generations’.
4. Jonathan Heidt, ‘The Anxious Generation’.
5. Justin Brierley podcast, ‘The Surprising rebirth in the belief in God’.
6. Owen Davies, ‘The Oxford Illustrated history of witchcraft and magic’.
7. SPCK – ‘The Bible selling like never before’ (https://premierchristian.news).
8. ‘Full-fat faith: the young Christian converts filling our churches’ – The Times (https://www.thetimes.com).
9. Tom Holland – ‘Dominion’.
10. Michael Greene – ‘But don’t all religions lead to God?’
11. David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls, ‘God and Cosmos’
12. C Stephen Evans, ‘God and Moral Obligation’.
13. Soren Kierkegaard, ‘The concept of anxiety.’