Moralistic Therapeutic Destiny
My son shared with me a song he created with a friend, now on Spotify. Give it a listen. They worked really hard on it.
Sometimes I forget how old my son actually is and need to pull out my fingers. And it always startles me to remember his age begins with the number one, and startles me more to remember that too was once my number when I was first aware of my Self.
The "idea" I spoke about yesterday, of "an utterly transcendent god with absolute control over history" and that every bit of life is "a necessary part of the deity’s larger purpose or plan" for me, is an idea I first considered when I was about my son's age. It's there right from the get-go when I opened the Bible.
I am sure this is not the idea my son has in his mind and heart now. And if he has to consider this idea, it must be within the basic parameters of how he considers his own destiny (if the word is used at all).
"Back to normal," such is the proper end we think we deserve. And what is "normal"?
"I really want to travel again," that's usually what I'd hear next. "I want to retire soon and live peacefully and comfortably ever after" is the true vacation from life we have in mind.
Such we take for granted, the bare minimum a person deserves after putting herself through the necessary shits of life, giving away herself, to be lorded over through much of it, so that she can be her own Lord at the end.
Now what if you want to jam into this universal expectation of a common Man the idea of a deity?
You tell me.
You talked about retirement all the time. You have ideas of what you are entitled to. There are things to you nonnegotiable—many, many things, big and small, bourgeois and bizarre. And if you are to fit into them all a god, or the mere idea of there being one, what do you want your "god" to be? What's in it for you?
The common belief we have can be summarized by three words "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism," each loaded with implications. Let me post here the basic observations of the sociologist who came up with the term. We believe:
- A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
- God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
- The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
- God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
- Good people go to heaven when they die.
Tell me if this is a fair description of our true doctrines, and ask ourselves how we have betrayed the Biblical God, right from the get-go, the very first words of the Bible.
It's a different world now. We are no longer asking the questions the Bible proposes. We are all alone now, with no end in sight.
This is an era outwardly of fulfilment but inwardly of despair. In a number of Western nations freedom for every man has been made relatively secure; the common people have gained command over the main centers of political and economic power; comparatively few are destitute and none are slaves. Something approaching the mastery of nature and the liberation of all men is being attained.
But with the looming of these accomplishments, the shadows of despondency seem to have lengthened. Alcoholism and suicide are massive social realities; countless works of fiction express mood of melancholy and terror; and the whole phenomenon of modern psychology, both in its discoveries and in its popular repute, testifies to the anguish of the men today."
― Glenn Tinder, "The Crisis of Political Imagination" (1964)
Yours, Alex
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