3: Fear and Loathing in the Subcultures

I have always been puzzled by the energy with which Christians react to interactions with our society. For example, I remember the angry rant of an otherwise sweet woman who was incensed at “yet another judge ruling against Christian’s right to pray in schools.” She said, “We need to wake up. We’re really living under persecution in this country.” I was stunned.

However, reading Daniel Taylor’s The Myth of Certainty has given me a new insight into this kind of thinking. “The secular world is not so much a threat to God and His ways as it is to us and our ways,” Taylor writes. This makes so much more sense to me. Why would we believe that God needed our defense? Maybe more important, how can we be so certain that what we are defending is really “of God?” I wonder if we would be wise to more often heed the advice that Gamaliel gave to the Sanhedrin.

Yet, as Taylor points out, our fear of the secular subculture is not completely irrational. We are, after all, strangers in a strange land, in our own land. While the secular subculture is not a threat to God it is not exactly friendly to us. Taylor’s insight on why is what I find truly illuminating.

The belligerence of the secular subculture toward faith is really based on the same fears that we experience toward their lack of faith. We stand in competing worldviews, each one a perceived threat to the other because each one is perceived to reject the central tenets of the other. The secular subculture rejects faith as “unreasonable” because faith threatens one of the central tenets of “contemporary intellectual orthodoxy,” that is: doubt everything.

What many Christians find enraging is not “attacks” by this secular subculture but rather their dismissal. Faith does not so offend the secular world in and of itself. It is when faith is seen to intrude where “it does not belong.” In particular, when one’s faith gives off the impression that you are privy to insights not available to non-believers.

But Taylor is not shy about challenging three myths of the secular intellectual world. The first is that their worldview is based on reason and analysis. This assumption asserts that all people can come to the same conclusions if they will only apply some universally available thought process. This myth misunderstands the tool of reason in a manner that any politician or high school debate team would challenge. Following any particular chain of reasoned thoughts does not guarantee that there is no other way to look at the evidence.

Another myth is objectivity. This assumes that human beings are capable of setting aside all bias and experience and seeing circumstances through the same eyes, neatly and cleanly. But Taylor clarifies that his point is not to argue that reason is useless or that objectivity is not worth pursuing. He simply rejects the assumption that these tools give the secular world superiority over the person of faith.

Finally, Taylor asserts that the most fundamental tenet of secular orthodoxy is tolerance and it is often the most violated. Pluralism, Taylor writes, is the “orthodoxy of the day.” Yet pluralists are only tolerant of worldviews that affirm pluralism. Holding out the possibility of higher truth, even if it is inaccessible to humans, is heresy to that orthodoxy.

Ironically, these two different subcultures have a great deal in common in that neither will seriously consider the other and both are tremendously confident. As Taylor writes, “The end product of ignorance plus confidence is smugness, and both subcultures are bountifully supplied.” Unfortunately, reflective Christians often find themselves damned in both subcultures. Believe me, between is just not a fun place to be.