What does it benefit the church to assess and discuss the corruption of contemporary culture? To analyze the historical philosophies that have poured into the waters in which we swim? Hmm. I think it can be helpful, but I think it can also be extremely dangerous. The Spirit of God didn’t leave the church with historical records of philosophical criticisms of Greek mythology, nor was the focus of the Old Testament recordings that of intellectual analysis of how Egyptian philosophies and religions corrupted the people of Israel. The Ten Commandments don’t tell us all the ways in which the corrupt world around us is wrong, nor do they tell us that understanding the wrongness of the world around us will make us holy. One subject that does arise, sometimes indirectly, sometimes directly, is the concept of Man. Created, corrupted, and cleansed. Right now, I am studying a condensed version of Carl Trueman’s Strange New World, and am splintered with thoughts and feelings both positive and not-so-positive. It’s good to think! For my husband’s sake I am putting some of these thoughts to writing, in order to spare him a week’s worth of words. That being said, this blog post is about a week’s worth of words, so grab a pot of coffee or a cake or something before reading.
It’s chapter 2 now, and we are on to contemplating the Romantic presentation of the natural man, and how this Noble Savage has influenced our modern concept of identity. We can look to the Rousseaus, Wordsworths, and Dickenses and see a romanticized picture of a truly natural man, pure and untarnished by social constructs and pressures, contrasted with extreme depictions of their opposites. If, as we reflect on their philosophies and the bearing their philosophies have had on our culture today, we find ourselves caught up in the realization of how this authentic self must be largely responsible for the progressive self, I think it would be wise for us to first consider the social dynamics and evils that the cultures in which they lived manifested and festered before forming too strong judgements on their convictions. Having been immersed in a sea of toxicity, it does not seem so illogical to jump as far from it as possible as one begins to see and understand the nature and effects of the poison with which one has been filled. Seeing the cruel results of certain human tendencies, the oppressive dynamics of particular circles of thinking and acting, it makes initial sense to fly to the other end of the spectrum. I say that because I don’t think we can interpret the Romantics’ literary juxtapositions fairly if we take their writings out of their cultural settings. The word society does not mean to us what it meant to them, and even if there are similarities that we can all connect with, in order to fully and accurately understand their points and concerns, we need to put ourselves in their homes, streets, towns, and justice systems. What I am not saying is that every philosophy the Romantics held was sound or true. What I am saying is that we should be cautious when assessing historical works and lives in the context of our modern experience. It is oh so difficult to hear what others are saying when we perceive dissonance with their message and ours, and this difficulty increases drastically when we are considering the thoughts of people so far disconnected from us by convictions, experiences, culture, and the worlds of change that happen through centuries. Moving on.
While I do think that objective reality, both concrete and abstract, governs nature, I also think that within reality we are faced with all sorts of unexpected, paradoxical, complex, and often very messed up realities that our experiences, philosophies, and arguments may not do justice to. The tendency within off-sync human circles, groups of people that think and see differently on any given subject, is for people to volunteer all sorts of absolutes and arguments that favor our personal and cultural experiences, or what the majority in our cultural sphere wants to hear, and to quickly vomit a plethora of straw-man responses, unhelpful cliches, applauded (and often dismissive) opinions, and red-herring diversions whenever someone else shares an unfamiliar or differing perspective that threatens the validity or comprehensive accuracy of our own personal understanding of reality.
The Natural man (or “expressive individualist,” as defined by Robert Bellah, and used by Carl Trueman), uninfluenced by coercive and corruptive political and social constructs which were artificially good and absolute in their man-made, greed driven facade, does sound pure and closer to human when considered from the perspectives of the poor and oppressed in the 18th century. Unfortunately though, the evil manifested in society is simply the realized and unified evil found within the very deepest heart of the most natural man. Flying away from polluted and perverse society towards the power and beauty of creation sounds cleansing, and in a way, it could be. However, even the earth is broken, and the very roots of man’s heart. Though one man born in a natural state may be more loving and kind than some, another in his exact same situation may be wicked and cruel. These realities do not invalidate the points that Rousseau and Dickens were making about society, but they also do not validate the romantic naivety, or trust in, the potential goodness of the heart of man, or that nature itself is undefiled. Even if you could separate a man from the nature of his society, you cannot separate a man from his own nature. The intricacies of any culture have been and are always informed by the intricacies of a networking of the roots of twisted human natures.
We can turn our thoughts to our American, culturally accepted, contemporary idea of authenticity and identity to assess how the values and philosophies of the Romantics have corrupted our culture, OR, ironically, we can look to the cultural attitudes and practices they (the Rousseaus and Dickenses) were condemning to better understand oppressive dynamics of our society. The corrupting powers of man and of society cannot really be severed from one another. I am convinced that the dynamics of nature as realized in creation, individual man, or societies of man are not independent of one another, and should not be filed in separate folders. In our attempt to better understand today’s issues of identity within the greater context of social structure, we should be careful not to polarize realities that are connected by nature in their very source.
Philosophies of Natural man, or authentic, independent man, do not originate in the passionate culture warriors of the 18th century, nor within my own personal, American imagination of my identity. Consider the incredible historical document that Christians open together every Sunday, called the Bible. There we can find that this natural man, this romanticized idea of humanity, raw and authentic, has been at play in the hearts of desperate humans since the days of Cain and Abel, Abraham, Jacob, King Saul, and King David. Since the oppression of Rome and all the power struggles Paul addressed within the church and family circles there and in churches in surrounding societies. We can look at the nation of Israel throughout their OT journey, and see manifested in fears, words, and actions, hearts that are defining themselves and the people around them with distorted interpretations of nature, or with varying interpretations of broken and distorted nature. Adam and Eve ate the fruit because they believed the lie that knowledge and power were more essential to their identity than humility and love–that to know and serve themselves was better than to know God and serve Him through loving and tending His world. This Natural man, these Natural societies, they did not arise from the philosophies of those self-centered, emotional, nature-loving untrustworthy artists of the 18th century, nor have they arisen despite the exhausting persistence of more rational, righteous groups of humanity (please catch the sarcasm here, even if it offends you). Oh no, all of the perverseness of culture today and yesterday– it all has a common source.
It is not too hard as conservative Christians, steeped in a culture of critical assessing, to look outward at the culture around us and say “those sexually perverted people are consumed with themselves. They are darkened. They are evil. They are lost. They are hateful and toxic. You can see how these man-centered philosophies have shaped their thinking. You can see how this idea of natural man has shaped their understanding of identity. How the elevation of man-centeredness, or self-centeredness has perverted the truth in their minds,” ignoring their concerns and experiences, and denying all that is good and right about them as human beings. But it is perhaps more difficult to say “I can see how my perception of the nature has colored my understanding of the Bible. I can see how my belief that nature informs our human identities, has led me to believe that human relationships should be defined by power dynamics. I can see how Christians have knitted a perverse definition of humanity into their teachings of the Bible, not only since the writings of the Romantics took hold of our minds, but since before Israel walked through the Red Sea.. Since the time Abraham offered Sarah on the altar of his fear, since the people of Israel demanded a King, a powerful, beautiful King, in place of their Servant God.”
Nature tells us conflicting stories. Nature tells us to care for and defend our weak, but it also tells us to kill and eat our weak. Whoever threatens us. Nature tells us that female creatures carry and give birth to their young, and care for them, and that female creatures can be the most ferocious, terrifying animals one can encounter. But then nature also tells us that female creatures sometimes eat their young and/or their mate, and sometimes crush their eggs. Nature tells us that male creatures will guard and watch their young, sit on a nest of eggs while their mate forages, and ferociously protect their mate and their young, but it also shows us that male creatures will ravage and harm their own, and will fight and kill their offspring to protect their turf. Nature is all at once majestic, peaceful, and good, and terrible, terrifying, and nasty. It would be wise to consider in what ways we have made nature our God, worshiping the creation and creature rather than God. There is no circle of humanity that has not perverted the truth, in some way exchanging what is good and right for a lie, and that includes within societies that have Christian influence. It even includes church cultures. Brothers and sisters, do not hate one another. Truth and Reality do not need you to be right in order to continue. Do not be afraid that if you discover you are wrong in some way, reality will cease to be real. Do not try to protect God, and by so doing suppress His Spirit in yourself and in others.
For some of us, the natural man must fight. Listening for long enough to realize that we don’t actually have the answer or solution is a foreign concept, a subconscious fear that informs many of our social dynamics. Intimidated by others, we play every power card available to us. Consumed with what feels to us like righteousness, but what ultimately boils down to the business of protecting our personal beliefs and perspectives at all costs, we become infantile in our thinking, cold, deaf, and blind to those around us. In so doing, we risk drowning in a sea of confusion, because love and hate are not compatible. Then there are those of us in whom the natural man must hide. Bitterness is waiting to give way to malice, and anger is festering into hate, because our perspectives and experiences of reality have long been unacknowledged, dismissed, or ridiculed. Our island of identity feels so tiny and threatened, and we’d rather disappear in fearful anger and hardness of heart than trust that God is the source of everyone, the Authority who protects the unheard and unseen, but also the Priest who intercedes for the blind and the deaf. Many of us are a complex combination of both. Both tend towards self-inebriation. Please hear this caution: neither of these islands is the narrow way. Neither island is following Christ. Neither island is Christianity. Can we find ourselves in these places and still be Christian? Of course! But don’t fall into the darkness of thinking that drunkenness on yourself or your culture is ever going to lead to life.
So back to the Natural man. What is he? A man whose body and personality were given to him by God through nature… flesh and blood, strengths and weaknesses… all the quirks of a unique and broken DNA, inherited from generations of dirt and bone, along with lots of messed up, fear whittled, power mongering, self-preserving heart patterns, thought processes, and social habits. As we assess natural man, or societies of men, throughout all times and places, within and outside of the church, we see peoples, constructed and destructed in all the twisted glory of darkened humanity. We see, and are, individual people and societies that cling to various perspectives found within ourselves and nature in order to validate and justify our particular beliefs, defaulting to mindsets and actions that secure our humanity over the humanity of others in the psychological, emotional, physical, and/or social realms. These worldviews and natural philosophies are ingrained not only into “worldly” people within the culture around us, they are also deeply imbedded into our own “Christian” interpretations of the world and the Bible, and are therefore clung to, defended, and practiced in our hearts and minds, in our homes, and in the walls of our churches as if these limited interpretations and experiences of reality are themselves the sources of reality as a whole. Y’all. This is not Christianity. We live in this chaos of existence, but this chaos is not the Spirit of God. It is the spirit of broken humanity, desperate to protect our identities.
I ask again, what is Natural man? Man that is beautiful, man that is gentle, man that is violent or dominating when feeling vulnerable or challenged. Man that looks to his instincts and feelings for answers, that is what he is, whether that be terrible or wonderful. Man whose mind is trapped in a body of fascinating loveliness, and gut-wrenching darkness, strong when he is strong, but oh so fragile when he is not. This is not what humanity was meant to be. Man was created from nature, but not by nature. Man was made of the substance of the earth, to be intune with the earth, to live in and love the earth, to thrive in nature, but man was named by God. Neither the dirt from which man’s mind was formed, nor the dirt from which man’s heart was formed, nor the dirt from which man’s penis (or vagina) was formed gave man identity. God saw them (man), loved them, and named them. Man is a creature of earth, but man is not animal, nor is man nature. Man, in the purity of our God-given identity, is designed to be naturally good, glorious, and authentic in all our expressions of creativity and love. But then, darkness came. Separation came. Humanity, our very identity as humans, became riddled with impossibilities.
We should not assess the human conscience, subconscious, and physiology, only to sever it one from the other. We cannot throw either out. Our internal createdness: our conscience, our emotions, our spirit— those are all aspects of who we are, of our identity. If those things scream “BROKEN,” then that is what they say. Rarely will that be their only voice, although it will always be a present tone, and is sometimes more audible in some than in others. We cannot throw out our physical createdness: our bodies, our brains, our organs. Those are all aspects of who we are, of our identity. If those things scream “BROKEN,” then that is what they say. Rarely will that be their only voice, although it will always be a present tone, and is sometimes more apparent in some than in others. My point is this: our identities are a complex weave of physical and emotional, of rational and empathic (although I would argue that those two things should not be completely distinguished from one-another). Our identities are a heartbreaking symphony of beauty and brokenness, and left to ourselves, ourselves would die in the conflicting oppression of it all, and/or die blindly ravaging the people and world around us. We should not, in our critical assessments of humans and humanity, be creating dichotomies of personhood and identity that make it easier to judge and condemn the humanity of others, and to validate our own purity or religiosity. It is not an honest presentation of humanness. It is not Christianity. Instead, we should listen to and love one another, and we should remind each other of the Gospel, of what it means to be made whole, not in an understanding of how right I am, but in the reality of Christ.
God, Oh please, God, look at us. We have elevated knowledge and power above humility and love, have looked to nature to define our meaning, and are wallowing in deep dark mud. All of us. Look at us, see us, feel us, form us, name us.
If you read this entire thing, I am truly impressed.
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