Modern Culture
The Empty Self

Last week I opined that our modern culture was being made over for the individual which is unworkable because it renders no culture at all. Each one is doing what is right in his own eyes as Judges announces is the conduct of post-Joshua Israel. But, there is also the vacant or empty self that results from only looking within self to define what is believed and performed.

JP Moreland recently proposed in a post entitled “Christianity as Knowledge Tradition” that this condition of the self without substance, hope and character is the product the secularization of culture. He says:

The pervasive denial of truth, knowledge and rationality outside the hard sciences has left people without hope that true, knowable forms of wisdom can be discovered as guides to a flourishing life.

This has further resulted, he opines, in the “empty self” which he defines as:

…narcissistic, inordinately individualistic, self-absorbed, infantile, passive, and motivated by instant gratification. The empty self experiences a loss of personal significance and worth, as well as a chronic emotional hunger and emptiness. The empty self satiates itself with consumer goods, calories, experiences, politicians, romantic partners, and empathetic therapists. The empty self does not value learning for its own sake, is unwilling to defer gratification under the demands of discipline, and prefers visual stimulation to abstract thought. Applied to education, a classroom of empty selves will reinforce a view of education in which learning exists to make the student happy, to satisfy his/her emotional hunger, and to fulfill his/her own plans for success.Moreover, with the secular relativization of truth, knowledge and reason outside the hard sciences, secularism has contributed to the absolutization of desire satisfaction. With truth and reason dethroned as guides for life, something had to take its place. And the heir to the throne is the absolute importance of satisfying one’s desire. Secularism helps to prop up this value in the culture by its denial of truth and reason in matters of worldview, along with its promulgation of a naïve and destructive notion of tolerance.

Wow! A perfect description of the men and women we encounter everyday. While I may not agree with Dr. Moreland about the exact reason we are where we are, he has the diagnosis right. Without truth and reason that is the basis of culture, there are nothing but unsolvable issues and no hope for the individual living in that culture. Satisfying individual desires as the highest good eventually leaves one empty. Just look around and we see the destructiveness of secularism and the therapeutic culture it has spawned. What a wonderful opportunity for the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ the only hope of all men living as empty selves in modern culture.

[The entire piece of Dr. Moreland is worth reading and can be found at www.scriptoriumdaily.com ]