Bad Therapy by Abigail Shrier

I was at Chandler's house when I saw this book on her shelf. I love Abigail Shrier and so I asked if I could borrow it. Turns out I bought it for her in the first place! I cannot say enough for Bad Therapy by Abigail Shrier. Anyone who knows a child, has a child, or was a child needs to read this book. Although I really liked her conclusions, the sheer scope and scale of the problem depresses me. It's a behemoth. 

She starts with therapy itself. Shrier quite persuasively makes the case that therapy, the way it is done today, is actually iatrogenic, that is it harms more than helps. In this section she outlines exactly what "Bad Therapy" is:

"What does bad therapy look like, I wondered. If a sadist wanted to induce anxiety, depression, a feeling of incapacity, or family estrangement, what sort of methods would she employ? How would a malevolent mastermind induct a generation into a tyranny of feelings? Like this.

1. Teach Kids to Pay Close Attention to their Feelings...

2. Induce Rumination...

3. Make 'Happiness a Goal but Reward Emotional Suffering...'

4. Affirm and Accommodate Kids' Worries...

5. Monitor, Monitor, Monitor...

6. Dispense Diagnoses Liberally...

7. Drug 'Em...

8. Encourage Kids to Share Their 'Trauma'...

9. Encourage Young Adults to Break Contact with 'Toxic' Family...

10. Create Treatment Dependency..." (p. 42-63). 

We have created hypochondriacs who experience the same pain as everyone else, except they fixate on every sign or symptom. They make themselves sicker by worrying about getting sick.

In the next section, "Therapy Goes Airborne," she discusses the ways in which Bad Therapy has migrated into the schools. This is the most depressing part because there are literally millions of teachers, almost none of whom are trained therapists. If they were, they would have to follow the ethical guidelines and best practices of therapy. Even though therapy has a lot of problems, they can fix them as a licensed group and hold their members accountable. But they hold no sway over teachers. And teachers are an ornery bunch, much like herding cats. Many simply are not that smart and whatever sounds good is taken as gospel truth. Even the smart ones are not reading the latest studies and diving deep into the latest conversations on the best way to help children struggling with mental health. It's like giving teachers access to the latest in chemotherapy treatments and so, "just in case," they administer a small dose to each student every day. Here's where the iatrogenesis leaps into the general population. 

In the classroom, it starts with "Social-Emotional Learning." This is the latest fad and every teacher from kindergarten on up is asked to evaluate their students social and emotional "temperature." This can be emotional check-ins where students are asked daily how they are doing. Often, one student's sadness can infect the entire class and an emotive, therapeutic trauma session ensues. Much crying and flagellation are signs of a good check-in despite the complete lack of academic purpose or even therapeutic progress. These amateur group therapy sessions teach students that they are emotionally fragile and probably broken. Students are then coddled and those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds lose out the most. Rather than being held to high standards and given the tools needed to better their situation, the students are excused, accommodated, and unmotivated to succeed. Schools are on the hunt for trauma and it's surprisingly easy to find. Figuring different traumas stack up and believing "the body keeps the score" (a debunked, but highly popular theory), the children are poked and prodded until the slightest trauma can be unearthed and "dealt with" whether or not parents agree to any of this. In fact, since most of the trauma is apparently a result of parental action, it's best to keep parents out altogether. Therefore the students are endlessly surveyed and inculcated with the idea that something is wrong with them. Their teacher and school counselor just need to figure out what. 

Not only is all this poking and prodding hurting the students and introducing trauma where none existed, it has led to a type of toxic empathy. Anyone, anywhere can claim to feel "unsafe" and she is automatically the victim. Regardless of the motives or even the actions of the "perpetrator," all empathy channels toward the aggrieved. This has led, apparently with no recognition of the irony, to the most bullying of environments. Shrier calls this "The Tattletale Generation." Victims are virtuous and the perpetrators beyond the pale and without redemption. This simultaneously reinforces the victim narrative and introduces new "trauma" to the "perpetrator."

In exasperation, Shrier asks, "Who raised these children?" She answers her own question with "Gentle Parents." This is the other side of the coin where the teachers playing therapist are one side and the parents playing therapist are the other. Rather than a simple (and time-tested) "Knock it off," children are indulged and analyzed and their feelings held up for endless examination. This has produced a generation of tiny tyrants who scare their parents. In our desire to avoid becoming authoritarian parents, we have neglected to be authoritative parents. But something has to keep these tiny tyrants under control. So we turn to drugs. Shrier has a lot to say on the drugging of our children that has replaced old-fashioned discipline. TL;DR: She's against it.

Finally, in the last section, Shrier proclaims, "Maybe There's Nothing Wrong with Our Kids." She advocates that parents disregard the "experts" and allow their children to be children. When they mess up, discipline them. Provide them with love and independence. Don't coddle them but encourage resilience. Invite extended family to speak into their lives. Don't treat your child as the center of the universe, to the detriment of all others. 

She ends with, "Remove the [harmful interventions]: the technology, the hovering, the monitoring, the constant doubt. The diagnosing of ordinary behaviors as pathological. The psychiatric medications you aren't convinced your child needs. The expert evaluations. Banish from their lives everyone with the tendency to treat our children as disordered. You don't need them." (p. 250)

I think she's right.

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Somehow the book Being Mortal by Atul Gawande was recommended. After getting it from the library, I got jammed up with other, more pressing books. I considered skipping it. I do judge books by their covers and this one seemed boring. 

This is one a handful of books that I believe will stick with me... probably forever. 

I'm glad that I read it, and also exhausted!

Here is the money quote at the end:

Being mortal is about the struggle to cope with the constraints of our biology, with the limits set by genes and cells and flesh and bone. Medical science has given us remarkable power to push against these limits, and the potential value of this power was a central reason I became a doctor. But again and again, I have seen the damage we in medicine do when we fail to acknowledge that such power is finite and always will be.

We've been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive. Those reasons matter not just at the end of life, or when debility comes, but all along the way. Whenever serious sickness or injury strikes and your body or mind breaks down, the vital questions are the same: 

• What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes?
• What are your fears and what are your hopes? 
• What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? 
• And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding?

Beauty for Truth's Sake by Stratford Caldecott

A fellow teacher recommended Beauty for Truth's Sake by Stratford Caldecott, stating that it had a great impact upon her. Since I greatly respect her, I figured her recommendation was as good a reason as any to buy it and read it. 

I had to read it twice. 

It's very dense. Even the title, Beauty for Truth's Sake, is enigmatic. What does that even mean? Even after reading the book twice, I'm still not sure that I can explain it. 

Caldecott is making the case for re-enchanting education. He believes we went wrong when we separated Faith and Reason. 

He begins with a discussion of the trivium, grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the quadrivium, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy, which together compose the seven liberal arts. As understood by the ancients, it was the study of these things that would lead a student to the ultimate good, which was the study of God. In this world, faith and reason worked together to free the student up for that most good, true, and beautiful. "The assumption of this system of education was that by learning to understand the harmonies of the cosmos, our minds would be raised toward God, in whom we could find the unity from which all these harmonies derive: Dante's 'love that moves the sun and the other stars.'" (53) But western civilization long ago lost the connection between faith and reason and so God and the study of theology became worthless pursuits. 

By losing sight of the purpose of education according to Plato, we have lost sight of our very humanity. Plato describes the power of learning on the soul: "the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming to that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good." (22) Knowledge, then, is its own end. It is be valued because it leads us to beauty. And truth resides in beauty. John Newman states, "I have said that all branches of knowledge are connected together, because the subject matter of knowledge is intimately united in itself as being the acts and work of the Creator." (29) True beauty is the harmony found in the universe. To miss or denigrate beauty is to lose both truth and goodness as well. And all beauty is found in acknowledging the Creator.

Caldecott then discusses the poetic imagination and our need to awaken it. This means understanding how the medievals saw at the world. Theirs was a cosmos infused with divine symbolism. "Everything that exists, in whatever mode, having its principle in the Divine Intellect, translates or represents that principle in its own manner according to its own order of existence; and thus, from one order to another, all things are linked and correspond with each other so that they join together in a universal and total harmony which is like a reflection of the Divine Unity itself." (48) It was this elimination of the symbolic and poetic understanding that caused the great divorce between science and religion and art from science.

The author then goes onto discuss how the ancients imbued that first of the quadrivium, arithmetic and numbers, with symbolism. He starts with mathematics and shows how numbers pointed the mind of man to God. It begins with 1 - the ultimate symbol of unity that exists in God, himself. Then 2, which clearly delineates the symbiosis of the Father and the Son. But it is 3 that completes the picture of the Trinity and the love that flows between Father and Son. Caldecott spends quite a bit of time on more number symbolism, including the "golden ratio," and the ways the medieval world used number theory to point the people to the truth of God. 

From arithmetic, he moves to the next topic of the quadrivium, geometry. Specifically he shows how circles and other geometric shapes point to the unity of the Trinity. Not only do circles and triangles capture the beauty of the godhead, but proportion as well. Caldecott states, "A single relationship unites the Father to Christ, Christ to his disciples. Christ is the proportional mean between God and the saints." (81) He even relates pi, and its unending string of numbers, to the infinite love of God for his creation. If the Holy Spirit is the circle connecting the two points of Father and Son, then his measure is πd, an infinite number times the distance between Father and Son. We reside in the middle of that circle!

Next in the quadrivium is music and to this Caldecott turns. According to the ancients, the universe is singing! And "to understand the universe is to appreciate its music, the harmonies between its parts, the rhythm of if movement, and the proportion of its elements." (94) This music becomes physically manifest in architecture as well. Unfortunately, we have lost sight of the verticality seen in medieval architecture, with its intentional pointing to God. We have focused on the horizontal, that is man to man and to his environment. Even the tallest skyscrapers are simply horizontal buildings stacked upon each other. He calls for an architecture based on verticality, permanence, and iconography. Not only buildings, but the natural world is singing. "The animals, plants, and minerals, the stars and elements, were universally thought to 'praise' their maker, either simply by their very existence, or when called upon to do so by man (who gives them a voice they do not possess in themselves)." (107)

This universal singing leads naturally to astronomy, the fourth branch of the quadrivium. C.S. Lewis brilliantly reminds us that "The music which is too familiar to be heard enfolds us day and night in all ages." (110) We live in an enchanted creation and we miss it because it is all too familiar. Unfortunately early astronomers missed the mark in their insistence on an earth-centered system, and so lost some credibility. The problem was that the astronomers so believed in the mythical symbolism of creation that they worked backward from that presupposition. Rather than let the actual data guide them and then discover the beauty, they tried to impose their own vision of the beautiful, distorting what God had actually designed. In attempting to "save appearance" they created increasingly complicated descriptions of what was actually a beautiful system: the sun at the center (light) and the elliptical orbits of planets which contain two centers, just as we orbit our lives around the visible and the invisible God. Much beauty exists in the truth of the created order. The ancient astronomers lacked the faith to wait for that beauty to be revealed. 

The final subject of astronomy should lead most naturally to the study of God, but in our secular and disenchanted world, we have become buffered selves, disengaged from the world. "Without those ties, without that embeddedness, nature was drained of grace, and our connection to the transcendent God became less a matter of imagination or intellect or feeling than of sheer willpower." (124) To re-enchant the universe, we must return to revelation and worship. If we define "liturgy" as "a formal ritual enacted by those who understand themselves to be participating in an action with the divine..." (Wikipedia), then liturgy may be our salvation.

Can we see liturgy itself, then, as the "lost key" to humane education that we have been searching for in this book; that is, to the reintegration of all things, all subjects, in a vision of sacred order? Would a renewed appreciation of liturgy help to anchor theories about number and symbolism and quality more profoundly in real life, enabling us to introduce some much needed harmony into our own souls too? (126)

Caldecott reminds us that all societies are religious societies and all contain a creation story, a doctrine of the end times, and a liturgy or set of rituals to organize time and space. Ours has moved away from true religion to a secular and God-denying counterfeit religion. We must therefore start with remembering. We were created by God and that knowledge should evoke in us gratitude. That gratitude should turn into worship. This, then, should engender an appreciation of the seven liberal arts as a way to give ontological depth to our universe and point to a harmony that harmonizes our souls with the soul of the Creator. Modernity rejects this vertical dimension and so leads to a fragmented and dissipated self. It is the very definition of hell. The man whose soul seeks to harmonize itself with its creator flies on wings of both reason and faith, all bound up in love. Reason will lead to faith as beauty is revealed and faith will naturally engage in reason to reveal more beauty. It is, as Dante tells us, love that moves it all. 

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

It was my time to choose a book for Book Club and I picked a book that had long been on my list: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Dennis Prager says it's his favorite book and it changed his life.

So my expectations were high.

Plus I've read A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Gulag Archipelago, and Darkness at Noon. All in the same genre. 

I think because of my prior exposure to those books, this one did not seem as impactful. If anything, I'd say The Gulag Archipelago was the one that most made an impression on me.

Frankl writes as do the others, disjointed and out of chronological order. It's more thematic. It makes me wonder if having that kind of state-sponsored trauma impacts one's ability to tell the story. Or perhaps for them, it's not about the day-to-day events, but the larger meaning behind it all. 

Certainly Frankl wants to get at why he and his fellow prisoners suffered the way they did at the hands of the Nazis. Even before being detained, Frankl was spreading interested in the question of meaning and purpose in life. He was convinced that if a man did not have a sense of meaning or purpose he would die either mentally or even physically. So he looked on his fellow prisoners as a kind of science experiment. He clearly saw that those who gave up hope always died. It was those, like himself, who felt that their unjust suffering had a purpose of some sort that survived. 

I suppose the most remarkable thing about the book (and the others of the same genre) is how disconnected they were from their own tortures. They can discuss it dispassionately and disconnect from the personal experience of it. I suppose that necessary for survival. In Solzhenitsyn's case, he writes in a sarcastic manner, further removing himself from the horror. 

Frankl is also remarkable for the fact that he could forgive and move on once released from the prison. He recognized the humanity of each person, whether guard or prisoner. All had the ability to be cruel or kind. He famously states, "The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts."

The second half of his book discusses his theory of "Logotherapy." In a nutshell, after the war, he started his psychiatric practice helping people discover meaning in their lives. He was convinced that lack of meaning and purpose was the root of all mental suffering. He worked to reframe and redirect his patients towards discovering meaning in their circumstances, whatever they be.

One disappointment is that he never directs the reader to faith. I think he had faith in God as a result of his Judaism, but he never recommends that faith as a source of meaning and purpose. I suppose that's because he wants everyone, believer or not, to be able to access a life filled with meaning. That's a fair point. Obviously for me, a life whose meaning is found outside of God is just a temporary fill, but for Frankl that's enough. 

The book is worth reading because it's such a cultural touchstone. I'm sorry to say it did not impact me the way it impacted some. I wish it had. 

Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund

Our church decided to read Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund in our Community Groups.

After reading it, my first thought was, "Why don't we lead with this?"

The book reflects the Puritan-style of explicating at length on a single verse. Ortlund has chosen Matthew 11:29: I am gentle and lowly in heart. 

Ortlund begins by reminding us that this is the only place in all of Scripture where Jesus talks about his heart. It might be good for us to start there.

This not one characteristic among many. It is not in tension or balancing out his wrath. It's who he is. 

Jesus IS gentle and lowly.

We see this time again in the gospels as he acts with love and humility towards ALL who sought him. The seeking him is key. Ortlund states, "This is not who he is to everyone, indiscriminately. This is how he is for those who come to him, who take his yoke upon them, who cry to him for help" (21). 

Jesus pronounces "woe" and judgement on the non-repentant. But to the sick, he is the Great Physician. 

In fact, in a very moving metaphor, Ortlund compares Jesus to a doctor working in third-world conditions. He is overjoyed when someone who is hurting and broken comes to him. He does not reject the patient or load him with guilt. He welcomes the chance to restore and to heal. That's who Jesus is. We, who come to him in repentance, are his joy. 

Not only is Jesus standing with open arms, ready to welcome the profligate home, he understands us. The beauty of a god who came to earth as a man, and suffered in every way a man can suffer, means he looks on us with compassion. He knows what it is to be in our shoes. He knows how hard it is to run from temptation. He's seen first-hand in those he loved failure. In fact, tied up in the word "gentle" is the understanding that he will deal with us perfectly. The deeper the anguish, the pain, the hurt, the brokenness, the sin, the gentler he becomes. He is there for us in the exact perfect way we need him to be. We cannot outsin his grace. It enlarges to encompass even our biggest failures. 

At the same time, Jesus understands the destructive nature of sin even better than we do. He, alone, sees the full damage caused by sin. Even in our most self-effacing moments, we fail to grasp the entirety of the damage done. In our fallenness, we will always color our repentance with some amount of self-justification. Jesus looks on our sin and knows it's worse than we thought. 

But rather than causing him to reject us, that knowledge of the depth of sin increases his compassion for us and his anger towards sin. He alone knows the havoc sin wreaks on his children. He will judge. But he will not judge the penitent. He already paid the price for our sins. Therefore when one takes up his offer of forgiveness, even with only a tiny glimpse of the damage done, his heart bursts with joy and love. That sacrifice has been made worth it.

And not only has Jesus paid the price in the past, he continues to make intercession for us today. Some see this as Jesus pleading for mercy from a harsh and retributive Father. This is not true. Jesus continuously brings us up to the Father and together they celebrate what he's done. Jesus is praying for us. And the Father is more than delighted to answer. Imagine that. He not only intercedes, Jesus is our advocate. He's on our side and he's making our case. This is his heart. 

He is a true friend. The most true friend we will ever have. He pursues us while allowing us to pursue him. And it is a two-way relationship. We have the honor to be his friend. Incredible. He knows every broken part, every shameful secret, every act of unfaithfulness, every betrayal. Yet he loves. He despises sin for its warping effect on us. He intercedes for us. He makes our case. His joy is when we come to him. And he calls us "friend." Not simply that we can regard him as a friend. He looks at us and says, "Friend." 

With all this focus on Christ, the temptation is to view him as "the good one." The Father is eternally indignant and must be pacified. The Spirit is around, but not doing much. This is so far from the truth. Everything that is true of Jesus is true of the Father and the Spirit. God the Father has the same heart. He, too, runs toward repentant souls with open arms. He does not need convincing. The Son advocates and intercedes because that is the job the Father gave him. The Spirit is the actual spirit of the Father. It is God. It's this loving, gracious, merciful friend in a form which can indwell us. It's God in us. Loving us and shaping us from the inside out. It's what makes God, God. It's the most intimate form of God. 

The heart remains the same. Yesterday. Today. And Forever.

From childhood, we are raised with a view of God as eternally angry, sitting high above in judgment, ready to pin us to the ground with thunderbolts. We are tolerated. We are perpetual disappointments. We are charity cases.

This is not the heart of God. 

He delights in a repentant child. He loves and welcomes sinners. The deeper the sin, the more grace to pour out on us. His greatest joy is to welcome us back into relationship with him. Think of the the Father of the Prodigal Son. He scans the horizon looking for the first sign of our return. And when we slink towards him, he runs towards us. He throws a party in our honor. That is the heart of God. 

Anger and wrath are his "strange work." Necessary, but not his natural bent. His love requires justice. He hates sin. He knows the vast extent of the damage sin does. He cannot allow it to continue. 

But his natural bent is love. We are his heart. His most natural desire is to embrace the repentant and rejoice. He must be provoked to anger. He naturally loves.

Why is this idea of God so strange to our ears. It's because we tend to see God as a bigger version of ourselves. We think, "If it was me, I'd be really mad. I might forgive, but I'd never forget." We anthropomorphize God. And we attribute our most sin-laden responses to him. How far off the mark is this! God, himself, tells us, "My ways are not your ways." He doesn't think or act like us. He's not just a better version of us, he's other. He responds in ways we can only hope for, but would never do ourselves. Our sinful nature justifies ourselves and condemns others. God has no sinful nature. He does not have vestiges of a sinful natures. He is not us, just redeemed. He is redemption. He does not need to justify himself, and he offers no condemnation to the repentant. This is simply not possible for a human. We cannot respond in this way. It goes against every fiber of our being. It goes with the grain of his being. It is God being most fully God. 

He is gentle and lowly. 

Ortlund ends with,

The world is starving for a yearning love, a love that remembers instead of forsakes. A love that isn't tied to our loveliness. A love that its down underneath our messiness. A love that is bigger than the enveloping darkness we might be walking through even today. A love of which even the very best human romance is the faintest of whispers. (168)

Christ offers us that love.

The Death of Learning by John Agresto

I saw this book recommended somewhere, and since it's about education, my interest was definitely sparked. The Death of Learning by John Agresto details the decline of the study of the liberal arts and his plan to restore it to prominence. 

He first defines the liberal arts as, "the seeking of knowledge about important matters through reason and reflection" (20-21). It's the type of studies that make humans particularly human and free us to think for ourselves. The study of the liberal arts should most naturally lead to the study of the truth.

But today's society has declared that kind of an education superfluous. It might be nice to delve into the complexities of life, but how is one to make any money doing that? Therefore, it is incumbent upon the defenders of liberal education to argue for the value the liberal arts give to both the individual and society in general. 

And yet, the humanities have been thoroughly muddled up with ideas like, "think like a historian," in trying to prove itself  a career-promoting option. Rather than give students an opportunity to simply sit at the feet of the masters, the liberal arts has attempted to make itself what it routinely decries: practical. 

If, however, we were to advocate for a full-throated version of the liberal arts, what would it include? Our multicultural landscape demands it not just be "dead, white males." So how to choose? Agresto suggests the following: "Thus, we could finally ask what was it that caused the notion of human liberation to flower—what ideas, writings, religious principles, or events brought about these current views of human equality, individuality, and freedom that so many contemporary believers in liberty, liberation, and equality cavalierly take as true. This would be the wonderful fruit of a real liberal education—one that seeks insight in books, reason, and arguments rather than weakly standing on slogans." Choose the best on offer. 

One big problem facing this kind of education is the fact that where it is still being attempted, it is being done badly. "Liberal education is no longer the attempt to understand the complexity of the universe and our own place in the cosmos, or even to understand our own civilization or truly learn about other cultures. It is no longer the introduction to the excitement of good novels and the ability to be moved or even transformed by the beauty of fine poetry. It is, instead, a type of badgering of incoming students, feeding them not questions but prescribed answers." It has become another of its antithesis: indoctrination. 

In order to move forward on this admittedly hard journey to restore the place of the liberal arts, Agresto first asks the reader to be clear-eyed about what exactly the liberal arts hope to accomplish. "I have never been convinced that liberal education necessarily makes one more charming or even more moral. However, I think it does hold the potential to make us smarter than we were before and more knowledgeable about things that matter. The aim of liberal education has never been softness of spirit but rather toughness of mind." In a sense, the study of ancient authors provides a way to make them immortal, almost magically immortal, by allowing us access to the minds of the dead. Any resultant virtue obtained is on us.

So what mindset should we bring to these precious texts? Agresto warns, "All too often to read critically means to approach a text looking for biases or errors, or at how little the author knew compared to us. But think how much better it would be to approach a text as if we are the ones with prejudices and half-formed opinions. To see that the bias might be with us, the readers and professors. To grow in learning means that we all have to be open to that"(144). We are not to criticize the text so much as allow it to criticize us. We approach with wonder, knowing we are in the presence of a towering intellect. After "trying to comprehend...everything relevant we can know about a writer, ideas, or events" can we properly begin to criticize as we move together towards truth (145). 

The self-governing republic bequeathed to us by our Founders requires citizens who can think, if we are to remain free. 

the liberal arts, properly conceived and taught, can introduce our students to the best thinkers, authors, and artists from antiquity to the present, how it could give students exposure to what would be, for them, new ideas and perspectives, and how it can offer them the chance to think through these matters for themselves and come to their own conclusions through reason and reflection.

This might cultivate the ability in them to possess their own minds...This is among the most weighty arguments for liberal education: The freedom to think, to imagine, to question, and to dissent is part of what it means to be a free man or woman. (150)

Inherent in a citizen of a self-governing nation should be both courage and humility. Reading the greats, properly done, can inculcate both. Best of all, it may lead to that most maligned of virtues: moderation. 

Agresto concludes his small book on a big topic like this:

My guess is that, for the liberal arts to live and again prosper, we will have to show that there can actually be an American liberal education--one that helps civilize all of us by preserving the finest in our culture's literature, art, music, and philosophy and that offers them all students; one that encourages all students to understand the basic principles of science and its marvels so that they can be intelligent citizens in our highly scientific and technological world; one that does not see itself as educationally separate from our colleagues in business, law, agriculture, engineering, and other technical and productive studies but that offers what it truly knows and which, in turn, looks to be open to education from them; one that helps this country understand itself and the principles that undergird it; one that has regard for the qualities of our fellow citizens and has the desire to improve their lot and not merely criticize it; and perhaps above all one that makes us smarter in areas that really matter. That is, an American liberal education that satisfies the Founders' hopes that this nation's citizens would be so knowledgeable about history, so cognizant of their duties, so intelligent about the alternatives, and so thoughtful regarding the principles that give life to the country, that indeed, as Madison said, liberty and learning would continue their high task of giving faithful support each to the other (174)

The Christian Mind by Harry Blamires

For the fall session of teacher development, I was asked to read and discuss The Christian Mind by Harry Blamires with the entire faculty. The teachers were given one of six chapters to read on their own. My job was to explicate how that chapter fits into the whole, how it fits into the classical, Christian model of education, and how teachers might incorporate the work. In 45 minutes. 

Let’s go.

First off, Blamires makes the case in this 1963 book that the “Christian Mind” is greatly wanting in the significant conversations of the day. In the forward he says that he considered updating some of the material for the more recent publications, but found that since nothing had changed, the book remained cogent. 

While Christians might practice their religion with diligence and integrity, Blamires points out: 

But as a thinking being, the modern Christian has succumbed to secularization. He accepts religion—its morality, its worship, its spiritual culture; but he rejects the religious view of life, the view which sets all earthly issues within the context of the eternal, the view which relates all human problems—social, political, cultural—to the doctrinal foundations of the Christian Faith, the view which sees all things here below in terms of God’s supremacy and earth’s transitoriness, in terms of Heaven and Hell. (3-4)

The Christian has given up the entire battlefield of ideas over to secular assumptions and secular ways of arguing. In fact Blamires asks the reader to attempt to think “christianly” on any issue, apart from preconceived biases or political positions, and then argue the point with fellow Christians. It will soon become apparent how lonely this place is. No one talks that way. In fact it can seem dangerous to cede ground as it might benefit a political opponent. Christians must “re-establish the status of objective truth as distinct from personal opinion.” (40) Only then can we hope to recover “the Christian mind—a mind trained, informed, equipped to handle data of secular controversy within a framework of reference which is constructed of Christian presuppositions.” (43)

Blamires contrasts the secular way of thinking to this christianly way: 

To think secularly is to think within a frame of referenced bounded by the limits of our life on earth: it is to keep one’s calculations rooted in this-worldly criteria. to think christianly is to accept all things with the mind as related, directly or indirectly, to man’s eternal destiny as the redeemed and chose child of God. (44)

Blamires goes onto state, “There is nothing in our experience, however trivial or worldly, or even evil, which cannot be thought about christianly.” (45)

But exactly what it means to “think christianly” can evade us. Blamires starts with the notion that to think christianly is to this with a supernational orientation. “The Christian mind sees human life and human. history held in the hands of God. It sees the whole universe sustained by his power and his love. It sees the natural order as dependent upon the supernatural order, time as contained within eternity.” (67) I think this can be termed, “gospel-colored glasses.” That is, and granted this sounds very foreign, the Christian should approach every topic with an eye to the eternal and God’s sovereignty. “What is God doing in this circumstance, and how can I align myself with it?” is a question we should have at the top of our minds as we think through and contribute to the conversation. That world, God’s world, is the real world. Do we live like this?

Next the Christian mind is aware of evil:

The notion that this world, and the powers of it, are in the grip of evil, is too well established in Christian teaching to be lightly disregarded, yet Christians have grown accustomed to shrug off the more somber implications of this truth. (86)

At the same time, we must avoid the trap of pride. It is easy to see the evil committed by the other. Blamires says we must approach or fellow travelers in this life with a sense of “What have we done?” (103) The world our Lord entered into was rotten to the core. Yet he entered in. He did not shy away from calling evil, evil, but he knew his place was in this world, with we fallen beings.

The Christian mind must also have a firm grasp of the conception of truth:

One may say without exaggeration that failure to distinguish clearly between the Christian conception of truth and the conception of truth popularly cherished in the secular mind has been one of the most unfortunate neglects of our age. (106) 

Our society today likes to talk about “my truth” and “your truth.” The Christian must understand that truth “is supernaturally grounded, not developed within nature; that it is objective and not subjective; that it is a revelation and not a construction; that it is discovered by inquiry and not elected by a majority vote; that it is authoritative and not a matter of personal choice.” (107) The Christian must be willing to say, “Don’t ask me what I like or what I approve of. Ask me what I think is true. The truth isn’t always nice. It isn’t always likeable. But I believe you’ve got to cling to it.” (121) But knowledge of the truth requires a deep understanding the theology presented in Scripture. We must never resort to an uninformed opinion prefaced with, “Well I believe...”

The Christian mind accepts authority. The world does not and never can. The world does not tolerate authority or even understand it. We live under the authority of the Father, “benign yet authoritative, loving yet powerful, merciful yet wrathful.” (140) As Christians, the gospel message should lead to “that sense of personal inadequacy, human dependence, utter lowliness and lostness, which brings the Christian to his knees and throws him into the hands of our Lord.” We must avoid the “self-satisfaction of the pharisaical kind with which our Lord himself never came to terms.” (146) The vehicle the Father uses is the Church and therefore the world must adapt itself to the Church. This is heretical thinking in our times. Blamires spends a lot of time decrying the common refrain that the Church is in trouble in the modern age. Impossible. The Church cannot be destroyed. This was proven 2,000 years ago. The Church, as the body of Christ, will continue to exert its authority until Christ returns.

The concern for the person must also consume the Christian mind. The Incarnation is proof enough that the human being is an exalted life form. Blamires spends most of this chapter decrying the mechanization of our society. Technology and its all-consuming effects have served to dehumanize that which is made in the image of God. And this before the internet. “We have to ask ourselves what degree of dependence upon the technological artifacts that are drugging the bodies and minds of our contemporaries is appropriate in those who are trying to live the Christian life.” (160) Now he’s getting right up in our business! He posits that Christians everywhere should be up in arms about the materialism and dehumanization being fostered by technology. In 1963. We serve our technological innovations, not the God in heaven. 

To those not convinced, Blamires is clear:

Powerful influences of government and commerce nourish the concept of man as a packet of diverse functions. There is lavish expenditure on numerous devices which appeal to man as the creature of one function only—propaganda, advertisement, entertainment, and indoctrination designed wholly to capture the undiscerning eye and the unthinking heart of man the conditioned consumer, the conditioned voter, the conditioned producer. Every effort is made to debase man by dehumanizing him; to condemn him to an existence in which he functions, not as a person, but as a thing; not as a thinking, choosing, creature, but as a cog in a piece of machinery. To function in a machine is to function sub-humanly—to act in a preordained, automatic pattern which precludes the exercise of purpose, creativeness, choice, and reason. (165)

Finally, the Christian mind has a sacramental cast. He beautifully states:

The Christian Faith presents a sacramental view of life. It shows life’s positive richnesses as derivative from the supernatural. It teaches us that to create beauty or to experience beauty, to recognize truth or to discover truth, to receive love or to give love, is to come into contact with realities which express the Divine Nature. (173) 

He uses society’s focus on all things sensual as ripe ground for the Christian mind. The Church has not recognized the extent to which today’s youth are seeking the transcendent when they lean into sexually-themed culture. Blamires makes clear that “the religion of the Incarnation must be presented to modern youth as something more exciting than a lot of prohibitions aimed at disinfecting life of its torrential delights, and something more positive than a plan to substitute a sterility of body and mind for that contemporary fleshly abandonment which, if no longer glad, is at least perversely affirmative of existence.” (174). Adolescents crave more than we are offering them. They will turn to the psychologist or the poet, but they will have their passions met. 

Blamires suggests a Christian Romanticism as an answer to the youth. Once we recognize that the longings felt by the youth as expressed in their music, culture, clothing, relationships, stories, etc. is never going to be fulfilled in this life, we can point to them to the reality that it is not supposed to be. We are not of this world. Our hope lies outside it. As C.S. Lewis said, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” He paints a beautiful picture of a heart flung to the stars, of longing never fulfilled, of dreams remaining dreams becausethat is the reality. We must engage our young people where they are, full of hope and longing and dreams. We must tell them those are wonderful markers of a world in which all can be fulfilled:

Because they lose their intrinsic joy, we know our early dreams and longings for what they are, the pointers to fulfillment and reality; not ends in themselves, but significant disturbers of our peace. Unsatisfied longings must be nourished in us, and the elusive dream of fulfillment dangled before us, or we should never know that we are not here, on earth, in our proper resting-place. Utterly divested of this disturbing inheritance, men’s hearts would never desire the ultimate peace and joy offered by God.

The Christian mind makes sense of passionate youthful longings and dissatisfactions as pointers to the divine creation of man and the fact that he is called to glory. (179-180)

The instinct to envelop itself with passionate, sensual adventures is fundamentally healthy.

What?

This runs so counter to everything we communicate to young people. We bombard them with do’s and don’ts. We never tell them that their desires are good, true, and beautiful. We tell them those worldly attractions will not fulfill, but we never tell them it is right to long for more. We tell them Jesus is enough. He is. But not until we see him face-to-face. 

But it’s not enough to promise them a time in the sweet by-and-by. We must help them own these desires and cherish them for what they are: glimpses of heaven. 

Blamires turns to the poetry of Coventry Patmore, with whom I admit unfamiliarity, as an example of “the God who woos the soul of man through the self-transcending grab of grateful love.” (182) Blamires reminds us that the “pull of beauty in love, or art, or Nature” are all instance of:

the voice of God which calls, and the grace of God which urges us to listen. Youth’s romanticism before the potent glamour of sex, music, dancing, and the like, must be a Christian romanticism which recognizes the divine Voice. Unless youth’s stirring urges and visions are seen to point beyond time, they will be worshipped as ends in themselves. (182)

Blamires also enlists the writing of Charles Williams, of whom I’m also unfamiliar, to point the way romantic love relates to Christian Romanticism. The way the lover envisions his beloved is how we are to understand how God sees us. In addition, we are to understand that when that which is perfect is come, we will see our fellow man in the same light, with a “rapture of emotion, which seems to blend humility with exultation, self-giving with grateful receiving, in a joyful interchange of laughter and courtesy.” (185) This kind of love, whether glimpsed through romantic love or the beauty of nature demands immortality. All other human activities will cease, but Blamires asserts, “Death is incompatible with love.” (186) Only the Christian theology of eternal life promises love fulfilled. 

Blamires then ends with this powerful statement: 

Sexual love is one of the most powerful openers of the human mind to the reality of the eternal, one of the most potent disturbers of human willingness to come to terms with materialistic secularism, For nothing in natural experience more universally touches the soul of man with the call to worship, to serve, to adore, that which is outside himself, with the hunger for an immortality spent in love and self-giving, As a lever to prise open the heart of man to the awareness of mystery and to the glimpse of glory, both rooted in eternity, sexual love is one of God’s most efficient instruments. (188) 

The Christian Mind thinks supernaturally, aware of evil and grounded in the truth; it accepts authority and is centered on humans; it makes all things sacramental. This kind of think is sadly limited today. Even very intelligent Christians can lapse into secular thinking with the thought, “No one will accept arguments based on theology.” While this view holds some merit, it is unacceptable. If we cannot offer the world a Christian way of thinking about the issue facing society, we risk becoming just another clanging gong in a very noisy world.

Bad Religion by Ross Douthat

I received Bad Religion by Ross Douthat as a gift. It was on the list of books I keep that someone, somewhere recommended. I have no idea where I got this recommendation, but I'm so glad I did. It's an excellent book on the history of American Christianity. Its real value is in putting the current moment into perspective.

As American Christians, it's very easy to believe that how we "do" Christianity here is not only how it's always been done, but how it should be done. Yet neither is true.

Douthat begins in the so-called "golden years" of American Christianity in the mid-twentieth century. This was a time of growing acceptance of orthodox Christianity in all realms of society–spiritual, economic, and political. Yet even at this time, cracks existed. 

"True golden ages do not exist. Martin Luther King was a Christian hero, but he was also a reckless adulterer whose academic work was partially ghostwritten. The neo-orthodox theologians did a brilliant job of making the Christian intellectual framework intelligible to a secular audience, but they also frequently seemed to purposefully dance around some of the most important–and necessarily controversial–issues of Christian faith. (Martin Gardner's 1971 novel-of-ideas, The Flight of Peter Fromm, The Flight of Peter Fromm, features a young seminarian driven mad by Reinhold Niebuhr's evasiveness on supernatural questions...) (p. 51)

But by the late 1960s a remarkable thing occurred. Churches stopped growing. Americans continued to grow religiously, but not in the orthodox tradition. "Heretics carried the day completely." (p. 64) A New Age spirituality gripped the nation. Somehow Christianity lost its reputation for transcendence and became out of fashion. 

How would the Church respond? Would it seek to accommodate and synchronize with the spirit of the times or would it double-down on the basic tenets of the faith? Both. 

"The first approach would seek to forge a new Christianity more consonant with the spirit of the age, one better adapted to the trends that were undercutting orthodoxy. The latter would follow William F. Buckley's maxim and stand athwart religious history yelling "Stop!" The first approach would attempt to sustain Christianity's midcentury reconciliation with Western liberalism by adapting itself to the changing cultural circumstances. The second would break decisively with the revolutionary mood in American society and identify Christianity with cultural conservatism." (p. 81)

It's easy to imagine where this ended up. The liberal faction did a great job of embracing and modeling the love of Christ. It just set aside the judgment for sin embodied in Christ. In the process of all love and acceptance and no need for devotion or self-sacrifice, the Church made itself irrelevant. Who needs church when one could just accept everyone for what they were and sleep in on Sundays? On the other end was a resistance movement dedicated to fighting the excesses of the liberal establishment. The mainline churches lost members in droves while more conservative off-shoots and "para-church" organizations rapidly gained ground. Unfortunately with no oversight or hierarchal structure to hold them accountable, these groups easily strayed from orthodoxy as well. The evangelical movement became conflated with conservative politics. Young people, who did not want to identify with the Republican Party, yet desiring to retain a form of faith, departed into a more cafeteria-style religion, clinging to the attractive parts and discarding the uncomfortable.  

For some, the discovery of "lost gospels" provided a new and interesting take on Jesus. Many could claim access to secret or hidden knowledge. The Divinci Code perfectly embodied the desire to forge a new brand of Christianity that could withstand the disdain many felt for the strictures of orthodoxy and its call for repentance. Mainline churches were irrelevant. Evangelical churches were too judgmental. The "lost gospels" provided an opportunity to forge your own Jesus. This appealed to the high-brow and intellectuals among believers.

But for the other half of America, something else was needed to tap into a different deeply felt need. Enter "Pray and Grow Rich." Joel Osteen and his Best Life Now perfectly filled a need for those feeling left behind in a culture increasingly exposed to "the risks and shocks of commerce and competition" (p. 202). As an added benefit, it could appeal to the rich by justifying their gain–God was blessing them for their righteous living. This transactional religion could also boast of melding perfectly with the American Dream. Work hard, "invest" in the cause, sit back and wait for the returns. 

Once again the pendulum swung. Reacting to the brash materialism and commercialism of the prosperity gospel, Americans decided to turn to self-discovery and a connection with the transcendent that had no rules or rituals. It had one god–the god within. This god dwells within your being and coincidentally agrees with you in every respect. Gone are the hierarchies, and the rules, and the calls to sacrifice yourself for the Kingdom of God. The god within only demands that you stay true to your authentic self. As Elizabeth Gilbert modeled for us in her best-seller Pray, Eat, Love, we must search for that voice within ourselves that speaks in the most authentic us-ness possible. The god is there, waiting to be discovered. If that involves leaving a spouse (as she did), so be it. "You do you" replaces "Do unto others..." Unfortunately "I as god" tends to lead to isolation and unhappiness. Who knew? (Jesus. Jesus knew.) Cue rise of the therapeutic culture.

As it will, reactions to this heretical form of Christianity took the religion in the opposite direction. Beginning with the Tea Party and continuing to MAGA country, Christians intertwined patriotism and an infallible narrative with the gospel itself. Jesus didn't mean for you to be rich, a la the prosperity gospel, Jesus meant for you to be a Republican and 'Merica. While America has beautiful, biblical values upon which it was founded, America, and American politicians, can never be the Savior. America is simultaneously experiencing a fear of the Apocalypse (if the the wrong people are elected), and a rabid embrace of a messianic figure who can save us from destruction. Both positions cause harm to Christianity and the country in general. 

While it is true that America has been a force for good and that it has always been an experiment that can fail, the true Hope lies in the gospel message of Christianity. Douthat states:

In our nation's better moments, Christianity has been intimately involved in American politics while standing somewhat apart from partisanship, summoning the country to reform without falling victim to the conceit that political reform is religion's only purpose. At their most robustand independent, our churches and religious leaders have reminded us that America is only almost chosen, and that paradise isn't possible on earth. In our finer hours, orthodoxy's universalism has been potent enough to temper nationalism in both its apocalyptic and messianic manifestations.

But we do not inhabit such an hour today.

In the end, Douthat doesn't really have a good answer for all this back-and-forth. Obviously he advocates a return to orthodoxy. He wants an embrace of the sacramental and beautiful. He calls the church to return to her mission of drawing the world to God through Christ and His death and resurrection. He mentions the Emergent Church movement as a possible source of renewal. Unfortunately since the book has been written, that segment of Christianity has proven liable to pastor-worship and heresy. 

Personally, I think the solution lies in small, gospel-centered, worship-driven churches. Churches that ask much and offer much in return. A church focused on Jesus and his call to be perfect while offering a radical form of grace and forgiveness. A church that loves all, embraces all, welcomes all, but seeks to pull all up out of the natural fallen state of humanity into a glorious life of ongoing sanctification. The Church must strip away all the accruements that hinder the simplicity of the gospel message: You are a sinner in need of a Savior. You cannot save yourself. Jesus loves you so much that He willingly and at great cost took on that role. Surrender to Him and His call to be perfect is your only option. Welcome to the family. You are loved. 

Anything that replaces or amends that message is heresy. It will not lead to Jesus. It will lead to Bad Religion. 

Live Not By Lies by Rod Dreher

I had just recently been introduced to the essay "Live Not By Lies" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This short essay, published just before Solzhenitsyn was exiled from Russia is so powerful that I needed to read it several times to fully imbibe it. When I heard that one of my favorite authors, Rod Dreher, had written a book of the same title, inspired by the essay, I had to read it. What a powerful read.

Dreher begins with a story of a little-known man, Father Kolakovic, who worked to prepare the Slovak Christians for the coming Soviet invasion. After World War II, he knew that the Russians would replace the Germans as an occupying force and felt the need to shore up the Christians in advance.

Dreher feels a similar mission in America. Not that America will soon be subject to the hard totalitarianism of Soviet Communism, but that America will soon fall under another destructive force he calls "soft totalitarianism." Following Kolakovic's dictum, Dreher wants Christians to "See. Judge. Act. See meant to be awake to realities around you. Judge was a command to discern soberly the meaning of those realities in light of what you know to be true, especially from the teachings of the Christian faith. After you reach a conclusion, then you are to act to resist evil." (p. 5)

Dreher believes that America, with its therapeutic, atomized culture, is a prime breeding ground for the soft totalitarianism he sees coming. We, as a people, are more lonely and separated than ever before. Hannah Arendt warned about the dangers inherent in that type of a society in the 1950s. "What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world, is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century." (p. 31) As we have moved away from the original American dream of a virtuous citizen, informed by Scripture, free to live as he pleased within godly constraints towards a materialistic and individualistic view of happiness, we have also become exactly the type of society Arendt warned about. Our hyper-focus on our own, individualized experiences and our ability to interpret our own reality has fractured our society and left us vulnerable to totalitarianism.

This totalitarianism will not come from a gun, but from the tears of social justice warriors. These members of "ideological motivated moral communities" seek to enforce their sacrosanct beliefs, which give meaning and purpose to their own lives, onto the surrounding populace. (p. 60) As they see the world as a series of power struggles in the Marxian sense—oppressors vs. oppressed—they seek power to upend existing structures. Identity is the key to which camp one fits in. Various identities are definitionally oppressed while others are definitionally the oppressors. They do not seek actual justice; they seek power and domination. They have harnessed the most influential of social institutions in order to command the conversation and demand language reflect their point of view. Believing that words construct reality, and he who has power controls the language, they have latched onto language as a way to dominate. Say the wrong thing and it's labeled "violence." While actual violence is justified in the name of upending power structures. 

Dreher sums up where we find ourselves today:

In the West today, we are living under decadent, pre-totalitarian conditions. Social atomization, widespread loneliness, the rise of ideology, widespread loss of faith in institutions, and other factors leave society vulnerable to the totalitarian temptation to which both Russia and Germany succumbed in the previous century. 

Furthermore, intellectual, cultural, academic, and corporate elites are under the sway of a left-wing political cult built around social justice. It is a militantly illiberal ideology that shares alarm ing commonalities with Bolshevism, including dividing humanity between the Good and the Evil. This pseudoreligion appears to meet a need for meaning and moral purpose in a post-Christian society and seeks to build a just society by demonizing, excluding, and even persecuting all who resist its harsh dogmas. (p. 93)

However, Dreher is not writing to send the reader into despair. He spends countless hours interviewing those who lived in the times of Soviet totalitarianism to glean hope and way to stand athwart the coming onslaught. One dissident states, "You will be surrounded by lies—you don't have a choice...If you want to live in fear, or if you want to live in freedom of the soul. If your soul is free, then your thoughts are free, and your words are going to be free." 

First, we are to immerse ourselves in history. Not knowing history is a perfect way to atomize an individual. The person who does not know where he came from and what came before is isolated and vulnerable to lies. Religion is also necessary to connect individuals to one another so that a person is not left to fend for themselves in a world bent on lies. Truth in Scripture can be used to counter the deception propagated by a system bent on destruction. Faith, not reason, may be the only thing onto which a person can cling. Families are also indispensable in grounding individuals and passing on a heritage. Within a family, truth can be spoken free of fear. "It's no accident that every dictatorship always tries to break down the family, because it's in the family that you get the strength to be able to fight." (p. 148) Finally, an education, backed by and infused with Christianity and historical knowledge is the best way to prepare students for the coming darkness. People can survive the leftist totalitarianism only if surrounded by those who will hold him to truth and push out the lies.

Like in his book, The Benedict Option, Dreher recommends small, like-minded communities to harbor and shelter people from soft totalitarianism we are seeing today. He's not sure pastors will be up to the challenge. It's in small groups—families, schools, Bible study groups—that people will find the strength to stand up. "We desperately need to throw off the chains of solitude and find the freedom that awaits us in fellowship...Only in solidarity with others can we find the spiritual an communal strength to resist." (p. 181)

Spurn fear. We are free. Our souls can remain free if we choose to Live Not By Lies. Suffering and persecution can be withstood by a solid faith in God and in the Truth. We have no choice.