When a culture can’t agree on the very meaning or “why” behind many of the things that make up the culture, chaos ensues, and that is exactly what we’re seeing happen. Things are breaking down, and collapsing. 

Why?

In our capitalist society we’re constantly given a reason to do something. Normally it’s a reason to buy something, but during an election season it’s about why you need to be for or against a particular side or candidate. I’m no psychologist, but if there is such a thing as overloading people with why they should do something, not do something, be for something or be against something it seems like we’ve reached that saturation point and then some. It seems like Americans have had whatever mental and emotional receptors to why you should believe something, do something or be for or against something be so abused and overused that there are many diverse ways in which people are coping with it.

This is something that has caused those pressuring us to do or believe, or act have found more scary and threatening ways to get us to do what they want.  The end result of what all of this causes to happen is something that I’m not going to try and answer, and I’m not trying to write any sort of cultural article, but I’m just explaining the situation that we find ourselves in here in America in 2020.

Many scholars believe that Western Culture ascended into the modern day starting in about the 13^th century when Thomas Aquinas is credited with helping get the Greek scholars accepted back into the universities. For the purposes here I will briefly describe Plato and Aristotle as each offering the fundamental components of philosophy. For Plato it was universals, and for Aristotle it was particulars. It is the emphasis of Aristotelian particulars that are credited with the ushering in of the Renascence, and Reformation that followed. However, a common set of universals is necessary for a civilization to exist or to have meaning or a “why?” that causes its people to value its continued existence.

For example: A marriage is something particular, but in order for that marriage to have a meaning, there must be some sort of accepted universal truth of what a marriage is.  Is a marriage a temporary arrangement or is it for life? Without an accepted universal truth under-girding it, you have no answer as to the “why” it’s for life, or why it’s between a man and a woman. With no accepted universal truth upholding it there is no meaning behind what a man is or a woman is, or why one can not simply identify as another.

In Western culture, particularly since the time of the Reformation the bible and Christianity have served to provide the answers to the universals, and those were accepted by a majority. Now that Christianity is being rejected, the universals that gave a basis to the particulars within our culture have begun to be rejected. So, the particulars themselves are beginning to lose their meaning. When a culture can’t agree on the very meaning or “why” behind many of the things that make up the culture, chaos ensues, and that is exactly what we’re seeing happen. Things are breaking down, and collapsing.

The Why of a Nation?

For those of us who don’t really see politics as the ultimate answer, it’s been helpful to not be completely caught up in the daily battles of this or that political side.  One of the things that has helped me to understand more what is happening in the rest of the world is a lot of articles describing the rise of the civilization state.  The civilization state is a sort of answer to the Western invention of a “nation state”. A civilization state is a concept where China, India, and Turkey are offered up as examples who have leadership that consider their nation built upon the foundation of a civilization. This civilization is, in their minds, enough to give them their universal meaning upon which to make up the particulars of their culture.

One does not have to agree with their conclusions, or really even the idea of a civilization state being a successful model to see what they’re aiming for. They are seeking a basis or foundation to build on, a foundation of universals within which to found their “why?”.  A nation has to not hate itself to remain a nation. For the protesters of 2020 who see America as not worth keeping, the sweeping away of statues represents the position that America was founded upon irredeemably flawed principles and actions. It’s foundations are seen as rotten. So much so that it just needs to be made into a parking lot and started over.  These people were educated into this by people who knowing best in their own eyes chose to abandon the previous “why” and historical basis for America, and we now see the consequences of those commitments and that teaching unfolding in cities before our eyes.

The Why of a Church?

What about a church? A church absolutely has to have a “why” for its own existence, and there are a lot of banners of “why” that are lifted over particular churches today.  You’ll often find clues as to what that church is all about when they make a tagline (an Our Vision) for the church on their website. For example, some fellow NAPARC churches in my area say things like “LOVE GOD AND NEIGHBOR” as their tagline, so from that it seems that they’re all about the normative use of the law.  If one wants to hear a bunch of stuff for you to do as a Christian and center around that, go there.  Others say things like this: “Nurturing a joy for loving God and neighbor by proclaiming and living out the gospel”. That’s the same normative use (3^rd use) of the law again, only this time the gospel is something they proclaim and are apparently also doing.  Apparently they’re the good news or what they do is the good news. This is not a Reformed view taught from the confessions.

I could go on but it is clear that these churches do not center on Christ’s objective work or the gospel.  What they center on is not good news, but the effects of the good news, or our response to the good news. I can tell you from experience that as time goes on you will see a good portion of the children raised in this type of church find that they can love neighbors just fine without all the hassle of the church and all of the annoying people that go to it. Also, you can find those exact same kinds of “Our Vision” statements on the websites of the long apostate mainline churches as well.

Then there is what you could call the politically heavy “curmudgeon church”. These are usually full of right-wingers who to hear them talk, just about any conservative political talking point of the day seems to occupy half of their brain space, while other half gets filled with sports of some sort, leaving them without a central focus, clinging to empty pietistic right-leaning do-gooder-ism, and external behavior modification.  Most of the sermons here also tend to lean towards your responsibility to take God seriously with the normative, (3^rd) use of the law as the main focus.

The woke church is the new hotness of “why”. They’re transformational, so their tag-lines are also sayings like “Love God and People”, but some of them also say things about the city they live in. they’re “For the city”.  A famous church in New York flies this figurative banner over their church based on their vision statement: “[We] exist to help build a great city for all people through a movement of the gospel that brings personal conversion, community formation, social justice, and cultural renewal to [our city] and, through it, the world.” Now there’s a different element to this type of church that is clearly Post Millennial and world building. The gospel seems to be there to help motivate and empower people to do city building/gospel spreading. Their work in the city is part of the good news of God bringing in the kingdom through cultural efforts. Only now, in America many cities failing. They’ve become hotbeds of looting, crime, hate  and people and businesses are leaving them. This whole movement of gentrification and city building optimism that seemed to come in with the secular transformational Obama administration has failed.  Really with Covid-19 it would make sense that many of these churches might be struggling to keep going at all unless they shift the message.

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