Cultural Apologetics

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FOREWORD

They identified six reasons for the exodus: (1) The church is overprotective and fails to expose people to anti-Christian ideas. (2) The church’s teaching is shallow. (3) The church is antagonistic to science and fails to help believers interact with scientific claims. (4) The church treats sexuality simplistically and judgmentally. (5) The church makes exclusivist claims. (6) The church is dismissive of doubters. Note that every single reason involves a failure to engage the life of the mind and employ apologetics to answer people’s questions. (Location 133)

CHAPTER 1 WHAT IS CULTURAL APOLOGETICS?

The church has grown anti-intellectual and sensate, out of touch with the relevancy of Jesus and the gospel to contemporary life. Marred by scandal, infighting, and a lack of conviction, the church’s prophetic voice, once resounding with power on issues of slavery and human rights, is now but a whimper. The gospel no longer receives a fair hearing (the Christian voice is muted). Christians find themselves as morally fragmented as their non-Christian neighbors (the Christian conscience is muted). The collective imagination of Christian culture is focused on the mundane (the Christian imagination is muted). (Location 205)

Note:: I think it is because we have gone to such a tickle-the-ears posture in order not to offend anyone. There has to be some kind of balance where the truth can be proclaimed, even the hard truths, while still loving on people. The truth is offensive, that doesn’t make it less true or easier to hear. It seems we cater to those who are not committed - when it gets slightly hard, I’m out - while losing those who are looking for truth because they aren’t finding it in the Church.

Traditional apologetics is concerned with making arguments to defend Christian truth claims, and has often addressed challenges to Christian belief coming from philosophical and other more intellectual sources. The term “cultural apologetics” has been used to refer to systematic efforts to advance the plausibility of Christian claims in light of the messages communicated through dominant cultural institutions, including films, popular music, literature, art, and the mass media. So while traditional apologists would critique the challenges to the Christian faith advanced in the writings of certain philosophers, cultural apologists might look instead at the sound bite philosophies embedded in the lyrics of popular songs, the plots of popular movies, or even the slogans in advertising (“Have It Your Way,” “You Deserve a Break Today,” “Just Do It”). (Location 235)

For the traditional apologist, academic sources, such as philosophy, science, and history, are prioritized in providing evidence for arguments. But for the cultural apologist, cultural artifacts—illustrations from the world of music, art, sports, entertainment, social relations, and politics—are paramount. (Location 244)

I define cultural apologetics as the work of establishing the Christian voice, conscience, and imagination within a culture so that Christianity is seen as true and satisfying. (Location 256)

In addition, a cultural apologist operates at two levels. First, she operates globally by paying attention to how those within a culture perceive, think, and live, and then she works to create a world that is more welcoming and thrilling and beautiful and enchanted.11 Secondly, she operates locally, removing obstacles to, and providing positive reasons for, faith so individuals or groups will see Christianity as true and satisfying, plausible and desirable. (Location 275)

I adopt Hunter’s “faithfully present within” culture approach, augmented by Andy Crouch’s insight that Christians are called to be creators and cultivators of the good, true, and beautiful. Alternative accounts of cultural apologetics could be developed that explicitly endorse one or another of Niebuhr’s possible positions on Christ and culture. (Location 291)

Kevin J. Vanhoozer’s sapiential or theodramatic proposal for apologetics is closest to my own, as he seeks to “demonstrate the truth of Christianity (the theodrama, not a theoretical system) with our whole being: intellect, will and emotions.” (Location 295)

Note:: Jesus is not just a little part of, over, above, etc. as mentioned previously, but He is all. Our whole being, our whole culture, He is the all in all. To carve Him out of a little is to remove the omni from His omnipresence.

To summarize, cultural apologetics is defined as the work of establishing the Christian voice, conscience, and imagination within a culture so that Christianity is seen as true and satisfying, and it has both a global and local component. As we shall see, this definition allows—even necessitates—the use of philosophy, science, and history as well as the creation of new cultural artifacts in making a case for Christianity. Broader than Myers’s characterization of cultural apologetics, and contrary to Craig, cultural apologetics is concerned with the truth and justification of Christianity. Cultural apologetics must demonstrate not only the truth of Christianity but also its desirability. (Location 307)

PAUL ON MARS HILL

A walk through the agora (the marketplace) would reveal a pantheon of idols, indicative of the Athenians’ religious devotion. One could find temples for the worship of Roman Caesars, Greek and Roman gods, and countless other shrines and idols. A novelist at the time wrote of Athens, a city of roughly 25,000 people, “It is easier to meet a god in the street than a human.”16 It is no wonder Paul was “greatly distressed” (Acts 17:16) as he walked the streets of Athens. He was confronted at every turn by multitudes of lifeless idols. (Location 321)

Note:: It is interesting how we forget that godlessness isn’t a new phenomena. The Apostle Paul struggled with it in culture, in fact, it reaches back to Genesis 3 in the beginning. We just experience it differently in modern times, but there is nothing new under the sun.

First, Paul affirmed what he could affirm. Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.” (Acts 17:22–23, italics added) (Location 329)

Notice that Paul did his homework. He “walked around” and meticulously examined the culture he sought to reach with the gospel. (Location 334)

Second, Paul outflanked the thinking of the Athenians, showing them that the God they worshiped as unknown was actually true and knowable. (Location 337)

Paul knew the Stoic and Epicurean philosophies of the day. (Location 339)

Finally, Paul confronted their rank idolatry. In Acts 17:29 Paul moved the discussion out of the familiar world of the Greeks and into a distinctively Christian view of reality. (Location 342)

Paul’s method in Athens is instructive. He understood the culture and employed that knowledge to identify a starting point for building a bridge to the gospel. (Location 346)

Our Athens

How does our culture perceive the world? In a word, we are disenchanted. (Location 355)

Modern culture is obsessed with “contraband transcendence”—a kind of spirituality and occultism that is antitheistic and antihumanistic. Moderns insist that everything is matter. At the same time, through their actions, they reveal a deep longing to connect to something beyond the material world. Some might call this spiritual pornography—a cheap substitute for the real and beautiful. (Location 359)

The collective mind of our culture is largely anti-intellectual and shallow, lacking the intellectual categories or ability to think deeply about things that matter most. Many are guided more by feeling and desire than by reason. (Location 370)

Finally, how does our culture live? In a word, we are hedonistic. (Location 372)

The Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love have been replaced by the modern virtues of tolerance, personal autonomy, and progressivism (that is, a discarding of the oppressive ethical and religious view of the past). (Location 377)

Building Bridges to the Gospel

The philosopher Peter Kreeft speaks of three longings of the human soul—truth, goodness, and beauty—and three prophets (or guides or capacities) of the human soul—reason, conscience, and the imagination. (Location 382)

Reason guides us on the quest for truth. The conscience leads us to goodness. And the imagination transports us toward beauty. This is also why we have intellectuals, prophets, and artists. They can perform a priestly duty, leading us if we allow them toward the ultimate object of our soul’s longing: Jesus Christ, the source of all truth, goodness, and beauty. (Location 391)

As rational animals, human beings naturally desire to know the truth about reality. As Aristotle puts it at the beginning of The Metaphysics, “All men by nature desire to know.” (Location 399)

In ably articulating the truth of Christianity, we demonstrate intellectual credibility, humility, and our God-given call to love God with our minds. (Location 407)

Note:: Matt 22:37

Because of this attitude, Jesus is often seen as irrelevant in the Western world, especially on matters related to the acquisition of knowledge. By implication, those who follow him are viewed as amateurish, not to be taken seriously. (Location 443)

Note:: This is so ironic since a lot of the time people desribe Jesus as a “good teacher” or “wise man” or “prophet” instead of God. Now, culture tries to strip Him of wisdom, as well.

When Christians begin to regard Jesus not only as beautiful but as brilliant and wise, it will shift the way he is perceived in our culture. (Location 449)

CHAPTER 2 DISENCHANTMENT

TWO WAYS OF PERCEIVING

Consider the common mantra of those who don’t believe in God. They pose this challenge: “If God exists, then why doesn’t he make himself more obvious? If there was any evidence for God, then I’d believe in him.” Really? Is it that simple? This common challenge is problematic for two reasons. First, it wrongly assumes that no evidence for God exists and that God’s existence isn’t obvious. And second, it assumes that if the evidence for God were available, belief would automatically follow. But what if the problem goes deeper? What if there is a problem with our perception itself? What if the disease that hinders our belief distorts how we see? (Location 609)

A MODEL FOR REENCHANTMENT

Dallas Willard reminds us, and “God wants to be present to our minds with all the force of objects given clearly to ordinary perception.”14 Yet most of us don’t experience God in such a concrete, ordinary way. Something seems to be missing from the equation. According to the Bible, what’s missing is the work of the Holy Spirit. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we begin to see God and the world the way Jesus does and then to invite others to see God in the same way. In other words, reenchantment is a work of the Holy Spirit. (Location 651)

In the Bible we find not only the greatest story ever told but the greatest possible story ever told.15 It features man’s tragedy, a divine comedy, and a fairy-tale ending.16 It’s an inviting story that points us, relentlessly, to the deep and abiding love of a God who creates, pursues, redeems, and restores all that he has made. (Location 660)

My preferred framework for understanding the story of the Bible uses the metaphor of home and moves in three parts: home—away—home again. (Location 668)

SUPPRESSING THE TRUTH ABOUT GOD

EMPTYING THE WORLD

Over the last three centuries especially, as the richness of the sacred world was replaced by the barren desert of materialism, those same processes began to work on the human subject. The subject—the human individual—had become “gorged, inflated, at the expense of the Object.”33 Like an overinflated balloon ready to explode, man’s sense of dignity, destiny, and value was poked and prodded by the steel point of unbridled pride until it eventually burst. Modern humanity, emptied of its soul, collectively sighed as sacredness vaporized into the crisp, cold air of this disenchanted age. As Lewis concludes, “In emptying out the dryads and the gods (which, admittedly, ‘would not do’ just as they stood) we appear to have thrown out the whole universe, ourselves included.” (Location 766)

EXCURSUS: PHILOSOPHICAL CAUSES OF DISENCHANTMENT

While philosophers, theologians, and historians disagree over the details, they tend to agree that the unraveling of what Hans Boersma calls the “sacramental tapestry”38 of the world can be traced to at least three philosophical ideas: nominalism, mechanism, and empiricism. (Location 788)

This picture of the world began to unravel in the late medieval period. One important consequence of realism, the view that mind-independent universals exist, is that the structure of the world imposes limits on what is possible, even for God. Even God can’t change Rosie into an alligator. What God could do is cause Rosie to cease to exist and in her place create an alligator. What God can’t do, however, is cause Rosie the chicken to be an alligator. After all, Rosie is a chicken. Moreover, God too has an essential nature that imposes limits on his ability to act (for example, traditionally God cannot do the logically impossible or anything inconsistent with his essential goodness, such as evil acts). (Location 803)

Some fourteenth century theologians didn’t like the idea of God being restricted by his own essence or the essence of things in the world. William of Ockham (1287–1347) argued that God can do whatever he wants. God’s power is absolute. Extreme versions of what is called voluntarism allow that God could command murder as morally right, make contradictions logically true, or bring about four-sided triangles. (Location 808)

Ockham argued for a view called nominalism. Nominalists reject belief in universals. There are no shareable essences in the world. Whatever traits chickens have in common can be explained without an appeal to universals. So too for every other creature in the world, including humans. They share things in “name” (nomen) only in virtue of the absolute and free will of an omnipotent God. (Location 811)

Nominalism removed form, and formal causation, from the world. The medieval picture of the cosmos as an organism that strives toward some end, as well as the Aristotelian idea of final causation, soon crumbled too. “The nominalist rejection of universals,” writes the philosopher Michael Gillespie, “was thus a rejection not merely of formal but also of final causes.” (Location 817)

The only truths that can be known according to empiricism are those that come from the senses. As Nancy Pearcey summarizes, in late modernity “a biblically informed respect for empirical fact, which had inspired science to begin with, was replaced by empiricism, a philosophy that elevates the senses to the sole source of truth.” (Location 833)

The moves from realism to nominalism, from nature-as-organism to nature-as-mechanism, and from a healthy respect for empirical facts to empiricism each helped set the stage for the nineteenth-century ascendency of Marx, Nietzsche, and Darwin and the complete severance of the sacred order from the natural (and social) order. The resultant disenchantment and “the notion of a culture that persists independent of all sacred orders,” writes Philip Rieff, “is unprecedented in human history.”50 The materialism, reductionism, scientism, naturalism, Darwinism, and nihilism of our day find their roots in the changing philosophical and cultural scene of the late medieval and early modern period. (Location 839)

CHARACTERISTICS OF DISENCHANTMENT

What began as the suppression of truth about God has led to, in the West at least, disenchantment. Emptied of transcendence, the human experience of the world fades to grey. (Location 847)

four characteristics of our world’s disenchantment: the felt absence of God, a consumer culture, blindness and foolishness, and idolatry. (Location 856)

The “Felt Absence of God”

The goal of life in our modern culture is no longer virtue oriented toward an end (as the Greeks argued) or religion oriented toward the divine (as the medievals argued). Rather, the goal of life is entirely subjective. It is found within the self. To be specific, the defining goal of an individual’s life in this disenchanted age is the satisfaction of their personal desires. (Location 876)

Everything dies when God dies, including our link to the wisdom of the ancient world and to the established conceptions of human meaning, purpose, and value. Merely adding God back, as a character who matches the modern furniture of our disenchanted reality, is insufficient. Given enough time in the darkness, “straying through an infinite nothing,” we can no longer see what’s lost and therefore can’t recognize our own lostness. (Location 885)

The felt absence of God is the defining feature of our day. In a disenchanted age, belief in God is unwelcome, unnecessary, and unimaginable.55 God is unwelcome in the boardroom, bedroom, courtroom, classroom, and (even) in many of our churches. (Location 889)

Dawkins is saying that appeals to God shut down the process of gaining knowledge. Why is this the case? Because Dawkins assumes that science will one day be able to explain everything without appealing to the divine. (Location 917)

In a disenchanted age, no beliefs are left untouched. Not only is nonbelief in God a genuine possibility, it becomes far more difficult to believe in God. Doubt, angst, and the felt absence of God characterize contemporary religious life. Religion is reduced to external behaviors—dance steps—while God’s grace and presence—the music of the gospel—are noticeably absent in the believer’s everyday life.62 The religious person is not all that different from his secular counterpart. Both have learned to live on their own. Within the church, we give lip service to God, but our actions betray us. (Location 930)

A Consumer Culture

The satisfaction of pleasure (hedonism) rules the day, as we move from one taste to the next in a perpetual search for more. Sex trafficking, the porn industry, and the Walmartization of America are driven by the same impulse: to find meaning and significance in the satisfaction of our unfettered desire. The world is now a “vast storehouse of commodities” in which everything is for sale.67 Everything is reinvested with meaning, which is now defined by the market value. (Location 947)

Blindness and Foolishness

As we narrate the story of our lives and embody habits that are motivated by misplaced desire, our character (de)forms, and our perception of the world changes. We become blind and foolish. Money, entertainment, excess, gluttony—the litany of vices and her spoils—blind us to goodness and beauty. This blindness and foolishness lead to the fourth characteristic of disenchantment: idolatry. (Location 983)

Idolatry

As Paul noted in Athens, human beings are inherently religious (Acts 17:16, 22). We all worship something: either the true God or some created portion of reality. “Idolatry is inherently a rejection of God’s authority and a quest for self-definition, self-importance, and self-fulfillment on our own terms.” (Location 987)

As Wirzba summarizes, in living [and perceiving] idolatrously, “we lose both God and the world.”81 And in losing the world, we lose ourselves too. (Location 1006)

SIGNS OF TRANSCENDENCE

As G. K. Chesterton is reported to have observed, “Modernity has given ultimate authority to the world view of a slightly sleepy businessman right after lunch.”85 This boredom has fueled the modern obsession for experiences that provide momentary escape: movies, video games, drugs, alcohol, sex, sports, mindless trolling on social media—anything will do, as long as they do not point beyond the material world to some transcendent or supernatural reality. Yet our obsession with so-called “contraband transcendence”86 betrays us. (Location 1018)

A second pressing problem, highlighted by the prevalence of so-called contraband transcendence, is that we long for things the material world cannot provide, and these longings refuse to go away quietly.89 God and a deep spiritual reality are still there. He didn’t leave. He still upholds us, even if we refuse to acknowledge him. Transcendence has a way of breaking forth. It erupts through the cracks of our experience and the byways of creation and points to something fundamental. The transcendent “bites us from behind in our daydreams and nightmares, in our fantasies and bored despair, in moments of extremity and disorientation, in experiences of startling delight, or in revelations of beauty, goodness, and truth, which the so called ‘real world’ has no words for.”90 (Location 1030)

Peter Berger describes a signal of transcendence as follows: To speak of a signal of transcendence is neither to deny nor to idealize the often harsh empirical facts that make up our lives in the world. It is rather to try for a glimpse of the grace that is to be found “in, with, and under” the empirical reality of our lives. In other words, to speak of a signal of transcendence is to make an assertion about the presence of redemptive power in this world. (Location 1042)

Berger, in his excellent book A Rumor of Angels, notes five signals of transcendence from our everyday experiences. (Location 1053)

First, there is the human propensity for order. (Location 1054)

Second, Berger notes the pervasiveness of human play. (Location 1061)

Third, there is the unconquerable human propensity to hope. (Location 1064)

C. S. Lewis famously argued, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”97 The human characteristic hope points beyond itself and this world. It is a signal of transcendence. (Location 1067)

Fourth, in the face of horrendous evils, such as the massacre of the innocent, rape, or murder, there is the human demand for not only condemnation but damnation. (Location 1070)

Finally, there is the reality of humor. (Location 1076)

To these five we could add the reality of cosmic wonder, morality, beauty, music, death, the directedness or “aboutness” of our mental lives, religious experience of the divine, and more.100 The basic idea is this: everything that exists—every truth discovered, every beauty (and every corruption of beauty), and every good (and perversion of good)—points to and illuminates the divine. Since God creates everything that exists, everything bears his stamp. Each of these signals of transcendence also point to the gospel story as the true story of the world. For in the gospel we find an enchanted, supernatural world where love is eternal, death is overcome, victory is snatched out of the hands of defeat, and all turns out for the good in the end. The world, if we pay attention, points to God and a God-bathed reality. (Location 1083)

CHAPTER 3 REENCHANTMENT

Many today don’t see how God is related to our happiness. If anything, God is seen in contrast to human happiness, opposed to our joy. If there is happiness to be found, it will be found on human terms, free from limitations on our desires. Peter Kreeft notes that sloth, a spiritual lethargy or a failure to recognize our inherent longing for God, is a distinctively modern sin. (Location 1340)

Traditionally, love has been understood as a theological virtue. In exercising the theological virtue of love, chiefly for God and secondarily for neighbor, we experience inner peace and joy. In a disenchanted age, the demand of love, with its call for personal transformation from selfishness to selflessness, is difficult and unappealing. (Location 1350)

AWAKENING DESIRE

Yet sainthood remains unattainable for most. The problem isn’t primarily one of moral defect; rather, it’s one of longing and loves: many simply do not desire God above all else, or even at all. (Location 1395)

In our disenchanted culture, the universal longing for transcendence is either unnoticed or suppressed. As Alison Milbank observes, “Part of our problem in presenting the Faith is that our world deadens desire, and many people do not know that they are missing anything.”14 Cultural apologists need to be aware of this. Disenchantment redirects and channels man’s desires toward the mundane. The spell has been cast and the world remains in a stupor. Our task is to reawaken in human hearts a longing for more, for that “far-off country.” To that end, there are at least three ways we can join with the Holy Spirit in awakening desire in those we seek to reach with the gospel: the way of imagination, the way of reason, and the way of morality. (Location 1411)

The Way of Imagination: Heroic Escape and the Invitation Home

The Holy Spirit woos us through the beauty and imaginative stories depicted in these works of art. Ultimately this quest can only be satisfied with Jesus and the gospel. These stirrings in art and media provide a means of escape that is, according to J. R. R. Tolkien, heroic.16 They remind us of our homeland and invite us to embark on an epic journey toward the object of our longing. (Location 1426)

Often it is the “aesthetic currency of the imagination—story, poetry, music, symbols, and images”30 that God uses to awaken our desire. (Location 1463)

The Way of Reason: The Argument from Desire

“Hope” in Mere Christianity. Lewis reasons as follows: “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex.”31 Lewis is noting that whenever humans have a natural desire for something, there is a corresponding object that satisfies the desire. (Location 1469)

We long for God and a magical—a supernatural—world full of deep mystery, beauty, holiness, and wholeness, a reality behind the material cosmos. We can summarize the argument with two premises: 1. Our natural desires have a corresponding object that satisfies them. 2. There exists in us a natural desire, the desire for transcendence, that nothing in the material cosmos can satisfy. ... 3. There exists some object beyond the material cosmos that can satisfy this desire. ... 4. The transcendent object of our longing is God. ... 5. God exists. (Location 1475)

Even if the evolutionary story can explain our longing for transcendence, the argument from desire has not failed. The very nature of desire itself is best explained by theism, not naturalism. Erik Wielenberg is wrong to assume they are equals. He argues, “What we have are essentially two competing ‘just so stories’ [evolutionary psychology and theism]. If that is right, then we have a stalemate. And a stalemate in this context means failure for the argument from desire.”37 Evolutionary accounts of the longing for transcendence are implausible. For example, Wielenberg argues that restlessness contributes to survival by driving people to succeed in life. Contentment, on the other hand, leads to stagnation, “which in turn breeds reproductive failure. . . . Evolutionarily speaking, a good strategy is never to be entirely satisfied with one’s lot in life.”38 Thus, according to Wielenberg, restlessness does not point to a God-shaped hole in the human heart. Rather, restlessness contributes to the survival of the human species. (Location 1527)

Yet for those who believe happiness is found in otherworldly goods, namely, in union with God, contentment is never stagnation. (Location 1538)

Note:: shalom

The Way of Morality: The Longing for Happiness and the Dialectic of Desire

“turned me into believing there is a power greater than myself and there is a purpose for me on this planet.” (Location 1588)

We do not act alone. When we are attentive to the Holy Spirit’s promptings and step out in obedience to those promptings, the transcendent breaks forth into the mundane. Lives are changed. (Location 1594)

RETURNING TO REALITY

I mean that Christians ought to (1) see and delight in reality in the same way that Jesus sees and delights in reality and (2) invite others to see and delight in reality in the same way. (Location 1601)

Seeing Reality as Jesus Does

Inviting Others to See Reality as Jesus Does

Paul doesn’t point his listeners to human sinfulness and their need for forgiveness (although that is important and a necessary part of ultimately understanding and embracing the gospel). Rather, he draws their attention to all the good and delightful things God has given to his creatures: “In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:16–17 ESV). Paul calls his listeners to take note of the created things that yield pleasure—food, rain, the seasons of growth and fruitfulness. He implores them to see God as the giver of these things. This is significant because it suggests that the good and pleasurable things in this world witness to God, who is good and delights in all that he has made. Granted, we can be led astray by our pleasures, but understood properly, they are generous gifts from God. (Location 1655)

Paul’s invitation to the people is instructive as a model for helping others return to reality. He implores his listeners first to repent, to turn from idolatry and believe in and worship the true God. Second, he urges them to see everything they enjoy as gifts from God, signs that God exists and lovingly sustains and cares for that which he has made. This model is useful in our context as well, as we invite others to see and delight in God’s gifts and to participate in a “life-world rebellion,”53 where the old, disenchanted ways of seeing are abandoned in favor of a new way of seeing. Paul’s example suggests one way to do this: to point to the things we all enjoy and help others see that delight is not found in them but comes through them.54 (Location 1663)

False Reenchantment 1: Contemporary Humanism

False Reenchantment 2: Augmented and Virtual Realities

Technology has long been viewed as a means of salvation from pain and death, and today it offers us a new experience of transcendence through augmented and virtual reality. Consider augmented realities, such as the video game Pokémon Go, which combines its world of fictional animals with physical reality. In the summer of 2016, Pokémon Go captured the imagination of millions of Americans, filling streets, museums, parks—and even churches—with people staring at their phones as they tried to catch the mythical creatures appearing (through the phone’s video screen) in real, physical locations. Virtual realities offer a similar promise of transcendence. Popular video games, such as Second Life and its spin-offs, allow people to create second selves, or avatars, to live out an alternative life in an imaginary universe. Trans- and posthumanist movements take the promise of transcendence to another level altogether. The 2014 movie Transcendence starred Johnny Depp as Dr. Will Caster, an expert in artificial intelligence. Before his death, Caster’s mind was successfully uploaded to a virtual reality where his life continued as a bodiless virtual being. (Location 1710)

Note:: This example from seven years ago seems antiquated now as GPT-4, the Metaverse and other techologies become exponentiallly more advance and intrusive. Artificial intelligence is advancing so rapdily, it is virtually impossible to keep up with. Moore’s Law even appears slow in comparison.

Trans- and posthumanism makes for good science fiction, but they will never deliver on what they promise. Human nature is not endlessly malleable, and there are limits to what science and technology can offer to us. Downloading human consciousness is possible only if the mind is reducible or identical to the brain (purely material and physical). But if the mind is immaterial, it would be impossible to “download” one’s thoughts, beliefs, hopes, and dreams onto a physical hard drive.70 These dreams create false hope, perpetuating the lie that we can save ourselves. The result is the same as it has always been: a path to eternal misery. (Location 1736)

Note:: Incompletely remembering the section from the book Riddles of Existence talking about a person and what makes a person. Is it their memories and experiences that makes them…them? Need to look that up and flesh this out a bit more.

False Reenchantment 3: Neopaganism

Neopaganism is a false reenchantment because it does not evoke the pleasure of a dream, but that of a nightmare, where we are trapped in a world that is magical, but not good. It is a hopeless world, devoid of love and joy, without a moral order. Immortality, if it can be had at all, becomes a kind of hell. (Location 1765)

ENCHANTMENT AND THE BARRIER TO UNBELIEF

All too often Christians try to fit Jesus into our own agendas, treating him like a genie instead of Lord and Savior. All too often our apologetic efforts focus on the plausibility of Christianity without much attention to its desirability. (Location 1776)

A cultural apologetic of return calls the church to see and delight in the ever-present, all-consuming Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer. (Location 1780)

We must not be beholden to the lie that all is well in the world and the church. This is not a time for business as usual. Eternal destinies are at stake. The future of the church is at stake. (Location 1790)

Looking at and Looking Along

In looking at the beam, Lewis contemplated the nature of light itself. In looking along the beam, Lewis was led to its source: the sun. (Location 1972)

CHAPTER 4 IMAGINATION

Great art does that. Stories move the heart. Beauty awakens our longings, and the imagination paints pictures in our mind that help us see reality more clearly. As we talked about the movie on our drive home, we were especially aware of this powerful medium. Art has an ability to bypass our defenses and touch our identity in a way that nothing else does (Location 2031)

THE EXILE OF BEAUTY

Christians confuse the nature and role of beauty for three reasons. ... First, there is a strain of anti-intellectualism in today’s church. ... Second, the Western church is captive to pragmatism. ... A third reason for the neglect of beauty in the church might be called philistinism. (Location 2043)

We lack a theology of beauty. Failing to understand what beauty is, we don’t understand its purpose or where it comes from. (Location 2054)

BEAUTY’S CALL

What the Israelites needed most—and this is a theme from Genesis to Revelation—is God’s presence. (Location 2112)

And just as he had done in Eden, God gives his people the tabernacle as a place of order, abundance, and beauty. God himself dwells in the tabernacle, which he created to remind his people of their home.9 The tabernacle was a divinely crafted model that pointed to a greater reality, when all was as it should be and humanity experienced the unmediated presence of God. (Location 2124)

God is the master artist: it is his pattern for the tabernacle, and it is our home he creates and cultivates in the opening chapters of Genesis. As Andy Crouch notes, the creation account of Genesis reveals God as an artist and a gardener. (Location 2130)

“The Church needs artists to assist the body in understanding truth, but just as importantly the Church needs artists to equip the Church to praise God. We cannot praise God without art.” (Location 2142)

In addition, realize that the most beautiful thing you can do is locate your life in God’s story. Find your meaning in the true story, a story that is alive and inviting. One of the most powerful yet often overlooked apologetics is the attractiveness of the Christian life. (Location 2181)

LOOKING AT IMAGINATION

If beauty is what calls us, drawing forth our longings, it is the imagination that guides us in perceiving and creating beauty. But what is the imagination? Philosophers, theologians, and artists offer different definitions, but there is broad consensus on what imagination is not. It is not our memory, perception, or beliefs. Yet it is similar in some ways to memory, perception, and belief. Most notably imagining is “a representational state”—there is intentionality or “aboutness” to our imagination.22 Most who study the nature of imagination agree that it is crucial to our lives, playing a significant role in perceiving, creating, dreaming, meaning, judging, learning, and moralizing. As the philosopher Colin McGinn provocatively suggests, man is “Homo imaginans”—the one who imagines. (Location 2189)

Piecing together these various strands of thought, we can conclude the following about the human imagination. The imagination is (1) a faculty of the mind (2) that mediates between sense and intellect (i.e., perception and reason) and the human mind and the divine mind (i.e., finite creatures and the infinite Creator) (3) for meaning and inventing. (Location 2219)

Through the process of inventing, our imagination playfully and spontaneously pulls together ideas and images to make something new. But how do we explain the process of inventing? How did it arise? What purpose does it serve? Evolutionary accounts of man’s creative capacities don’t provide adequate justification for the imagination and our inventive faculties. Evolution subjects every motive to our need to survive, but this motive fails to ring true in our experience. Human beings often create at times and in ways that seem at odds with the will to survive. Ask yourself why the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich would continue to compose music during the siege of Leningrad, even as German bombs fell around him,35 or why a community of artists would exist among Hebrew slaves in Egypt. Survival is not a comprehensive paradigm to explain humanity’s imaginative and creative impulse. (Location 2254)

The divine imagination is rich and exuberant, bursting forth with joy, playfulness, and delight.36 So too is the human imagination in the act of inventing or subcreating. As Tolkien puts it, “We make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.”37 In invention the human imagination partakes of the divine. It engages in the serious business of heaven: creating and cultivating beauty and meaning in order to spread God’s joy, delight, and glory. (Location 2264)

LOOKING ALONG THE IMAGINATION

Stories, especially good stories, can provide us, Tolkien argues, a means of escape, recovery, and consolation.41 Good stories command what Tolkien calls “secondary belief.”42 We escape from our primary world and enter a secondary world through the imagination. While we are “in” the secondary world, we experience joy and sorrow, hope and fear, as if we were part of the story. When we put the book down or leave the theater, if the story has done its job, we should see reality afresh. Stories help “clean our windows”43 so that we see the familiar in its proper light as beautiful, mysterious, and sacred. (Location 2304)

For the task of cultural apologetics, we can generalize this point even further. Many, if not all, good stories are good precisely because they point to the one true story of the world: the gospel. In the gospel, as in the very best fairy stories, we find what we long for: a magical world, life eternal, love unbounded, the defeat of evil, and a happy ending. And all good stories point us to Jesus, even if they do so indirectly. We are drawn to some stories over others because we intuit that they reflect reality, that they are somehow connected to another, ongoing story. Fictional stories prepare us to recognize the true story when we see it. They are windows to another world, beckoning us to look through for the One who offers us joy unending. (Location 2331)

ART AND THE KINGDOM

In light of these local and global concerns, how can art, beauty, and the imagination help us point others to Jesus? Let me offer three practical suggestions. (Location 2344)

First, our evangelism, apologetics, teaching, and preaching must cultivate “imaginative reasoning.”46 Jesus used metaphor, story, analogy, hyperbole, and a variety of creative methods to engage his listeners and assist them in understanding his message.47 We should do likewise when we share the gospel, engage in apologetic discussions, preach, and relate with others. (Location 2345)

Imaginative reasoning is not easy. We must study theology, and we must study culture. Then we must learn to make thoughtful connections between the two. This requires energy, insight, and the development of intellectual virtue. We must daily pick up our crosses and follow Jesus and his call to be salt and light in a world of decay and darkness. (Location 2353)

Second, we can support and encourage art and artists within the church. The church needs artists because they help us see reality as beautiful, meaningful, and mysterious. (Location 2356)

Third, we must encourage artists’ faithfulness. Every Christian is called to be a faithful witness for Christ, but in calling artists to faithfulness I want to highlight the crucial yet often neglected truth that art is a worthy vocation unto the Lord. (Location 2365)

Those pursuing artistic endeavors should strive for technical excellence. This may require years of honing one’s craft.48 It is not enough to catch a vision for “Christian art” and settle for poor quality or shabby work accompanied by a request for God’s blessing. (Location 2370)

As a movie director in Hollywood has said: “L.A. is the town that controls world storytelling for both children and adults.”54 Hollywood and other elite institutions that produce and cultivate art have an inordinate influence on the narratives that shape our world, and if we want Christianity to be viewed as reasonable and desirable, Christian artists and leaders should be sitting at the table of these key culture-shaping institutions, offering our voice, conscience, and imagination as a subversive narrative that contrasts with the dominant spirit of the age. (Location 2384)

BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD

The human longing for beauty and goodness are both powerful yet often neglected starting points for building bridges to Jesus and the gospel. In a world immune to rational arguments, beauty and goodness are the filters through which the gospel message is first considered. (Location 2410)

CHAPTER 5 REASON

You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring in his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him. C. S. Lewis1 (Location 2530)

Studies have demonstrated that we are losing our minds. Nicholas Carr, in his book The Shallows, says it simply: “Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”2 (Location 2552)

Contemplation and the cultivation of intellectual virtue, long viewed as marks of maturity and the highest human ideal, are no longer viewed as essential to happiness and human flourishing. There is a shift in “society’s attitude toward intellectual achievement,”4 as Carr argues, from “being cultivators of personal knowledge to being hunters and gatherers in the electronic data forest.”5 Auguste Rodin’s 1902 sculpture The Thinker once embodied this high human ideal of the contemplative life.6 Today that sculpture could be recast as The Tweeter, a familiar image of a person sitting with their head down staring at a phone while dispensing words of wisdom in 280-character bursts. The short, pithy and quickly forgotten statement now embodies the spirit of our individualistic, consumer-focused age. Some might say we are losing our humanity. (Location 2559)

Note:: I don’t disagree with the sentiment that things are changing, we are inundated with information, and for the most part, most struggle with engaging with information and critical thinking. There are some, though, across generations that do. Regardless, I’m not sure how this results in us losing our humanity.

I guess it depends on what it means to be human. The book, “The Soul” explores this idea in granular detail. While we are mind, body, and soul and our experiences are changing, does this really result in the loss of our humanity? Maybe, the author will explore this further in the coming paragraphs and I’m jumping the gun.
If that is the case, what about in pre-historic times, when we essentially had zero information? Were we any less or more human then?

The noted Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins thinks Darwin dealt “biology’s deadliest blow to supernaturalism”11 making it “possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”12 (Location 2578)

Note:: This was essentially the original sin, was it not? To know both good and evil. Maybe, that is the point to have all knowledge without understanding or thinking knowledge will be our savior, instead of Jesus?

We see early in Genesis 4 how humanity strayed fast and far from God.

They assert there is no evidence for God. Faith is blind, a jump into the abyss of irrationality and incoherency. (Location 2590)

But how do we know that something is “true”? By what process do we utilize our reason to arrive at the truth? The reasoning process involves several components, including (1) the reception of facts from sensation, reports of others (i.e., testimony), memory, introspection, or the imagination; (2) the perception of self-evident truths (including the laws of logical inference); and (3) the arrangement of the facts to arrive at new truths that are not self-evident. (Location 2706)

The Argument from Reason to God

Recall that naturalism is the view that there are no supernatural beings. (Location 2733)

naturalist is committed to the following three claims: (1) There are none but natural causes involving none by natural entities; (2) the distribution of minds in the universe is late and local: only recently evolved creatures have minds and mental properties, and those minds and mental properties are tied to relatively complex biological structures of the evolved creatures in question; and (3) there is nothing that is divine, or sacred, or worthy of worship.41 (Location 2735)

C. S. Lewis saw a deep conflict between the claims of naturalism and reason itself. As he states in Miracles, Thus a strict materialism refutes itself for the reason given long ago by Professor Haldane: “If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true . . . and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms” (Possible Worlds, p. 209). . . . [Naturalism] discredits our processes of reasoning or at least reduces their credit to such a humble level that it can no longer support Naturalism itself. (Location 2745)

We can formulate an argument from the existence of reason (minds) to the existence of God as follows: 1. The existence of minds is not surprising under theism. 2. The existence of minds is enormously surprising under naturalism. 3. Therefore, the existence of minds strongly supports theism over naturalism. (Location 2761)

Some Christian philosophers, such as James N. Anderson and Greg Welty, have even argued logical laws are divine thoughts about how propositions essentially relate.59 If so, then “every logical argument,” including every argument for atheism, “presupposes the existence of God.”60 (Location 2837)

First, it is evident that we understand far more about the world than what is required for survival. As John Polkinghorne said, “It seems incredible that, say, Einstein’s ability to conceive of the General Theory of Relativity was just a spin-off from the struggle for survival. What survival value does such an ability possess?”61 The answer is “none.” As Polkinghorne claims, the human capacity for the kind of abstract reasoning employed in pure mathematics has little practical value for humankind’s struggle for survival. It is difficult to see how such complex reasoning abilities could evolve from nonrational, nonpurposeful, blind forces.62 (Location 2849)

The world is ontologically haunted by a self-existent, immaterial, cosmic mind. As Lewis has said, “To admit [a] cosmic mind is to admit a God outside Nature, a transcendent and supernatural God.”64 This is the argument from reason to God. (Location 2861)

LOOKING ALONG REASON

It was the first time someone had presented the evidence for the Christian faith, and I was shocked at the cumulative case for Christianity. Week after week, I learned about the evidence for God’s existence, the deity of Christ, and the historicity of the resurrection. I marveled as the teacher dropped a stack of books on the table each class, inviting us to dig in for ourselves. (Location 2623)

Anyone who asks questions and seeks answers is a philosopher. The question is not if we will engage in philosophy but whether we will be a good philosopher or a bad one. Many of us are poor philosophers because our thinking lacks breadth and depth; we’ve ceased asking questions and have become content with daily doses of mindless entertainment. As Neil Postman once quipped, we are amusing ourselves to death.29 We allow Google’s search engine to think for us. We have been lulled to sleep, and the innate and God-given longing for truth and knowledge has been muted. (Location 2663)

Note:: This argument makes sense. We have off-loaded critical thinking, or thinking in general, to a Google search. Even more modern, to ChatGPT or Gen AI. This is not going to improve going forward with the propagation of more “intelligent” tools available to society.

This is what actually scares me about AI. I’m not overly worried about AI becoming sentient. What does worry me is the manipulation of truth and “intellects” (FAANG companies, or creators of AI moving forward - all the large tech companies who drive content and algorithms) who now have the complete ability to control the information we ingest.
For example, Google’s algorithm or Instagram’s or any, really, have the ability to rank information, block information, like “hate speech”, etc. from being served to us. While, in some aspects, this is potentially positive in reducing “fake news” or other types of information, it has the potential to be extremely dangerous.
With the manipulation of large language models (LLMs) which feed AI tools, companies that control them control the narrative. If Christianity is deemed “hate speech”, for example, they can turn the temperature down, literally and figuratively, on content that is Christian-focused. Using a very relevant metaphor, they can “boil the frog” and gradually change the temperature to reduce Christian-focused content to nothing changing society’s access to truth.

Christians believe that all truth points to its source in Christ, the creator of all things. Contrary to cultural trends, truth is not “whatever works” or “whatever coheres with other beliefs”; rather, we find truth when our thoughts, beliefs, or statements correspond to reality, when we are rightly related to the way the world is. God has given us reason as a guide on this journey to help us discover truth and its source. As cultural apologists, we want to help others see and understand the value of reason and then look along the path of reason on our quest for Jesus and the gospel. (Location 2670)

LOOKING AT REASON

The Right Use of Reason in the Inquiry after Truth with a Variety of Rules to Guard against Error in the Affairs of Religion and Human Life, as Well as in the Sciences, and it became the standard text on logic for over one hundred years. It was used in schools such as Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Yale. Watts’s life serves as an example for us today as cultural apologists, showing us how the head and the heart must unite to create and cultivate in a way that embodies goodness, truth, and beauty for the glory of God and the benefit of man. (Location 2678)

Note:: In a way, this substantiates my point above regarding intellectual elitism controlling the narrative. There is zero chance those schools would entertain teaching this book today.

As Francis Bacon said, God has given us two books as sources of truth: the book of God’s works (creation) and the book of God’s word (the Bible).35 Scripture implores us to study both books: “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15); “Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!” (Prov. 6:6). (Location 2692)

Faithfulness to Christ requires the diligent cultivation of intellectual virtues conducive to the pursuit of truth and love of God and neighbor. This also means that we seek to root out false, accidental, and irrational beliefs. Since our beliefs “are the rails upon which our lives run,”36 our beliefs must be rational and justified. These justified true beliefs will help us live and help us love, because we love best what we know best. The greatest commandment includes loving God with our minds: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37, emphasis added). The proper use of reason is essential to human flourishing, as it is essential in making a case for Jesus and the gospel. (Location 2700)

His unbelief had little to do with the evidence. It had everything to do with his poor relationship with his father. I learned a lesson that night. Making the case for Christianity is about far more than delivering true content. We must not neglect the relational aspect. We are called to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15). When we present a case for Jesus and the gospel, Peter implores us to do so “with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15). (Location 2875)

Starting Posture

This is Jesus’s way, and it must be the way of his followers too if we are to persuade others. As Aristotle noted long ago, the credibility of our message (logos) is influenced by who we are (ethos).70 Any argument, no matter how tightly made, can be (and often is) undermined by a vicious posture toward those we seek to persuade. God brings us truth through his love and compassion, and we must do the same with others. (Location 2899)

Starting Points

“The key to crafting a successful message is to find starting points consisting of beliefs that the strong public already finds plausible.”72 (Location 2917)

If I hadn’t demonstrated a long-term awareness of and respect for his sacred core beliefs, our conversation would likely have ended, and with it, my opportunity to build a case for Jesus and the gospel. We must value the sacred cores of the individuals and communities we seek to persuade with generosity, charity, and respect. (Location 2929)

Making the Case

An argument is one or more statements (called premises) strung together in support of another statement (called the conclusion). There are two basic argument forms: deductive and inductive. (Location 2937)

REASON AND THE KINGDOM

If you could reach the synagogue, you could reach the city. Paul was strategic in his apologetic approach to engaging the culture, and in a similar manner we should ask ourselves: What today functions as a center of power for the discovery of truth and the advancement of knowledge? I believe one of the best answers to that question is the modern university. (Location 2961)

If we are to be strategic in our cultural apologetic, we must work to cultivate Christian leadership and a Christian presence within the halls of the academy. (Location 2971)

Christian professors are a vital part of God’s missionary endeavor, as strategically placed ambassadors for Christ in a key center of cultural influence. (Location 2994)

Truth calls. Reason guides. A cultural apologetic of return will not shy away from demonstrating the truth of Christianity. (Location 2999)

CHAPTER 6 CONSCIENCE

Christians today are known primarily by what they stand against instead of what they stand for. For the majority of people aged sixteen to twenty-nine, Christians are anti-homosexual, judgmental, hypocritical, too political, old-fashioned, insensitive, boring, unaccepting of other faiths, and confusing.3 (Location 3209)

Studies reveal that there is little difference in the lifestyle of believers and nonbelievers (setting aside a few extra religious activities for the practicing Christian).4 The lives of some Christians make a great argument for atheism, or as Os Guinness bluntly observes, “The church is a leading spawning ground for atheists.”5 (Location 3215)

LONGING FOR GOODNESS

We were created to live in harmony with others. Even in the garden of Eden, it was not good for Adam to be alone (Gen. 2:18). The good life is a life lived with others, one filled with deep and abiding relationships. We were created to be known and to know, to be loved and to love. (Location 3237)

Finally, human flourishing requires us to be rightly related to our end—our purpose. We were created to love and serve God according to the nature he gave us, and we thrive when we live this way. If we locate our lives in the gospel story and live under God’s rule and reign, we will find our identity, meaning, and purpose. (Location 3240)

The quest for goodness finds expression in our longing for wholeness (the individual component to human flourishing), justice (the social component), and a life of significance (kingdom-directed component). (Location 3244)

The Longing for Wholeness

We all long for unity and wholeness in life. We long for unity because we’ve been created for wholeness by the perfectly united triune God. (Location 3268)

But where can we find the wholeness we long for? By looking to Jesus as our greatest joy, hope, love, and happiness.11 And as we experience wholeness, a watching world will take note, as they seek a cup of living water for their restless souls. (Location 3280)