We need to nurture our ability to discern the way of the world around us. This ability needs to move beyond a vague sense of things; we need to develop a vocabulary to help us articulate what we sense around us so that we can name it and, where appropriate, put up defenses against it. What follows is compiled from personal research, but it had its birth and refinement as a collaborative reflection with a group of my students. In the months to come, I plan to flesh out these ideas much further, but I hope that what follows presents at least a start toward synthesizing and articulating this vital vocabulary.
We arrived at the concepts articulated below by asking what sorts of cultural answers we might have for three central questions:
How do we know if something is good?
How do we achieve our goals?
What is possible for us?
Together, these questions map out some of the edges of what Charles Taylor calls the social imaginary, a sort of collective unconscious sense of how things should be done and what actions and meanings are plausible. To try to organize this vocabulary, I have described them as the metrics, methods, and message offered to us by our cultural environment.
This idea can be taken further, though. An important part of trying to develop a vocabulary is to empower us to speak more precisely about something. In this case, thinking about culture through this lens opens us up to thinking about a particular mechanism by which culture lures us away from merely being in the world to being more thoroughly of it as well. This mechanism can be compared to a switching station.
In a switching station, a train enters on one track. In the station, that track merges with another, and, along the way, the lines diverge, and the train leaves the station headed in a new direction. The actual change can be subtle, as the tracks run together for a time, but the result is significant. In a like manner, the “Metric” spirits are relevant in both a life lived for Christ and one lived for the World. That is, virtue may merge with vice. However, along the way, most of the “Method” spirits make a subtle change, usually raising something to a role of undeserved ultimacy. Ultimately, a shift occurs such that we end up seeing the more plainly false “Message” spirits as plausible, and we can leave the station on a path to vice instead of virtue.
I believe that using this vocabulary and paying attention to this mechanism can empower us to become more aware of where and how vice takes hold of our hearts. In short, I offer the Spirits of the Age as both a vocabulary and a mechanism that can help us account for the pull of vice. As a start to developing this idea, I offer this rough framework below as a draft version in the hopes that it might be a tool we can use to hold ourselves accountable before a God who calls us to a life more rightly ordered.
Metrics: How do we know if something is good?
Approval – do people like it?
Autonomy – does it help me show people what I can do?
Efficiency – does it maximize what I get compared to how much I have to give?
Equality – is it fair to everyone?
Expertise – was it created/endorsed by smart/skilled people?
Expression – does it say something about who I am?
Growth – does it provide a good return on investment?
Loyalty – does it support “us” or attack “them”?
Novelty – is it new or unique?
Pleasure – does it make me feel good?
Progress – does it make things better?
Purity – does it refuse to compromise?
Status – does it increase my standing with people I value?
Utility – can I see an immediate practical use for this?
Variety – does this expand the range of what I have or experience?
Value – is this worth a lot of money?
Thinking about the metrics is about stopping and asking “why do I think that this is a good way to go?” or “how am I judging whether something is worth it?” The label may not strike you as perfectly worded, but I suspect that you’ve asked versions of these questions before. It’s not bad to ask these questions, as many reflect our basic biological wiring; these are where the “tracks” can run together. The danger comes when the definitions or relative importance of the terms of our questions start to shift.
As perhaps the most obvious example, take progress. Your definition of “better” will make quite a difference in what you view as progress, and the cultural sense of “progressive” may carry with it a notion of “better” that departs from the vision of the Good offered in Scripture. (For what it’s worth, our cultural sense of “conservative” may carry with it a notion of what’s worth preserving about our culture that also differs significantly from what Scripture values.)
Methods: How do we achieve our goals?
Activism – You can (and therefore should) do something about it. Carpe Diem.
Consumerism – With all of the available wealth, knowledge, and technology, a better life is just one purchase away.
Economism – With properly-managed market incentives, we can create enough wealth for everyone to achieve the good life.
Emotivism – Evaluative and moral judgments are just an expression of preferences, and we’re all entitled to whatever preferences we happen to have. The aesthetic sense becomes the moral sense. “Whatever floats your boat …”
Expressivism – People will know that we’re special if we can show them how we’re special.
Polarized Tribalism – If we can just defeat them, things will be better.
Practical Atheism – Whether God exists or not, we have made the most progress when we’ve focused on the material world. Emphasizes a focus on the here and now, leaving the transcendent to sort itself out. “Live for the moment.”
Narcissistic Individualism – At the end of the day, what’s most important is that you get yours. The best society is one where everyone does what they think is best for them.
Scientism – Study, research, and experimentation are the key to really knowing about the world around us.
Structuralism – The system is rigged. If we can just fix (fill in the blank), then everyone will be able to succeed.
Technicism – From our accumulated scientific knowledge, we can invent tools that help solve all of our problems. “There’s an app for that.”
Here the tracks begin to diverge. Almost all of these ways of doing things are still true in a way, but they have a tendency to be elevated to a level of ultimacy, to an “ism”, that loses this balance and pulls us away from a Scriptural vision. That is, these methods often fall afoul of the old adage: “To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
By way of example, we are capable of accomplishing an astonishing array of things, but activism takes this potential and elevates it to the norm. The assumption is that we can and should do something about any problem we face. It loses sight of categories of things like sin, which Scripture tells us cannot be overcome by way of striving, but rather resting in what someone else has done. Activism also tends to think that the solution to bad engagement is just better engagement. We can end up exhausting ourselves through constant preening, politicking, and posturing in an effort to gain traction on whatever issue we’re pursuing, and we forget that one of the sweetest gifts of God is rest.
As another example, scientism tends to overlook what can’t be measured. As a result, the spiritual reality that Scripture attests to is almost entirely ignored. We can pretend it’s not there, even though the testimony of Scripture is that instead we are largely blind to this facet of reality. However, even the physical is often reduced to the quantifiable, as if human happiness could be produced in a lab if we just came up with the proper set of weights and measures. Good scientists recognize these limitations, but scientism pipes up in the background, asserting that all this means is that we haven’t come up with subtle enough measurements or clever enough experiments just yet.
Message: What is possible for us?
We can know everything – “just put your mind to it” “trust your gut”
We can do anything – “the sky’s the limit” “the possibilities are endless”
We can have anything – “the world is your oyster” “follow your heart”
We can be anyone or anything we want – “live your truth”
You are all that really matters – “you do you” “you gotta look out for #1”
Bottom Line: You can (and should) have it all.
I put this last category in the singular because I think it represents the ultimate departure, the point at which the tracks have finally diverged and we find ourselves animated by a vision that runs counter to what God offers us. I hesitate to say that this is a vision not offered in Scripture because you can find it time and time again in its pages, albeit never presented in a positive light. This vision is the same essential vision offered by the snake in the Garden of Eden: “you will be like God.” Ever since Eve, we have seen knowledge, judgment, independence, life on our own terms as the ultimate enticement. Ever since the Fall, we continually reenact its folly, imagining ourselves up to the task of being gods, judging ourselves able to be enough without God or neighbor, and discerning right and wrong solely by what fits our desires.
I don’t think we often start by being convinced of this “message” proposition on its face; the proposition needs to become more plausible for us. The immanent God needs to recede into transcendence or irrelevance, and we need to slowly blinker our horizons to our own world, especially our inner lives, where we can more easily convince ourselves of our sovereignty. In short, if we were on the right track, we need to pass through a switching station to change our destination.
The switching station metaphor can of course be reductive. It has an “all or nothing” flavor to it that doesn’t capture all of the nuance or difficulty of our divided selves. Even a growing awareness of the mechanism articulated by the Spirits of the Age concept isn’t a silver bullet to a sinless life. We can’t do it all. We need Jesus, who has done it for us. That said, as adopted children in God’s household, we are called to thankfully embrace the ways of our new household, and that challenges us to faithfully discern the ways that we can be “in the world, but not of it” or how we can “put off our old nature.” Hopefully, you will find that the Spirits of the Age provide a helpful toolkit for that task.