Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
Ways to Win: Five Things to Avoid and Five Thing to Do to Prevent Cultural Collapse and Have a Jolly Time (2/5)

Ways to Win: Five Things to Avoid and Five Thing to Do to Prevent Cultural Collapse and Have a Jolly Time (2/5)

Last updated on: October 12, 2016 at 4:33 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

Ways to Win: Five Things to Avoid and Five Thing to Do to Prevent Cultural Collapse and Have a Jolly Time (2/5) 2016-10-12T16:33:19-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

20160908_211220034_iOS_opt

We need a strategy of hope based on virtue, wisdom, and joy.

Preface for Those Not Reading Part I

Cultures generally muddle through their problems. If righteousness exalts a nation, injustice will debase the culture. Fortunately, advanced cultures generally balance out: decay in one area, improvement in another.

Sometimes a culture blows it and ends up in a reboot situation. This is particularly true when in a period of rapid change combined with the passing of the founding generation. The American Civil War was one such era, the World War II generation is another. Both changes did not bring utopia, but did allow the Republic to muddle along with some problems solved. As the World War II generation passes from the scene, we are in such a time.

The systems created by that Greatest Generation need reexamination and improvement in light of changes. Doing this moderately and carefully without creating more problems than are solved is the trick. The Constantine strategy is the advice to go do something: build a counter-culture, ask only to be left alone, and inevitably His Kingdom will come. Our community is starting with an experiment in k-12 and undergraduate college education with the help of our church home and The King’s College.

Yet there is a danger that while low in probability is too dangerous to ignore. Sometimes a nation does enough wrong things that total cultural collapse happens as it did in 1917 in Tsarist Russia.

The results of such a massive reboot are rarely pretty.

One way to avoid such a dark age is to realize things can be worse and to avoid despair. We can build alternative counter-cultures. Another way is to embrace extreme skepticism or goofy credulity.

This is not a Ghost

Last night I was alerted that the outer office camera detected motion and I went to look at what could be in the building at midnight. The dancing light caught on camera was better than some “ghost” images I have seen on the Internet. Since the supernatural is real, why haven’t I called the news?

While I am open to the existence of ghosts, this example seems better explained by a spider web catching the light, a leak in the casing of the camera, or some other natural event. Why? The object betrays no structure, evidences no purposeful movement, and looks just like other images I have seen debunked. Still if one were a grifter, perhaps something could be made of the film of an image dancing on the screen. Is it, after all, the ghost of Dale Carnegie come to see what we are doing in his building? IMG_0027

Good people fallen into extreme credulity get excited, because of desperation to “prove” the supernatural exists. A culture in trouble breeds many of these folk, because the dangerous belief that nothing could be worse sends some people into despair. They rightly want something bigger than themselves, but begin to look in all the wrong places. They want to believe, but reject faith because faith demands evidence and uses reason and best experience. They cry: “Just believe” and so fall for any number of goofy things. This is particularly dangerous when combined with the cultural resources of a great faith tradition such as Christianity. A person who will fall for this will stand for nothing in the end, because he is dazzled by spectacle. God help a culture where the soft-hearted become soft-headed.*

So in Russia before the Revolution, good men and women looked into spiritualism and were fooled by cranks and frauds. Even the Imperial Family was not immune as they looked for a cure for the hemophilia that was killing the young heir. We look for saints and end up in the hands of Rasputin if our hopes conquer the evidence.

Of course, some of us that see this goofiness react by becoming hard-headed and hard-hearted. We will not fall for the grifter and so we will be open to almost nothing. If we cannot touch it, then it is not real . . . forgetting that nobody can touch a number. If the evidence is not certain, or nearly so, we will not give our consent. Yet this is no way to live life, because many things worthy of belief are only probable and great things are often done by men and women who bet on the merely possible. To gamble on an intellectual long shot is not unreasonable, but the super-skeptic is unable to do so. He is no longer skeptical enough, because his fear of being duped is never examined.

As he looks for the lie, he fails to embrace the truth until life and opportunity pass by.

And so in a culture in decay, the rational, become crabbed and nasty. They delight in debunking and spend the vast majority of their intellectual energy opposing error. Yet while the super-skeptic, the intellectual Scrooge, root out the obvious frauds, the dubious are not helped, because the dubious are immune to reason. Meanwhile they accomplish nothing, because being against is not enough for a man.

Before the Revolution, it is was popular for intellectuals to sneer at the Church. They looked for the tricks, the fake weeping icon, and became a generation later capable of defacing all icons, including the image of God in the innocent. In exile, intellectuals like Lenin debunked every traditional idea they could find only to fall into the grip of Utopianism, more deadly than any fraud by a false monk. Others become nihilists: burn it down and something better will come.

Super-skepticism led to murder, cultural destruction, and an ugliness that has yet to end.

The good community must avoid credulity, falling for every religious or secular conman with a pitch of instant revival, and super-skepticism. Instead, we muddle along thinking, feeling, and doing our best. We are skeptical, because faith must be skeptical since it is not certain. We act and create, because faith is not faith if not putting substance on our hopes.

We begin with hope: we are optimists. Yet we reject utopianism, we know the world is too broken for perfect solutions and distrust every guru with all the answers. Instead, we allow our hope to be shaped by Church, reason, and experience. These hopes so tested become the knowledge called “faith” and on faith we act.

We save our intellectual capital, but do not horde it. We spend it on service to our community and a commitment to Jesus Christ.

————————————-

This series is based on lectures prepared for The Saint Constantine School college program. It is part of the Constantine Strategy to serve our time with wisdom, virtue, and joy for Christ and His Church. I gave a shorter version of this talk to the Thrive Apologetics Conference. Part I, Part II.

*Read Abolition of Man by CS Lewis for a better version of this warning.

Spiritual Reflections

Previous Post

October 11, 2016

Ways to Win: Five Things to Avoid and Five to Do to Prevent Cultural Collapse and Have a Jolly Time (1/5)

Next Post

October 13, 2016 Ways to Win: Five Things to Avoid and Five Things to Do to Avoid Cultural Collapse and Have a Jolly Time (3/5)

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Apologetics Art Culture Education On Books On Education Philosophy Politics Pop Culture Spiritual Reflections Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 July 2025 June 2025 September 2024 July 2024 June 2024 December 2023 June 2023 September 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What root attitude does Paul say is the "root of all kinds of evil"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Love of money Love of music Love of animals Love of wisdom

Books by This Author John Mark Reynolds

See All Titles »