Forty years ago, Francis Schaeffer came out with How Should We Then Live? in which he provided an overview of western culture from the time of ancient Rome, up to his present day. I used his book for my 12th grade Worldview class at the small Christian school I worked at for eight years. Overtime, though, as I did my own reading and research, I felt that Schaeffer’s book was lacking in a number of areas, and so I decided to essentially write my own book. As it turned out, I no longer work at that school, and my rough manuscript just sat on my computer for a year. I finally decided to fix it up a little and put it in these 70 posts for my blog.
Schaeffer’s book, though, was instrumental in my life, in that it got me thinking about the “big picture,” and how current ideas, views, and trends are, in fact, shaped by the ideas, views, and trends of the past. As he said, there is a flow to history, and for the most part the three trends that most shape a culture are philosophical, theological, and the arts. Hopefully, these posts have been able to help clarify the “big picture” of western culture by highlighting and discussing these very trends throughout the past 2500 years.
In any case, there are a few things from Schaeffer’s book I want to mention as I discuss the current challenges facing today’s American society.
The Roman Bridge
Early on in his book, Schaeffer used the analogy of a Roman bridge. Back then, they were built strong enough to withstand people, carts, horses, etc. But if one was to drive a modern truck over those bridges, they would inevitably crumble under the weight. The fact is, their foundations would not be strong enough. So too is it in the case of a society’s worldview, which provides the basis for that society and culture. The test of the strength of any particular worldview can be seen in its ability to deal with the mounting pressures of life.
Given that analogy, if we take a quick look at the mounting pressures and controversial issues of our current society, it is becoming apparent that our society’s foundational worldview seems to crumbling, not being able to address controversial issues like abortion, gay marriage, LGBT rights, healthcare and welfare, racial injustice and mass incarceration, immigration, and the mounting global threats around the world.
The foundation that America was based on seems to be cracking under the pressure—and no, that foundation is not Christianity. Any honest assessment of history will admit that America was, by and large, based on the values of the Enlightenment. Now, the difference between America and France was that whereas the French Revolution sought to actively destroy Christianity, the Founding Fathers in America were not so extreme: they were wise enough to allow for freedom of religion.
Because of that, devout Christians over the past 250 years have been free to not only practice their faith on a personal level, but also challenge the government, speaking Christian truth to political power, and plead the case of the poor, the needy, the marginalized, and the oppressed. We must remember, for example, that it was Christian abolitionists who led the fight against slavery; it was Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister, who fought for civil rights. Try to watch this clip without tearing up at the prophetic power of King’s words.
In short, although America was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment, it has been the free exercise of religion that has made it possible for Christianity to act as the conscience of America. Unfortunately, what we are seeing today is that far too many Christians have allowed the church to be fragmented along political lines, to the point where “conservative” Christians and “progressive” Christians tend to reflect the image of the GOP and Democrat party platforms, more than they bear witness to Christ and the Kingdom of God.
And that, I submit, is one of the major contributing factors in the chaos we are seeing in our society today. When elephants and asses are allowed to run wild, the crap gets everywhere; and far too many Christians, instead of trying to clean up the political messes and tame the wild beasts in our government, have chosen to pick up the feces and throw them at anyone who challenges their political ideology, which they are fed through the endless drivel of social media.
Mass Media and “Fake News”
This leads me to a second point from Schaeffer that he made at the end of his book: the power of the media to manipulate the truth. Remember, Schaeffer wrote about this back in 1976, when there were three channels and PBS. I think his head would explode if he were to see the veritable flood of non-stop sensationalistic “news coverage” coming from 24-hour cable networks, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, and other social media outlets.
What he warned about that could happen, has become a reality in our society today. I will not give specific examples of media bias, because we all can think of a few off the top of our heads. Of course, we need to check ourselves on this: we no doubt can think of a few examples that do this from the “other” side of the political spectrum; we are much too blind of the examples emanating from “our” side. Yet we eat it up, because certain sites and organizations feed our biases, strengthens our presuppositional worldviews, and further insulates us within our respective ideological bubbles.
And when we are bombarding by such propaganda day and night, we essentially become brainwashed: Chris Matthews likens Trump to Hitler because Trump says that he’s going to put America’s interests first when negotiating trade deals—and instantly Trump-Hitler comparisons spring up all across social media. Sean Hannity ran with the non-stop accusations of Obama being a secret Communist—and for eight years, the Far Right was convinced that Obamacare was a secret Communist attempt to set up death camps.
And let’s be clear. For the past year, people and politicians alike have been aghast at Trump’s irresponsible and inflammatory “tweets,” and rightly so. I’ll be honest—I didn’t vote for him precisely because I found him to be so irresponsible with his outrageous rhetoric and baseless accusations of anyone who challenged him. But notice, now that Trump has won, and that tactic has politically worked, virtually every politician, celebrity, and so-called news reporter has started doing the same thing. Just a few weeks ago, Maxinne Watters suggested that the reason why Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz had chosen not to run for re-election was because he was a secret Russian spy.
The reason we have fallen into so much chaos is because we have allowed ourselves to be manipulated, by power-hungry politicians, by sensationalistic and biased media who pump out outrageous speculation in order to get ratings, and by our own “reality TV” mindset. Let’s face it, we have allowed our politics to become an obscene form of entertainment.
Somewhere, Machiavelli and Nietzsche are laughing, and Orwell and Huxley are saying, “I knew this would happen!” Schaeffer saw this coming in the 1970’s, and it has become reality TV.
Social Issues and Political Ideology
In his book, Schaeffer chose to focus on what he felt was the most pressing social issue facing America: the legalization of abortion. In fact, it was Schaeffer’s clarion call that caused the Religious Right to rally around this issue and firmly align itself with the GOP party ever since. And despite 40 years of GOP lip service, proving itself to be either incompetent or unwilling to deal with the issue, Evangelicals still are fervently GOP. And over the past 40 years, the “culture war” over abortion has expanded to countless other social issues as well: abortion, gay marriage, LGBT rights, guns, capitalism vs. socialism, racial injustice, mass incarceration, immigration, and the refugee crisis, to name a few.
Now, I’m not going to sit here and try to give quick, easy answers to these problems. The fact is, there are no easy answers, and the reason why people (both on the Right and Left) think there are easy answers is because they have sold themselves to be slaves of particular ideologies that say, “The other side is evil, we are right, if we could get in power, we’d fix it everything.”
And this, I believe, lies at the root of our current problems: people have made politics and politics systems their religion, and thus treat their particular political candidates as their gods. I remember back in 2008, when John McCain was trailing badly—as soon as he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate, he shot up to be in a statistical dead heat in the polls. Why? Because Sarah Palin was pretty and looked good—nobody knew anything about her, but they were convinced that McCain-Palin was the ticket! And for that matter, let’s face it, Obama was a handsome man—did anyone really know anything about him? Nope—but boy, was he charismatic.
Political ideology is the American religion, and we look for the prettiest, most charismatic candidates to make us feel good and who will feed our presuppositional biases. That is why the pressing political and social problems can’t get fixed: no one is dealing in reality. We are all floating inside our respective ideological virtual reality, fed intravenously, so to speak, through sites like Infowars, Bretibart, Salon, and Vox. And because of that, we have rendered ourselves incapable of tackling these pressing social issues in any meaningful way.
Conclusion
In this post, I haven’t tried to give any answers. I’ve simply tried to illustrate why our current society in America has become so inept and unable to deal with the mounting pressures and challenges of today’s world. Our society, despite its “Christian” veneer, is fundamentally devoted to two political religions, as embodied in the growing ideological rift between the Left and the Right. And it has gotten so heated, that people are forgetting the need to work within the Constitutional framework that the Founding Fathers set up that has, up until recently worked.
A few weeks ago, I saw Tucker Carlson interview Richard Dreyfuss on the importance of understanding civics, and the crisis that most Americans simply don’t understand how the government is supposed to work. Dreyfuss pointed out that Civics has not been required to be taught in the American school system since 1970. Why is this important? Simple: we are living in a society in which the majority of its citizens don’t even understand the Constitution framework of their own country. The result is that we no longer look for politicians to work within that framework (and thus be forced to work and compromise with the other political party) to find solutions to societal problems. Rather, we simply want “our party” to impose its will by any means necessary, checks and balances be damned.
In short, we are a society incapable of addressing the mounting societal challenges because (A) we are ignorant of the very system of government we are under, and (B) Christians have failed to be the conscience of society anymore, and no longer demand that our government leaders act in a Christianly, moral manner. We want our particular political ideology (which has become our religion) imposed on the rest of society. And those two ideologies are clashing over the societal challenges that face us.
Incidentally, if your first reaction to the above video was, “Tucker Carlson? Fox News? Oh that right-wing, sexual-predator, GOP spin-machine! What the hell? Fox is the reason our country is so screwed up! It just panders to white racists southern hicks!” …well, that’s the very problem I’ve discussed in this post: immediate condemnation without actually listening to what is said. Regardless of your political bent, I don’t know how anyone could object to what Dreyfuss said.
Sadly, it seems we are willingly sacrificing our republic for ideological tyranny—we’re okay with it, as long as “our side” wins.
I am convinced that the Constitutional system in America can only work when Christians act as the moral conscience of the nation and demand that its citizens and politicians acts in a moral, and yes, Christ-like manner. I am not talking about “imposing religion” on anyone—I’m talking about speaking Christian truth to power, and demanding morality, dignity, honor, and character in both our leaders and each other.
We cannot impose morality through legal means and systems. Our legal and government institutions should reflect the morality that we have sown in the hearts of our country’s people. And to be blunt: Christianity in America has failed at this in the past 40-50 years. Modern Enlightenment secular legal systems will never solve societies problems through political force and the imposition of particular idolatrous ideologies.
If that’s the case, then, to quote Schaeffer, “How should we then live?”
My concluding thoughts in the final post.
