Here is something I have often wondered as I ponder modern entertainment and entertainers: Why does so much of it involve mocking and belittling the Christian faith? Why is there such a desire to violate and trample upon Christian ethics and morality? Why would the opening ceremonies of the Olympics feature a lurid, transgender version of the Last Supper designed specifically to be contemptuous and offensive? Why would so many people advocate that mere children be exposed to drag queen story hours? Why has abortion advanced from a rare but unfortunate option to an event to be celebrated and boasted of? Carl Trueman offers a compelling answer in his new book, The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity.
If over the past few years you have done much reading in thoughtful Christian books, you have probably come across the term “disenchantment.” This is the idea that the world no longer regards anyone or anything as transcendent, which in turn means that any meaning or significance we may find must exist within the natural world. And while it is certainly true that the modern Western world has become disenchanted, Trueman finds this an inadequate explanation of our times, for the “idea that man is disenchanted does not explain some of the most notable features of our current cultural climate. As Tara Isabella Burton has reported, our age is not marked by the disappearance of belief in the supernatural, the weird and the wonderful. In fact, there is an efflorescence of new religions. Religious belief has not disappeared; we simply have more religions to choose from—indeed, we can even invent our own today.”
But what of the old religion of Christianity and its values that were once normative and considered of cultural benefit? “Our world is not characterized by a disillusioned indifference to values once grounded in religious faith. Rather, it often seems to revel in an ecstatic destruction of all that was once considered sacred.” Society “glories in transgression, and transgression is exhilarating.” This is exactly what we see on the big screen, the little screen, and the iPhone screen.
Especially among cultural elites, “Transgression of that once considered sacred has become their primary task. And transgression of the sacred is exhilarating precisely because it makes us feel like gods, the creators of our own meanings and our own selves. All we need to do is cross lines previously enforced by the idea of God and we thereby assume the role of being gods.” It is by transgressing the restrictions of Christian morality that people experience the exhilaration of freedom that makes them feel like gods. In other words, desecration is all the rage. It is not enough to simply decline to be Christian or to disagree with Christian morality. No, to be an authentic and respectable human is to delight in transgressing God’s rules. Yet, as usual, man takes the bait without seeing the hook: “The modern notion of man—free and autonomous as demonstrated by his ability to transgress boundaries once considered sacred—has paradoxically reduced him to nothing. In desecrating God, he has ironically desecrated himself.” Ironically, as man attempts to make himself like God, he behaves like a beast. In his attempt to elevate himself, he actually diminishes and desecrates himself.
Having laid out his thesis, Trueman first asks and answers a question that should be straightforward: What is man? Yet the answer of the past (a being created in God’s image and given great purpose, worth, and dignity) has been overthrown so that man is now a being who has evolved from no one and nothing and is therefore autonomous. Man defines himself today by his ability and program of desecration, which involves transgressing whatever rules, limits, or strictures God demands of him.
Trueman then looks to Nietzsche and his famous declaration that man has killed God. Having killed God, man must become god and create his own meaning and his own truth. Though Nietzsche described this state long ago, it has taken a century for its consequences to seep into culture to such a degree that it is now an aspect of our “cultural imaginary.” But this is the world we live in today—a world in which each man is a self-creator who is responsible for functioning as his own god, determining his own beliefs, his own purpose, and his own notions of good and evil.
Several technological innovations of the modern world are deeply entwined with this self-creation by giving us godlike powers. They manifest themselves most notably in sex, reproduction, and death. Each of these receives a chapter-length treatment that shows vividly how they further man’s desecration. Pornography has reduced human beings to objects rather than people; IVF (though often well-intentioned) has turned babies into commodities while fueling a new wave of eugenics; euthanasia has given us the power over the time and manner of our own death and, increasingly, the death of other people.
In the face of such destruction, even many who are antagonistic toward the Christian faith are realizing that they do not wish to live in a world completely devoid of Christianity’s influence. Hence, atheists like Richard Dawkins wish to preserve a kind of cultural Christianity, even if not a devotional or dogmatic one. Yet Trueman understands, rightly, that desecration demands a much more substantial response than cultural Christianity or even mere re-enchantment: It demands consecration—a full commitment to the creed, cult, and code of the Christian faith, which is to say, the beliefs, practice, and morality of historic Christianity, as found within the local church. And this, ultimately, is the hope, the message, and the call of his book:
If desecration is the pervasive problem of our day, then nothing less than consecration is the answer. We have imagined ourselves to be gods and have ironically reduced ourselves to mere dust. That is a moral problem. It cannot be solved simply by “reenchanting” our world by acknowledging that nature is mysterious or that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our consumerist philosophies of life. Consecration is not a feeling or an emotional response to something; it has a distinct dogmatic, cultic, and moral shape, with all three elements standing in nonnegotiable connection to each other. … Only a renovation of the heart, redirecting it toward God, is able to [answer our plight]. And that only takes place in the context of the church, where humanity by creed, cult, and code can once again realize what being made in the image of God truly means.
The Desecration of Man is a challenging and sobering read, yet a helpful one, for it helps explain the world as it is today. Better still, it is an optimistic one, for it calls us to commit and re-commit ourselves to the divine solution, which is understanding, practicing, and living out the Christian faith in the context of the local church. The Desecration of Man complements The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self and Strange New World (both of which are on sale in their Kindle editions this week), as together they help Christians understand this world and live well within it.
