Craig Hazen

Election Year Evidence of Cultural Narcissism

Craig Hazen — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 06:00:00 -0800

“The most important election in …”

“This is the greatest financial disaster since …”

“We predict the largest voter turnout since … “

“There is more at stake in this election than … “

“Clearly this is the nastiest election in the history of …”

“The country hasn’t been this divided since … “

The candidates, their campaigns, main stream media, new media, neighbors, friends, pastors, dentists, and bloggers have characterized the presidential election of 2008 in terms that should be reserved for the most prominent moments in history—you know, like the Big Bang, the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs, or universal heat death. Based on the rhetoric students will never again need to study history because it has reached its zenith in the epic battle between two omnipotent forces.

Indeed, George W. Bush, because of his silence and lime-light avoidance, actually looks like the voice of reason, peace, and serenity in the midst of the election—which by most media accounts is the greatest upheaval in at least the history of the Milky Way. Perhaps this Lama-like posture during this tectonic shift will be his real legacy.

Certainly the hyperbole has gotten out of hand and may be a symptom of a cultural disorder unique to our generation. Historians looking back on this election cycle will likely not see galactic consequences, but they may see our rhetoric about it as a sign of a strange new strain of cultural narcissism. Now it is not just “all about me” as an individual, but it is “all about us” as a society. Everything we do, every crisis we face, every success we have is the greatest of all time. Our elections, our choices are unprecedented in human history—at least that’s how the public rhetoric, ratcheted up to insane levels, is painting the picture.

Any student of America’s Civil War, or China’s Cultural Revolution, or the ancient Greek’s Battle of Salamis would think us mad for the grandiose descriptions of our own challenges. While the rest of the world looks back on Pol Pot and his genocidal regime as a true incarnation of historic evil, Keith Olbermann of MSNBC is busy declaring, with majestic outrage, Sarah Palin to be “the worst person in the world”! Only a deeply narcissistic and myopic social order could stomach such a wildly incongruous association.

The British writer C.S. Lewis must have seen this generation of cultural narcissists coming because he developed an antidote for it. After witnessing the horrors of World War II, he wrote an essay titled “On the Reading of Old Books” in which he prescribed his cure. “It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.” In order to avoid thinking to highly (or lowly) of ourselves in any generation Lewis thought we should drink deeply at wells of past cultures. “The only palliative,” he wrote, to keep our perspective in check “is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds.”

A good word from a man who took his own medicine and as a result wrote books and essays that seem to stand far above our circumstances and grant us a much more balanced perspective on our current time and place.

In conclusion, just let me gaze at our collective cultural navel one last time and say this: we have seen in these last few months what would have to be considered, by any sentient being, far and away the most hyberbolic election rhetoric in the history of communication throughout eternity and throughout the visible and invisible cosmos.

Religulous Review

Craig Hazen — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:04:31 -0700

Comedy tastes change over time. I’m sure a water-squirting daisy on a jacket lapel was a riot in its day. Knock-knock jokes kept me and my friends pretty entertained in second grade. And I’m sure Henny Youngman would not get the same laughs today if he were still alive doing stand up.

The new film Religulous starring comedian Bill Maher (HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher) and directed by Larry Charles (Borat, Curb Your Enthusiasm) seemed to fall pretty flat in the laughs department—like it was appealing to an audience that may have been amused by it twenty years ago. I was struck by how little laughter there was among those in the opening-weekend crowd. (In terms of magnitude, I use the word “crowd” here in the sense of the “crowd” that might attend a Joe Biden campaign rally.) Religulous was showing in the smallest theater in the multiplex (not much bigger than the “truck-driver’s chapel” that appeared in the film) and even then it was only about a third full.

It was pretty clear that the few folks attracted to the movie were already fans of Bill Maher and his open hostility to all things religious. Why, then, so little laughter from them? I think it’s obvious. Anyone who fits that strange “I’m smarter than Blaise Pascal, John Milton, C.S. Lewis, Maimonidies, and Averroes put together” mold has already had his laughs. After all, anyone who is able to work a TV remote control has immediate and never-ending access to some of the strangest displays of human religiosity imaginable on global network broadcasts. Those who get affirmed in their irreligion by watching such things have already tuned into the craziness many times to reassure themselves that believers are some fully evolved species of super kook. They do not need Bill Maher to replay it with a new soundtrack. The movie audience seemed pretty bored—and rightly so. They’d seen it all before on their own living room TVs.

Well, if it’s not very funny, then what does it have to offer? Nothing, really, except a chance for Maher and Charles to make a fast buck (glad I got my ticket for free). Maher is pitching this film as mavericky—telling the truth about religion that everyone else is afraid to address. But Religulous is nothing more than filthy, nudie, druggie, and obtusey. There is little to laugh at and nothing to learn (expect maybe that if you quit being religulous you get to act like Caligulous).

Christianity gets more than two thirds of the attention in the film. Were there any thoughtful and penetrating objections to Christianity in the film? No. Did they interview any thoughtful and accomplished Christian scholars. No. The closest they came to this was an interview with renowned scientist Dr. Francis Collins whose segment in the film made almost no sense indicating that they had butchered it down to nubs in the editing room.

Maher does bring up two points that are argued on occasion by knowledgeable opponents of Christianity. These are 1) that the New Testament was produced generations after the events they record, and 2) that the basic story of Jesus is simply a retelling of myths that predated him, myths that came out of Mitharism and Egyptian religion.

The latter argument is itself a retelling of the myth re-popularlized by Dan Brown in the The Da Vinci Code. Bill Maher and Dan Brown made the inexcusable error of never actually consulting experts in these ancient religions—or even doing a brief Google search. For instance, Prof. Gunter Wagner has set forth the conclusion of the evidence attempting to link Christianity with Mithraism. Writes Wagner, “Mithras does not belong to the dying and rising gods, and no death and resurrection ritual has ever been associated with this cult. Moreover, on account of the lateness of its spread, there is no evidence of the Mithras cult influencing primitive Christianity.”

As for the idea that the New Testament was written much later than Christians have traditionally believed, again, even a cursory study of the facts of the case would be helpful to people like Maher who claim to have objections based on evidence. It has been for many years the consensus of most modern scholars—believers and skeptics alike—that the Gospels were written in the latter half of the First Century AD The most common date ranges for the authorship of these documents are 70-80 AD for Matthew, 60-70 for Mark, 70-80 for Luke, and 80-90 for John. Since Jesus departed earth around 30 AD, these dates of authorship all fall into the generation that had first-hand contact with the events recorded. Maher simply seems to buy the popular mythologies and unquestioned assumptions that often pass for knowledge about early Christian history.

If a careful examination of the evidence did not drive Bill Maher to his conclusions about Christianity, then what did? Maher is wide open in the movie about the religious environment of his childhood. He was raised in a religiously schizophrenic home with a Roman Catholic mother and a Jewish father. He attended mass and Catholic school until he was thirteen when his family suddenly stopped. His mother said it was because she and her husband were tired of feeling guilty about using birth control. It wouldn’t be a stretch to propose a causal relationship between the way Maher’s family treated Christianity like a semi-useful fiction and Bill’s adult conclusion that Christianity is bunk. It reminds me of the great atheist of last century, Bertrand Russell. We really don’t get much in the way of substance when we read Russell’s famous book, Why I Am Not a Christian. But we seem to get far greater insight about Russell’s rejection of Christianity when we read his less famous autobiography. Like Maher, Russell’s dysfunctional religious upbringing seems to be far weightier than any rational argument in moving him to godlessness.

If there is one important lesson for Christians of all sorts to learn from this movie it is this: we have got to start talking differently about “faith.” Unfortunately, we have let the secular world and antagonists like Bill Maher define the term for us. What they mean by “faith” is blind leaping. That is what they think our commitment to Christ and the Christian view of the world is all about. They think we have simply disengaged our minds and leapt blindly into the religious abyss.

The biblical view of saving Christian faith has never had anything to do with blind leaping. Jesus himself was fixed on the idea that we can know the truth—and not just in some spiritual or mystical way. Rather, he taught that we can know the truth about God, humans, and salvation objectively. That is, the very best forms of investigation, evidence, and careful reasoning will inevitably point to God and His great plans for us. The early church learned well from the Master because they too were fixed on the idea that they knew that Jesus was raised from the dead and that we could know it too. The Apostles never made any room for interpreting their experiences of the risen Christ in some mystical or fictional fashion. As the Apostle Peter put it, “We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:16).

What we mean by “faith” is not blind leaping that is oblivious to the evidence, especially evidence to the contrary. Rather faith in it’s biblical context is trust grounded in objective knowledge. Faith is trusting that which we can know to be objectively true. I run a graduate program in Christian Apologetics at Biola University in which we train students at the highest levels to give compelling reasons for their faith. Maher did not knock on our door. But unfortunately, I think many of the Christians he interviewed would be surprised to learn that there is a robust knowledge tradition in Christianity. I long for the day when a guy like Maher would never consider making a film like this because it would be so difficulty to find Christians that he could hound and hoodwink.

Maher and Charles successfully put some of the goofiest strands of the Christian movement on public display for cinematic ridicule. Great skill, intellect, or cleverness, that did not require. The greater feat would be for the two documentarians to jump out of their own shallow presuppositions and prejudices to get a fresh look at what has made Christianity attractive to some of the greatest minds in human history. But I think it’s a good bet that they don’t have a sequel like that on the drawing board.

Five Sacred Crossings Interview, Part 3

Craig Hazen — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:48:22 -0700

I was recently interviewed about my book, Five Sacred Crossings: A Novel Approach to a Reasonable Faith, by the Evangelical Philosophical Society. Here is Part 3 of 3 parts.

If you click on Five Sacred Crossings, you’ll go to a page where you can download a free chapter of the book. There is a video interview I did with Peter for Conversantlife.com

Can you tell us what it was like to write Five Sacred Crossings?

The thing I enjoyed the most was discovering myself where the story was going next. I did not have a detailed master plan before writing, so every day was a little surprise with regard to the unfolding of the narrative. I am still surprised by my own ending. Re-reading it was an experience that I certainly have never had when writing academic books and essays. I picked it up, started to read somewhere in the middle and couldn't put it down. I wrote the darn thing yet got caught up in the story myself! It was far more exciting and emotional than I remember when first writing it out.

What would you like to see happen with this book?

Of course, I would like to see it recommended by Oprah so it gets the widest possible reading! Okay, so maybe that's not going to happen, but it's a good dream. My book probably won't get that kind of exposure, but I hope some other compelling, thoughtful, stereotype-breaking Christian literature does. I think this is going to be most likely if those of us in the community of Christian philosophy and apologetics interact with the Christian creative community more intentionally and intensely.

From where you observe, as the Director of a cutting-edge Graduate Program in Christian Apologetics at Biola University, can you say how we - as American Evangelicals - are doing in our apologetic efforts?

How are we doing with apologetics? Not bad. There is one advantage when secular culture encroaches more and more on the Church's turf. The Church seems to awaken to some of the important things she has neglected like the apostolic command in 1 Peter 3:15 to "be prepared always to give an answer." By any measure the interest in clear-thinking Christianity has been on the increase. This may just be a regional phenomenon, but huge crowds come out to Biola to hear lectures and debates now that would have only attracted a handful twenty years ago. We have a long way to go, but I think significant progress has been obvious and measurable.

Our greatest weakness with regard to apologetics is that by-and-large the average Christian and pastor still thinks that knowledge and faith are non-overlapping realms of human endeavor and experience. Our greatest strength with regard to apologetics is that so many leaders and teachers in the movement model that fact and that it is not just about giving answers and winning arguments, but rather it is about living a full-orbed life in Christ.

How might Five Sacred Crossings cultivate the strengths of our apologetic efforts?

I think Five Sacred Crossings is centered on this key strength I just mentioned. The book uses arguments and persuasion, but the key characters model grace, kindness, courage, love, and sacrifice to make the arguments real and weighty. I see my colleagues in apologetics and philosophy at Biola doing this every day and it is more inspiring than just about anything you can encounter. These are men and women living the great answers to life's questions, not just speaking them.

Five Sacred Crossings Interview, Part 2

Craig Hazen — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:14:33 -0700

I was recently interviewed about my book, Five Sacred Crossings: A Novel Approach to a Reasonable Faith, by the Evangelical Philosophical Society. Here is Part 2 of 3 parts.

If you click on Five Sacred Crossings, you’ll go to a page where you can download a free chapter of the book. There is a video interview I did with Peter for Conversantlife.com

Who is your intended readership? And can you tell us about some of the reaction to the book?

I had certain folks in mind when I was putting the story together. Think about the millions of people who watch Oprah every day. They are open to spiritual and religious ideas, but want to connect with them first on an emotional level. They are open to thinking about the big issues if they are presented in a relevant and engaging way.

Forget about my intended readership for a moment, though. The book has been out long enough so that we know who is reading it, and it is really remarkable. Everyone you can imagine. Octogenarians, non-Christians, teenagers, women, men, people who haven't read a novel in decades, Christians, people in the highest ranks of the federal government, major TV stars, pastors, atheist college professors, a woman from Liechtenstein, a stuntman from Brazil, an Israeli soldier, a missionary in Cambodia, and on it goes.

As an evangelical Christian, it is very exciting to receive feedback from non-Christians who are reading it and caught up in the story and the ideas presented. I've heard dozens of accounts from unbelievers who read the story and then contacted me or other Christian people they know. The book really throws them for a loop. They resonate with all five of the "crossings" and find the main character very attractive, but at the same time they know that these are Christian ideas being presented. It's as if they needed to hear the big issues of the Gospel in a compelling new way. I intentionally wrote this book to break down stereotypes of Christianity and provide a fresh look at eternal truths. As one lifetime agnostic told me after reading it, "We've got to talk about this. If this is how you look at the world, it is far more rational and attractive than I have assumed."

Why should philosophers and apologists read fiction?

Christian philosophers and apologists need to read fiction (and poetry, and listen to music, and at least occasionally watch films and TV) in order to be culturally relevant. Jesus led his revolution primarily by telling unforgettable stories that stuck with people who heard him. Humans are wired for hearing and telling stories. The great ideas that are so compelling and persuasive to high-level Christian thinkers need to become part of the mindset for people in all societal strata. Therefore we need new channels of communication to make these ideas relevant to everyone. This is a creative project of the highest order. Although philosophers and apologists may not be the ones writing the novels, screenplays, and operas that ultimately move the culture, we need to be familiar with these modes of communication and discourse if we want to see our ideas last beyond the life cycle of our latest book from a university press.

Are there fiction writers that you admire or use as your model?

No, I can't say I used anyone as a model. Although I would recommend that anyone wanting to try their hand at what I call "didactic Christian fiction" should, for two reasons, read widely among very popular novelists whose works fill the racks at popular bookstores and airports. First, so you can see what level of discourse and style the general population finds engaging (after all, these are the people who you are seeking to influence with this kind of writing project). Second, it will encourage you because I think for the most part your reaction will be: "Oh my goodness, I can do much better than that." You might be wrong, but it will help overcome your insecurities about shifting gears to fiction writing.

Five Sacred Crossings Interview, Part 1

Craig Hazen — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:13:37 -0700

I was recently interviewed about my book, Five Sacred Crossings: A Novel Approach to a Reasonable Faith, by the Evangelical Philosophical Society. I’m going to divide the questions and answers into three parts. Here is Part 1.

By the way, if you click on Five Sacred Crossings, you’ll go to a page where you can download a free chapter of the book. There is a video interview I did with Peter for Conversantlife.com

How would you characterize Five Sacred Crossings?

That's pretty straight forward. Five Sacred Crossings is a novel, pure and simple. The best way to capture the genre is to compare it to Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code. The Da Vinci Code is a fast-paced, page-turning mystery novel that packed into its center some teaching about the origins of Christianity. Unfortunately, Dan Brown bought an ugly package of historical gossip and unfounded nonsense as the "suppressed truth" he was hoping to reveal to the world. But what better way to communicate such things than for a couple of years to have every other person on a given airliner reading about it! Dan Brown had the wrong message, but the right vehicle to disseminate it.

What I attempted to do was similar except that I packed into the core of the mystery novel key elements of the Christian worldview that make Christianity attractive and grounded in knowledge.

A funny side point is that the knowledgeable folks at Harvest House decided to position Five Sacred Crossings as a book of apologetics and not as a novel because the Christian fiction genre is so over saturated right now. They wanted my new book not to be lost in that category. Hence, they helped come up with a subtitle "A Novel Approach to Reasonable Faith." So I don't know where you will find Five Sacred Crossings in the bookstore - in the apologetics/religion section, or in the fiction section.

Without giving too much away, can you say what the book is about?

The book is about a few weeks in the life of a college professor and brilliant natural linguist named Michael Jernigan who takes a college class through some teachings called "the five crossings" that he learned about in the Cambodian mountains as a young soldier in the Vietnam War. Through these teachings, and raucous discussion among a group of very diverse students, the class learns how the wisest of people approach life's biggest questions. The book is punctuated by an intense story about an Indonesian terror cell in the college town. I certainly won't tell you how it ends, but I've been stunned by the fact that about a dozen grown men (not to mention the scores of women) have contacted me to tell me they couldn't put it down and were in tears when they finished it.

Why did you write Five Sacred Crossings?

It seems to me that Christian philosophers, apologetics, and theologians in our generation have done some extraordinary work in re-establishing the intellectual credibility and the integrity of the Christian worldview in a secular and pluralistic age. What we haven't done, though, is find new ways to communicate these great truths to the masses who are so confused on issues of religious truth and the meaning of life. I thought I would try my hand at writing something that would appeal to people I know who would never read an apologetics textbook or a philosophy article in an attempt to engage them with clear thinking on the issues that matter most.

The Blind Man and the Elephant

Craig Hazen — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 11:07:45 -0700

It seems that it is not as easy as it once was to speak about all religions as if they are the exact same thing just dressed in different clothing for different people groups at different times in history. With the continuing high profile of Islamic terror activities, stark contrasts are being presented between Islam and the other world religions. Islam is not the same as Buddhism, and Buddhism is not the same as Christianity, and so on. It is very unlikely that all of them are leading to heaven, God, or nirvana. This is much easier to grasp than it used to be.
I remember learning a very old and famous fable in grade school as the teacher tried to demonstrate that all the religions are really, underneath the surface, one and the same. You’ve probably heard it at one point or another and it goes like this.
Several blind men are led into a rajah’s (that is a king’s) courtyard where they encounter an elephant. One feels a tusk and concludes that an elephant is like a spear. Another touches a leg and thinks an elephant is like a tree. Yet another bumps into the side of the beast and believes it is a wall, and so on. The blind men offer their opinions rather forcefully and even begin to fight over it. The rajah hears the mayhem down below and comes out on his balcony to assess the situation. After taking a moment to capture the scene, the rajah says, “You foolish blind men, don’t you know that you have all been in contact with the same thing? It’s an elephant and you have all been touching different parts of it.”
The lesson by analogy, of course, is that each of the different religious traditions of the world are bumping into only one particular aspect of ultimate reality and are blind to the total picture. But at the end of the day, all of the religious hands are touching the same essential truth.
It is easy to see the appeal of this fable in its attempt to show that at the core all religions are the same. But there is a more interesting feature of this fable that is not normally highlighted. How is it that the blind men finally know that they are all touching the same elephant? They hear a word from the rajah who stands above the situation, sees all, and can provide real knowledge to those below. Without a rajah the blind men would still be fighting.
In a day when humans are battling over religious issues like never before, we must not assume that all religions are the same. They are not. But we should redouble are efforts to find real knowledge about ultimate reality. And that can only come from a rajah, a king. One who stands above the human situation and can communicate clearly about where we came from, who we are, and where we’re going.
Where is our raja? Where is our king? Where is our voice from above?

Religion Poisons Everything?

Craig Hazen — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:02:09 -0700

During their Christmas break from school I took my teenage kids to see “The Golden Compass”—a movie based on the popular children’s books by Philip Pullman. In his famous trilogy, Pullman attempts to communicate a decidedly atheistic worldview through a compelling fantasy narrative. The film was fast paced, well acted, and visually splendid so it kept my attention for the entire two hours.

Of course, even though the anti-religious aspects were diluted in the movie, I was busy drinking in all the symbols and the obvious atheistic world view that was being set forth. Over burgers and fries after the movie I asked my kids what they thought the underlying message of the movie was. All three agreed: religious people steal children and then harm them all in the name of what is good; religious people believe unscientific myths and then manipulate everyone and everything in order to protect their myths. I think they nailed it.

“The Golden Compass” film is by any measure a pop-culture thrust of the new atheist movement that has books at the top of the best seller lists. One common thread that runs through the new atheism is that people who set aside belief in God can be just as good and moral, if not more so, than traditional religious people—who are usually thought to be decidedly harmful to civil society.

At a conference this fall in Washington, D.C., prominent social scientists from Princeton, Penn State, and Baylor put this idea to rest. Analyzing data over a forty year period, the scholars concluded that by a whole range of measures, religious people are more likely to contribute to, stabilize, and enhance the societies to which they are attached. Fun facts along these lines: religious people are 30% more likely to engage in altruistic actions, 2.4 times more likely to engage in civic volunteerism, and among teens almost every study ever done shows religious commitment to reduce significantly drinking, drugs, sex, and suicide.

One of the new atheist icons, Christopher Hitchens, has become famous for saying that “religion poisons everything.” Fictional motion pictures may be the best place to try to make this charge stick because the facts derived from careful study of the matter certainly don’t show this to be the case.

Conspiracy Theories: The Fruit of the Soul’s Dark Regions

Craig Hazen — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:49:33 -0800

A group of esteemed public intellectuals in America from Gore Vidal to Howard Zinn have risen boldly to challenge the official explanations of the alleged terror attacks on September 11, 2001. The latest prominent critic of the official account that Muslim terrorists brought down the World Trade Center towers with fuel-laden passenger airliners is Professor David Ray Griffin, a senior theologian from southern California’s Claremont School of Theology who is traveling around the country attempting to stir up the far left of the Democratic base during the election season about this very important issue.

In his recent book and his public lectures on college campuses, theologian Griffin sounds as if he went back for dual degrees in engineering and investigative reporting as he uncovers the “real” evidence in the case. His conclusion: beyond a shadow of a doubt, the WTC towers collapsed due to controlled demolition at the hands of Bush-related conspirators attempting to expand American imperialism at home and abroad.

I shall not recount the strange case for the conspiracy presented by Griffin and others—there are over 628,000 web sites that do that. But please do understand that the Griffin-like theories have been eviscerated by thoughtful people with no axe to grind. Indeed, even the editors of Popular Mechanics—a magazine I used to buy as a kid to see cool amphibious cars and garage-built airplanes—took a crack at a response and in a few short pages annihilated the case presented by the conspiracy advocates (see www.popularmechanics.com).

Deep curiosity kicks in at this point with the question why would anybody put their reputation at stake by going public with such craziness? I don’t know about all of the conspiracy mongers, but in the case of David Ray Griffin, there is something to learn by attempting an answer. First, he is no ordinary theologian. He is one of the most liberal scholars on the theological spectrum. He has spent his career developing a postmodern picture of God in which he “redefines the divine.” It seems to me that a finite fellow with enough hubris to think he has the cosmic standing to reinvent an almighty, eternal being according to his own predilections will find it rather unchallenging to reinvent something like the 9/11 attacks. Second, and probably more important, is hatred. Those of us who do not understand the conspiracy mindset are severely underestimating the depth of odium and revulsion that the left feels toward George W. Bush. It is a hatred that warps reason, distorts any contact with reality, and commits an individual to live in their soul’s darkest and most irrational regions.

Even J.R.R. Tolkien’s pathetic character Gollum seems dressed and in his right mind compared to Griffin ranting about Bush’s murderous exploits. Like other very liberal Christian theologians, Griffin doesn’t find the Bible particularly useful in his work. If he valued it more, he might have paid attention to the words of the prophet Zechariah, “Let none of you devise evil in your heart against another, and do not love perjury; for all these are what I hate, declares the Lord.”

American Idol is one of the more wholesome shows on television.

Craig Hazen — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:32:25 -0800

Seriously, American Idol from the beginning has been unwittingly dishing out some rather profound personal and philosophical insight.

For the last few weeks we’ve watched people wandering in from the community and auditioning raw before Randy, Paula, and Simon with hopes of being selected to move on to the next stage in Hollywood, the auditioning hopefuls fall into four basic groups. The first are those who actually have enough talent on display or discernible cachet to be chosen to move up. Second are those who are pretty good, but not good enough to move up (we don’t see many of those on the broadcast—not enough drama). Third are those who know they are bad singers and are there for their fifteen minutes of fame or the thrill. Most of the lessons about American culture, though, come from the fourth category which is composed of those who really do think they are good, but are, in reality, atrocious by any objective measure.

Every morning after a broadcast, viewers from across the country are standing around water coolers in offices asking, “Those disastrous singers don’t really think they’re good, do they?” The answer is an unqualified “yes.”There are two reasons for this that provide windows into our cultural mindset. The first is that no one tells these poor souls they are horrific singers. Every one of them thinks they come from Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average. Think of the nationally televised embarrassment a couple of good friends or an honest family member would have saved the pitiable wannabes. The second reason many of these people think they are good is that they have swallowed a very popular American lie that has been a creedal statement in the public school system for years: if you believe in yourself, you can do anything!

Unlearning an off-kilter cultural platitude can be a painful thing--and certainly one does not have to be as nasty as Simon to teach the new lesson. But there is no getting around it, believing something does not make it true. There are objective standards to aural beauty and Simon enforces them without much cushioning. But reality is not a bad place to live in the long run. Like Woody Allen wrote, I hated “reality but realized it was the only place to get a good steak.” God made us all very different and “believing” you are what you are not is not going to change things. The faster we learn that in life--especially through honest evaluations from trusted friends and family--the straighter the path to a good steak.

Ideas and Consequences

Craig Hazen — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 12:28:39 -0800

Although God so loved mankind that he gave his only begotten Son, historically man has not followed God's example when it has come to the treatment of his fellow man. In fact, we have made great progress in the second half of the twentieth century in our maltreatment of Homo sapiens (while, interestingly enough, during the same period other species have found increased protection against maltreatment.) Just a few years ago one found it necessary to point to the regimes of Hitler and Stalin to illustrate archetypal examples of man's inhumanity to man. Now one simply needs to take the wrong off ramp on a southern California freeway to see it first hand. Gang tyranny and terrorism, although on a smaller but growing scale, have displayed a similar disregard for human life found in Stalin's "five-year plan" and Hitler's "final solution."

And the gang situation is just one of the more grisly visible manifestations of such disregard. Roe v. Wade has helped to turn genocide into something effectively invisible and something that even minors can participate in at their leisure. (Abortion is not wholly without restriction...at many clinics one must first schedule an appointment.) The recent human extermination legacies established by the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer, Theodore Bundy, and Timothy McVeigh pale in comparison to the abortion blood bath, but these celebrity mass murderers have been growing in ranks.

When confronted with the continued mind-boggling deterioration of man's status at the end of this century, the natural question is how can the Church of Jesus Christ make a difference in this dismal situation? The answer is surprisingly simple and a little mundane: the same way it always has. Historically the Church has impacted the world at large in two basic ways. The first was to march out one by one and engage the siruation directly on the ground. The modern equivalent of this engagement can be seen in the courageous actions of those such as abortion protesters, inner city street witnesses, and in church programs for battered wives, abused children, alcohol and drug dependencies, and the homeless. The second is to make an assault on the ideas that undergird and are in great part directly responsible for such misery.

Unquestionably the Church needs to expand dramatically both of these means of engaging the culture. But I think it is also unquestionable that it is the latter avenue that has been most neglected, most impotent, and most in need of revitalization. The study of Christian Apologetics -- that is, the general defense of the Gospel and Christian world view -- simply cannot be neglected any longer if we wish to see the Kingdom of God furthered in this generation.

The last time Christianity in the West faced an entire civilization set against it, was in the centuries before the conversion of Constantine (Emperor of Rome) early in the fourth century. Not surprisingly, amidst the hostility in those early centuries some of the great leaders that emerged and which are remembered today were the Greek and Latin Apologists. They were the believers who clearly communicated and defended the faith and did not shrink from attacking the weak intellectual foudation upon which anti-Christian arguments were based. They were also quick to respond to the critics of the faith especially in high places. And all this was done in the face of powerful, bellicose adversaries and under threat of death. We need well trained people to do the same today on all levels; in the street, in the churches, in government, in the media, and especially on the secular university campuses where the Christian is the only minority that can be abused and slandered without protest. (With regard to free speech and freedom of religion, students now talk about the American campus the way they used to talk about East Germany under Soviet domination.) A coup d'etat in the world of ideas for the sake of the Gospel should be one of the promary goals of the Church, but it usually ranks far below the more urgent concerns of spaghetti suppers and parking lot repavement.

Reinvigorating the grand truth claims of the Christian faith and sound arguments to defend them has obvious consequences for the church's efforts in evangelism and missions. Indeed, I would argue based on the activity and teachings of the Apostles in the New Testament that it is an indispensable part of the effort in missions and evangelism, not just some curious intellectual sideshow. But tenaciously promulgating and defending "true" ideas (those known with great certainty to be revealed by the Creator) have consequences far beyond the actual saving of souls. True ideas about the nature of man, the physical universe, morality, government, economics, ets., have the power to fulfill other biblical mandates for individuals and society, such as the implementation of justice and the amelioration of the plight of the poverty stricken, to name just two. Without the true ideas, however, we shall see no such consequences. Francis Schaeffer saw this connection better than most, especially as true views of reality impact law and government. In his Christian Manifesto he wrote:

"We have been utterly foolish...in our complete failure to face the total world view that is rooted in a false view of reality [i.e., that al is matter and energy shaped by chance]. And we have not understood that this view of reality inevitably brings forth totally different and wrong and inhuman results in all of life. This is nowhere more certain than in law and government -- where law and government are used by this false view of reality as a tool to force this false view and its results on everyone."