Solzhenitsyn on the Problems in the West

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is a name that may not be familiar to many young people today, but in 1978, he gave an incredibly important speech at Harvard University’s commencement in Russian. As a political dissident, he found himself in exile from the Soviet Union, so he found refuge in the United States, and he actually lived in Vermont which is a nice tie to my home state.

Solzhenitsyn was interesting because in his address, he spoke about the crisis of the West. While he did address the problems that were present in his homeland, he addressed his Western audience about their own shortcomings.

Within the first few minutes of his speech, he found what seems to be the Achilles’ heel of the West. “Western society expanded in a triumph of human independence and power. And all of a sudden in the twentieth century came the discovery of its fragility and friability.” We trust so much in human independence, the ultimate triumph of the Enlightenment, that we really don’t know what to do now that there are all kinds of problems associated with unfettered freedom.

In 1978, Solzhenitsyn didn’t even know all of the changes that were going to hit the West in the next 40 years, but our insatiable appetites have only increased. We want more and more of everything, but we still are not really happy. For whatever reason, we think that things can solve all of our problems. At least here in the United States, we have unprecedented levels of prosperity. Beyond that, we really are pretty independent people. I was thinking the other day about how for most of human history, you would have been happy to have one of something. It was enough to have one nice coat. However, now a lot of people even have a nice backup just in case they damage the one they have. It is not just about having enough, but it is about having enough in case we lose the enough that we have now.

Providing all of these unheard-of comforts to the citizenry was thought to be something that would lead to contentment and ultimately happiness. However, Solzhenitsyn observed, “In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: the constant desire to have still more things and a still better life, and the struggle to obtain them imprints many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to conceal such feelings.”

You probably have heard about keeping up with the Joneses, but it isn’t just about keeping up with them. Even if they have reached a certain level of material wealth, once we catch them, we still want to have more. It really isn’t much a matter of comparison. That is one significant part that we miss out on. We might say that we just want our share of the American dream or whatever other standard we might set, but if we are honest, we only care about comparisons when there is someone above us. Once we hit that standard that we have been talking about forever, then we still want more.

As a result, we are free from the state by and large. We are not dependent on state provision. We have our own stuff, and we have enough of our own stuff. However, we still want more. We want more possessions. We want to be able to purchase more and make more money.

We have simply traded one master for another.

This approach lends itself to some other vices. Solzhenitsyn highlights an obsession with legislation. After all, if we want to protect our own things, we have to build legal system that gives us a solid mechanism for defending our own property. Property is good, but an unhealthy obsession with more and more property means that we push ourselves to the legal boundaries rather than a concern for a good amount of what we need. “Nobody may mention that one could still not be entirely right, and urge self-restraint, a willingness to renounce such legal rights, sacrifice, and selfless risk: it would sound simply absurd. One almost never sees voluntary self-restraint. Everybody operates at the extreme limit of those legal frames.”

Again, this isn’t rocket science. If Solzhenitsyn were alive today, I don’t think he would be surprised by our current society. The situation didn’t get better. It got worse, and he noted this trajectory 40 years ago. If it isn’t illegal, most of us feel entitled to do it. Never mind what impact it may have on our culture or on anyone else. We push the boundaries right to the edge. We are not willing to sacrifice for other people to make it better for everyone. Rather, we want to push the boundaries to the edge for our own benefits.

One of the most powerful quotes from his entire lecture concerns the legal system. “Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man's noblest impulses.” Because we have built the culture of our society around our own independence and our chief concern is our own individual pursuits, we do whatever we can to advance our own situation. The law is the only thing that we see holding us back. Solzhenitsyn frowns on that development.

The problem is that it goes on even further. We want everything, and the only thing that keeps us in place is the legal system that we push to the limit anyway and would probably violate if we could do so without recourse. If it could possibly get worse, it does for Solzhenitsyn because we have idolized the individual, who potentially has the type of character I outlined above. This is not saying that there aren’t good people in the West, but he is saying that it is really dangerous when certain people are able to run, unhindered, in the path of individual choice. He said, “The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals.”

This leads to a great deal of freedom being used for horrible things, but that should not be a surprise. Solzhenitsyn points to something that is really unpopular today, and I assume it was unpopular in his day as well. “Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually, but it was evidently born primarily of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent in human nature.” For the Christian, this should be a red flag. We understand sin nature. We understand that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke and others argued that man was really just a blank slate. There is nothing inherently evil about humanity, and in the right environment, man would just be good. Solzhenitsyn kind of mocks this understanding of human nature by saying, “Strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still is criminality and there even is considerably more of it than in the pauper and lawless Soviet society.”

Some in the West have realized this and turned to socialism, an idea that Solzhenitsyn rejected. However, he understood that this turn to socialism was responsible for a genuine human emotion. “After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music.” In this quote he is obviously speaking about media, but it extends far beyond that. We realize something is wrong, and we realize that our society is moving in the wrong direction. We realize that there are problems with what is going on. We start to turn to other things because we want to feel something. We think that there has to be something better.

That’s the question then that we all need to answer. Where do we turn if we are unhappy with where we are at? We have a great deal of freedom and independence. These are good things. I would never argue against them by any means. However, we need to keep in mind that it is one thing to diagnose a problem, and it is quite another to find a solution for that problem. It’s hard because there are always a million possible solutions, and most solutions sound pretty reasonable in theory.

Humanism isn’t always a problem. Humanism can be a really good thing. It is good to embrace a philosophy that puts a great deal of importance on humanity. After all, don’t we want to love our fellow man and try to do what is best for society? I think most of us do, and it scares me to think of a governmental system that does not have the good of humanity at heart.

Nevertheless, Solzhenitsyn hits the nail on the head one more time. Humanism has problems when it stands alone, problems we have already diagnosed throughout this entire article. “Humanism without its Christian heritage cannot resist such competition.” The competition he refers to speaks about the intellectual competition with communism in the West. It is an intriguing intellectual exercise in the West because it seems to align very well with much of what we are missing. Communism seems to establish a higher system that provides meaning and order. We’re sick of what we have, so we want something to fill in the gaps. Humanism on its own, perhaps referred to as secular humanism by some, doesn’t have an answer. Instead, in the West we just see the disorder and are unsatisfied with it.

That’s why Christianity is so important. Christian humanism, on the other hand, believes in the inherent value of man not because of the faulty belief in our perfection but rather because we are created in the image of God. As soon as the myth of human goodness is busted by the evident corruption in the East and the West, humanism has nothing. Christian humanism does not make false claims about human nature. That is a substantial difference.

Not only that, but Christian humanism points towards the sense of order and meaning that the West seems to be missing. Solzhenitsyn does not go on to endorse Christian humanism. However, it is a rather obvious implication of his worldview. If there is a lack of meaning and structure in the West, something I would agree with, then there are a few alternatives that we can use to fill in that gap.

Maybe that is the answer to the question then. People are simply unsatisfied with where we are at. We have tried to find meaning in so many places. Why don’t we try to think about where we have found meaning in the past? As we have drifted further and further away from our Judeo-Christian roots and embraced more and more Enlightenment philosophy in its stead, you can see Solzhenitsyn’s argument play out more and more obviously.

Don't Be Afraid to Dream

When you are a little kid, you are always asked what you’re going to be when you grow up. When you’re in high school, you take a variety of personality tests that sometimes point you towards careers that may be suited for your interests and individual propensities. In college, you make a decision to pursue a major that you hope will lead to an eventual career in that field.

In terms of vocation, your entire childhood is practically based around hoping for something that you are going to be able to do. It is dreaming about a career that you really want to pursue, that you feel passionate about. You may not have it yet, but the encouragement is there to think about what could be. So many little kids dream about being professional athletes, and while we know that it is probably an unrealistic dream, we don’t automatically tell them not to dream. We tell them that if they work really hard, that dream might come true.

We may know that the fulfillment of that dream is unlikely. Playing in the NFL is an opportunity that very few people actually have, but it is not impossible, so we encourage our young people to dream. Even at the college level, while our dreams might be a bit more tempered by that point, we still know what we want to do, even if it is not incredibly likely. For all of your art history majors that want to work at the Louvre or the physics majors that want to work at NASA, their dreams very well might come true. Nobody is saying that they won’t. However, the majority of art history or physics majors will need to find their careers on some other trajectory simply because neither organization can employ everyone.

Something interesting seems to happen when we get out of college and start to work. So many people start to lose their dreams, or if they don’t leave their dreams entirely, they write them off as unrealistic or unachievable. They stop taking steps to pursue them for a variety of reasons.

I know some people who gave up their dreams because they had a family, so their priorities started to shift. That is a great reason, and I don’t question anyone about making that choice. Some people just give up entirely though for seemingly no reason other than the fact that they have gotten older, and that is what I do not understand.

Naturally, we have a limited amount of time on this earth, so when our future on this planet is shorter, there is less that we are going to be able to achieve. I can do more in 50 years than I can in 40 years presumably. However, that doesn’t mean that there still isn’t a lot that I can do in 40 years. There is a lot that I can do in 10 years or even one year.

It strikes me as really odd then that we are so quick to give up our dreams. After all, maybe I love to play basketball and it finally dawns on me that I am never going to play in the NBA. However, what does that really mean in the grand scheme of things? Does it mean that I can’t dream anymore? Absolutely not. That particular dream might be dead, but it doesn’t mean that I have to surrender to a life of meaningless existence. It may mean that I have to change my plans a little bit, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t ever hope for anything ever again.

That’s what I seem to notice about people. They were forced to give up on a particular dream, whatever that may be, and they all of a sudden decide that they can dream anymore in general. Because one thing did not work out, nothing is going to work out every again.

I don’t understand how people function that way. I am one of those people who always has another plan. Some things work out while others do not. However, that doesn’t mean that I never try consider some other type of dream ever again. I just keep thinking. The dreams never stop; I just keep jumping right in to figure it out.

I think there is a sense of hope that is required in order to dream, and I think that is the part that so many people are missing. If you don’t have hope, then you can’t dream. Without hope, a dream is simply a fantasy, an unrealistic one at that. Therefore, why bother dreaming? Why bother talking about what might be because it isn’t going to happen anyway?

You see, that’s why I think that we have these dreams when we are young and gradually lose them as we get older. Young people generally still have hope. They have not become so incredibly jaded in their short time on earth, so they are still willing to think about what may be. They are willing to think that the future may be better than the present. Some may call that unrealistic, and that’s fine. However, they are willing to at least be open to the possibility that the future may be better. I think that is a huge step in the right direction that all of us can learn from.

I’m not suggesting that we go through life assuming that everything will be perfect and will work out the way we want. Our experience has shown us the folly of that. We know that life is not perfect. I am saying that is better to go through life with a type of hope. Am I advocating for some type of wish fulfillment? Not at all. Rather, I would suggest a more balanced approach. We cannot assume that everything is going to be perfect. We live in a fallen world after all, and Christians need to recognize that reality. However, we also cannot assume that everything is always going to be terrible or everything is going to be full of disappointments. Again, Christians believe that God created this world perfectly, and while it is marred by sin, it still retains elements of its original goodness. There is still beauty in the world. There is still hope in the world. It is not perfect, and we feel the problems associated with sin all the time. We see it around us, in our own lives and in the lives of others. However, we also know that there is no question that God is still with us. He has not abandoned this planet. As long as God is here, and He always will be, there is always hope.

Here’s my suggestion then as we think about hope and dreaming. Dreaming is good because dreaming aligns with the way the world is. Hope is still here, and that hope transcends any jadedness we might have or feel. Why not think about what could be or should be? Why not talk about what we hope happens in the future? Why not think about making the world a better place? It certainly is not too late. God is still here.

I personally think that when we dream, we are doing what God calls us to do. We are hoping. I think it is part of God’s design for us to be entirely honest for you. Why do you think we have this tension between God’s kingdom here on earth and God’s future kingdom that we see presented at the end of Revelation? It is good for us to want that which is good. It is a type of dream. We are looking forward to something that we are anticipating with great joy. We hope that it will come true because we know it will be a great thing if it does. And the great part about God's hope is that we know it is going to come true. Therefore, we have something better than just a hope; we have a sure hope.

It is far too easy for us to get wrapped up in what is true here and now, but it doesn’t have to be that way, and if you are a dreamer, I say that you should keep dreaming. Think about something that could be or should be and take definite steps to try to make that happen. Maybe your dream will never come true the side of paradise. That’s possible. However, don’t let that turn you off from the process of dreaming altogether. In the words of Fleetwood Mac, “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.” I believe it is biblical to dream and to hope, and I think that the world could use more of it. Think about the implications of a world full of Christians that were not afraid to dream. They could do so much, and they would have the disposition to give it a try.

They could dream about what may be or could be, and the funny thing about things that may be or can be is that sometimes they turn into things that are.

How much good could be done with a group of people who had a vision to dream about something highly beneficial, and they actually started to take that dream and give it a try? Think about it. In fact, dream about it.

Living within the Truth: Vaclav Havel Applied to Christianity

I recently read “The Power of the Powerless” by Vaclav Havel after I read about it in The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher. It was my second time through The Benedict Option, but for whatever reason I decided to find a copy of this essay this time. I am so glad I did.

It struck me that even though this essay was written for those who suffered under the oppressive regime of communism in Czechoslovakia, it has remarkable implications for Christians in our world today. I am not at all comparing our situation to the atrocities that people like Havel had to endure. That would be an inappropriate comparison to say the least. However, I do think that the strategies that Havel suggests for political dissidents in Czechoslovakia can be applied to Christians in our culture who want to stand against the way our culture is going. The application of these strategies and his culture brought down communism. I think that applying these strategies in our culture can bring down secularism.

First, we have to start with Havel’s shopkeeper. He is just an average guy, and he puts a sign in his window that says, “Workers of the World, Unite!” Havel suggests that our shopkeeper very well might not really believe that the workers of the world need to unite or even want to put that sign in his window, but “he does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life ‘in harmony with society,’ as they say.”

How easy is that for us as Christians? How many times do we just go along with what the crowd says because it keeps everyone happy? We don’t want to make waves or ruffle anyone’s feathers, so we compromise. After all, we know that we don’t believe these things, but we are happy enough to just blend in and not get ourselves in trouble.

This thing is that just going with the flow and tacit acceptance of ideology is exactly what the post-totalitarian state wanted the people Czechoslovakia to do. Havel explains, “The primary excusatory function of ideology, therefore, is to provide people, both as victims and pillars of the post-totalitarian system, with the illusion that the system is in harmony with the human order and the order of the universe.”

That’s the trick. Slowly, this ideology infects people’s minds. They see propaganda everywhere that tells them that the workers of the world must unite. They may not care very much about it, but it shows up everywhere. This ideology is reiterated on the storefront of every indifferent shopkeeper, and soon the illusion of harmony is perfected. This system is supposed to lead to a “blind automatism” that simply keeps people where they belong. Everything is the way it is, and they are soon dominated by the ruling powers and accept the fact that the way it is is the way it should be. In fact, Havel points out that people do not even have to believe in the system at all, “but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them.”

This silence and the lack of action to call out the shortcomings of this system is what ensures the continuance of the system. “This metaphysical order guarantees the inner coherence of the totalitarian power structure. It is the glue holding it together, its binding principle, the instrument of its discipline. Without this glue the structure as a totalitarian structure would vanish.” The metaphysical order does not need to be true; it only needs to provide all the answers and prevent people from asking questions. It needs to provide satisfactory answers for the blind automation that it creates, and if anyone strays outside of his or her boundaries, they need to be put back in their place. That way, those in power and the system itself, which Havel suggests even constrains the people in power once the system is active, create a cohesive worldview. They can deal with anything that people throw out them, as long as what people throw at them comes from the approved list of questions that their worldview is able to satisfactorily answer.

The vital thing to keep in mind about this entire system though is that it is entirely false. It is a bunch of people who have been lulled into complacency, and they want to go along just to get along. It is an effective strategy, but this entire reliance on ideology “works only as long as people are willing to live within the lie.”

Here is where the hope lies because some people will get sick of living within the lie. Our shopkeeper might stir up enough courage to not put up the sign that he is supposed to put in his shop window. He isn’t even taking an active step to do anything about the political system in place, but even his refusal to do what the government wants is nevertheless an action. “In this revolt the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie. He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth.”

I cannot emphasize this point enough, and if you remember nothing else from this post, think about this. When we take a stand for that which is right and that which is true, we are in actively revolt against the post-totalitarian state. They want to create a system where we go along blindly and only ask the appropriate questions. By saying that we are going to do something different, ask different questions, or not blindly accept what we are told to accept, we are in revolt even if we don’t necessarily feel like we did very much. We haven’t done anything other than say, “No!” to the lie around us, but that is what it takes to begin to break the enchantment of the system. Once people realize that it is possible to do something other than go with the flow, the power of the system has been demolished. Havel goes on to explain what this looks like and how cultural institutions and substructures are built to support this community built around the rejection of the status quo, but I am not going to take us to that point today. Rather, we are going to camp on this point.

By simply being willing to dispute the lie, our shopkeeper “has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system.” And beyond that, he has brought himself back to humanity and the dignity that his humanity entails. “Living within the truth, as humanity’s revolt against an enforced position, is, on the contrary, an attempt to regain control over one’s own sense of responsibility.”

I promised at the outset that we were going to talk about how Christians can apply this methodology in our world of secularism. How we can be the people who expose secularism as a world of appearances?

First, secularism severs dignity from humanity. I know that many are going to dispute this point vehemently, but it matters. Christians believe that humans have inherent dignity because we are created in the image of God. Therefore, like Havel assumes, Christians believe it is good for us to live within the truth and have that sense of dignity and responsibility for our own lives. We are created with free will for a reason, and we are not meant to be blind automatons.

From a secular perspective, there is nothing inherently valuable about humanity. Perhaps we are valuable because we are alive, but there is not much difference between us and other life forms. We may be more advanced, more complex, and more intelligent, but we are looking at a difference of degree rather than a difference of kind. The Christian perspective supposes that humans are a different and special kind of life. That makes this valuable and provides us with dignity. The secular worldview does not provide that dignity beyond the dignity that applies to any kind of life form by virtue of being alive.

This desire for dignity that Havel recognizes is something that we can affirm from a Christian worldview, and I think that we need to keep that in mind as we proceed. We offer something to culture that secularism cannot.

Second, secularism proposes to deposit a coherent worldview that can answer all of our questions just like communism tried to do in Czechoslovakia. The difference is that secularism often times hedges its bets in the possibility of scientific advancement. It is a worldview based on progressive discovery which is a good thing. After all, we want to understand this world as accurately as we can, and our opinions should be formed by the best evidence we have in front of us. Where secularism goes off the rails is when they argue that this type of hope in the progress of science can answer every question.

This type of secularism has been termed by some as scientism, and it is almost a religion in and of itself (although sociologists would disagree with this claim because of the absence of any type of supernatural belief). It certainly has the capability to answer questions about our physical world, but when the scientific method strays into the philosophical realm, it really does not have very much useful to say. Therefore, the quest for a purely secular worldview that can answer every question is really a tall order, and I would argue it is not possible. Some would dispute this, but that puts the burden of proof on them, and they need to provide satisfactory answers for the philosophical questions that surround us here on earth.

Because of that crack in the foundation, just like communism in Czechoslovakia, secularism does not live up to its promise. It cannot present a comprehensive worldview.

Finally, Havel focused a powerful light on the power of groupthink. So many people believe that secularism is valid because they have been told that so many people believe secularism is valid. Just like the sign in every shop window might make it feel like everyone supports communism, when we hear all of these smart people write books about how secularism is true, we just follow along. When they tell us that all the smart people are rejecting God, we just assume they are right. We go with the flow. As Christians, we can’t have that. We need to stand up to that challenge. First, we need to do what I suggested first and argue for human dignity. We have a unique case as Christians to argue, and we can resonate with that truth. We can break people out of living in the lie and bring them into living within the truth of human dignity. Second, we can show that the secular worldview simply is not coherent. With the crack in the foundation, it will be obvious that secularism cannot live up to its promise. When it cannot live up to its promise, then the myth has been broken. That is what we want to do as Christians. We need to bring people out of the lie and into the truth.

Why Christianity Takes Courage in America

It takes courage to live as a Christian in America in the 21st-century. I know that many of you are going to stop reading right now. Christians are not being killed in America like we are in so many other parts of the globe. We don’t even face imprisonment here in the United States of America. Yes, some people have had to face economic consequences for standing by their Christian convictions, but by and large, there is very little oppression of Christianity in the United States.

If that was what I was talking about, you would be right. The United States is not currently a place where you are going to lose your life for being a Christian.

However, Christianity takes courage in the United States because of the cultural climate we find ourselves in. I have a few reasons for believing this, and I will lay those out sequentially for you.

First, consider what it means to be a Christian. You are putting your faith in the fact that Jesus Christ, God in human form, died and rose again. Not only that, but after He came back to life, He ascended into heaven. Not only that, but we trust our Bibles. Our Bibles are full of things that are pretty incredible as well. Think about it. The Israelites were led by a pillar of fire, and they still rejected God. I don’t know what is harder to believe: the fact that there was a pillar of fire miraculously leading them or the fact that they could be so stubborn and ignore such an obvious signal of divine presence. Not only that, but we believe in God creating the universe out of nothing.

Affirming these truths seems crazy especially in our hyper-rationalistic age. Affirming Christianity means staring that culture in the face and saying that we don’t buy into the assumptions of philosophical naturalism. We reject the prevailing worldview of American culture. It takes courage to go against the grain. Naturally, we have reasons for what we believe, and they are perfectly valid reasons, but not everyone is going to see it that way. This is not a call to anti-intellectualism, but it is rather a call to the recognition that there are people who are going to think we are ridiculous for believing what we believe despite all the evidence we might provide to support our position. Because we are going against the culture, it takes courage to have some people call us crazy no matter how much proof we provide.

As a brief side note on this topic before we continue, I think this is a particular temptation for people who tend to be proud of what they know. For people who have built their reputation on being one of the smartest people in the room, it can be hard to admit that they believe something that is going to make people think they are false. Of course, we understand that, as Christians, we are called to be fools for Christ, but that can be a difficult challenge for some of us. If we have built a reputation on how smart other people think we are, we have to be willing to give that up if necessary. We never give up our pursuit of truth, but some people will not support us when we follow the path to the cross.

Secondly, Christianity takes courage in our culture because so many people simply do not understand what it means or think that they are with us when they are not. The 2018 version of The State of Theology survey came out recently. 78% of Christians somewhat or strongly believe that Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God. That’s a little problematic unless you don’t mind heresy. 32% of evangelicals say that their beliefs are not objectively true. You can imagine how someone like the apostle Paul would respond to one third of evangelicals. 53% of evangelicals would somewhat or strongly agree with the statement that everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature. I’m not a huge fan of the wording of this statement, but it is potentially problematic if this belief in the goodness of humanity extends to not requiring salvation from Jesus Christ. The survey didn’t press further on this point as far as I can tell, but you can see how this could be a big problem.

You wonder why I bring this up and why it takes courage to be a Christian in this kind of culture where even Christians have erroneous theological views that are at odds with two millennia of Christian tradition. Sometimes it is harder to stand up to those who think they are on our side. It is really easy for me to stand up to Planned Parenthood and say that abortion is wrong. They don’t pretend to agree with me, and I don’t think that they are on the same page as I am. Therefore, we both realize we are bound to collide. While it may not always be the most pleasant, it is not surprising.

Personally, I find it harder when we have people who say they are Christians, but their theology really makes you wonder if they actually are. I’m not here to judge them. That is between them and God. However, when they hold positions that are contrary to the Biblical testimony, they need to be brought back into orthodoxy. They need to be brought back into a true understanding of God. There would be very few things worse than facing God on judgment day, thinking that you had been following Him your entire life and realizing that He never knew you. That truly is a wasted life, thinking that you were doing everything right to find your way to eternal security and being incorrect the entire time.

These discussions are naturally very hard to have because they believe that they are truly following God, and I truly believe that I am following God. In some ways, we are on the same team, but in other ways, we are entirely separated. It is an entirely different conversation than the one that I have with someone at Planned Parenthood. It takes courage to talk to those within our own camp to help bring them back to a right understanding.

It is difficult to criticize members of our own camp, and it takes courage to counterintuitively show them love by pointing out where they are falling out. It may not seem kind or loving, but we have to step up and take on that challenge. After all, it matters. These kinds of things are not little tangents of the Christian faith. We need to stand firm for Christianity, and doing it with those people who believe they are actually aligned with us takes a great deal of strength and courage.

Third, I think that the most powerful tactic that Satan uses against us is the belief that we are isolated. The whole country is falling apart, and no one is really a Christian anymore. We are all alone, and there is no one who can help us.

Of course that is blatantly false. We are never alone as long as God is with us, but we are also never humanly alone, especially in the United States today. We believe we are isolated, and we are told that Christianity is some kind of relic of our national past, but that is entirely false. However, the reason that we believe we are isolated is because we often times do not speak out. We are not public with our Christianity, so that person who sits beside you at the office or the other parent at your child’s football practice might be a Christian just like you, but you would never know it.

There is a story that I know I heard through my church at one point, and I don’t know if it is true or not, but it talks about a lady who was a member at a relatively large church. It was at least large enough that she didn’t know everyone who attended there on a regular basis since they had multiple services and a large auditorium. She heard there was a community supper, and she thought that she should invite the lady who sat beside her in the office to that dinner. She had never really spoken to her about her Christian faith before, but she thought this may be a good opportunity.

She went to the office the next day and was really nervous about invading her friend. Of course we are all afraid of rejection or ridicule as I mentioned above. However, when she told her coworker, her coworker laughed. Our lady was a little bit confused, but her coworker explained that she had been convicted to invite her to that same dinner and was just as afraid to ask her.

Obviously, the story has a happy ending, and, like I said, I don’t know if it is true or not. However, the kind of sad part about this story is that these two ladies worked beside each other, and neither one knew that the other one was a Christian or even that they attended the same church. Thinking that we spend 40 hours every week with our coworkers, it is at least humbling to me to wonder if many of them know that I am Christian. Facebook makes that much more obvious if they see what I post, but it does worry me to think about how few of my coworkers I have ever shared the Gospel with. I could be just like one of the women in that story. My coworkers might believe they are isolated. I might have more Christian coworkers than I think, but if we are all quiet about it, we will think that we are the only ones there who follow Jesus Christ. Those ladies thought they were isolated, but they were not in actuality. I think that Satan is very happy to keep this feeling that way. Therefore, it takes a great deal of courage to speak up. We get the benefit of feeling that God is with us when we step out in faith, but we also get to encourage someone else who may be feeling like they are the only question left in their office, on the sports team or in town even.

It is not easy to be a Christian in America. I realize our lives are not in danger, and I do not write this to minimize the experience of Christians around the world who face that kind of persecution. I am grateful that I do not have to face those potential consequences in my life right now. However, that does not mean that being a Christian is easy in America either, and the challenges we face, while not lethal, I still plenty strong enough to cripple us and make us ineffective for the cause of Jesus Christ. We can be afraid of ridicule, awkward conversations and isolation. Those are all very real things, and they are barriers that can really bring us down. We need to face them with courage and charge them head-on. Until we do that, we are not going to do all that God would have us to do.

Why Do We Keep Seeing Remakes? We Have Forgotten the Metanarrative

You probably have heard that Disney is making a live-action remake of Aladdin. This follows their live-action remake of Cinderella, but in more general terms, I’m sure you have noticed that there is a trend towards unoriginality in Hollywood. It is not just Disney; we also have seen revivals of Roseanne, Murphy Brown, Hawaii Five-0, Magnum PI, Fuller House, Mary Poppins and so many others. Whether on the big screen or on network television, you have to wonder why we don’t get new ideas.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the attraction towards nostalgia. I first wrote about this tendency of Hollywood in 2016 when I wrote about Fuller House and The Karate Kid remake. I then wrote about MTV Classic, also in 2016, and I suggested that we need to be aware of how we are communicating today because nostalgia for methods that worked in the past may not work today. Finally, I wrote about that YouTube Red series Cobra Kai, and I asked a very important question that I think will inform our discussion today. If we are so focused on the past, are we missing out on great things that could happen in the present? Sure, I love The Karate Kid, and it is awesome to be able to go down memory lane. That being said, is it possible that there are plenty of brilliant storytellers out there today who have their own stories that they want to tell, and could resources be more effectively brought towards those people? In that situation, we could still watch Ralph Macchio from 30 years ago, but we could still see more great stories develop today. That seems like a better proposal.

However, I’m not sure that is a realistic proposal. I wasn’t thinking in this context when I wrote that article in 2017, but as I have been thinking more about the idea of story and narrative, I think that I have a better idea as to why we continually come back to the old stories and remake them (with a few politically correct adaptations, of course, since this is 2018).

In short, I am going to propose the existence of a metanarrative, the great story of humanity. That story has certain themes in it, and themes that are consistent with the metanarrative are the ones that stick with us. Those are the stories we like because, as humans, we are designed to like certain things and recognize that which is truly good. However, as we have gotten further out of touch with this metanarrative and virtue, our modern stories therefore are less consistent with that narrative. Because they are less consistent with that narrative and what is consistent with our nature, they do not do well in the box office, so Hollywood has reverted to the old stories. They are more consistent with that narrative and therefore are successful because people like them. It goes beyond nostalgia and is deeper than that even though nostalgia may be part of it.

The Metanarrative

First, we need to consider this concept of metanarrative. As Christians, we understand that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We also understand that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Of course, this is talking about Jesus Christ in context, but we would be remiss if we did not recognize the significance of describing Jesus Christ as the Word. Words tell stories. Words communicate meaning. Jesus Christ is indeed the story in the world. He is the great story, and He is the metanarrative. He is the overarching Word that provides the lens for interpreting everything else. If we want to know why anything in this world has meaning or significance, it derives that significance through the person of Jesus Christ. Our meaning and our stories are significant because we are created in the image of God. He gave our stories meaning through His, and we are a part of His metanarrative.

Because we are part of this larger story orchestrated by God and are created in the image of God, there are certain things that are going to be consistent with our God-given desires. There are things that are going to remind us of God’s story. As a pretty easy example, most of us resonate with the theme of justice. To use one of my examples above, think about Cinderella. We feel that it is unfair that Cinderella is mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters. Therefore, when, through the intervention of her fairy godmother, she is able to go to the ball and ultimately marries the prince, our sense of justice is satisfied. We feel like everything worked out the way it should. After all, Cinderella is a pretty decent person, and her evil relatives should not be able to walk all over her. They should be punished for mistreating Cinderella, and Cinderella should triumph. We want her to have a happy ending, and we love this story because she does. Nobody would like Cinderella if her wicked stepsister ended up getting married to the prince. That would not satisfy our innate sense of justice.

Storytelling in and of itself is nothing new, and you can see these kinds of things echoed all over our world across time and culture. It could be a giant coincidence that these kinds of themes of justice, mercy, love or joy seem to come up again and again. Or, it could be, as I suggest, that because we are created in the image of God, we have some idea of this metanarrative. It is almost Platonic if you will. We realize that there are these ideals, and we tell stories about these ideals. We try to line up with the metanarrative in our stories. We try to line up with God’s story. Even in those cultures that would not recognize the God that we believe in or have never heard the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, by virtue of being created in the image of God, they are part of the metanarrative. They are part of the story that God has established, so they resonate with the parts of it that are consistent with God’s story.

We look at the story of Jesus Christ, and we recognize justice. A perfectly innocent victim died for the sins of all humanity, but we see what J. R. R. Tolkien classified as eucatastrophe. At the last minute, when everything seemed dark, we see justice triumph. Jesus Christ conquered the grave. He didn’t have to come, and He did not have to endure the cross, but His mercy and love shown through because He did. However, conquering death was not the only thing that Jesus did; He made a way for you and me to experience unmerited yet complete, eternal joy.

I think you can theoretically see some of the connections I’m trying to show you here. The themes that we love about classic stories are also present in God’s metanarrative. Therefore, it becomes a question of whether or not these are random coincidences, or could it be that, as a Christian would contend, we are drawn to stories that celebrate the themes that we see in God’s story because we are created in the image of God? We are undoubtedly marred by sin, but we have some concept of what good looks like, and we love that which is good. We love justice because justice is good. We love joy because joy is good. We love mercy because mercy is good. Love in and of itself is good. It is not a matter of whether or not we happen to feel they are good; they are objectively good.

Modern Metanarrative Integration

We can go down the list of classic movies and television shows and find these themes everywhere. It is not that every one of these movies or shows happens to display all of the hallmarks of Christian virtue. Far from it; we are talking about Hollywood after all. However, think about a movie like Saving Private Ryan. That picture of sacrifice is beautiful. Think about the friendship and love in The Wizard of Oz (not to mention justice). Inception tells a powerful story of reconciliation. Even very dark movies like Fight Club can show us important truths about our dissatisfaction with the status quo. The Breakfast Club illuminates our desire to belong and make something of our lives. My list could go on for very long time, but I don’t think it is hard to see how these themes come right out of God’s story. Of course, I’m obviously not saying that these movies are speaking the voice of God (far from it for each and every one of these), but I am saying that because the writers and directors are created in the image of God, it is not surprising that the themes that they put into their stories and, unsurprisingly, the themes that made their movies wildly popular with their audience are the exact same ones that spawned from within the metanarrative of God.

This is amazing when you start to think about it. What we, Christians and non-Christians alike, love about our favorite movies comes directly out of God’s story. We might not recognize it, but it is there. There is no doubt that if you ask people why they love Saving Private Ryan, they are not going to say because of all the violence. There are probably going to say because of the sacrifice or brotherhood of soldiers. If you ask people why they love Fight Club, they will first refuse to talk about fight club, but if you press them, they will say that they can resonate with its rejection of consumerism and a life of insignificance. This is like God’s ultimate guerrilla tactic. We may not even realize it, but it is too much of a consistent trend to be merely a coincidence. Look at every top movie and find out why people love it. You will find a theme that comes right out of God’s story.

Why Now?

With this groundwork set, we can then advance to the question as to why Hollywood can’t seem to find a new story and why they continually want to make updates of old stories.

Before we get into the deeper theory, let me first suggest that there is a great deal of financial incentive. This is when nostalgia comes into play. If there was a new version of The Sound of Music, I would watch it (and I did when NBC did its TV version a few years ago). I love The Sound of Music, and I associate it with good memories. Therefore, there is a degree of nostalgia without a doubt. Knowing that nostalgia is powerful, it is a rather safe decision to produce that movie. It will make money almost all the time. I understand that money talks.

That being said though, I don’t know that nostalgia is necessary or even the only reason. After all, if my theory is correct, if we create a movie based on a theme that is consistent with God’s metanarrative, it is going to resonate with the audience assuming, of course, it is a well-made movie. There is a reason that most Christian films don’t do well; most of them are not overly great movies (although I am happy to say that this trend does seem to be changing with movies like The Case for Christ and I Can Only Imagine). It is not just enough to have the right themes; it has to be a well-made movie as well. Nevertheless, the themes are absolutely necessary.

Also, film has been around as a genre approximately 100 years. You didn’t really see tons of nostalgia until recently. If the theory about nostalgia being the chief driver was true, then I feel like in the 1970s, you would have seen a rash of movies that hearkened back to the early days of film. Just like people my age grew up with Aladdin and now are going to go see a remake, that kind of parallel have easily existed prior to now. We don’t see it though as far as I know.

Consequently, I don’t think that nostalgia is a sufficient reason for explaining why we see them all popping up right now.

Secondly, stories have been told for a very long time, but it is not that we have run out of stories. I don’t know that we have reached the end of human creativity; the mind is a pretty wild thing that has pretty wide boundaries. I absolutely reject the assertion that there are no stories still to be told. The evidence against that is that there are every now and then great movies that are made and resonate with people even today. The well is not dry.

However, what could possibly be the reason then for these types of movies if it is not straight nostalgia or simply an exhaustion of possible story options?

I would suggest that we have forgotten the themes or outright rejected them. This trend is nothing new, but for much of human history, so many things have been simply understood as true and self-evident. Being heroic was seen as a good thing (check out this article by Carla Alvarez in An Unexpected Journal about the development of heroes that lends some support to this idea). Today, we make movies about the antihero. We are interested in the story of the villain, and we want to put that center stage. For most of human history, it was seen as a good thing to have a stable family. Now we make comedies based on all of the potential twists and turns that tear apart the nuclear family. We laugh about what we formerly valued.

Rather unsurprisingly, we see a lot of movies fall apart if they do not embrace any of the themes out of God’s story. Like I suggested previously, any movie is far from perfect. None of them are even close to pure. However, the movies that you see flop are the ones that do not have any strong thematic ties to that which is consistent with human nature and the metanarrative. In fact, when you look at most of the worst-rated movies of all times, they almost always fail to have any type of definite theme. They fall apart because they fail to connect to that which is innately human but more importantly part of God’s story.

Therefore, I think my conclusion that we either have forgotten or rejected the themes makes a great deal more sense than the alternatives. Film directors don’t know what makes a successful film because they have gotten away from the things of God. Not that Hollywood has ever been the American bastion of morality, but culturally, Americans seemed to at least understand these themes a little bit more through the general Judeo-Christian culture that defined our country. I am not saying that we were a Christian nation, but I am saying that there was a greater awareness of Christian truth in the past because Christianity undoubtedly played a more significant role in the cultural conversation in that time. Therefore, it would not be surprising if a filmmaker thought that it would be a great idea to embed the theme of mercy within his or her film. They would recognize that it was a good thing because it was culturally understood to be objectively good.

These objective truths are becoming cloudier and cloudier. We turn away from them more and more as a culture, so when we are creating films or any other cultural project, we simply might not see the importance of fitting these themes into our work. Without the awareness of the metanarrative and its distinct features, we are going to miss these themes that resonate with people and make movies classic. The best movies had them. They find their ways into movies nowadays, but it is less likely to find these ideas because they are not as prevalent in the culture that undoubtedly influences the art that filmmakers make.

It briefly comes back to money again here at the end of the story. If you are a major film studio and can only make so many movies within your budget, you need to get a return on those films to stay in business. You may not recognize why Aladdin was so beloved, but you know that it was. Therefore, you know that you can rekindle that magic again. You don’t have to know about the themes present in Aladdin that are consistent with God’s metanarrative, but if you are a businessman or woman of any merit, you will want to go back to that again as long as you can.

If you have followed me this long, then I think that you can see how this story ends. You want the magic, but you don’t know where to get it. Therefore, you have to return to the same old stories. If our film studios understood how to generate this magic again, I don’t think we would see nearly as many remakes as we do. However, they don’t know how to predict a successful movie. They don’t realize where the magic comes from, and they have forgotten God’s metanarrative altogether or outright rejected it as irrelevant.

The problem they face is that the movies that people love are the ones that are consistent with that metanarrative. The answer is to return to God’s story. I’m not saying every movie has to be an allegory. Every story does not need to be The Pilgrim’s Progress. That would get boring after a while. Rather, what I’m saying is if you want to make a movie that people want to watch and love, you need to make a movie that resonates with them on a human level. Because, at our deepest level, we are created in the image of God, we have some idea of that which is good. Our perspective is undoubtedly marred by sin, but we know what justice is when we see it. We know what mercy is. We understand what is valuable about heroism. Believe it or not, God understands that as well and showed it to us in its purest form, and He created us to desire these things. Therefore, we also desire portrayals of those good things. If Hollywood wants to be able to tell new stories that are successful, they need to get back in touch with the metanarrative and embrace those themes.