Learning the Way: The Way of the (modern) World

In my second year as a student at Regent College I read The Way of the (modern) World: Or, Why it's Tempting to Live as if God Doesn't Exist. I feel fortunate to have not only read this book, but had the opportunity to study with the author. It is an incredibly important book by a deeply wise and intelligent man: Dr. Craig Gay. 

Not only is this an important book in general, it was also a very important book for me at the time. There were a number of places of intellectual wrestling in my life during this season. I wrestled with my critical feelings towards the many churches that seemed to have given far too much ground up to modernity. I wrestled with what kind of minister, pastor, or teacher I could be in our culture and ways of doing both church and school. I tried to think through the varying philosophical options and through my own tendencies towards both luddite-ism and my equal propensity to get sucked in by new technology and gizmos (to be clear, I tended towards rejection when it comes to anything to do with social networking or relationships, while tending towards overeager acceptance and adoption of technology which was more task focused or personal; little did I know that you could hardly distinguish the two then, let alone now!).  More personally, I wrestled with godliness - it was, and is, just so easy to go through each day hardly aware of God at all. This was true then as a seminary student; it is true today as a pastor. 

I did not expect to find a book that spoke to all of this and more.

In The Way of The Modern World Craig Gay sets out to answer the question found in the subtitle: Why is it so tempting to live as if God doesn't exist? He argues, quite convincingly, that embedded deep within modern institutions and traditions is the assumption that even if God does exist he is irrelevant to the 'real business of life.' The modern world is, in other words, built upon a practical atheism. This assumption, and those which surround it, have far reaching consequences. Gay goes on to characterize the modern world by three features: control, secularity, and anxiety. That is, we live in a world premised upon our ability to control the vast majority of existence and upon seeking to ever expand and refine that control. The appeal of ever greater control is a part of the secularization of the world; we rationalize and disenchant as these put more things 'under our thumb.' The perhaps surprising consequence of this is, however, anxiety. For we are ever anxious that we do not have enough control and that there are things beyond our control or even our understanding. Life constantly impinges upon our desired reality. 

One at a time Gay walks through the major institutions of the modern world (politics, technology, economic life, and the worldly self) and shows how the assumptions of practical atheism have come to be, their effects, and how Christianity has contributed to the systems currently in place. And, in each case, we see that what we lose in the modern world is not only our faith in God but our very selves, for the modern world turns out to be a profoundly impersonal system in which we are constantly tempted to worship the sub-human instead of God. And, as the Psalmist notes, we become like what we worship. Gay summarizes this near the end of his book:

"If we worship 'nature,' then our self-understanding - if it can even be called that - will be imprisoned within the fateful confines of naturalism and determinism. If we worship technological 'making,' and if we view the world and others as 'devices' to be constructed and manipulated in the service of technical-rational ends, then we will view the quality and possibilities of our own existence in the same fashion. If, finally, we worship ourselves, foreclosing on the possibility of self-transcendence and undermining our ability to be truly related to God and to our neighbor, then we will in the end become incapable of experiencing our selves at all."

The final two chapters of this book are best. In the second to last chapter Gay takes stock of 'the huge modern heresy' which is, as G.K. Chesterton put it, our way of seeking to alter the human soul to fit modern social conditions rather than altering modern social conditions to fit the human soul. This path is highly destructive. In the final chapter Gay puts forward the beginnings of a Christian view of personhood in which he urges us to recognize that true personhood is found in our relationship with others and our ability to transcend ourselves. "When Jesus tells us that 'whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it' (Matt. 10:39), he is not simply speaking of the rule of Christian religious devotion, but of the rule of existence itself. We must lose ourselves to Christ and others if we are ever truly to find ourselves."

I could write much more. This is a difficult book. Gay doesn't pull any punches and he goes fairly deep into some important but not often talked about ideas. It is also an important book that will teach you a lot if you take the time and make the effort to work through it. 

Note: This post is part of a series which I began here. To see all the posts in the series click the label at the bottom of this post "20yrs40bks".