Idolatry of Experience

Posted on December 15, 2007

In the Winter ’07 issue of n+1, Mark Greif lays out part two of “The Meaning of Life.” His summary of Part I is a striking indictment of those of us who depend on experiences to find meaning in our lives:

A year ago, I wrote an essay about a modern crisis in experience. I defined experience as the habit of creating isolated moments within raw occurrence in order to save and recount them. Questing after an ill-defined happiness, you are led to substitute a list of special experiences and then to collect them to furnish our storeroom of memories: incidents of sex, drinking, travel, adventure. These experiences are limited in number, unreliable and addictive. Their ultimate effect can be a life of permanent dissatisfaction and a compulsion to frenetic activity.

Greif’s cultural criticism is incisive. He has cut to the core of heart issues and idolatries in a economy driven by experience and entertainment. Stringing the events of our lives together, we so often find significance in the collective experiences we have come to call life.

Where Greif does not fare so well is in his remedy for his experience riddled countrymen. His solution is anchored in the ancient Greek philosophies of the Epicureans and Stoics.  Apart from his simplistic philosophic summaries, Greif proffers a life predicated, not on happiness, but on detachment. Instead of holding out hope for true happiness, something that can only be offered to man from God, Greif contends that we should strive for Epicurean “ataraxia, imperturbility and mental detachment.”

Interestingly, I recently preached a sermon that deconstructed the way of the experientialist and the doctrinalist in the search for what it means to know God. I, however, proffered the gospel of Christ that quickens the affections for God, instructs the mind regarding the truth, and affects our engagement with all things. Far from detachment, the gospel calls us to significance in Christ, who accepts us wholly and compels us totally to live out the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus in the dark, fuzzy, and illuminated places of our world.

Christ and Culture (Sanneh)

Posted on December 14, 2007

I am increasingly influenced by Lamin Sanneh’s work on gospel and culture. In his new book, Disciples of All Nations he well frames the gospel and culture issue as it relates to nationalism:

How can Christianity maintain its commitment to culture, insofar as culture embodies faith in a concrete way, while avoiding the sort of cultural idolatry that fuses truth claims and exclusive national ideals? How is cultural commitment compatible with religious openness? The history of Christianity, it has to be admitted, demonstrates an uneven record in balancing cultural specificity and theological normativeness, and the field is littered with failed attempts at reconciling Christ and culture.

This is particularly apropros during the Xmas season, when so much of Christmas is associated with national-cultural values and practices, straying far from the faith and truth of the gospel. How do you retain theological normativeness within our culture while avoiding idolatry?

Top Books for 2007 (that I actually read)

Posted on December 13, 2007

Here is a sundry list of things I read that made a particular impression on me this year. They were not all published this year. They are not necessarily my favorites, and they include fiction, non-fiction, previously read, etc. In no particular order…

Books:

  1. Falling Man, Don DeLillo.
  2. Harrison Bergeron, Curt Vonnegut
  3. Central Themes in Biblical Theology, ed. Hafemann & House
  4. Seeing Through Cynicism, Dick Keyes
  5. Total Church, Chester & Timmis
  6. Paul: A Fresh Perspective, N. T. Wright
  7. n + 1. a twice-yearly print journal of politics, literature, and culture.
  8. How Children Raise Parents, Dan Allender.
  9. The Moral Vision of the New Testament, Richard Hays
  10. Disciples of All Nations, Lamin Sanneh

Articles:

  1. “Converts or Proselytes?: The Crisis Over Conversion in the Early Church,” Andrew Walls IBMR 28
  2. “Anaesthetic Ideology,” Mark Greif n+1 vol. 5
  3. “Things I Wish I Had Known When I Planted My Church,” Next Wave