Is too much freedom making you miserable?

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The story of the West over the past century has been a story of the fight for freedom. One generation fought for freedom against the rise of tyranny in Europe. Subsequent generations have fought for personal freedoms in just about every area of life – sex, identity, rights, politics, and so on. A huge part of this has been casting off the restraints of tradition and of religion. James Williams, describes this development like this:

For most of human history, when you were born you inherited an off-the-shelf package of religious and cultural constraints… The packages included habits, practices, rituals, social conventions, moral codes, and a myriad of other constraints… In the twentieth century the rise of secularism and modernism in the West occasioned the collapse – if not the jettisoning – of many of these off-the-shelf packages of constraints in the cause of the liberation of the individual. [1]

We have been part of an unstoppable campaign, with no obvious end in sight, and one single purpose: the freedom of the individual to create their own identity, live as they choose, and express that life to the full. 

Yet, at the same time, we have grown more and more miserable, with dramatically lower levels of happiness and wellbeing, and a rapid rise in anxiety and depression. How can you explain that? I would argue that, while freedom from oppression is vital to human flourishing, it’s also quite clear that freedom as an absolute simply doesn’t work for three reasons.

First, freedom cannot operate without constraint. Everything we enjoy in life is enjoyable because there are constraints and boundaries. Sport only works because of rules. Society only functions because of laws. Trains need tracks. Fish need water. Language needs grammar. Humans need skin.

This is especially important when we think about morality. Moral boundaries make happiness possible. As much as we talk about the freedom of the individual to do as they please, to simply ‘do what makes you happy’, we all accept that without moral limits the world descends into anarchy. We abuse and hurt one another in the name of pleasure seeking. We self destruct.

So, even if you reject ancient moral codes as limiting and oppressive, preventing you from doing what you want, you simply cannot reject boundaries altogether. It’s impossible. Constraint of some form is inevitable and essential for any kind of experience of freedom. The only question is who gets to decide where those boundaries lie. 

Arguably, the fact that we have no system outside of ourselves (such as religion) to establish certain givens is the reason we are so at war within ourselves, and at war with others. We’re all on the same pitch, but playing different games. There is no harmony, no beauty, no form, and ultimately, this lack of constraint – of someone saying, ‘This is right, and this is wrong’ – is one reason we are so confused and so miserable. The boundaries of moral constraints make us feel secure, and help us live at peace.

Second, unlimited freedom makes you miserable from an overload of choice. This is called the ‘paradox of choice’ – a well documented phenomenon – and it tells us that limitless options are paralysing, and that even when you do make a choice, you will question whether it was the right one, and that makes you less happy. For example, people prefer to shop at Lidl because they don’t have to experience the anxiety of choosing between hundreds of air fresheners, and dozens of ketchups. Studies have shown that if you give someone a choice between thirty chocolates, they are less likely to be happy with their choice than if you only offered them six options. [2]

This is clearly true when it comes to sex. People tend to believe that more experience and more sexual partners will lead to more satisfaction in the long term. It turns out the very opposite is true. Those who have had fewer sexual partners tend to report more satisfaction in marriage. Why? Because you’re not comparing your spouse with a mental library of experiences. You are content.

Consider the movement to abolish the gender binary of male and female. What is likely to be the result of authoritative voices, like the BBC, teaching children that there are over 100 different genders, and they need to figure all of this out for themselves? Will more choice make children happier, more carefree, and more secure? I doubt it.

Western society has engaged in vast social experimentation by smashing down old beliefs, customs, and traditions in the name of unfettered freedom and choice. But with that comes a host of unintended consequences, the downside of living in a world without certain beliefs as givens.

In speaking of this constant effort to reform the world, G.K. Chesterton famously used the analogy of a fence. If you come across a fence in a field, and you don’t know what it’s for, it would be stupid to smash that fence down for fear you might come face to face with a bull. Chesterton argues that an intelligent person will tell that reformer, 

If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it. [3]

Sometimes tradition is wiser and more important than we know. Choice has been limited for a reason, and we would do well to understand that reason before we smash down the fence.

Third, limitless freedom leads to a new kind of oppression and slavery. In The Social Contract, the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau put it like this: ‘To be driven by our appetites alone is slavery, while to obey a law that we have imposed on ourselves is freedom.’ [4] In other words, when there are no rules, you end up being a slave to your own desires and lusts. You have no means by which to renounce and conquer them. 

Russell Brand has famously and candidly spoken about his own addictions, and his efforts to get free from them. He puts it like this: 

We have been taught that freedom is the freedom to pursue our petty, trivial desires. Real freedom is freedom from our petty, trivial desires. [5]

It’s difficult to know for sure how things will develop as we continue to press the limits of personal liberty. I suspect there will be a counter-movement, and a resurgence of religion – perhaps of Christianity, or of some other ‘off-the-shelf package’, as Williams puts it. 

This is certainly what I have witnessed in individuals. It is very common for people to grow up shunning all moral constraints, and then to grow quite sick of their new-found ‘freedom’ for all the reasons I’ve described above. They become more anxious, more uncertain, and more empty because of their slavery to their own desires. And at that point, they often experience a longing for spirituality, and even for God.

[1] Stand Out of Our Light, James Williams
[2] Confronting Christianity, Rebecca McLaughlin
[3] https://www.chesterton.org/taking-a-fence-down/ 
[4] The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
[5] Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions, Russell Brand

This article was originally published at Salt.

Why the atheist church is failing

On the surface, they looked a lot like any other churches, but with an atheistic twist: ‘Meetings involved “sermons” from scientists, artists, and academics; members sang pop songs together and snapped their fingers to poetry readings. Old-timers chatted by the snack table and invited newbies to meals outside the group.’

This was the explosively successful Sunday Assembly movement that began in London in 2013, and spread rapidly from there. Spearheaded by two comedians, Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans, the idea seemed to strike a nerve for those who had grown up in church, but lost their faith. They wanted the experience of togetherness without the accompanying doctrine. There was a sadness for something lost at the heart of our culture in the absence of religion, and this seemed like a viable alternative.

The movement grew rapidly and peaked early, but is now in a steady state of decline, with global attendance dropping from 5,000 per month in 2016 to 3,500 per month in 2018.

Why this dramatic drop in attendance? The fundamental answer seems to be the lack of a coherent binding force beyond the desire for community. Faith Hill, writing for the Atlantic about this decline, quotes one researcher as follows: ‘Being uninterested in something [i.e. religion] is about the least effective social glue, the dullest possible mobilising cry, the weakest affinity principle, that one can imagine.’

So, what does bind groups together over the long haul? Apparently, it’s vital to have the element of ‘sacrality’ that calls for ‘challenging rituals and taxing rules’. In other words, there needs to be a transcendent and compelling system of truth that calls for a deep and wholehearted commitment.

The funny thing is that Christians could have warned them it wouldn’t work, because they’ve tried this before. Many times.

If you want to know why churches are mainly empty across the UK it is for precisely this reason: that God was effectively removed from much of Christianity in Britain more than a hundred years ago. Back in the 1800s many churches and denominations began to feel embarrassed about the more supernatural claims of the Christian faith (for example, that Jesus rose from the dead) and about the Bible itself. Preachers began to espouse humanism from their pulpits, majoring on themes like the brotherhood of man. While some of the language of God remained (especially in the hymns), belief in God was fading away, led by the very men who were at the helm of those denominations and churches. These churches were like drag queens dressed up in the trappings of religion, with all the smells and bells and lashings of makeup, but any observer could tell that the religious garb was superficial. Underneath was a hairy atheist, balls and all. 

To this day, you can walk into one of the nearly empty churches of the main denominations – Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, United Reformed – and you’ll discover what I’m talking about: mostly, they don’t preach the same message you find in the Bible of God’s wrath against sin, and his peace deal brokered through the blood of his Son, Jesus. Instead, they preach a neutered and secularised version of Christianity, much more tame, and much more lame. They’re identifiable by their language of inclusion, their endorsement of all lifestyles, and their passionate embrace of all religions as essentially the same. But this is not Christianity, it’s just atheistic humanism with an organ and a few candles. They act as mere mirrors to the culture at large and so render themselves completely pointless, and devoid of interest. Their main message is about being nice, the very thing Jesus was emphatically not.

It may seem odd that I, a church pastor, would be so scathing of so much Christian practice in the UK. I suppose it’s because I simply don’t see the point of going through the motions of religious devotion when you decided a long time ago that you would bend that religion to conform to modern sensibilities, rather than bending your life to conform to God’s will. The Bible teaches that man is made in the image of God; and yet here we are, trying to mold a god in the image of ourselves. The proof of the futility of all this is the fact that most of these churches are in terminal decline, at least the ones that are not already dead.

That is not the entire picture, of course. There are thousands of churches (within and without those denominations) that have resisted this trend and preach a full-blooded version of the Christian faith, with a living God who is a Sovereign Judge who invites us to experience his forgiveness. Those churches tend to be full because they offer something the world and secular humanism isn’t offering: the power of God.

My own experience of starting a church has been proof of the irreducible importance of the Christian message, the gospel. If you remove parts in some attempt to make it more acceptable the whole thing begins to crumble. But when you confront people with a true version of the message Christ preached, in all its offensiveness and glory, people’s lives are dramatically impacted for good. The success we have seen in growing a church of (almost entirely) millennials in the heart of London has had nothing to do with any talent I possess, and everything to do with the yearning ache in all of us for genuine hope in a broken world.

I can understand the urge to keep the form of church gatherings, even when the message has been completely excised (as in the case of the atheistic churches), or transformed beyond recognition (as in the case of so many established churches across the UK). The idea of church has a lot going for it. But in the end, such experiments are always going to fail because the real power in Christianity has never been the form, but the message.

The article was originally published at Salt.

When pastors fall

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With the recent announcement on Instagram from Joshua Harris that he is separating from his wife, and has lost his faith, yet another oak has crashed to ground.

Harris has been furiously back-peddling for a few years now, seeking to un-write what he has written on matters of dating, courtship, and sex. I was in my teens when his books (I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Boy Meets Girl) were published. I didn’t read the first one – no doubt the more controversial of the two – but I found the second one a huge help as I moved towards marriage. It was sound, practical advice. The truth is, that whatever faults there may have been in Harris’ overall approach to dating, the situation in the world right now when it comes to finding a marriage partner is seriously messed up and the church is barely doing any better. Secular sociologists like Jean Twenge have written at length about all the sadness and loneliness the modern dating scene is creating, where commitment and honour are virtually absent. About this, there is too much to say. (Have a listen to my Salt Live talk, Can Love Survive the Dating Apocalypse?, on this page.)

Waking up to the news of Harris’ public denial of the faith he used to preach is sobering, not least because I am a pastor. It’s right to feel sadness and sorrow. This is a seriously messed up situation. But, after the sadness and sorrow there are other thoughts that we ought to dwell on.

First, this is nothing new. The Bible is an honest, warts and all, portrayal of human frailty and faultering faith. There is no hagiographic editorial air-brushing going on. Even the best of biblical heroes are revealed to be massively flawed in some very shocking ways. This is one of the evidences that the Bible should be taken seriously and read as history; what possible incentive would authors have to put their best characters in such terrible light, when those same men are considered leaders and prophets of God? The fact that these men trip up and sometimes crash and burn is written down to warn us that this can happen to you. 

In other words, sin is more insidious and dangerous than we realise. That’s why Jesus had to die. That’s why he had to deal with the mess we’re in. This is spiritual warfare, and there are casualties, betrayals, treacheries, and treasons. Some people are rescued from the brink, others wander blindly or deliberately over it. If public denials of faith serve any purpose (and arguably, a man like Harris should just stay quiet), then they do at least cause us to wake up and stop slumbering through this spiritual war we are in.

Second, there is only one hero worthy of the name. Every exposure of sin – be it sexual sin, abuse of authority, bullying, greed, pride, self-aggrandisement, or whatever – has the effect of emphasising how totally awesome and perfect is our saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. He was tempted in every way that we are, yet he was without sin. He learned obedience through what he suffered. He was humbled to the ground, and humbled further on the cross, but he never once cursed God. He said, take this cup from me, but yet, not my will be done, but yours. He surrendered to the will of the Father, set his face to Jerusalem, wept over lost souls and baying crowds, and then died an ignominious death. And the Father saw fit to glorify him in vindicating resurrection power, placing him above all rule and authority, at his right hand. And now he has light in his eyes, and a sword in his mouth, and he’s coming again to judge the living and the dead, as the only truly worthy and blameless man.

Maranatha.

Ten questions for pro-choice people

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Let me state my purpose up front: I’m a pro-lifer with ten genuine questions aimed at pro-choice people, and I’m hoping that you (dear reader) will keep on reading to the end. But I’m also realistic. The chance of keeping your attention on such a matter of deep division is not going to be easy, not least because you may well imagine me to be misogynistic and backward.

This debate is always vitriolic, and as a result, often deeply unintelligent. Most people (on both sides) are content with sharing facile memes and purile soundbites. I want to avoid that tone, if I can. It’s not the strong language I have a problem with (vital issues call for forceful language), but the ignorant ways that opinions are often voiced, and the consequent refusal to engage in rational discussion. I hope to convince you that the pro-life perspective is rooted in compassion, not misogyny. And so, I urge you to read and even respond.

Here we go…

1. Why is there a double standard at work here, in which we stay quiet about abortion while mourning miscarriage? Last year we had the tragic experience of losing a little boy at 15 weeks. Everyone around us – pro-life and pro-choice friends included – mourned with us and helped console us at the loss of this child. But what made it a tragedy? Was it the fact that he died, or the fact that we were sad about him dying? Anyone who has felt sadness about a miscarriage feels that way precisely because it is the loss of life. To me, this is an inexplicable double-standard, in which terminations are swept under the rug and miscarriages are met with flowers and cards.

2. Why do we fight to save the lives of disabled and premature babies? It is a strange fact that the same surgeons can be disposing of unwanted foetuses in brutal fashion, and then performing nigh-on miraculous operations on the bodies of equally young babies in order to save them (as in the famous photo of Samuel Armas poking his hand out of the womb at 21 weeks while the surgeon tried to fix his spina bifida). A hospital in California recently broke world records by saving the life of a tiny 23 week little girl. What made that girl’s life worth saving? Was it the mere fact that she was now outside the womb? Was it the will and desire of the parents? Or was it some inherent worth in her humanity?

3. Why are abortion laws based on viability outside the womb? The cut-off point of 24 weeks (for healthy babies) is based on whether the baby can survive outside of the womb. The reasoning is that if a foetus cannot survive outside the womb, then the mother has the right to terminate her and choose not to support her development any longer. Now, while it’s true that viability increases with each passing week all the way to 40 weeks, and babies born before 24 have a lower survival rate, it’s not at all clear to me why that has become a boundary for conferring human rights on the baby. The fact is that all babies are highly dependent on the care of others for a long time after birth, and many of us will become dependent on others towards the end of our lives. Dependency on others does not determine whether your life has value, so why do we establish this blurry and somewhat arbitrary line for unborn babies?

4. Why is a woman’s body pitted against her baby’s? The whole debate is set up so that the right to life is set against the right for women to govern their own bodies. The problem, as I see it, is that the foetus is not the woman’s body. This is acknowledged in our legal system. [1] It’s also the reason you celebrate or panic when you see those two blue lines on the stick. This is not a ‘growth’, and your emotions are proof of that. The pro-life movement views both bodies as beautifully valuable. That’s why we fight for babies and for women. We want women to be genuinely valued and empowered, but abortion doesn’t do that. Why is it that seven percent of women have been forced into having an abortion and it’s used as a tool of coercive abuse? Why is it that women feel they have to choose between pursuing a career or education and having a baby? Why can’t they do both? Why do we see an abortion as a central tenet of women’s rights when it seems to cause women so much grief and pain? (see point 5). Furthermore, more than 50% of aborted babies are female when you factor in widespread sex-selection on the global scene, so it’s not at all clear that abortion is pro-women on any level.

5. Why don’t we talk about the fact that many women suffer unbelievable guilt after having an abortion? This is not mere anecdote. [2] I’m conscious that the debate is ongoing as to whether there are long-term mental health issues after abortions, but that discussion can be a smokescreen to cover up the fact that many women have been very public and clear about the guilt and regret they have felt after abortions. Whether or not this is categorised as a mental health issue is not the important thing here. Guilt signals something important to a person, and without guilt we lose our humanity. So why do we ignore the fact of guilt after abortions? Is it because the admission of guilt is the admission of wrongdoing?

6. Why is the pro-life movement vilified and bullied as though it was somehow backward to campaign for human rights at this fundamental level? The pro-life movement is often portrayed as led by white men and as fundamentally backwards and misogynistic, despite the fact that women of all races are involved and are more opposed to abortion than men). But talk to a pro-lifer. Generally, they believe a basic ethic: All human life has sanctity. Which part of this is backwards and misogynistic? Consider this carefully. Most of our concerns around justice on a global level are based on this fundamental ethical conviction. Without this belief there would be no anti-slavery, no anti-poverty, and no anti-misogyny movements. Pro-lifers are merely consistent in applying this fundamental ethic to every single human being, including people in the womb.

7. Why not prefer adoption over abortion? Since this issue is often cast in terms of the pregnant woman’s difficult decision, given how all-consuming it is to have a child, why do we make this a binary choice between abortion and keeping the baby? There is a beautiful third way: the fact that there are so many childless couples out there who would do almost anything to have a baby of their own. Wouldn’t it be a heroic thing to carry a baby to term and let that child live and be raised in a loving home? I don’t want to minimise the pain involved in giving away a child, but it seems to me quite obviously preferable to ending that child’s life altogether. It is sometimes argued by pro-choicers that such children will go on to lead awful and painful lives, and thus it is kinder to terminate them if they are unwanted. However, this is rightly seen by those who have been adopted as deeply offensive, as it devalues the childhood they had in their adoptive families and the fulfilling lives they are now leading. 

8. Why is it more acceptable to fight for the rights of animals than of unborn humans? Veganism is on the rise, and campaigners often base their argument on the personification of animals, with slogans like, ‘I’m ME not MEAT’ (next to a picture of a pig), or ‘We take them from their mothers and butcher them’ (next to a picture of a calf). As a rule, vegans are not considered to be among the lunatic fringe. Unlike pro-lifers, they usually get respect for their beliefs. Now, I am willing to tolerate a certain degree of madness in our society when it comes to many social issues, but the fact that the animal rights lobbies are considered compassionate and pro-lifers are considered barbaric is totally irrational.

9. What do you think our descendants will think of us? Western society has been shown to be wrong on some key human rights issues in the past – most notably slavery and racial prejudice. To this day, we grieve the history of our ancestors who were capable of stripping away the dignity and humanity of people on the basis of their race. But do you not suppose that we have equally glaring blind spots in our seemingly advanced age? I am confident that some future generation will look back on us with disgust for two reasons: (1) The logical inconsistencies of the pro-choice movement will become clearer over time, just as the pro-slavery movement eventually lost the argument; (2) Advances in medicine and science will make it more difficult to sustain a hard boundary between ‘blob of cells’ and ‘human being’, and with no such boundary there is no longer any conscionable reason for allowing abortion at any point after conception.

10. When does a person become a person? This is really the question to rule them all. Everything depends on this. Assuming we agree that an individual person has dignity and rights that we want to protect, then the importance of this issue simply cannot be exaggerated. So, let me ask it this way: When did you become you? Was it when you were born? Was it when you were viable outside the womb (around 23–25 weeks)? Was it when your heart could first be heard beating in the ultrasound room? And does a person become a person gradually or in an instant? Our laws answer this: a person becomes a person at 24 weeks exactly (and at birth if they’re disabled). But how would you answer this question? And more importantly, why?

Let me offer some concluding thoughts. It seems to me that persuading anyone to change their mind about this issue is very difficult. The divide is deep set and deeply emotional. But my hope is to get greater sympathy for the pro-life cause, and to show that it is based on reason and compassion. First, it is reasonable because there is something beautifully and elegantly simple about saying that life starts at conception, and establishing a firm line rather than an entirely arbitrary one, that risks ending the life of a person. Second, it is compassionate because all pro-lifers believe that the lives of the unborn are worthy of protection and justice – just as we believe that women are worthy of protection and justice, and of the greatest support in pregnancy and beyond. Abortion is simply not the way to do this. We recognise that unplanned pregnancy is frightening and life-changing. But it’s time we questioned the culture that pits a mother against her baby, that offers no support to women in situations of unplanned pregnancy, that discriminates against people with disabilities and little girls in the womb, and that does not uphold the absolute right to life for all and protect the most vulnerable people in our society. It is time to deal honestly with these questions, to wrestle with them together, and to stop dealing in soundbites.

[1] Lord Hope said the following in the case of Attorney-General’s Reference (No 3 of 1994): HL 24 Jul 1997: ‘an embryo is in reality a separate organism from the mother from the moment of its conception.’

[2] The most comprehensive review of the evidence in 2013, incidentally by a pro-choice psychologist, found that there is no mental health benefit to abortion and there is an increased risk of psychological problems following abortion including anxiety, substance abuse and suicidality: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23553240 

The article was originally published at Salt.

Screen time and the decay of the soul

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As a general rule of thumb, I have discovered that the more time I spend on my iPhone the more unhappy I feel. It seems to underscore a number of key failings that, I suspect, many will identify with: a loss of self-control and increase of impulsiveness; a failure to pay attention to those I love; time squandered that should have been used to more productive (or simply more relaxing) ends.

Perhaps the real eye-opener has been the ability to monitor my own phone use with the new Screen Time feature. I’m reluctant to divulge the results because, unlike some people at Salt I am not an oversharer, but I can at least point to some sobering statistics. Those aged 15 to 24 spend four hours a day on their phones. That amounts to a quarter of waking hours, or 3 months a year (without any meals or toilet breaks). If you consider that a workday is typically about 8 hours, this is equivalent to spending thirty-four years of your working life on your phone. [1]

Now, I could be wrong, but I suspect that none of us choose to spend our lives in such a fruitless and compulsive way. It’s not as though anyone begins their new year with a resolution to commit more time to their screen.

I’m guessing that most of us feel very uncomfortable about all of this. We know that being on our phones this much makes us worse at relating to people in real life. We’re aware that our phones seem to be fuelling and intensifying the anxiety epidemic that has gripped society. And we also have this nagging feeling that we’re missing out on the best of real-world experiences: serendipitous encounters with strangers that never took place because we don’t make eye-contact; concerts sullied by a compulsive need to video what we’re supposed to be enjoying; meals forgotten because we took some photos of the plate and then spent far too long selecting the perfect filter whilst mindlessly spooning the stuff into our mouths.

All of these worries (and more) are valid. But I would suggest that at the root of our concern about screen time is a more important and profound issue: our mortality. Life is already too short, and this is not how we ought to spend it, especially as staring at a screen seems to have the odd effect of making time move even faster still.

There’s a line in a psalm in the Bible that says, ‘Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom’. In other words, it is a prayer that assumes you will live a smarter, more enlightened and intentional life if you meditate on how quickly time passes, and how little there is to waste of this finite resource.

A consideration of the shortness of life does not immediately answer the question of how best to use our time. We can at least agree that nobody is going to lie on their deathbed and express a regret such as, Too little time spent tapping and scrolling. We know that screens are stealing far too much time, but what should we be doing instead?

Besides the typical suggestions (pay attention to your kids, read more books, be in-the-moment) I believe that the part of us that suffers the most from this chronic inattention and zero tolerance to boredom is our souls. Throughout history, men and women have been very deliberate in seeking out opportunities for perfect solitude in order to deepen their capacity to know God. So, while we worry about our general psychological health as we behave more and more like impulsive addicts, I believe it is the soul that suffers most in this digital age.

This is not because technology is somehow inherently opposed to spirituality – a myth I wholeheartedly refute – but simply because the soul is slow and technology has the effect of making life move fast. There are very few moments for true contemplation any more, and especially when that contemplation throws up genuine existential questions and emotions. It is simply too easy to seek out distraction that is really a form of escapism, giving brief shots of dopamine to mask the deeper issues of life.

Perhaps this is one reason many in the West have turned to a form of pseudo-spirituality in mindfulness meditation. Besides the promise of reducing anxiety, the fact that meditation has roots in Eastern spirituality may explain some of its appeal. Yet somehow we’ve ended up with a reduced and acceptable version for secular people. While I’m not an advocate of simply trying out whatever religious worldview or spirituality seems attractive to you in the moment (after all, the question of what is true must come into it at some point), I also find it dismaying that we have been duped by consumerism to such an extent that even spiritual practices are cut off at the roots, and then repackaged as products to improve your life. 

What then is the solution to this neglect of the soul? To begin, there is the obvious need to tame your phone addiction (and I highly recommend reading Jaron Lanier and Cal Newport for inspiration). But it is not sufficient to merely carve out more space and time for boredom.

Why not? Because the deepest need of the soul is to find peace through truth. The discomforting sense of existential angst that many are familiar with (the very sensation you may seek to escape by finding distraction in your screen) emerges out of uncertainty about life, its purpose, and its end. Those feelings need to be confronted, but the secular world we inhabit has proved woefully inadequate at answering these deep questions and longings.

Therefore, if I’m right in arguing that our phones are the latest iteration in our human quest to seek distraction by entertaining ourselves to death, then the real solution is to face up to the hardest questions and look for answers. That is where the Christian faith has a remedy that perfectly matches the soul sickness I’m describing, since it offers both a rational and persuasive account of reality, along with a satisfying and joy-giving way of life.

[1] If a person works from age 21 to 65, they might spend a total of 82,720 hours at the workplace. But since screen time runs over the weekend, that is 28 hours a week, or 3.5 workdays per week. That adds up to 64,064 hours between the ages of 21 and 65, which is the same as thirty-four working years (and no, I didn’t bother factoring in leap years in any of these calculations).

This article was originally published at Salt.

Are Christians cherry picking their morals?

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‘The Bible is homophobic, we all agree that’s wrong. So, when it comes to things like homophobia, are Christians just choosing which parts of the Bible to accept and which to reject? Are they cherry picking their morals?’

This question is a perfect example of one of the major blind spots in the secularist worldview. It was asked during the Q&A at our last Salt Live event this week on the topic, Does religion poison everything? In the heat of the moment it seemed a pretty formidable question, and I wasn’t sure how our speaker would handle it. But a couple of moments reflection reveal some gaping problems.

First, there’s a deep irony in someone adopting the secular stance and then accusing religious folk of cherry picking morality. Why? Because that is probably the most devastating critique that can be levelled against secularism itself. The truth is that without a religious foundation for morality there is no such thing as objective moral truth – all we have are personal preferences. And many atheist philosophers have long recognised this fact.

So, if we take the example in the question – homophobia – and read between the lines, this person was saying something like this: ‘These days we all agree that homophobia is wrong, that minorities should be protected, that individuals have free choice to express themselves in whichever way they wish, and that nobody has the right to judge another person based on these choices.’ The problem is that there are so many unsubstantiated moral judgments here that have no grounding in secularism. For example, what in nature tells us that minorities should be protected? What in nature teaches us that individuals have a perfectly free choice to express themselves? There are literally no moral statements (statements involving words like ‘should’, and ‘ought’, and ‘wrong’) that have an objective basis in the secular worldview.

The highly problematic implication is that all morality in secularism is cherry picking. The secularist must build a worldview based on what feels right, in which things like ‘equality’, ‘acceptance’ and ‘free self-expression’ are essential values for relatively arbitrary reasons, but they preach those values as though they are God’s Honest Truth.

Second, we need to acknowledge that everyone draws the line somewhere when it comes to sexual ethics, and it is somewhat arrogant to assume that only just now, in the 2010s, have we got it all figured out and everyone else (in history and across the world) is wrong. Yet, this is often the working assumption.

Perhaps the main reason for the liberalisation of sexual ethics in the West has been our growing commitment to freedom as our most deeply held doctrine. And freedom goes hand in hand with individualism – a very modern, very Western, way of looking at the world which largely disregards the community, or one’s ancestry. This commitment to individual freedom explains why we have come to accept certain sexual behaviours as being in keeping with free expression (like homosexuality, hookups, and polyamory), whilst rejecting anything that violates our deepest convictions about the freedom of the individual (hence the passion that was driving the #MeToo movement last year).

But there is a problem. It is interesting that it never seems to dawn on us that the rest of the world does not necessarily build their morality on the same foundation. Not all cultures regard individual freedom as the highest ethic, and many cultures believe in things like responsibility and community with equal or greater fervour.

Here’s my point. We too often arrogantly assume we have got it right. But what is this if it is not a form of cultural imperialism? Why should we accept the claim that the Modern Western Liberal view of these things is the only right one, and everyone has to come into alignment with it or suffer marginalisation as bigots? This kind of cultural imperialism is dangerous, not least because there are exceptionally good reasons to question how healthy our individualism is. Nobody seems to notice that our increasing levels of absolute personal freedom have not always made us happier in the West (and the fact that we can’t imagine an alternative moral framework only proves how thoroughly indoctrinated we have become).

Third, the assumption that all Christians agree on the rightness of homosexuality, and therefore cherry pick morality from the Bible, is wrong. This is where we have to make a very careful distinction. All of the Christians I know do not think homophobia is right, even for a second. They don’t want anyone to be judged and persecuted in society, and we in the church don’t think it’s our place to judge those outside the church.

That said, the fact remains that if someone wants to be a follower of Jesus they must not pick and choose their favourite bits from his teachings, accepting only the things they like while rejecting the things they don’t like. To do that is to make yourself an authority over Jesus, as though you know better than him, when in fact the very definition of believing in Jesus is making him the supreme authority over you. The danger in attempting to marry Christianity with progressive values is that we end up creating a god in our own image, who (surprise, surprise) seems to echo back all of the things we already believed about the world. At this point I would agree with the questioner, and affirm that it is hard to respect Christians who cherry pick from the Bible.

But as I said, that is not usually the case. For my friends who have grown up experiencing homosexual attraction, but have also come to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, they have been willing to trade their sexual fulfilment in order to pursue a deeper satisfaction in following Christ. And of course, this is not just an experience for those with homosexual desires. Literally every person who chooses to follow Jesus makes these painful and self-denying choices. And yet, for the average secular Londoner, the idea that someone would willingly say no to their sexual desires is utterly unthinkable. Why? Because we have entirely believed the message that free sexual expression is right up there with The Meaning of Life, and nothing – not even Jesus – can compete with that.

And yet he does compete with that, as so many of my friends will attest. To follow him is to kill yourself entirely, and to hand your whole life over to him. You don’t guard a part off and say, ‘This is my identity, and you can’t touch this.’ No, following Jesus has always been about something much more deep, much more radical, than that. To be a Christian is to agree with the Apostle Paul: ‘You are not your own, you were bought with a price.’ A Saviour who was willing to die for me in order to rescue me from my own miserable state of separation from God is not a Saviour I will deny, even if it means giving up my rights.

This article was originally published at Salt.

Dementia in the Trans-Physical Age

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My dad can’t remember my name any more. It’s unspeakably sad, not least because he is only in his mid-sixties. He knows he likes me, and even trusts me, but he’s not sure why. He often affirms that I’m ‘a good man’ and I respond by telling him that I love him, but that only elicits a confused look which seems to ask, Why?

While my dad is suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s, the sad fact is that dementia is going to affect most of us in some way. A third of people born this year will develop dementia at some point in their lives, and even if you escape this curse many of the people you love will be afflicted by it.

From my earliest memories my dad has been the hero of my life and a constant inspiration. His vast reading, his deep convictions, his grit and indefatigable approach to the challenges of life have all left their mark. I have always loved the way he loved me, my brothers, my mum. There were many shortfalls, but he has been a good dad, even a great one. Now it feels like he is slipping away.

And what is left? A face I love. Eyes that are kind and strangely understanding. Crooked teeth like tombstones. And a body that is slowly but surely failing. Yet this body is still my dad, and so we care for him and seek to offer him the dignity and honour he deserves. 

Reflecting on the destructive effects of dementia raises a huge question: Where does the real you reside? We live in the Trans-Physical Age in which we view our bodies as plastic, moldable, even disposable containers in which our true selves live. If you feel that your body is an inaccurate portrayal of the real you, you are free to change it. Perhaps the real you is younger, a different race, or a different gender. And so, like choosing a more suitable outfit for an occasion, we paint, cut and carve our bodies to better reflect the person we feel we are inside. And when the body eventually fails, one of the greatest hopes that is beginning to emerge is the idea that you could upload that true self into some more durable hardware than disease-ridden meat. Your consciousness may be transferred to a computer and so the real you can outlive this rotting biological waste. [1]

All of these movements I am describing are captured by the ‘trans’ prefix. It means across or beyond. And I have no doubt that what we have seen so far is just the beginning. There will be an ever-expanding array of alternative trans identities and options which reflect a common theme of body denial. The point is that in this word ‘trans’ we are seeking to bypass and alter our bodies, as though they do not matter to our sense of self or they must be adjusted to better reflect who we are. All of this is underpinned by a conviction that the real you is somewhere inside, rather than the imperfect container you’re in.

Face to face with my dad, I’m very aware that there are no simple answers to the questions I’m raising here. On the one hand, it does feel as though he is slipping away as one neurone after another fails to fire, and everything that was familiar or automatic to him becomes strange and out of reach. At what point is he no longer my dad? How many memories does he have to lose before the body that resembles who he was becomes an empty shell? But I can’t think that way. No matter how bad things are going to get, he’s still my dad standing right there in front of me. That body is a body I love because it is him, and so it cannot be discarded or neglected or ignored.

It was the Ancient Greeks who first taught us to despise our bodies. The philosophical underpinnings of our modern attitudes to the body seem to have stemmed from the teachings of Plato, in which the spiritual realm of the Ideals was elevated above the grime of the material. The body was seen as something to escape, a mere vessel. This goes some way to explaining why the Greeks thought of work with the mind as so much superior to work with the body. We agree with this whenever we talk of blue collars and white collars, showing just how deeply this Greek way of thinking is embedded in our world, elevating one thing above another.

But Christianity broke into the Greek world with an altogether more complex, more subtle, and more hopeful view of things. Yes, the body is broken, and you have a spirit that will live on beyond death, but the aim is not to be separated from the body and enter some ethereal version of the afterlife in which you will float around for all eternity. This notion was killed when Jesus came back to life in a body that was both like and unlike his old one. It still bore the scars of his crucifixion as he ate barbecued fish with his friends. But he also looked different and seemed less constrained by the laws of nature. His body was physical, but somehow better and improved.

This means that when I look at my dad I feel sadness and hope at the same time. Perhaps parts of him are disappearing, like a photo bleached and faded by years of exposure to the sun. But since I am certain that Jesus did in fact rise from the dead—a certainty I derive from the testimony of the eyewitnesses who were frequently put to death for this claim—so I am deeply confident that my dad will be reunited with a better body one day. That will be the reward of his faith in Jesus, the ‘firstborn from among the dead’. Dad’s future body will have all the same parts, being both familiar and strangely unfamiliar at the same time. It will also be an improved and perfected body.

A vision of the future as something embodied—with hair and sweat and feasting, and with spit flying out of your mouth as you laugh at a friend’s jokes—this is at the heart of the Christian hope of eternity. That is why we treasure and honour the body, even that of a dying person. ‘For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens’ (2 Corinthians 5.1).

[1] This growing movement is called Transhumanism.

This article was first posted at Salt.