As a society we have spent on and been absorbed with ourselves and our Western society is in serious decline. Last year (2010) saw 29 million mental health prescriptions in Australia. A large part of the bill will have to be paid by others, particularly children. We are obsessed about environmental concerns, but ignore the havoc being wreaked upon children by family breakdowns and other social pressures. Prof Patrick Parkinson's report, For Kids 'Sake, recently published by Sydney University, details the extraordinary number of children who can no longer live with their biological families. More than 26% of Australian children are suffering from mental health problems. The growing amount of self-harm inflicted, and the growth of inappropriate sexual encounters between children are but the tip of the iceberg. History teaches us that the greatest civilizations eventually fell due to their own internal decay.
The present global crisis has its roots in economics and bankers losing touch with economic reality and morality. Losing touch with the traditional values that built Australia. Consider the story of Long-Term Capital Management founded in 1994. By August 1997 the Fund’s capital was $6.7 billion with debt of $126.4 billion – a ratio of 19:1. Merton and Scholes were awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. Then as a result of a Russian debt default Long-Term Capital “blew up”! The Nobel Prize winners had known plenty of mathematics, but not enough history. The current Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, has said: “We are in the most serious financial crisis since the 1930s, if not ever.” Yet when you analyse what is happening in financial markets you realise that the smartest men in the room are not so smart after all!
I want to suggest to you these issues are at root not actually economic or social problems but rather spiritual problems. There is a malaise about spiritual things, and in particular the Christian faith, which is deeply alarming. Most people who call themselves Christians are ignorant of Christ’s teachings. I want to give you some suggestions on why and how this has occurred.
If you listen to modern music it is deeply ambivalent about religion. Consider John Lennon's song, Imagine, written just before he died, where he expresses the view that the world would be better off without religion. John Lennon tells us that it is religion that divides us and if we got rid of that we would all be happy.
But all religion is not the same. Consider Mohammad (born 570 a.d.) and Christ. Mohammed married the last of his many wives and concubines at age 53. A’isha was a 9-year-old girl who had been betrothed to him at age 6. Mohammed also killed 600-700 Jewish men at Medina by beheading them in a trench they had dug. It has been correctly said: The life of Christ is radically different from Mohammed. St Paul came to Europe with a book; Mohammed with a scimitar!
If you wanted to divide the 20th Century in the West into different eras it would broadly fall into three distinct periods. As we commence the 20th century in, say, the period before the First World War, religion was still very privileged. If you were not to believe you certainly would be considered a crank. Religion was considered something that decent people believed in!
By the time you got into the middle of the 20th Century there was a huge change. After the Second World War intellectual leaders and cultural trendsetters all said the same thing: they predicted a future without religion. They taught: we are going to outgrow religion. Religion was for the time when we didn't understand the world and now we do. Religion was bad for your intellectual development, bad for social development, and bad for your personal development. If you recall the first Star Trek series, Capt. Kirk and the crew never talked about religion as they were living in the future and it was completely irrelevant and obsolete. We have gotten over religion just like kids have gotten over Santa Claus.
However, at the end of the 20th Century there emerged a deep ambivalence towards religion. People became spiritual agnostics who regarded religion as belief in unbelievable things, but these people claimed to experience inexplicable metaphysical feelings. They could no longer discount the possibility that there was something beyond the material world. No longer was religion seen as merely wish fulfilment. You would hear comments like: we hate religion but know there is something there. My relative – Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, Stephen Jay Gould – wrote an essay. He said just before he died: “50% of my peers are Christians!” He said: “The big question is, who is the fool?” Today there is a loss of faith even in non-faith!
Many educated Australians claim to be very upset with God, but equally want God and spirituality. And we Christians need to listen to their critiques of religion. The reason we should listen to the critique is that Jesus Christ himself deconstructed religion, savagely, repeatedly and relentlessly. Jesus, however, had a different motivation. Jesus was trying to clear the ground for His message. Jesus called most religious people “whitewashed tombs”. [Mt 23:27]
If you are not a Christian you need to hear the critique of religion so that you can understand the distinction between being religious and being a Christian. Where is the line? Where can I be really mad at the church but not at God?
Let's now look at the modern critique of religion. I want to mention three men whose views have dominated the discussion of religion even though most people do not recognise where their ideas have come from. Where did modern people get their unhappiness with religion from? I want to suggest that there are three men in particular who we need to know something about. These men are: Karl Marx (1818-1888), Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).
Freud looked at religious people and saw them as people who don't want to change their lives, but rather they want to justify their lives. Remember the scenes in the last Godfather movie? Parts of the family are in church, baptising a baby, whilst their henchmen are out killing all their competitors. I go to church, that's my religion. What's my religion for? I pay! I put a new wing on the church, I do penance. Thus Freud says, "Religion is basically psychological self-justification." “Self-righteousness.” In short, man created God!
Marx comes along and looks at religion and sees people using religion not to psychologically justify themselves, but rather to sociologically justify themselves to exclude others. In effect Marx said, "You have hurting people and you use religion to mask their symptoms." You give them promises of a better life in the world to come so that they do not focus upon their present plight. Just live a good life on earth and in heaven you will have a wonderful time!” “Pie in the sky” is a critique of religion which we often hear in Australia which interestingly has Marxist roots!
Then along comes Nietzsche who is even more influential. He claims that anyone who is involved in religion is just on a power trip. In fact, Nietzsche would claim that anyone who has any answers to any questions is just on a power trip! Freud says religion is a way to justify yourself and thus is concerned with self-righteousness. Marx says your religion is just a way of avoiding unfairness in life. Then Nietzsche comes along and says that religion is just a way to accrue power. The result is abuse.
The truth is that many people have used religion exactly as suggested by Freud, Marx and Nietzsche. “Self-righteousness”, exclusion, power trips, anxiety are in all our hearts.
Flannery O’Connor, an American Catholic author, has written a marvellous short story - Revelation - which illustrates the points made by Freud, Marx and Nietzsche. This is a story of a religious person - Mrs Turpin - and will help you understand the big point I'm trying to make.
The doctor's waiting room, which was very small, was almost full when the Turpins entered and Mrs Turpin, who was very large, made it look even smaller by her presence. Her little bright black eyes took in all the patients as she sized up the seating situation and their social positions.
There was one vacant chair and a place on the sofa occupied by a blonde child in a dirty blue romper suit who should have been told to move over and make room for a lady. He was five or six and his mother, nothing more than white trash, Mrs Turpin thought, was not going to make him move.
"Sit down," Mrs Turpin said to Claud, "you know you're not supposed to stand on that leg. He has an ulcer on his leg,” she explained. Mr Turpin rolled up his trouser leg and revealed a purple swelling on a plump marble white calf. "My!" a pleasant ‘Christian’ lady, who had acknowledged with her eyes the problem with the ‘white trash’ woman, said, ”How did you do that?"
"A cow kicked him," Mrs Turpin said.
Next to Mrs Turpin was a fat girl of 18 or 19 called Mary Grace scowling into a thick blue book which Mrs Turpin saw was entitled "Human Development". Mary Grace could not stand the prudishness and judgmentalism of Mrs Turpin. The poor girl's face was blue with acne and Mrs Turpin thought how pitiful it was to have a face like that at that age. Mrs Turpin thought that even though she was fat she always had good skin, and although she was 47 years of age there was not a wrinkle in her face, except around her eyes from laughing too much.
Sometimes at night when she couldn't go to sleep, Mrs Turpin would occupy herself with the question of who she would have chosen to be if she couldn't be herself. If Jesus had said to her before he made her, "There are only two places available for you. You can either be a nigger or white trash,” what would she have said? She guessed she would have said, "Make me a nigger, but not a trashy one!"
The stylish ‘Christian’ woman said to Mrs Turpin, “What sort of farm do you have?” “We’ve got a couple of acres of cotton and pigs and chickens,” said Mrs Turpin. The white trash woman said, "Pigs! Nasty stinking things, a-gruntin’ and a-rootin’ all over the place.” Mrs Turpin gave her the merest edge of her attention. "Our pigs are not dirty and they don't stink", she said. "They are cleaner than some children I've seen. We have a pig parlour with a concrete floor and Claud hoses it down every afternoon and washes off the floor.” Mrs Turpin thought, that child can do with a wash.
Mrs Turpin counted her blessings that she was not like the white trash woman. In fact, she thought, “I am three levels above white trash.”
Mrs Turpin turned to the ugly girl and said, "You must be in university?" I see you reading a book there." But the girl continued to stare at her and did not answer. The girl's mother blushed at this rudeness. "The lady asked you a question Mary Grace," she said under her breath. "I have ears," Mary Grace said.
Mrs Turpin said, "I thank the Lord that he has blessed me with a good disposition". The day has never dawned that I couldn't find something to laugh at." "Not since she married me anyways," Claud said with a comical straight face. Then Mrs Turpin said, “I think the worst thing in the world is to be an ungrateful person. I just feel like shouting, thank you Jesus for making everything the way it is! I thank you Jesus. Jesus thank you!” she cried aloud.
The book struck her directly over her left eye.
There was one vacant chair and a place on the sofa occupied by a blonde child in a dirty blue romper suit who should have been told to move over and make room for a lady. He was five or six and his mother, nothing more than white trash, Mrs Turpin thought, was not going to make him move.
"Sit down," Mrs Turpin said to Claud, "you know you're not supposed to stand on that leg. He has an ulcer on his leg,” she explained. Mr Turpin rolled up his trouser leg and revealed a purple swelling on a plump marble white calf. "My!" a pleasant ‘Christian’ lady, who had acknowledged with her eyes the problem with the ‘white trash’ woman, said, ”How did you do that?"
"A cow kicked him," Mrs Turpin said.
Next to Mrs Turpin was a fat girl of 18 or 19 called Mary Grace scowling into a thick blue book which Mrs Turpin saw was entitled "Human Development". Mary Grace could not stand the prudishness and judgmentalism of Mrs Turpin. The poor girl's face was blue with acne and Mrs Turpin thought how pitiful it was to have a face like that at that age. Mrs Turpin thought that even though she was fat she always had good skin, and although she was 47 years of age there was not a wrinkle in her face, except around her eyes from laughing too much.
Sometimes at night when she couldn't go to sleep, Mrs Turpin would occupy herself with the question of who she would have chosen to be if she couldn't be herself. If Jesus had said to her before he made her, "There are only two places available for you. You can either be a nigger or white trash,” what would she have said? She guessed she would have said, "Make me a nigger, but not a trashy one!"
The stylish ‘Christian’ woman said to Mrs Turpin, “What sort of farm do you have?” “We’ve got a couple of acres of cotton and pigs and chickens,” said Mrs Turpin. The white trash woman said, "Pigs! Nasty stinking things, a-gruntin’ and a-rootin’ all over the place.” Mrs Turpin gave her the merest edge of her attention. "Our pigs are not dirty and they don't stink", she said. "They are cleaner than some children I've seen. We have a pig parlour with a concrete floor and Claud hoses it down every afternoon and washes off the floor.” Mrs Turpin thought, that child can do with a wash.
Mrs Turpin counted her blessings that she was not like the white trash woman. In fact, she thought, “I am three levels above white trash.”
Mrs Turpin turned to the ugly girl and said, "You must be in university?" I see you reading a book there." But the girl continued to stare at her and did not answer. The girl's mother blushed at this rudeness. "The lady asked you a question Mary Grace," she said under her breath. "I have ears," Mary Grace said.
Mrs Turpin said, "I thank the Lord that he has blessed me with a good disposition". The day has never dawned that I couldn't find something to laugh at." "Not since she married me anyways," Claud said with a comical straight face. Then Mrs Turpin said, “I think the worst thing in the world is to be an ungrateful person. I just feel like shouting, thank you Jesus for making everything the way it is! I thank you Jesus. Jesus thank you!” she cried aloud.
The book struck her directly over her left eye.
Ms Gallagher is a well-known anthropologist. She claimed that she had got rid of truth claims of the type built upon Freudian and Marxian principles. She was now completely committed to Nietzsche principles of suspicion. We have to get rid of all truth claims. She said that any truth claim, even Marxian, was essentially a religion. This was because she saw that Marxists exclude people. “We represent the proletariat and we have the right to kill you,” which has caused misery in the history of communism. She wanted to get rid of all truth claims.
When Ms Gallagher was studying in Africa she saw women in sexual slavery. She saw women oppressed. She says, “All of my life I've been committed to the idea that all truth claims are power plays. One culture never has the right to say to another culture what they should do as this is just a power trip. But what I'm seeing in Africa is evil.” But when she went to the governments in Africa asking them to do something about what was going on, they said to her, "You were just imposing your Western ideas. You call it sexual slavery but we don't see it that way. It’s just a power trip!” She went on to say that their claim that it was just a power trip by her was the biggest power trip of all. Then she realised that the claim that everything is relative is a religion. It is a dogma. It is a power trip and a way of excluding people.
Nietzsche says that there is no God and thus there can be no right and wrong. Thus what was happening in Africa was not right or wrong. But if your premise leads to a result that you know is not true, then you should change the premise. Consequently Winifred Gallagher was able to say that secularism cannot be true. But there must be a truth. She became a spiritual agnostic: I hate religion. I can't buy into their answers, but I know secularism is not true. Yet I know there is a truth. Is this all there is? And yet I know that it is not. There is now a loss of faith in non-faith.
People have come to see that the argument that if they weren't dogmatic then everything would be all right is nonsense. In fact, we are being just as exclusive and self-righteous as religious people.
Now here is what I want you to see. Jesus Christ is the most anti-religious person imaginable. Much of Marx’ critique is actually in the Bible. Look at Amos and Isaiah. {In Amos, God cannot stand the music offered in His praise [Amos 5:23]. Our righteous deeds are like polluted garments [Is 64:6]} They say that if you use God to oppress the poor it is not the God of the Bible. Jesus condemns the Pharisees (the religious people) for how they pray and devour widow’s houses.
Then Freud comes along and says religion is all about self-justification. It is about trying to buy God off. But Jesus tells us that God can buy you but you can never buy him. See, you can't placate God with your own good works, which unfortunately religious people do, by giving money and doing good deeds and so often repenting. Yet when Jesus comes up against someone like that he always cuts them down. He slams the lawyer who asked what he needed to do to be saved. Jesus said, “You need to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, strength and soul” and “love your neighbour as yourself.” [Luke 10:27] The lawyer tried to justify himself. Then Jesus told him the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Jesus Christ is the most un-religious teacher of religion the world has ever seen. In fact, the word religion rarely shows up in the Bible and typically it is used negatively. In fact, there is only one possible place where religion is used positively and then perhaps ironically - James chapter 1.
Have you not heard of people saying. I cannot believe in a God who people use to abuse others? But Christianity is the only religion which teaches that God came to earth to be abused by others. Our God was trampled upon by the powerful. Christianity says that at the heart of our faith, God becomes weak so that we could be saved.
Back to Flannery O’Connor:
Mary Grace raised her head from the floor. She reached to choke Mrs Turpin. Her gaze locked with Mrs Turpin's. "Go back to hell where you came from, you warthog," she whispered before she passed out.
How can I be saved and still be from hell? Mrs Turpin recognised something from Mary Grace that took the form of a message from God.
Later that day Mrs Turpin moaned, "I am not," she said tearfully, "a warthog. From hell!" But she knew she had been given a message, a message to a respectable, hard-working, churchgoing woman. Her eyes began to burn with anger.
"Why God did you send me a message like that?” she said in a low fierce voice. “How am I a warthog?” Why me? There's no trash around here, black or white, that I haven't given to. And break my back to the bone everyday working. And do for the church." She yelled out, “Why do you call me a warthog? Who do you think you are?"
As she looked up into the sky a visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw a vast horde of souls were tumbling towards heaven. There were whole companies of white trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognised at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and God-given wit to use it right. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces even their virtues were being burned away. Even their virtues were being burned away.
The vision then faded and she listened to the invisible cricket choruses, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upwards into the starry field shouting, “Hallelujah!”
How can I be saved and still be from hell? Mrs Turpin recognised something from Mary Grace that took the form of a message from God.
Later that day Mrs Turpin moaned, "I am not," she said tearfully, "a warthog. From hell!" But she knew she had been given a message, a message to a respectable, hard-working, churchgoing woman. Her eyes began to burn with anger.
"Why God did you send me a message like that?” she said in a low fierce voice. “How am I a warthog?” Why me? There's no trash around here, black or white, that I haven't given to. And break my back to the bone everyday working. And do for the church." She yelled out, “Why do you call me a warthog? Who do you think you are?"
As she looked up into the sky a visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw a vast horde of souls were tumbling towards heaven. There were whole companies of white trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognised at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and God-given wit to use it right. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces even their virtues were being burned away. Even their virtues were being burned away.
The vision then faded and she listened to the invisible cricket choruses, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upwards into the starry field shouting, “Hallelujah!”
Mrs Turpin needed to see that she needed to repent not only of her sins but also her virtues. Because the virtues can be little more than ways we deceive ourselves into believing we are controlling God and feeling superior to other people. In short, I've been trying to earn my salvation through my virtues, the result being that I am not a Christian but a religious person!
Mrs Turpin at last began to understand the Gospel.
Aldous Huxley, who wrote Brave New World, tells of his rebellion at University; his need for sex meant he abandoned religion. Typically the great thinkers of our time have feet of clay when you analyse them. As Aldous Huxley said, if he accepted the God of the Bible he would have to give up premarital sex!”
But the good news is that if we become less religious and more Christian we can be part of a society that avoids decline and fall. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks said: “That is to do what England and America did in the 1820s.” These two societies, deeply secularist after the rationalist 18th Century, scarred and fractured by the problems of industrialisation, calmly set about re-moralising themselves, thereby renewing themselves.
Lord Sacks went on to say: “The three decades – 1820-1850 – saw an unprecedented proliferation of groups dedicated to social, political and educational reform – building schools, YMCAs, orphanages, charities, friendly societies, the abolition of inhuman working conditions. That collective effort of re-moralisation eventually made Britain the greatest world power in the 19th Century and America in the 20th Century.”
Niall Ferguson’s book, Civilization, quotes the Chinese Academy of Science as discerning the key reason for the rapid economic growth of Great Britain as not being technology but the Christian faith. Conversely, the decline of Great Britain correlates with the decline of the Christian faith in Britain.
The challenge for you and me is not to be deceived by our virtues and to truly do unto others as you would have them do unto you. We have 26% of Australian youth suffering mental health problems. Governments cannot solve this problem. We all need to be involved as individuals. Look at scouting. Troops close because they cannot find adults to act as leaders. We then create social capital! It is this creation of social capital that will make our society a better place and avoid the continual decline.
To say there is no God can be a way of justifying behaviour. How do you justify your behaviour?
Nietzsche said: “If there is no God we get beyond ‘Good and Evil’. But as we have seen, that is not reality!
Henri Nouwen said: “Being the beloved [of God] is the core truth of our existence.” “And all our hearts are restless until they find their peace in God.” [Augustine]
Jesus said: They hated me without reason. [Jn 15:25] Do you hate Him without reason?
Jesus said: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” [Jn 14:6]
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Notes:
(1) Dr Timothy Keller of the Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York has been the source of many of the ideas in this talk.
(2) Merold Westphal’s book Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism contains the detailed analysis of the views of Marx, Freud and Nietzsche.
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