Traditionalism as Transgression

Last updated on: July 21, 2019 at 9:15 pm By Gene Veith

Many young adults, artists, and intellectuals feel a need to rebel against the dominant society. This manifests itself in “transgressive” styles–attempts to defy, shock, and outrage the conventional culture. This impulse has given us the “bohemian” lifestyle of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the “sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll” youth culture of the 1960s, the blasphemous art of the late 20th century, and the whole array of punk, goth, queer, and hipster sub-cultures today.

But how are those transgressive anymore? What was scandalous in the 19th century–divorce, pornography, homosexuality–has become commonplace in today’s bourgeois culture. The majority of Americans today see nothing wrong with premarital sex or gay marriage. Marijuana has been legalized, whether for recreation or medicine, in 33 states. Sado-masochism has become a staple of mass marketed romance novels. Once-taboo language has become socially acceptable. Repudiating religion has become a national pastime.

So if you are going to rebel against the dominant society, you’ll need to go in another direction. What is “transgressive” today would be holding to traditional morality and embracing traditional religion. That would be truly counter-cultural.

These thoughts were inspired by an article by Tara Isabella Burton, a Goth-inclined Millennial Anglo-Catholic, who advocates what she calls “Tradpunk” Christianity.

It seems there are online communities that call themselves “Weird Catholics” and “Weird Anglo-Catholics.” Burton tells about going to a party with some of these folks held in a New York cemetery. From Tara Isabella Burton, In Brooklyn, ‘tradpunk’ Christianity meets millennial counterculture, Religious News Service:

But, standing in Green-Wood Cemetery with my friends — vintage, goth, and Weird Catholic Twitter denizens alike — I was struck by the degree to which for me, as for many religious people I know, faith has become not merely a matter of personal metaphysic but a countercultural rejection of elements of a dominant (secular) culture. It’s traditionalism as transgression. You might even call it tradpunk.

To be a Christian, especially an Anglo-Catholic, in a largely secular city is, for me and for so many of my millennial cohort, an act of cultural resistance. We live in a consumerist American culture that, more often than not, tells us that the world is fundamentally meaningless — or, little better, endowed only with the meaning we in our intuitive wisdom choose to imbue it with. Moral values are relative. Truths are no less fixed. . . .

Christianity — particularly traditionalist forms of Christianity like my own Anglo-Catholicism — can often feel like a dynamic rejection of that worldview. At its best, Christianity demands hard moral truths, demands action, demands a faith that is not subjective or intuitional but at times radically at odds with the ethos of “self-actualization.”. . .

But, for me at least, the possibility Christianity offers — from the days of the Roman Empire onward — to creatively critique dominant cultures is a feature, not a bug.

At its core, Christianity is a faith of resistance, of questioning dormant assumptions, of breaking apart easy cycles of power and consumption. It’s been a faith of strangeness: and of strangers in a strange land. For me, at least, the addition of incense, or the old Rite 1 Liturgy, helps to highlight that strangeness. Keeping theology Weird is key to keeping it alive.

This is, perhaps, something one can build on. The modern poet and Christian convert W. H. Auden said of Kierkegaard that the Danish Lutheran existentialist “has the talent, invaluable in a preacher to the Greeks, of making Christianity sound bohemian.” Auden, as an intellectual and a poet and a gay man, was such a “Greek,” and he needed to disassociate Christianity from bourgeois respectability in order to take it seriously, and Kierkegaard helped with that.

Those ministering to teenagers, college students, and millennials would do well to remember this. I think too of Michael Frost’s book Keep Christianity Weird: Embracing the Discipline of Being Different. Also Southern Baptist Russell Moore’s podcast, Why Christians Must Keep Christianity Strange.

As I have said, to reach people today, we mustn’t tone down Christianity to make it seem normal to the contemporary secular mind. Rather, we must emphasize the radical things we believe–what is “weird” or “strange,” if you will–things like God becoming a man, Jesus bearing the evils of the world, the Atonement, the Sacraments–in order to first blow the minds of our secularist friends in the course of evangelizing them.

And yet, thanks to my study of the doctrine of vocation and my move to a small rural community, I’m appreciating more and more the value of the “ordinary.” There are people who care nothing for making fashion statements. They have no interest at all in being cool. They certainly do not hold to the dominant American bourgeois bohemianism, which tends to look down their noses at them, but they are too pre-occupied with their family, their jobs, and their various communities to make an effort to be weird. Their stance may be the most transgressive of them all.

Illustration: Praygothpray by Darrell A. via Flickr, Public Domain

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Ancient Letter Shows the Life of a Christian Family in 230 A.D.

Last updated on: July 19, 2019 at 8:41 am By Gene Veith

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The oldest Christian document from Greco-Roman Egypt, apart from the Bible, is a letter written in 230 A.D. It gives a brief but vivid picture of life in a Christian family in the days of the early church. In some ways, it goes against the conventional picture of Christians in the Roman Empire, suggesting some applications for Christians today. Including the centrality of vocation.

The manuscript, written in Greek, is part of a large collection of ancient manuscripts in Basel, Switzerland. The letter is not a new discovery, but a Swiss scholar, Sabine R. Huebner, has studied it, along with related manuscripts in the collection, drawing conclusions about the social world of Christians in that time and place. Her book, to be released in August from Cambridge University Press, is entitled Papyri and the Social World of the New Testament.

Here is the letter in full:

“Greetings, my lord, my incomparable brother Paulus. I, Arrianus, salute you, praying that all is as well as possible in your life.

[Since] Menibios was going to you, I thought it necessary to salute you as well as our lord father. Now, I remind you about the gymnasiarchy¹, so that we are not troubled here. For Heracleides would be unable to take care of it: he has been named to the city council. Find thus an opportunity that you buy the two [–] arouras².

But send me the fish liver sauce³ too, whichever you think is good. Our lady mother is well and salutes you as well as your wives and sweetest children and our brothers and all our people. Salute our brothers [-]genes and Xydes. All our people salute you.

I pray that you fare well in the Lord.”

So what can we deduce from this piece of historical evidence? The tone is both affectionate and respectful. Arrianus considers his brother Paul–an unusual name for the time, clearly named after the Apostle–“incomparable.” Arrianus uses the respectful “my lord” for his brother, as well as for his father, with a similar respectful tag for “our lady mother.”

Paul is away from home with their father and two brothers, while Arrianus is home with their mother, some other brothers, their wives and “sweetest children,” and other members of their household. (Someone thought the plural “your wives” meant that Paul had more than one, but I’m pretty sure this is a reference to the wives not only of Paul but of Xydes and the brother whose name is obscured by a tear in the manuscript.)

The most noteworthy fact that emerges is that this is apparently a wealthy and prominent family. Arrianus mentions the “gymnasiarchy,” the leader of the “gymnasium,” where athletes were trained. The person who thus supported local athletics used his own money to pay the bills, getting only civic honor and the thanks of the community in return. It was a prestigious position, though the scholar who annotated the letter says that an economic downturn in Egypt around this time often caused wealthy citizens to try to get out of this social obligation.

It isn’t clear where the family of Ariannus and Paul stood with this situation, but that they were candidates for the gymnasiarchy meant that they were of high social standing. Heracleides, whoever he was–another relative?–being chosen for the city council is also evidence of their prominence, even if he is just a friend. An “aroura” was a measure of arable land. It sounds as if since the gymnasiarchy had, fortunately, fallen through, they can use the money to buy more land.

Many of the earliest Christians were slaves, but here is a high-ranking family that holds to the faith. These Christians were not outcasts, and they did not reject the social world that they were a part of. Rather, they held public office, attended to civil affairs, and participated in the life of their communities.

To be sure, things would be different once persecution broke out, as it sporadically throughout the Roman Empire, depending on the Emperor and local officials. The “Benedict Option” of strategic withdrawal from a sinful world came later, after the fall of the Roman Empire. It would appear that Christians felt free to participate in their societies, as long as their societies would permit them to.

That the writer and recipient of this letter were Christians is evident in the references to prayer and, especially to the line “I pray that you fare well in the Lord.” Prof. Huebner says that this reference to “the Lord” is written as a contraction with a line written over it, and derives from manuscripts of the Gospel of John. (Her book has not been released yet, but you can find this discussion in the “Look Inside” feature on the Amazon entry.) She concludes that Arrianus must have read the Gospel of John in manuscript–if he had just heard it read, he would not have known about its quirky way of writing “Lord” that he here imitates.

So what we have here is a devout Christian family of the Early Church involved in sports, politics, and business. In that, they were not much difference from Christian families today.

Does that violate our idealized “saintly” image of the Early Church? It shouldn’t. Arrianus and his family were living out their Christian faith in their everyday vocations.

Illustration: “Christ the Teacher,” Early Christian catacomb painting, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=510313.

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“Christ Is a God of Joy”

Last updated on: July 7, 2019 at 9:10 pm By Gene Veith

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We talked about this Daily Luther Quote in our Bible class last Sunday:

[When someone is worried or sad,] he ought to think about Christ. You should say to him, “Christ lives. You have been baptized. God is not a God of sadness, death, and so forth, but the devil is. Christ is a God of joy, and so the Scriptures often say that we should rejoice, be glad, and so forth. This is Christ. Because you have a gracious God, he won’t take you by the throat.” (AE 54:96) [“Table Talk,” Luther’s Works Vol. 54, p. 96]

I had never heard this one before, but it’s a wonderful and helpful saying with a host of applications, especially when we get mired down in our various miseries.

Luther is NOT saying that we shouldn’t get depressed, that unhappiness is a sign that we aren’t saved, that Christians should always be happy-happy, that negative experiences are not part of the Christian life.

Luther makes that clear throughout his writings. He is the great theologian of the Cross, which refers not only to his theological understanding of Christ’s atonement for our sins in His crucifixion but also to his exploration of the crosses that Christians themselves must bear as they live out their faith in a world of sin and suffering. Luther himself struggled with deep depression, with what the poet calls “titanic glooms.”

The point, though, is that even as we undergo these bleak feelings, we can remember that just as Christ on the Cross had a joy set before Him (Hebrews 12:2), so do we (John 16:16-22). We can have a foretaste of that joy here, even in the midst of our struggles (2 Cor 8:2) and also in the ordinary pleasures of our lives (Eccles 8:15).

So “Christ is a God of joy.”

I was also struck by what Luther says about the devil: “God is not a God of sadness, death, and so forth, but the devil is.” The devil IS a god of sadness and death.

Look at the imagery of the occult, of Satanists, and their fellow-travellers. It’s all horror, monsters, dead bodies, and evocations of pain and despair.

So much of our culture today–music, film, art, literature–and our contemporary experience is preoccupied with darkness. For all of our apparent prosperity, many of us are desperately unhappy and yearn to break out of the darkness. But some people actually revel in that darkness, finding it entertaining and comfortable, to the point of preferring it to joy.

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3: 19-21)

Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)

Illustration: “The Smiling Christ” of the Castel of Saint Francis Xavier, Navarra, Spain. 15th century, Grentidez [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons

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Presenting the Augsburg Confession

Last updated on: June 23, 2019 at 6:52 am By Gene Veith

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Today, June 25, is the 489th anniversary of the presentation of the Augsburg Confession, which sets forth the definitive teachings of Lutheran theology.

This is very much a lay document, having been written not by Luther but by the great classical Renaissance scholar Philipp Melanchthon, a layman. Furthermore, the presenters were regional rulers and the elected representatives of self-governing cities–laymen all–who were confessing their faith to the Holy Roman Emperor, to whom they owed allegiance and who was concerned about the outbreak of the Reformation in his realm.

The Emperor held a diet–a meeting of all of the rulers and city representatives under his jurisdiction–at Augsburg in Germany. On June 25, 1530, thirteen years after the posting of the 95 Theses, those who held to the Reformation were brought before the assembly to give an account of themselves.]

The confessors wanted to correct misunderstandings about the Reformation and to refute false charges that were being said about it. Many of these misunderstandings and false charges–for example, that these are new teachings, that the Reformation is anti-sacramental, that the Reformation rejects the liturgy, that the Reformation opposes good works, that the Reformation undermines social order–are still common today!

The confessors showed that the so-called Lutherans are in continuity with the church catholic, while clearly stating the elements of the church that had departed from that catholicity and so was in need of reform.

After the document was read to the diet, one of the nobles, George of Brandenburg, put his life on the line, saying, “Rather than deny my God and suffer the Word of God to be taken from me, I will kneel down and have my head struck off.” The Emperor quickly assured him that his head was safe.

But the Augsburg Confession became a defining document for the Reformation, with individuals, churches, rulers, municipalities, and nations deciding whether or not to accept it. And many people did give their lives in the course of confessing this faith.

To be sure, later Protestants rejected the Augsburg Confession because they thought it “too catholic”–that is, too sacramental, too conservative, not radical enough–so that it became a point of contention not only with Roman Catholics but with Reformed Protestants as well, thus setting the parameters of a distinctly Lutheran theology.

Read this detailed account of the historical background of the confession and its presentation, as well as this tribute to the confessors.

So in honor of this anniversary, I will present the Augsburg Confession to you. Those of you who are Lutherans would do well to review what your church stands for. Those of you who are not Lutherans, for whatever reason, may also find it interesting.

I will give the first few articles, then a summary of the others, which you can access at the link. From the Online Book of Concord:

Article I: Of God.

1] Our Churches, with common consent, do teach that the decree of the Council of Nicaea concerning the Unity of the Divine Essence and concerning the Three Persons, is true and to be believed without any doubting; 2] that is to say, there is one Divine Essence which is called and which is God: eternal, without body, without parts, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, the Maker and Preserver of all things, visible and invisible; and 3] yet there are three Persons, of the same essence and power, who also are coeternal, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And the term “person” 4] they use as the Fathers have used it, to signify, not a part or quality in another, but that which subsists of itself.

5] They condemn all heresies which have sprung up against this article, as the Manichaeans, who assumed two principles, one Good and the other Evil: also the Valentinians, Arians, Eunomians, Mohammedans, and all such. 6] They condemn also the Samosatenes, old and new, who, contending that there is but one Person, sophistically and impiously argue that the Word and the Holy Ghost are not distinct Persons, but that “Word” signifies a spoken word, and “Spirit” signifies motion created in things.

Article II: Of Original Sin.

1] Also they teach that since the fall of Adam all men begotten in the natural way are born with sin, that is, without the fear of God, without trust in God, and with 2] concupiscence; and that this disease, or vice of origin, is truly sin, even now condemning and bringing eternal death upon those not born again through Baptism and the Holy Ghost.

3] They condemn the Pelagians and others who deny that original depravity is sin, and who, to obscure the glory of Christ’s merit and benefits, argue that man can be justified before God by his own strength and reason.

Article III: Of the Son of God.

1] Also they teach that the Word, that is, the Son of God, did assume the human nature in 2] the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary, so that there are two natures, the divine and the human, inseparably enjoined in one Person, one Christ, true God and true man, who was born of the Virgin Mary, truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and 3] buried, that He might reconcile the Father unto us, and be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for all actual sins of men.

4] He also descended into hell, and truly rose again the third day; afterward He ascended into heaven that He might sit on the right hand of the Father, and forever reign and have dominion over all creatures, and sanctify 5] them that believe in Him, by sending the Holy Ghost into their hearts, to rule, comfort, and quicken them, and to defend them against the devil and the power of sin.

6] The same Christ shall openly come again to judge the quick and the dead, etc., according to the Apostles’ Creed.

Article IV: Of Justification.

1] Also they teach that men cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works, but are freely justified for 2]Christ’s sake, through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor, and that their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, who, by His death, has made satisfaction for our sins. 3] This faith God imputes for righteousness in His sight. Rom. 3 and 4.

Article V: Of the Ministry.

1] That we may obtain this faith, the Ministry of Teaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments was instituted. For through the Word and Sacraments, as through instruments, 2] the Holy Ghost is given, who works faith; where and when it pleases God, in them that hear 3] the Gospel, to wit, that God, not for our own merits, but for Christ’s sake, justifies those who believe that they are received into grace for Christ’s sake.

4] They condemn the Anabaptists and others who think that the Holy Ghost comes to men without the external Word, through their own preparations and works.

Article VI: Of New Obedience.

1] Also they teach that this faith is bound to bring forth good fruits, and that it is necessary to do good works commanded by God, because of God’s will, but that we should not rely on those works to merit justification 2] before God. For remission of sins and justification is apprehended by faith, as also the voice of Christ attests: When ye shall have done all these things, say: We are unprofitable servants. Luke 17:10. The same is also taught by 3] the Fathers. For Ambrose says: It is ordained of God that he who believes in Christ is saved, freely receiving remission of sins, without works, by faith alone.

Article VII: Of the Church.

1] Also they teach that one holy Church is to continue forever. The Church is the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered.

2] And to the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and 3] the administration of the Sacraments. Nor is it necessary that human traditions, that is, rites or ceremonies, instituted by men, should be everywhere alike. 4]As Paul says: One faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, etc. Eph. 4:5-6.

Article VIII: What the Church Is.

1] Although the Church properly is the congregation of saints and true believers, nevertheless, since in this life many hypocrites and evil persons are mingled therewith, it is lawful to use Sacraments administered by evil men, according to the saying of Christ: The Scribes and 2] the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat, etc. Matt. 23:2. Both the Sacraments and Word are effectual by reason of the institution and commandment of Christ, notwithstanding they be administered by evil men.

3] They condemn the Donatists, and such like, who denied it to be lawful to use the ministry of evil men in the Church, and who thought the ministry of evil men to be unprofitable and of none effect.

Article IX: Of Baptism.

1] Of Baptism they teach that it is necessary 2] to salvation, and that through Baptism is offered the grace of God, and that children are to be baptized who, being offered to God through Baptism are received into God’s grace.

3] They condemn the Anabaptists, who reject the baptism of children, and say that children are saved without Baptism.? –

Article X: Of the Lord’s Supper.

1] Of the Supper of the Lord they teach that the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, and are distributed 2] to those who eat the Supper of the Lord; and they reject those that teach otherwise.

[Keep reading. . .]

[A summary of the other articles, from Wikipedia]:

XI	Of Confession	Lutherans believe that private absolution should remain in the church, though a believer does not need to enumerate all of his sins as it is impossible for a man to enumerate all of the sins for which he should be forgiven.
XII	Of Repentance	Repentance comes in two parts: in contrition for sins committed according to the Law and through faith offered through the Gospel. A believer can never be free from sin, nor live outside of the grace of God.
XIII	Of the Use of the Sacraments	The Sacraments (Baptism and the Eucharist) are physical manifestations of God’s Word and His commitment to us. The Sacraments are never just physical elements, but have God’s word and promises bound to them.
XIV	Of Ecclesiastical Order	Lutherans allow only those who are “properly called” to publicly preach or administer the Sacraments.
XV	Of Ecclesiastical Usages	Lutherans believe that church holidays, calendars and festivals are useful for religious observance, but that observance and ritual is not necessary for salvation. Human traditions (such as observances, fasts, distinctions in eating meats) that are taught as a way to “merit” grace work in opposition to the Gospel.
XVI	Of Civil Affairs	Secular governments and vocations are considered to be part of God’s natural orders; Christians are free to serve in government and the military and to engage in the business and vocations of the world. Laws are to be followed unless they are commandments to sin.
XVII	Of Christ’s Return to Judgment	Lutherans believe that Christ will return to raise the dead and judge the world; the godly will be given everlasting joy, and the ungodly will be “tormented without end”. This article rejects notions of a millennial kingdom before the resurrection of the dead.
XVIII	Of Free Will	Lutherans believe that we have free will in the realm of “civil righteousness” (or “things subject to reason”), but that we do not have free will in “spiritual righteousness”. In other words, we are free to choose and act in every regard except for the choice of salvation. Faith is not the work of men, but of the Holy Spirit.
XIX	Of the Cause of Sin	Lutherans believe that sin is caused not by God but by “the will of the wicked”, turning away from God.
XX	Of Good Works	The Lutheran notion of justification by faith does not somehow condemn good works; faith causes them to do good works as a sign of our justification (or salvation), not a requirement for salvation.
XXI	Of the Worship of the Saints	Lutherans keep the saints, not as saviors or intercessors to God, but rather as examples and inspirations to our own faith and life.

Abuses corrected

Article	Title	Description
XXII	Of Both Kinds In The Sacrament (Eucharist)	It is proper to offer communicants the consecrated bread and wine, not just the bread.
XXIII	Of the Marriage of Priests	Lutherans permit their clergy to enter the institution of marriage, for the reasons that the early Church bishops were married, that God blesses marriage as an order of creation, and because marriage and procreation is the natural outlet for human sexual desire.
XXIV	Of the Mass	Lutherans retain the practice of the Mass, but only as a public gathering for the purposes of community worship and the receiving of the Eucharist. Lutherans reject the practice of using the Mass as a “work” for both salvation and worldly (monetary) gain.
XXV	Of Confession	Lutherans uphold the need for confession and absolution, but reject the notion that Confession should induce guilt or anxiety to the Christian. Absolution is offered for all sin, not just sins that can be recounted in a confession, as it is impossible for a man to know all of his transgressions.
XXVI	Of the Distinction of Meats	Human traditions that hold fasting and special observances with dietary restrictions as a means of gaining the favor of God are contrary to the gospel. While fasting and other practices are useful spiritual practices, they do not justify man nor offer salvation.
XXVII	Of Monastic Vows	Man cannot achieve purity in community or isolation from the rest of the world, and perfection cannot be attained by any vow taken or actions of man alone.
XXVIII	Of Ecclesiastical Power	The only power given to priests or bishops is the power offered through Scripture to preach, teach and administer the sacraments. The powers given to the clergy in issues of government or the military are granted and respected only through civil means; they are not civil rulers of governments and the military by divine right.

Illustration: “Presentation of the Augsburg Confession”, St. Johannis Church, Schweinfurt, Germany. MonandowitschDerivative work MagentaGreen [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)] via Wikimedia Commons

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The Dog Fence

Last updated on: June 20, 2019 at 7:44 am By Gene Veith

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We just got back from the Outback. Of the many strange and quirky marvels we saw, the one that haunts me the most is the Dog Fence, also known as the Dingo Fence.

Dingoes are voracious predators that can wreak havoc with sheep. My son-in-law told me that one of his relatives, many generations ago, lost his entire sheep-raising business because of dingo predation. Back in the 1880s, Australians addressed the problem by building a fence clear across Australia.

The fence to keep the dingoes out is 3,488 miles long. By way of comparison, the United States of America, from sea to shining sea, is 2,680 miles long. So the dingo fence, which has quite a few twists and turns, is said to be the longest continuous structure in the world.

Longer than the Great Wall of China? That series of fortifications goes on for 13,171 miles, but that isn’t just walls, including also trenches and natural barriers of rivers and hills. There are a total of 3,889 miles of wall, but these sections are not continuous.

The Dog Fence is in Eastern Australia. In the west, there something similar: the Rabbit-Proof Fence, a mere 2,023 miles long, just under the width of America. In 1859, an English settler released 24 rabbits on his estate for hunting purposes, but within ten years, with few natural enemies (they should have gotten them together with the dingoes) and a rapid birth rate, they became like a plague of locusts, with waves in the millions devouring crops, as well as natural vegetation, which in turn caused huge erosion problems.

The Dog Fence is just a fence, made of chicken wire, folded over a couple of feet on the dingo side to keep them from digging under it. When it crosses a road–there are not that many in the Outback–it has a gate or, where we were, a large cattle-guard arrangement, with two inch bars at six inch intervals, sufficient for a human foot, but not a dingo’s paws. And the guard is as wide as a road, too far for a dingo to jump across.

The different states traversed by the fence hire “dingo fence patrol officers,” each of whom is responsible for maintaining 200 miles of fence. (Read the New York Times article about one of these officers.)

Sir Edmund Burke said that anything that approaches infinity, whether infinitely large or infinitely small, creates a sense of sublimity–awe, majesty, breath-taking wonder–the sensation evoked by the Grand Canyon, the giant red wood trees, outer space. Ruskin said that the reason we find such awe-inspiring sublimities so attractive is that infinity is a quality of God, the source of all that is good and beautiful, so that whatever seems to approach the infinite is an evocation of Him. To be sure, this is just a chicken-wire fence, but to see it go off into the distance, knowing that it extends farther than America, fills me with a sense of the sublime.

It is helped, of course, by its context. The photograph here shows just how desolate this part of Australia is. To be sure, parts of the Outback have elaborate systems of plant and animal life, despite it being among the driest places in the world, but here there are vast expanses of utter emptiness. Not far from where we were, on the dingo side, there is an area called “Moon Country,” so named because it looks like the surface of the moon. Indeed, a number of movies, wanting to create the illusion of being on some other world–such as Red Planet, a B-movie about Mars–have been filmed here. But who needs the illusions, when there are actual “other worlds” here on planet Earth?

Such vast emptiness I also find sublime. But the Dog Fence has other lessons. It is a low-tech solution to a major problem, the product of a sublime ingenuity. It is a defined border between the realm of towns, farms, and modernity and the wild. Few of us modern types could survive long in country like that. There were a total of just two roadhouses where you could buy fuel in over 300 miles, just getting to where the fence was. And this was on the dingo-free side of the fence. Running out of gasoline or having a breakdown could be fatal, as it was for many European explorers trying to cross these plains for the first time. And yet, aboriginal people live on the dingo side of the fence (as well as the other side), and they have learned to survive and thrive there, which is also sublime.

Photo by Jackquelyn Veith

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Lost in a Meaningless Universe

Last updated on: June 19, 2019 at 1:56 am By Gene Veith

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We Christians often speak of non-believers as “lost.” That is no metaphor today. For all of the technology that makes our lives easier and more pleasant, many of us–non-believers but probably some believers as well–feel that their lives and existence itself are meaningless.

I came across a fascinating description and analysis of today’s angst-ridden mindset. It’s at what seems to be a self-help site, with its authors going just by their first names. (I know, I know.) But it’s worth reading in its entirety. People who feel this way are exactly the ones Christians can reach out to with the Gospel and the rest of Christian doctrine. I’ll give you an excerpt and then say some more about what the article says.

From Kevin, Grace, & Thomas, The Origin of Modern Meaninglessness: An existential archaeology dig: where our angst comes from these days, why it’s here and what we can do about it:

Life is good these days, depending on how you define and measure it.

Some say we’re living in the best society that’s ever existed.

We point to smart phones, air-conditioning, hands-free paper-towel dispensers and other conveniences to confirm that we have it really, really good now – or at least better we used to. The presumption is that these kinds of things, in the final analysis, really matter.

Yet different measures speak otherwise. Addictions are up.¹ Suicides are up.² Anxiety is up.³ Depression is up.⁴ Rates of happiness are down.⁵Antianxiety and antidepressant medications are up.⁶ Pills that claim to help you do things like sleep⁷ and have sex⁸ and pay attention⁹ are up. Deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide are now at highest level since record-keeping began.¹⁰ There appears to be an epidemic of loneliness,¹¹ a sexual recession,¹² a breakdown of trust.¹³ We could go on.

But statistics fail to capture something profoundly personal in all this. . . .

There seems to be a general vibe in the air these days.

Call it “angst.” Or “alienation.” A view of life as a hard road that leads nowhere. A view of life as a relentless struggle that ends up as a dirt nap in your best suit or dress. Birth, then blaring hype surrounding a hollow pocket of nothing, then death. A struggle for status-symbols and the appearance of success while knowing it’s phony to the bone and all the way through. A pointless parade of poses engineered to convince others and ourselves that we really do matter, really we do, resulting in a glorification of superficiality. An underlying confusion about what the heck is really going on that metastasizes into hopelessness. A frenzy of activity surrounding a hysterical obsession with inconsequential nonsense. Sleepwalking through life, going through the motions, pretending it’s leading somewhere, hoping maybe there’s some point to it all. And what isthe point? “There isn’t one” is often the answer we hear. There is no point, we don’t know anything, and nothing matters. Now, go enjoy yourself.

Or, in a word: meaninglessness.

Ernest Becker said that the primary job of a society to its members is to convey a sense of meaning. He described the functioning society as a vehicle for heroism that affirms that our lives matter, which helps us persevere through the brutal realities of life and death. And “matter,” not in a “Great job holding that pencil! You’re awesome! Here’s a trophy!” kind of way, but in a “this genuinely makes the painful struggles of life truly worth it” kind of way.

If Becker is right, or anywhere close, then modern society might be failing in its primary responsibility, even while excelling at everything else.

Meaninglessness doesn’t show up as a belief in nothing, but as an obsession with a thousand different things.

It doesn’t show its face openly and announce itself: “Hello! I’m nihilism!” Rather, it’s an absence of something – or, a presence of nothing. Meaninglessness rarely takes the form of folks describing themselves as nihilists. It looks more like pleasant distractions that soon transform into bigger diversions which eventually morph into consuming obsessions. These obsessions are momentary, disconnected, unanchored, and unimportant. What is important is their job, which is to keep us distracted. They congeal into a steady, unceasing undercurrent, ferrying our attention from one immediate pleasure to the next, one distraction to another, with no larger direction or end in sight. All the while, there’s a sense that somewhere, something vital has gone wrong or missing.

[Keep reading. . .]

The authors go on to account for this pervasive meaninglessness with the fading of religion, which gives life meaning. It also shows why science cannot give this meaning. It includes a discussion of existentialism, the philosophy that first raised many of these questions. The article, to its credit, says that the existentialist answer–there is no meaning in the universe, so you must make meaning for yourself–doesn’t really solve anything. It also warns against “reductionism,” reducing the complexities of existence to some simplistic formula. (It’s all about power relationships! It’s all about sexual frustration! It’s all about oppression!)

It concludes without giving a definitive answer, recommending what seem to me to be self-help bromides, which the authors themselves seem to recognize as inadequate.

This is because without an awareness of God, life and existence really ARE meaningless. As the Book of Ecclesiastes says,

“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.” (Ecclesiastes 1:2; NIV)

“Under the sun”–that is, in the earthly realm–wisdom, wealth, pleasure, work, family, power, fame, are just “a chasing after the wind.”

I denied myself nothing my eyes desired;
    I refused my heart no pleasure.
My heart took delight in all my labor,
    and this was the reward for all my toil.
Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done
    and what I had toiled to achieve,
everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind;
    nothing was gained under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:10-11; NIV)

This word of Law from Israel’s wisest and most accomplished king leaves nothing standing. This is a book for today’s lost generations, which should find themselves resonating profoundly with this book of the Bible. Only above the sun is there hope and meaning, as God makes meaningful things that otherwise would be empty. Such as our vocations (a powerful concept that can provide God’s meaning for our work and relationships, for those struggling to find it.)

⁷Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do. ⁸Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. ⁹Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.¹⁰Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom. (Ecclesiastes 9:7-10)

Here is the bottom line for King Solomon:

Now all has been heard;
    here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
    for this is the duty of all mankind.
For God will bring every deed into judgment,
    including every hidden thing,
    whether it is good or evil. (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)

Image by John Hain from Pixabay, Pixabay License.

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