Posts tagged ‘Theology’
Christianity in a Culture of Narcissism: From Epicurus to Gilbert
“I know that God wouldn’t want me to be unhappy!” I have heard these words time and time again over the course of my ministry, usually from people who wanted to make decisions that, according to the Bible, were sinful. Yet, these people could not fathom a God who would ever want them to choose a difficult or painful path – a path that would make them unhappy – even if it formed in them obedient righteousness.
The search for human happiness was perhaps most famously forged by the fourth century BC Greek philosopher Epicurus. Epicurus asserted that a truly happy life was characterized primarily by two features: a sense of peace and the absence of pain. If a person had these two things, he would be happy. How did Epicurus accomplish such a peace-filled and pain-free life? First, he sought self-sufficiency and second, he lived with a large group of friends. Epicurus, it seems, was the original college student – venturing out from his parents’ place with lots of his buddies by his side. And though Epicurus himself was actually quite restrained in his morality and actions, his philosophy eventually gave rise to hedonism, a way of life which recklessly trades that which is peace-filled and pain-free for parties and pleasure.
For our purposes, it is important to understand how Epicurus related his search for happiness to his faith in God. For the relationship Epicurus establishes between happiness and God serves as an almost precise blueprint for those today who cannot fathom a God whose ultimate goal would be anything other than their personal happiness. Epicurus says of a person’s belief in God:
Attach to your theology nothing which is inconsistent with incorruptibility or with happiness; and think that a deity is invested with everything which is able to preserve this happiness.[1]
For Epicurus, God does not define what it means to be happy. Instead, happiness defines what it means to have God. If you are not happy, then, the problem is not with you, it’s with God! God is merely a means to the end of your personal happiness. He is not your sovereign ruler and creator, but your divine therapist whose fundamental function is to make you feel better. He is a “happy pill” of sorts – a pick-me-up to help you avoid the painful realities of life. Thus, if happiness eludes you, the solution is as simple as shifting your theological sensibilities: “Attach to your theology nothing which is inconsistent with…happiness.”
Epicurus’ philosophy has been replayed over and over again throughout the ages. It has been most recently and famously espoused by Elizabeth Gilbert in her bestselling book Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia. Gilbert, by her own admission, was a woman who had it all. She was married to a devoted husband and lived in a giant house in the New York suburbs. The plan was, shortly after she turned thirty, the couple would have children – they would start a family. As her story opens, she is thirty-one. But on a cold November night, locked in her bathroom, she discovers what she has always intuitively known: she does not want to have kids. She doesn’t even want to be married. Gilbert explains it like this:
My husband and I – who had been together for eight years, married for six – had built our entire life around the common expectation that, after passing the doddering old age of thirty, I would want to settle down and have children. By then, we mutually anticipated, I would have grown weary of traveling and would be happy to live in a big, busy household full of children and homemade quilts, with a garden in the backyard and a cozy stew bubbling on the stovetop…But I didn’t – as I was appalled to be finding out – want any of these things. Instead, as my twenties had come to a close, that deadline of THIRTY had loomed over me like a death sentence, and I discovered that I did not want to be pregnant.[2]
So how does Gilbert solve her crisis of marriage and motherhood? Existentially, of course! She divorces her husband and takes off globetrotting – to Italy, India, and Indonesia. And it is during her international adventures that she comes to a conclusion about God that, even though it is altogether unsurprising in its substance, is jarring in its frankness:
I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. I think you are free to search for any metaphor whatsoever which will take you across the worldly divide whenever you need to be transported or comforted…You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light.[3]
“Attach to your theology nothing which is inconsistent with…happiness.” Gilbert falls lock step into a crassly Epicurean vision of God. She is right at home with a “do-it-yourself” theology. If one version of God doesn’t work for her – if He doesn’t bring her the happiness, joy, peace, and fulfillment she desires as she defines these things – she is perfectly comfortable redefining her theology as much as necessary to suit her longings. God exists solely to make her feel good about herself. God exists to make Elizabeth Gilbert happy.
No matter how attractive Elizabeth Gilbert’s custom made system of doing theology may first appear, it is fundamentally dishonest. It was the atheist stalwart Friedrich Nietzsche who knew that theological cherry picking was a futile and academically vacuous pursuit: “Christianity is a system, a consistently thought out and complete view of things. If one breaks out of it a fundamental idea…one thereby breaks the whole thing to pieces.”[4] You can take it all or leave it all when it comes to theology, Nietzsche says, but you can’t take only certain parts. Nietzsche left it all. At least he was intellectually – and spiritually, for that matter – consistent.
There is a bitter irony for the person who believes in a therapeutic God who would never want him to be unhappy. In a limited and carefully qualified sense, he’s right! God does not desire the unmitigated misery of His people. Jesus opens His famed Sermon on Mount with a series of blessings, widely known as the Beatitudes. He declares:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted…Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3-4, 10)
The word “blessed” is rendered in many translations as “happy.” Though I prefer the translation “blessed,” “happy” is not altogether inappropriate, as long as the substance of Jesus’ happiness is properly understood. But in order to properly understand Jesus’ happiness, we must first notice the paradoxical nature of Jesus’ statements. Those who are poor in spirit…can be happy! Those who mourn…can be happy! Even those who are persecuted…can be happy! People in seemingly very unhappy situations can nevertheless be happy! But how? True happiness, Jesus teaches, has nothing to do with a person’s external circumstances, or even with his desires, dreams, and feelings, but with his eschatological and eternal hope. Those who brandish about the statement “God wouldn’t want me to be unhappy” as a license to do what they want, regardless of whether or not what they want is sinful, don’t really care about God’s happiness for them because they really don’t care about how God’s happiness comes to them – for sometimes, God’s happiness comes only through personal suffering and prodigious sacrifice.
How are you happy? Are you happy only if you get your own way? Or, are you happy when Christ works His way through you? The first happiness is nothing but narcissism. The second happiness is comfortingly indelible, even in a broken and sinful world that relentlessly seeks to bring us sorrow. This is why I find my happiness – no, my joy – in Christ. As the prophet exhorts, “Find your joy in the LORD” (Isaiah 58:14).
[1] Diogenes Laertius, 10.123
[2] Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia (New York: Viking, 2006), Chapter 2.
[3] Gilbert, Chapter 70.
[4] Friedrich Nietzsche in R.J. Hollingdale, Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 99.
Christianity in a Culture of Narcissism: From Darwin to Dawkins
Growing up, one of my favorite books was P.D. Eastman’s Are You My Mother? If you have kids, or if you grew up with my generation, or even the generation before, you no doubt remember this jewel of a children’s story. It features a baby bird who hatches while his mother is out worm-hunting. When he discovers he is alone in the nest, he ventures out looking for his mother. But he does not know who she is or what she looks like. So he goes to a kitten and asks her if she is his mother. The cat remains silent. So he goes to a hen. No dice. She’s the wrong kind of bird. He journeys on to find a dog. But the dog insists she is not the bird’s mother. Desperate, the little bird presses on to even inanimate objects, asking if they are his mother – a car, a tugboat, a plane, and finally an enormous power shovel. “Are you my mother?” the bird asks the shovel. The shovel, much to the little bird’s fright, snorts smoke out of its exhaust stack and picks up the bird and lifts him high, high into the sky. But then, in a twist of fate, the shovel drops him right back into his nest just in time for his real mother to return. And when the bird sees her, he sings with delight, “I know who you are. You are not a kitten. You are not a hen. You are not a dog. You are not a cow. You are not a boat, or a plane, or a Snort!” – the little bird’s name for the power shovel – “You are a bird, and you are my mother.”[1]
Perhaps the reason this story has resonated with the hearts of so many children for so many years is because it touches on a need all of us have – to belong. The little bird wanted to know to whom he belonged. And so do we. As kids, we want to feel as though we belong to our parents. As we grow, we want to belong to a group of our peers. As we get yet older, we often will give ourselves to one another in marriage and thus belong to a spouse.
This desire to belong is not surprising. After all, the Bible says we are created in “the image of God” (Genesis 1:27) and, as such, are ultimately designed to belong to Him. As the apostle Paul reminds us, “You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 NLT). We all want to belong. And, by faith in Christ, we can belong, above everything and everyone else, to God.
Though we all feel a need to belong, a narcissism disguised and gilded in the sterile white lab coats of those who believe that science as a discipline demands a naturalistic worldview in toto is seeking to slowly undermine and supplant this natural desire. This narcissism is promoted by people who, with a paradoxical twist of religious fervency, ground themselves in a system of Darwinian evolution hitched to a strident atheism which espouses not a human desire to belong, but a human fight for survival.
It is well known that the mechanism by which Darwinian evolution works is Natural Selection, or, to use the phrase originally coined by the British philosopher Herbert Spencer, “the survival of the fittest.” Charles Darwin explains the principle:
Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving, for, of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive. I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.[2]
Evolution, Darwin claims, lurches forward because those with less desirable traits die off while those with more desirable traits survive, passing on their superior attributes to subsequent generations. These subsequent generations, in turn, grow stronger and more environmentally adept. In short, they “evolve.” Survival, then, becomes a mark of success in a Darwinian system where propagation of oneself is the name of the game. Can there be a goal more blatantly narcissistic than this?
The difficulty with Darwin’s theory, of course, is that, even while it has succeeded at elevating biological narcissism to a cause célèbre, it has nevertheless failed to explain why humans sometimes act so un-narcissistically – even downright charitably! Indeed, Darwin decried this human tendency toward charity and warned of its ill effects:
We civilized men…do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.[3]
“If only,” Darwin opines, “we would not labor so compassionately to ‘check the process of elimination.’ If only we weren’t so charitable to each other!” According to Darwin, a narcissistic fight for one’s own survival and propagation that results in other, less fit creatures dying off and dying out is in line nature’s ultimate goal and good.
But this still does not solve the problem of human charity. If we are indeed the products of an inexorable evolutionary march propelled by Natural Selection, what causes us to trade the narcissism innate to this system for an unnatural, and even counterproductive, altruism?
Committed atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins sought to address this difficulty in his 1976 classic, The Selfish Gene. Dawkins explains that, even when people act in seemingly altruistic ways, their genes are still driving them to act in a manner which ultimately protects their survival and insures their propagation. So if a mother runs into a burning car to save her children, for instance, she is doing so not out of authentic altruism, but so that her genes can live on in her children, even if she dies. Likewise, if someone helps someone else to whom is he not genetically related, Dawkins claims he is doing so out of “reciprocal altruism,”[4] a term Dawkins borrows from the sociobiologist Robert Trivers, which is essentially the genetic equivalent of the old saw, “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” In other words, when a person does something “nice” for someone else, that person expects some sort of genomic favor in return. Yet, not all cases of altruism can be accounted for so coldly. For instance, when a fireman risks his own life, storming a burning building to save another, how can one account for this biologically? He is usually not related to the person trapped inside. Thus, he cannot be said to be working out of an evolutionary mandate to propagate his progeny. And his chance of receiving a favor in return, though possible, is certainly not probable enough to drive the risk he takes. Even Dawkins must admit that there is such a thing as “pure, disinterested altruism” that “has no place in nature.” Indeed, it has “never existed before in the whole history of the world.”[5] Evolutionary biology simply cannot account for all the mysteries of human philanthropy.
If nothing else, the evolutionary attack on human charity in favor of a calculated, genomic narcissism shows that, no matter how prevalent narcissism may be in our world, it is not altogether systemic. There are still times and places in which people look outside of themselves. Belonging to each other through love and kindness still count. And lest one cynically protests that belonging is merely an underhanded means to propagation and survival, we must remember that sometimes, belonging means risking one’s livelihood and even life. Belonging to an army means risking one’s existence for the sake of a cause. Belonging to a philanthropic organization means risking one’s health and wellbeing for the sake of fighting the AIDS pandemic in Africa. And belonging to Christ means losing one’s life for the sake of the gospel. That’s not narcissistic. That’s selfless. And that’s still good…no matter what Natural Selection may claim.
[1] P.D. Eastman, Are You My Mother? (Random House Books, 1960), 62.
[2] Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (London: Cassell & Company, Ltd., 1909), 64.
[3] Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (forgottenbooks.org, 1874), 116-117.
[4] Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 202.
[5] Dawkins, 201.
Christianity in a Culture of Narcissism
“Narcissus” by Caravaggio, 1596
“I wanna talk about me, wanna talk about I, wanna talk about number one, oh my me my.”
– Toby Keith, country singer[1]
“I think I’m fascinating.”
– Snooki, Jersey Shore star[2]
“What do you really want out of life? A bigger, better job? A hotter sex life? The lean, mean body you had in college? All of the above? Men’s Health can help you get there.”
– Men’s Health promotion[3]
As the Roman poet Ovid tells it, Narcissus was quite the heartbreaker. Narcissus was a handsome young hunter, furiously courted by every young lady who met him. But Narcissus rejected every advance of every young lady because Narcissus only had eyes for…himself. The story goes that one day, after an especially rigorous morning of hunting, Narcissus decided to rest for a moment on a verdant pasture next to a quiet pond. When he went to the pond to get a drink of water, what did he see, but himself! So enamored was Narcissus by his own appearance, that he eventually died there by that pool, for he was unable to pry himself away from his striking reflection.[4]
Narcissus, of course, serves as the namesake and the caution for the personality disorder we know as narcissism. I recently read that the American Psychiatric Association is considering removing narcissism from its highly influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Why? Because more and more psychologists consider it to be “a manifestation of normal personality.”[5] Narcissism is now normal. Or so psychologists say.
One doesn’t need to look very far to see just how “normal” narcissism has become. From country singers who want to talk about themselves to faux reality TV stars who find themselves to be inexhaustibly interesting to magazines which unabatedly sell narcissism to self-absorbed, even if fitness-conscious, consumers, instances of narcissism are everywhere. Yet, I would argue that simply because narcissism is prevalent doesn’t necessarily mean it is normal. “Normal” refers to something which “conforms to a standard or common type.”[6] But what “standard or common type” norms that which is normal? In psychology, it is the standard of self. Whatever behavior, trait, or characteristic is most common among the majority of people is considered normal. Majority norms psychology. Hence, the reason narcissism is being considered for removal from the DSM. Theologically, however, things work differently. Normal is not defined by human prevalence but by divine revelation. And theologically, narcissism is most definitely abnormal – and worse, sinful. As the apostle Paul warns, “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves” (2 Timothy 3:1-2). According to Paul, to be obsessed with self is a sinful sign of the terrible times. It’s time, then, to leave narcissism behind for something else – something better.
Over the next few weeks in my blog, I’ll be probing the foundations of narcissism in our society and asking, “How did we get here? How did narcissism become ‘normal’?” To this end, I’ll be exploring the historical underpinnings of narcissism philosophically, scientifically, and therapeutically. All of these disciplines, of course, will be discussed in light of the Bible’s verdict on narcissism theologically.
Ovid says of Narcissus’ narcissism, “Its empty being on thy self relies; Step thou aside, and the frail charmer dies.”[7] Here is a somber warning that we would do well to take to heart. Ovid cautions that narcissism finally leads to death. For in its emphasis on the self, narcissism leaves you only by yourself. And left by yourself, you will only die. For you are only mortal. This is why Jesus invites us to leave behind the deathly hallows of narcissism to find lasting life in Him: “If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me” (Mark 8:34). Jesus is clear: He and narcissism do not mix. Following Him is about losing yourself, not indulging yourself. For when you lose yourself, you happily wind up getting lost in Jesus Himself – His love, His grace, His mercy, His compassion, His identity, and His everlasting life. And He is better than you. In a culture of narcissism, this is what we, as Christians, are called to proclaim.
[1] Toby Keith, “I Wanna Talk About Me” (2001).
[2] Hillary Busis, “Barbara Walters Learns What ‘Smoosh’ Means During Interview With Jersey Shore Cast,” Mediaite (12.10.10).
[3] Email promotion from Men’s Health Magazine (5.31.11).
[4] Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 3.
[5] NPR Staff, “It’s All About Me: But Is Narcissism A Disorder?” National Public Radio (12.11.10).
[7] Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 3.
Pastor Zach's Blog 
It’s All Relative
Nearly everybody cheats, but usually only a little…That’s because most of us think we are pretty wonderful. We can cheat a little and still keep that “good person” identity. Most people won’t cheat so much that it makes it harder to feel good about themselves.
The basis for Brooks’ thesis is a new book by Dan Ariely, a professor of psychology at Duke University, titled The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty. Through a series of surprisingly creative studies, Ariely finds that people are disturbingly comfortable bending moral standards to suit their own purposes…as long as they don’t bend them too much. For instance, for the purposes of his book, Ariely asked a blind and a sighted colleague to take several taxi rides. The drivers happily cheated the sighted client by taking longer routes in order to rack up higher fares. They did not, however, cheat the blind client nearly as often because of the stinging psychological guilt associated with cheating a blind person.
Brooks summarizes Ariely’s findings:
For the past several centuries, most Westerners would have identified themselves fundamentally as Depraved Sinners. In this construct, sin is something you fight like a recurring cancer – part of a daily battle against evil.
But these days, people are more likely to believe in their essential goodness. People who live by the Good Person Construct try to balance their virtuous self-image with their selfish desires. They try to manage the moral plusses and minuses and keep their overall record in positive territory. In this construct, moral life is more like dieting: I give myself permission to have a few cookies because I had salads for lunch and dinner. I give myself permission to cheat a little because, when I look at my overall life, I see that I’m still a good person.
The Good Person isn’t shooting for perfection any more than most dieters are following their diet 100 percent. It’s enough to be workably suboptimal, a tolerant, harmless sinner and a generally good guy.
Brooks and Ariely assert that when it comes to our modern moral reckonings, most people assume close is good enough. But are Brooks and Ariely right in their analysis?
One of the bad habits I have is reading what commenters post at the bottom of online articles. These comments range from the insightful to the mundane to the paranoid to the bellicose. Nevertheless, the reason I read these commenters – as maddening as they can sometimes be – is because they give me a sense of our society’s zeitgeist. It is with this in mind that I had to chuckle at the top comment, as chosen by The New York Times, on David Brooks’ piece:
Most people in the world today are just trying to survive. A billion people don’t have access to clean water. In America, we see people who destroyed the economy not prosecuted. We see soldiers fight in far off lands, many coming home damaged for life. We see corporations allowed to buy elections. Millions of dollars are thrown away on tawdry campaign commercials that only enrich the coffers of media companies.
There is so much angst in the world today, and Mr. Brooks thinks we should worry about stealing office supplies, or eating an extra cookie.
Thank you for proving Mr. Brooks’ point, kind commenter. Notice how this commenter gauges morality. There are big moral issues – things like dirty drinking water, crimes left unprosecuted, physically and emotionally wounded soldiers, and corporate corruption – and there are small moral issues – things like stealing office supplies or eating an extra cookie. Who has time to sweat the small stuff when there are bigger fish to fry?
But notice the subversive self-aggrandizement that undergirds this commenter’s response. For all of the immoral injustices this commenter identifies are “out there.” Immorality resides in greedy politicians and corrupt corporations, not in people who casually comment on New York Times pieces. This commenter intimates his own morality by decrying others’ immorality. He implies his own relative goodness by opining about the macro-moral problems of our world while jettisoning the micro-moral failings of his life. He seems to believe, to use Brooks’ language, in his own “essential goodness.”
All this is not to say our macro-moral problems are somehow unimportant. They are vitally important. But our micro-moral problems matter too. Why? Because there is no macro-immorality problem in our world that did not begin as a micro-immorality problem in a life. Big injustices begin one person and one decision at a time. Just ask Adam and Eve.
David Brooks concludes his column with a sage warning: “We’re mostly unqualified to judge our own moral performances, so attach yourself to some exterior or social standards.” Brooks is almost right. An exterior standard is indeed necessary to gauge human morality in any sort of meaningful way. But I would argue that this exterior standard should not be a social one. For social standards, though they might be relatively external to us, are not absolutely external to us, because they are based on the collective consensus of human societies – you and me. Thus, even morality guided by social standards ultimately collapses into an internal moral narcissism. Only God is absolutely external. Therefore, in the Christian view, only God can serve as humanity’s enduring moral compass. Only God can judge our moral performances for what they truly are. Is it any wonder the preacher of Hebrews declares of the Lord, “‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ and again, ‘The Lord will judge His people’” (Hebrews 10:30)?
Our modern moral mores decry judging other people’s morality. Christianity decries this too (cf. Matthew 7:1-2). But Christianity takes it a step further. For Christianity not only prohibits judging other people’s morality, it also prohibits judging our own morality. Christianity teaches that we are so morally depraved, we can do nothing less than judge ourselves with a foolhardy rose-colored ethical optimism. In other words, we dupe ourselves into believing we are better than we really are. This is why it is God’s job to adjudicate morality – all morality…our morality. And we are called to listen, follow, and believe God’s verdict on morality – all morality…our morality.
[1] David Brooks, “The Moral Diet,” The New York Times (6.7.2012).
June 18, 2012 at 5:15 am Leave a comment