Glories that Form and Deform Identity – The Roads Ahead
Peter is an Adjunct Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at Westminster Presbyterian Seminary, UK.
I. The Glory (weight) of the World (culture)
The wisdom which sees the invisible things of God in things as perceived by man is totally puffed up, blinded and hardened.
– Martin Luther, Heidelberg Disputation 22.
If man will strike, strike through the mask!
– Herman Melville, Moby Dick.
As creatures made by God our identities only have stability, joy and satisfaction when we discern who we are in union with the Triune Lord, in whose image we are made.[1] We are dependent beings, designed and constituted such that we need another – we live by worship and cannot but have hearts that restlessly seek peace in one greater than us.[2]
To say that we are worshipping creatures is to recognise that we are drawn towards glory. We are attracted and compelled to praise, pursue and seek union with that which appears glorious to us. If that which has glory and to which we are drawn is the God who made us, we enjoy the Spirit’s renewal, the Son’s redemption and the Father’s rule. If that which appears glorious to us is this world, then we will worship it and suffer the world’s allurements, the devil’s assaults, and the flesh’s ambitions. We will worship and pursue either the Creator or his creation. To worship and seek the glories of this world inevitably brings pain, harm and loss. Our dependent nature means that the harm done is felt and experienced at the deepest level of identity. We are formed by our world worshipping to feel our sense of identity burdened by the weight of this world’s glory.
The Greek word used for glory (dóxa) is derived from a word group that in its most basic sense means ‘weight’. It exerts pressure on things; it has substance and impacts. In biblical usage dóxa “above all, expresses God’s honour, glory and power. It does not refer to God in his essential nature, but to the luminous manifestation of his person … pre-eminently [it] is used in the NT, as it is in the OT, to describe God’s transcendent being and majesty”.[3] It is God’s glory that attracts Spirit-renewed hearts to seek, love and rejoice in Christ, rather than self. When we worship God and rightly honour his glory our identities are established on the love of God.
The majority focus of the NT usage of the term ‘glory’ is to do with God’s glory and the glorification of him through his redeemed people. However, Paul teaches us there are different kinds of glory (1 Cor 15:40-41) and so this world also has a ‘glory’. The world’s glory has substance, power – weight. By means of its glory the world attracts, compels and draws out from us worship. The devil knows that the world has great glory – and he laid it before Jesus seeking to tempt him with it (Matt 4:8). Jesus explained that if we pursue and value the glory of people around us – individually or collectively as a culture – we will be unable to believe him:
I do not receive glory from people. But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?
John 5:41–44
So, Paul followed in the footsteps of Jesus when he wrote, “Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ.” (1 Thess 2:6)
When we value and care about the things of this world, we glory not in God but in things that are shameful. So God warns:
Many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. (Phil 3:18-19)
In the language of Romans, a culture is handed over to God when it exchanges “the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Rom 1:23).
The glory of people in this world is fleeting and transitory, for all in due time die (1 Pet 1:24). And yet the glory of people, cultures – the world under the devil’s authority – is real and weighty. God and this world have their own glory and we worship one or the other; being formed and shaped by that which we love and serve (Ps 135:15-18, Matt 6:24).
Theologians by vocation serve churches in a number of ways – one aspect of the ministry is alerting us to the reality of what is going on in church and world when all is seen through the lens of Scripture. In our case, that means helping remove the mask that the devil uses to make the world’s glory appear more attractive than that of God’s glory. Before we see in detail how our culture weighs people down with its devilish, worldly glory, we need to feel the pain of what it means for young people of the next generation to be shaped at the level of identity by the world. We need to accept that there is a problem and feel that it is more than merely an intellectual error to be corrected by the right information: Worship the world and you are harmed and hurt. We see the pain in many areas that shape identity, not least in the areas of:[4]
Sexual Identity
- There has been a significant decrease between 2014 and 2020, in the percentage of 16-24 year-olds who identify as ‘heterosexual or straight’.[5]
- Between 2009-10 and 2021-22, referrals to the NHS Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock in London – which deals with under-18s – rose by over 4,500 per cent, from 77 to almost 3,600.[6] The majority are girls; until a sudden increase in the last year in those whose birth sex is “not known”, girls made up well over 60%, sometimes over 70% of the referrals.[7]
- A school in Brighton claimed in 2018 to have 40 pupils who did not identify with their biological sex, and a further 36 identifying as “gender-fluid”.[8]
- It was reported that in another school, 17 children were in the process of “changing gender”, with some pupils ‘grooming’ younger children to follow.[9]
- It was reported in 2022 that almost one in 15 pupils at a leading secondary school identifies as transgender or non-binary. More than 60 youngsters at the school, which has about 1,000 students, declared their gender to be different from their birth sex or do not identify as either male or female.[10]
- A YouGov poll commissioned by the organisation Sex Matters found that 79 per cent of teachers had pupils at their school who were trans or non-binary. The same poll also found that 85 per cent of teachers reported having more students in that category now than three years ago.[11]
- In January 2023 the 2021 Census released data from the first time the UK population were asked about “sexual orientation”. It found “that around 43.4 million people (89.4 per cent) identified as heterosexual, around 1.5 million people (3.2 per cent) identified with an LGB+ orientation (‘Gay or Lesbian’, ‘Bisexual’ or ‘Other sexual orientation’). The remaining 3.6 million people (7.5 per cent) did not answer the question. The census question on gender identity was voluntary and posed to those aged 16 and over. The question asked: ‘Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?’ A total of 45.7 million people (94 per cent of the population) answered the question, with 45.4 million (93.5 per cent) answering ‘Yes’ and 262,000 (0.5 per cent) answering ‘No’. The remaining 2.9 million people (six per cent) did not answer the question.”[12]
Mental Health
- The NHS has been doing annual follow-ups to a survey on the mental health of young people conducted in 2017. The evidence suggests a large and growing problem – there is an increase from 10.1% to 25.7% of 17-19 year olds described as having a probable disorder.[13]
- The above ongoing research shows percentages of children having possible eating disorders are high and increasing.[14]
- Government reports underline that mental health problems in children and young people have been exacerbated by lengthy losses of education and social interaction during the recent pandemic.[15]
Exposure to Pornography
- A British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) research project[16] concluded: “The majority of the young people we spoke to as part of our research had seen pornography by the age of 13. In some cases as young as seven or eight years old.”
- 51% of 11-13 year olds, 66% of 14-15 year olds and 79% of 16-17 year olds report that they have seen pornography.
Sexual Abuse
- Ofsted’s review in 2021 of sexual abuse in schools and colleges[17] found, “nearly 90% of girls, and nearly 50% of boys, said being sent explicit pictures or videos of things they did not want to see happens a lot or sometimes to them or their peers”.
- “Girls… indicated that… the following types of harmful sexual behaviours happened ‘a lot’ or ‘sometimes’ between people their age… being sent pictures or videos they did not want to see (88%), being put under pressure to provide sexual images of themselves (80%), sexual assault of any kind (79%), feeling pressured to do sexual things that they did not want to (68%), unwanted touching (64%).”[18]
Family Breakdown
- In 2021 for the first time the majority of babies in England and Wales were born outside marriage.[19]
- In April 2022 “No Fault Divorce” became law in England and Wales,[20] making it easier to obtain a divorce. It is expected this will further increase the breakdown of family stability.[21]
This world exerts pressure on young people – it beguiles and seduces and pressures them to glory in its values, lifestyles and ambitions. In so doing it moulds their sense of identity into something that is harmed and pained. Our own health service’s statistics and government registers bear that out beyond any doubt. The things the world glories in have not brought peace or joy. However, merely pointing out the hurt caused by worshipping the world’s glory is not enough to turn hearts away from its allure. We are so damaged that we pursue and lust after that which hurts.
A vivid portrait of self-harming pursuit is given in Ahab – the ship’s captain consumed with pursuing the great whale, Moby Dick. He lost a leg to the fearsome monster of the ocean but was still obsessed with it. When in the great novel he met with a one-armed English captain – who had lost his arm to Moby Dick – he could see in another wounded man the harm done by seeking the whale. Yet he could not desist. The English captain said:
No more White Whales for me; There would be great glory in killing him, I know that, but hark ye, he’s best let alone; don’t you think so, Captain?’ – glancing at the ivory leg.
Ahab replied, ‘He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He’s all a magnet.[22]
The glory of this world is accursed but still allures and so we must expose the architectonic structure of the world’s glory to see better precisely how it brings its weight to bear upon people already harmed, yet still attracted, by it.
II. How the Culture’s Glory exerts pressure on the next generation
You have heard in the gospel that you must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of heaven, and that in every city bonds and afflictions await you … you will soon come to the town of Vanity Fair. In that town you will be beset by enemies, who will kill one or both of you. You must seal the testimony you hold with blood. Be faithful unto death, and the King will give you a crown of life.
– John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress
Christianity and the world each have their complex forces which shape our sense of identity. Through successive ages, the world has layered multiple strata of identity-shaping sediment which exert pressure upon us. Historians, philosophers, sociologists and theologians have dug away to different levels to expose the architectonic forces that today shape the secular person’s sense of self. Some reach back to the ancient world, others to the medieval, Reformation, Enlightenment or modern. Different aspects of culture may be highlighted as influencing our identity – philosophy, art, music, poetry, education, technology and much besides. One recent study on the development of the secular sense of identity reached back to the ancient world and observed that “More than anything else, I think, Christianity changed the ground of human identity.”[23] If Christianity provided an alternative sense of identity then it is no surprise that as our culture becomes increasingly secular, pressures increase on Christians to view themselves in ways shaped more by the world than God’s Word. “The shift to secularity is a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace.”[24] Since those words were published in 2007 the secular culture we live in has become even more hostile to Christian convictions. As Christians journey through this world, they find that if they hold to a biblical sense of self, they will inevitably suffer many injustices, face much opposition and often be misunderstood.
One of the difficulties for those who want to help future generations enjoy a sense of self shaped by Christ’s gospel is that the forces of the culture which exert pressure upon the self are variegated and so widely assumed, that they are difficult to even notice and articulate, never mind resist. Many Christian books have been published seeking to help us understand the secular culture that so influences us, but most focus on either the American culture or only one strand of the forces at work. This paper highlights four major strands of power at work in our secular culture, that shape the next generation’s sense of identity. Each has been explored in other academic and popular level works – but they have not thus far been drawn together so that we can see the impact on the self that they have in combination.
There are four major strands of power at work in our culture which together, and each in its own way, seek to make us into creatures whose identity is deformed by self-love. These four strands are 1) Expressive Individualism 2) Consumerism 3) Pornography 4) Conspiracy and Victim Culture. Together these appeal to and form within us deep self-love which seeks to make the self a final resting place of meaning and happiness. Augustine analysed the conflict between love of self and love of God, which differentiates the City of God and the City of Man:
The two cities were created by two kinds of love: the earthly city was created by self-love reaching the point of contempt for God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried as far as contempt of self. In fact the earthly city glories in itself, the Heavenly City glories in the Lord. The former looks for glory from men, the latter finds its highest glory in God, the witness of a good conscience. The earthly lifts up its head in its own glory, the Heavenly City says to its God: “My glory; you lift up my head.” In the former, the lust for domination lords it over its princes as over the nations it subjugates; in the other both those put in authority and those subject to them serve one another in love, the rulers by their counsel, the subjects by obedience. The one city loves its own strength shown in its powerful leaders; the other says to its God, “I will love you, my Lord, my strength.” [25]
The four strands of powers that impel us towards increasing self-love are laid out in the below diagram:
Before exploring each of these strands of power in more detail it is worth noticing that they foster an inherently unstable, vulnerable and irrational identity of self-love. The powers are mutually contradictory – pulling and pushing the self in opposite directions. The Consumer Culture seduces the self to feel powerful – I am able to buy and market whatever I think will satisfy me. Arrayed against that pulling the self away from such a sense of power is the Conspiracy and Victim Culture. Conspiracy culture urges me to believe myself to be weak and powerless in the face of international governmental conspiracies I cannot expose or overthrow. Similarly, the victim culture nurtures a sense of self that receives a range of exchanges and interactions that previous generations would view as normal or inevitable as if they are abusive and damaging in severe ways. A self that is broken and weak jostles for influence with a self that is powerful.
Expressive Individualism tells the self that I can only be who I really am when society accepts and applauds who I feel I am. This strand of power is fundamentally public – it demands recognition and signals its nature with flags, marches, lanyards and slogans. By contrast, the consumption of Pornography among the younger generation is fundamentally a private activity, seducing people into a self-love informed by secret shame and private sexual gratification. Pornography hollows out character and creates a deeply unstable sense of self through its tension with the public demands of expressive individualism.
The sense of identity our secular culture creates and impels the next generation towards is fundamentally unstable. This should not surprise us as we were created by God to love and worship a glory weightier than the world. “All humans have been created to be reflecting beings, and they will reflect whatever they are ultimately committed to … we resemble what we revere, either for ruination or restoration.” [26] Out of love and compassion for those who are “curved in on themselves” [27] in self-love, and so torn apart by opposing unstable senses of self-hood, we need to better understand the nature of the powers we face.
Expressive Individualism Culture
Expressive individualism is the paradigm in our culture that forms people who feel they will only be their true selves when they are able to publicly express and manifest their inner identity, and be applauded by society for so doing. This is a significant advance upon a culture of individuality and takes matters further than a culture of authenticity. The crucial ingredient that makes expressive individualism so potent a power in a culture is its insistence that others in a society must approve, commend, support and applaud an individual’s inner perception of their self-identity. As Charles Taylor observed, “One is a self only among other selves. A self can never be described without reference to those who surround it.” [28] There is assumed to not be any ontological restraint or check on one’s assumed identity other than what one feels and desires to be; ensuring other people affirm the felt identity is the only challenge. Overcoming any resistance to public affirmation is an ethical imperative as those who decline to praise another for their acting out of their sense of identity is to violate, harm and assault one’s sense of personhood.
Picture a man who believes his inner real identity to be that he is in reality a dolphin. A culture shaped by religious impulses might resist the person making such a claim for himself on the basis of a religious text or what the church teaches. A culture shaped by individualism would take a laissez-faire approach – you live like a dolphin if you want, it’s your choice, just don’t make life difficult for others in society. A culture shaped by authenticity would praise the person for discerning their inner authentic dolphin identity, but would not necessarily support their acting like a dolphin. An expressive individualist culture would go further than any of these by working to dismantle any objection to a man embracing the identity of a dolphin. Media would run programmes that commend the dolphin lifestyle; people who query the reasonableness of feeling yourself to be a dolphin would be cancelled and have their jobs threatened; banners and flags would appear on government buildings affirming the right to live as a dolphin; taxpayers’ money would be used to fund surgical procedures to make dolphin identities more credible; schoolchildren would be given classes to help them consider whether they too might have inner identities aligned with dolphins; churches would be surveyed to check how welcoming they are to aspirant dolphins; sports stars would be dropped from teams if they played at peak form but failed to publicly affirm the beauty of dolphin identities; politicians would be harangued by media asking if they agree that men can become dolphins. Such is the expressive individualist culture.
Carl Trueman has recently published an impressive book which details the history and significance of the expressive individualist culture.[29] He explores the roots of the culture in philosophy, art and literature. Trueman explains that in our expressive individualist culture, “Identity requires recognition by another.”[30] This is why the rainbow flag has become so ubiquitous in our culture. If we are to understand the weight of pressure upon the next generation’s sense of identity, we need to ponder the significance of the rainbow flag.
The Rainbow Flag
As Christians we understand that simple objects can in God’s economy have a profound spiritual impact. Bread is one of the most common foods in the world but the words of Jesus in Matthew 26:26 mean that we treasure breaking bread as the most poignant expression of spiritual unity we have, and in the Lord’s Supper we benefit from Christ’s death in a spiritual but powerful way. So significant has the symbol of bread become that the most solemn and serious thing a church can do is forbid an unrepentant member from partaking of the broken bread, and in so doing the person is exposed to a restrained but real satanic attack (1 Cor 5:5, 1 Tim 1:20). Christians know that simple things such as bread can be – and are – used to auspicate, demarcate and enforce the power of both God and Satan. We may no more dare to say of the rainbow flag, “It’s just a flag – it has no real significance or power” than we may say of bread broken in the Lord’s Supper “It’s just bread of no more significance than what I spread marmalade on this morning.”
Numerous people in San Francisco were involved in designing the rainbow flag, but the person most publicly associated with it was a drag queen called Gilbert Baker. His 1978 design was a rainbow which claimed God’s blessing for the gay lifestyle. In his autobiography Baker wrote:
Cleve and I danced the same way; we always raised our arms up over our heads, snapping our fingers like Diana Ross. We’d shake our hips like Tina Turner, acid cheerleaders twirling in psychedelic funkadelic circles. The crowd was as much a part of the show as the band. Everyone was there: North Beach beatniks and barrio zoots, the bored bikers in black leather, teenagers in the back row kissing. There were long-haired, lithe girls in belly-dance get-ups, pink-haired punks safety-pinned together, hippie suburbanites, movie stars so beautiful they left you dumbstruck, muscle gayboys with perfect moustaches, butch dykes in blue jeans, and fairies of all genders in thrift-store dresses. We rode the mirrored ball on glittering LSD and love power. Dance fused us, magical and cleansing. We were all in a swirl of colour and light. It was like a rainbow.
A rainbow. That’s the moment when I knew exactly what kind of flag I would make.
A Rainbow Flag was a conscious choice, natural and necessary. The rainbow came from the earliest recorded history as a symbol of hope. In the Book of Genesis, it appeared as proof of a covenant between God and all living creatures. It was also found in Chinese, Egyptian and Native American history.[31]
Baker emphasises his desire for the flag to communicate that the God of the Bible blesses the movement. He said, “The rainbow’s in the Bible. It’s a covenant between God and all living creatures.”[32]
The original flag had eight colours. It is worth noticing that there was a spiritual component to the colours. In line with the hippie movement’s connections with the occult and new age mysticism, Baker decreed that the turquoise colour represented ‘magic’ and the violet stood for ‘spirit’. Pink was the first colour because Hitler had made homosexuals wear a pink triangle badge – heading the flag with pink aimed to reclaim that dark history and celebrate homosexuality. The pink colour then stood for sex – gay sex in particular. It had to be dropped from the flag when the cost of the pink material was prohibitive for mass production. Seven colours did not hang evenly from lamp posts and so the turquoise stripe – representing magic or the occult – was dropped. These changes gave the six-colour flag widely promoted to this day, which has been used as the basis for various additions and refinements.
The occult-affirming aspect of the original rainbow flag is significant in that it is the nature of occultism that people are understood to place themselves under dark spiritual powers whether or not they understand themselves to have so done. In the occult world, if you use crystals, cards or magic rites you are under the influence of evil spirits even if you believe that the objects you play with are mere toys and have no supernatural significance. This is how the hidden kingdom of darkness operates.
Besides all the above, it remains the case that a flag denotes and encourages those who observe it, or fly it, to accept within themselves that they live and benefit from the power of the kingdom denoted by said flag; soldiers bleed for their nation’s flag; sports teams play for their flag, burning a flag is seen as a deeply provocative act. A flag is then an especially significant artefact in an expressive individualist culture, for it is the nature of a flag to evoke public sentiment and enforce public celebration. It is no insignificant matter then that the rainbow flag is ubiquitous in our nation. Yesterday I went on a few errands and I saw the rainbow flag flying outside my town’s fire station, hospital and a school. I saw the flag displayed in more than one shop window, on the side of a police car, on a bus and in the bank I visited. My football team (Nottingham Forest – I married into it!) has recently changed its logo to a rainbow-themed one and the captain of our team wears a rainbow armband. It is no exaggeration to say that I see the rainbow flag far more in my daily life than I do the union jack. In practical terms, we live in a nation that honours and lives under what the rainbow flag celebrates. The next generation is growing up with more felt pressure to honour the rainbow flag than the union jack – this creates profound challenges to churches that want to help them embrace a biblical identity.
A person can, spiritually speaking, live and serve under only one flag. We can have only one spiritual king – there really are only two spiritual kingdoms and we must choose which to honour. When God rescued his people from Amalek, “Moses built an altar and called the name of it, ‘The Lord is my Banner’.” (Exod 17:15) The enemies of God’s people “set up their own standards” (Ps 74:4) but God’s people know the Lord has said, “Behold, I will lift up my hand to the nations, and set up my standard to the peoples.” (Isa 49:22)
A flag which is an outward expression of allegiance and spiritual powers shapes the social imaginary of what sense of identity is blessed by God, and what is permitted and celebrated by our culture. The rainbow flag is far more than just a flag – there is no such thing as ‘just’ a flag; a flag always enforces and empowers. The rainbow flag is the sacrament of ungodly sexuality in the world. If we want the next generation to live under the banner of Jesus and his identity-shaping holy love, we will need to help them have confidence in their hearts and lives to resist the power mediated by the rainbow flag.
Pornography
There is a very broad and well-recognised problem in our culture arising from younger people being permanently connected to a screen. Even if the material being viewed is not pornographic and is just normal communications or news, the ever-present portable screen forms people to be permanently distracted, disengaged and dissatisfied.[33] This general aspect of technology shapes identities, but we need to be aware that the more extreme aspects of obviously sinful viewing are increasingly forming identities. Pornography has become embedded in mainstream Western culture to a degree unimaginable to previous generations. Technology with its own addictive powers means many people are permanently attached to a screen that has infinite reach to the darkest and most violent of visual images. The scientific research is conclusive and well established – pornography reprogrammes the brain, destroys normal sexual drive and fertility, embeds violent and misogynistic convictions, damages the ability to sleep, trashes normal concentration ability, and fuels depression. Crucially – for the purposes of our paper – pornography is one of the ways our culture exerts its worldly weight upon young Christians. The identity of a person is hollowed out by pornography leaving a husk to stumble through the motions of church and daily life.
The British Board of Film Classification has researched the reach of pornography and shockingly concluded that more than half of 11-to-13-year-olds have seen pornography and it is far from unusual to have 7-year-olds be exposed to it. The effects of this are traumatic and long-term.[34] The brain itself is damaged by pornography as it is summarised by the American Medical Association:
We found a significant negative association between reported pornography hours per week and gray matter volume in the right caudate as well as with functional activity during a sexual cue-reactivity paradigm in the left putamen. Functional connectivity of the right caudate to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was negatively associated with hours of pornography consumption.[35]
[The effects of pornography] range from brain fog and social anxiety through to depression, negative body image and flashbacks. Eating disorders, on the rise in young people, cause more deaths than any other mental illness. Porn has a big impact on idealised notions of body image. Even three hours of porn use a week can cause a noticeable reduction in grey matter in key areas of the brain. When brain connections are involved, it means they impact behaviour and mood. Regular bingeing on hardcore internet porn can cause some users to develop mental health problems, compulsive use, even addiction. These interfere significantly with everyday life and life goals. Users often talk about feeling ‘numb’ towards everyday pleasures.[36]
Visual images of a sexual nature retrain a human being to no longer see themselves or other people through the lens of God’s word. Augustine observed that the pornographic images popular in Roman culture (which were of course not mediated by a phone or computer) had the ability to train and impact people that exceeded mere verbal teaching. Augustine describes a young man gazing at a picture on the wall which portrayed two gods engaging in a sordid demeaning act of a sexual nature. He concludes that the man who views it will inevitably desire to do the same as that which he sees and will announce his pleasure in so doing.[37] So it is today, the visual images watched and shared by the young people in our churches mentor and disciple them in ways that go deeper into the soul than the few minutes of Bible study or sermon they hear once a fortnight or less. The inner spiritual life of a person matters more than the outer body; what good is it to lose your soul but gain all the finery of this world? And yet the soul can be reached via a pornography of the body. Many fool themselves into thinking the merely digital has no physical impact – this is but one part of the pornographic deception. As Augustine reasoned, “Holiness of body is lost when the soul is violated.”[38]
Pornography is widely available and intrusively so – hence the majority of children who encounter it do so at first accidentally. This is partly the fruit of our consumer technology-driven culture – another major strand of the world’s identity formation programme. However, it is also worth noting that the materialism of our culture shapes our identity to make our hearts more enthusiastic for sexual depravity. The sheer choice and loneliness of Western consumer culture numbs people to life and we become lukewarm about all that matters. John Cassian was a monk in the ancient church and an insightful analyst of the human heart. He drew a direct link between lukewarmness towards God and sexual sin. It is when our desire for God is lukewarm that we are vulnerable to the assaults of sexual sin. “On account of lukewarmness, the mind turns too readily toward the desires of the flesh. It needs to be restrained by the desires of the Spirit.”[39] As materialism makes us lukewarm, we are all the more vulnerable to the lure of pornography.
If all this were not enough, it is now clear that there is a sustained and very effective effort to normalise pornography among children via what is supposedly ‘sex education’. The most widely viewed website for sex education among children today is one that does not at all promote or explain what a Christian would understand to be godly sexual desires or behaviours. Quite the opposite: violent sex, bondage, sado-masochism, homosexuality and group sex are normalised via that supposedly educational resource.[40] Over 100,000 children visit that site each month, discipling them into a pornographic culture. Advertising which uses a less extreme form of pornography to seduce one into the consumer culture is complemented by an educational frame bequeathed by the modern British curriculum.
We are fooling ourselves if we think that the weight of the pornographic culture is not already hollowing out the inner identities of young people currently in evangelical churches. For a young person to even hold to the concept of traditional biblical morality in this area is extraordinarily difficult. To avoid being crushed by the weight of the pornography culture requires the grace of God in effusive measure.
There are particular identity-shaping impacts of pornography on churchgoers that are unique to us. Secular psychologists and scientists have listed the damage they can discern – and it is extensive. However, there is a unique soul-destroying impact that is the burden only of the church attender (or minister) who views pornography – it imposes the identity of one of Jesus’ most virulent enemies upon us: we inevitably become Pharisees – able to affirm doctrinal truths, able to put effort into evangelism, scornful of those less sound than us. The appearance is godly, the inner identity horrific. The Pharisees were the evangelicals of their day and till Christ returns stand as witness to the fact that those who hated Jesus more than any other, prized their Bibles. Pornography as it hollows out the inner soul inevitably forms evangelicals into Pharisees. Jesus said:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves … Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. (Matt 25:15, 25-28)
Every person in church life I have pastored regarding pornography has reported the same thing: “I cannot remember when I last felt joy in church worship. It all feels so dry.” This is the impact of pornography on the identity of churchgoers; it forms us into Pharisees who cannot feel the joy of the Lord because our hearts are secretly filled with another spirit. To be sure there are practical steps, discipline steps and parenting steps that need to be implemented to help counter the identity-forming reach of pornography in the souls of the next generation. We also need to recommit to and rediscover the holy, solemn heart-thrilling joy of gathering to worship God with his people on the Lord’s Day. The means of grace have not changed since they were instituted and in a pornographic culture, our need for them is as acute as ever. Our identities are formed from the inside-out via either pornography or the means of grace.
Consumer Culture
That our Western culture is consumerist and materialistic is such an obvious reality that we can fail to appreciate the substantive weight with which it presses down on our sense of identity. The sense that we achieve happiness and fulfilment through things or experiences we buy is so much part of the air we breathe, that we struggle to analyse the implications and the ways that in recent years consumer society has begun to shape identities in new ways. It was back in 1993 that David Wells published his landmark book No Place for Truth[41] which explored the changes being wrought on evangelical churches by the burgeoning culture of postmodernity in general, and consumerism in particular. In that first volume of what was to grow into a multi-volume study of culture and systematic theology, Wells noted that the cultural move into a market-driven society changed most ministers’ sense of vocation:
In this new clerical order, technical and managerial competence in the church have plainly come to dominate the definition of pastoral service. It is true that matters of spirituality loom large in the churches, but it is not at all clear that churches expect the pastor to do anything more than to be a good friend. The older role of the pastor as broker of truth has been eclipsed by the newer managerial functions.[42]
In his 1994 follow-up book God in the Wasteland, Wells developed his thesis further and again saw that consumerism was a key driver for the unhealthy changes to evangelicalism he described:
Technique is being substituted for truth, marketing action for thought, the satisfaction of the individual for the health of the church, a therapeutic vision of the world for a doctrinal vision, the unmanageable by the manageable, organism by organisation, those who can preach the Word of God by those who can manage an organisation, the spiritual for the material. At the centre of these substitutions is an individualism fired by a shallow, self-centred consumerism.[43]
When Wells released his 1998 volume Losing our Virtue, he developed his analysis in the direction of how all the cultural changes impacting the church had transformed our ethics. This required reflection upon the changing sense of identity wrought by the weight of living in a consumer culture:
We need to reflect more on the questions of our lost moral fabric … Questions of identity today stand at the centre of clashing perspectives on how we are to think about the human being … there is considerable pressure for people to adapt to each new situation, to reconstruct themselves, to reach into the world around them to extract some meaning for themselves, some sense of who the “I” is. The emptiness of the internal narrative is concealed behind the surface appearances.[44]
It is a sombre journey to read through Wells’ classic series of books and see him trace and expound the pressure a consumer culture places upon people to reinvent and market themselves as an ever more fluid identity that conforms to the expectations of the moment. Technological developments mean that the vision painted by Wells has only accelerated. His works stand today as a realised prophecy.
In a culture where all is measured by financial worth people are given the illusion of power. Money is a form of credit, which can transform into anything one desires.[45] It offers the god-like ability to purchase whatever god you want. In such an environment character expires[46] – for character requires long haul consistency or, perhaps more realistically, long-term painful growth and maturing. The consumer culture instead pressures people to incessant image changes, the endless pursuit of which promises the world but never delivers genuine happiness. In secular consumer-driven cultures “we contrast less sin to grace than the ordinary to the exceptional.” [47] The ability to purchase another experience, appearance or identity gives both the thrill of novelty and the inevitable banality of never really being able to stand out from the global crowd. As Francis Schaeffer wryly observed, all the rebels wear jeans but they are no longer rebels or individuals when they are all wearing the same jeans.
The UK has a massive problem with household debt – as a proportion of disposable income household debt in the UK in December 2022 stood at 133.8%.[48] This is not the highest it has been (In 2008 it hit 155.6%) but it is still a significant statistic. It is indicative of the way our consumer culture is built on credit, as opposed to the mere accumulation of capital. Our media understandably point out the practical dangers of so much personal debt in our economy,[49] however the point I wish to make is more theological and has to do with the identity-shaping power of a consumer culture shaped by credit. The theological significance of personal credit is that it extends my godlike ability to recreate myself and purchase an identity far beyond anything that could be earned by my labour. Money is godlike in its fluidity; credit extends that and so makes the illusion of power all the more beguiling. The deception that is wrought on young people in a credit-driven consumer culture is particularly pernicious – it promises endless forms of purchased identities but inculcates expectations for them being purchased without the sort of labour and work that would have in earlier generations chipped away at idealistic and false expectations. A consumer culture driven by earnings can be selfish and individualistic; a consumer culture driven by credit is illusory and deceptive at even deeper levels of the psyche. People’s expectations of identities and the satisfaction levels they desire from what they buy detach from created reality and the limitations God places upon our mortal lives. Advertising as an industry feeds off credit consumerism. In previous ages ‘advertising’ was sharing information about the best or competing versions of something we wanted or needed. Today, advertising is very different; it is designed to create in us a desire for something that we feel will complete us but which we do not actually need. Advertising is in the desire-creating business, and with consumerism built on credit, there is no need to limit the desires that can be foisted upon the next generation.
Conspiracy & Victimhood Culture
FLORRY: They say the Last Day is coming this summer.
KITTY: No!
ZOB: Great unjust God!
FLORRY: Well, it was in the papers about Antichrist.
NEWSBOY: Stop Press Edition. Result of the races. Sea Serpent in the royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist.
– James Joyce, Ulysses.
The conspiracy theory of society comes from abandoning God and asking ‘Who is in his place?
– Karl Popper
While consumer culture fills people with a sense of power (to purchase identity), conspiracy culture fills people with a sense of weakness (unable to control events). That there has been a proliferation of conspiracy theory-shaped outlooks in our culture has been widely commented on both by secular commentators[50] and Christian writers.[51]
“The ‘golden age’ of conspiracy theories, it seems, is now.”[52] In an era of declining educational standards, declining literacy, and the multiplication of sensory overload via screens and non-stop data, many people lack the tools or experience to distinguish reality from fiction. In a therapeutic age, if the claim makes me feel good about myself then I feel it to be true so it is real for me. As an economy struggles to provide the standard of living people have been led to feel entitled to, as a health service fails, and with fears of a pandemic in recent memory, anger, despair, addiction and disillusionment are on the rise in our nation. In such a context, it is no surprise that conspiracy theories are seized on by many.
Talking with somebody earlier in the year I mentioned that my wife was going to see the recently deceased Queen lying in state, and it is a sadness to me that the Queen had just died. The reply I got was, “Yes well, most people don’t know she has been dead for over a year. They have just been pretending – it’s all part of the plan.” To report that I did not know what to say in reply would be an understatement. I began to realise that comments like that are an invitation to wade deeper into the conspiracy theory world. If you look intrigued, open to hearing more – shocked at the ‘reality’ being revealed behind the curtain pulled back – then you will be given more so-called ‘research’ about ever more outlandish conspiracy theories. If your conversations are occurring in a church context, then these can be joined in a gnostic manner with verses about Jesus revealing secrets and the end times described in Revelation.
I have seen numbers of people become gripped by conspiracy theories; I have seen how somebody pulls away from other people, church and family to become convinced that the royal family, government, international agencies and so forth, are all engaged in a nefarious, highly-sophisticated plot to take over the planet. How this happens and why it happens does seem in part to be to do with the challenges we face in the external world, and also it arises from what students of the phenomena describe as a “conspiracy mindset”.
A person who embraces conspiracies as their worldview experiences a feeling of weakness before global, secretive forces they are powerless to defeat. The sense that there is a massive conspiracy to destroy capitalism, or church, or culture leaves those who are discipled in such an outlook feeling unable to change events. However, as agency is shed, a form of power is grasped; the power to know what others cannot see, is experienced and loved. A conspiracy theorist may well feel despair at the powers they imagine are arrayed against them, but they love and enjoy the sense of knowing what others cannot see. The sense that I know the mysteries of the universe and have worked it all out is a heady potion to drink. For those who are driven by self-love, conspiracy theories offer both the ability to blame others for one’s problems and to exalt oneself over them as the all-knowing seer. My failures are not my fault – it is the shadowy powers out there that have oppressed me.
The form of self-love engendered by conspiracy theories is then a well-armoured one. What is needed is truth, and verifiability of evidence but the self-love at the heart of the conspiracy theorists’ worldview prevents them from having the humility needed to learn thorough repentance. Somebody objected to my quoting John Calvin in a sermon recently. I asked why and the reply was a knowing whisper, “Oh I have been researching Calvin.” I raised my eyebrow to invite further disclosure and was solemnly told that “Not many people realise it, but Calvin was a Freemason. He was involved in all kinds of dark stuff.” I had never heard this kind of idea before – despite having taken university courses on Calvin and over the past decades read hundreds of books by and about him. With trepidation, I asked, “When you say research, what do you mean?” The answer was “a YouTube video”. Faced with a conspiracy theorist convinced they know better than all historical evidence and genuine scholarship there is no reasoning. If you try to present evidence it only further suggests to the conspiracy theorist that you are not awake to the secret truth of reality which they have. The problem is one of the heart; until the self-love of secret knowledge is repented of, no progress is possible.
How does conspiracy theory feel? First of all, it lets you feel like you are smarter than everyone. Political scientist Michael Barkun points out that conspiracy theory devotees love what he calls:
“Stigmatized knowledge”, sources that are obscure or even looked down upon. In fact, the more obscure the source is, the more true believers want to trust it. This is the stock in trade of popular podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience” – “scientists” who present themselves as the lone voice in the wilderness and are somehow seen as more credible because they’ve been repudiated by their colleagues. Ninety-eight per cent of scientists may agree on something, but the conspiracy mindset imagines the other 2% are really on to something. This allows conspiracists to see themselves as “critical thinkers” who have separated themselves from the pack, rather than outliers who have fallen for a snake oil pitch. One of the most exciting parts of a conspiracy theory is that it makes everything make sense.[53]
Allied to conspiracy culture is its cousin, Victimhood Culture. There have always, since the murder of Abel, been victims in our cursed world. The supreme victim of injustice was none other than Jesus Christ. The centrality of a divine victim in our religion means Christians of all people should be sensitive to wrongs done and should grieve the pain of sin piled upon sin; it is also possible that we can be susceptible to granting excessive power to any who adopt a victim identity.[54] In recent years there has been increased awareness and reporting in the secular culture of widespread and serious situations where people have been harmed and hurt by people from whom they had a right to expect care and protection. The secular culture has worked with its tools to bring its imperfect justice, investigation, and righting of wrongs. Almost all areas of society have been touched by such exposure of victims and it is right we mourn wrong done and support what we can to bring righteousness.
Alerting ourselves to the nature of victimhood culture should in no way be interpreted as deprecating the reality of wrongs done to victims or the rightness of seeking justice. Victimhood culture is something that has begun to shape our society partly through the widespread publicity surrounding genuine cases of abuse in all kinds of sectors, and partly through the widespread acceptance of critical theory as it has been embraced by educational establishments and the media. Scholars have noted that the wider cultural problems faced in the West are fuelling growth in a sense of victimhood: “Victimization is the tendency of the citizen coddled by the capitalist ‘paradise’ to think of himself in terms of the model of a persecuted people, especially at a time when crises sap our confidence in the benefits of the system.” [55]
As people are raised to view and understand the widespread existence of people being victimised by people and forces more powerful than them, young people are schooled in their expectations for life. The idea that I too may be a victim becomes a more realistic identity to embrace, the more people are publicly presented as such. Mike Ovey wrote about what he called “victim chic” – the tendency to find identifying as a victim increasingly trendy and popular. He explained that when a person adopts the identity of ‘victim’ they are covertly – or explicitly – identifying another as the ‘oppressor’. A victim may, or may not, genuinely be a victim of a real wrong and injustice. We “use the word ‘role’ suggesting one may not genuinely be a victim, but only playing a game”. [56] Adopting victim status, as Ovey explains, enables somebody to view their oppressor as wholly evil, intentionally wronging them. Victimhood is very much an identity and it can be magnified, embraced and embedded all the more permanently via its repeated proclamation. As a victim role enables one to view another as an evil oppressor, it also bequeaths an identity on the victim of innocence. In this sense, the identity adopted offers a version of what the gospel gives – justification. So, Ovey wrote of the victim role:
Our self-righteousness is associated with our self-construction. Conferring self-righteousness on myself is a sovereign judicial act. I define myself. This readily looks like establishing my own identity and nature independently of God. But, of course, to be a victim, I need another to be seen as victimizer. My act of self-acquittal has its corollary in my act of sovereign condemnation of the other as victimizer. Both acts resemble infringements on God’s role.[57]
At this point we see the family resemblance between conspiracy theory and victimhood culture – both offer an identity of power over others via a posture of weakness. The victim identity enables one to adopt a posture of weakness but from there, one has incredible power to demand the oppressor be cancelled, shamed, and permanently ostracised. In today’s world that can mean the loss of employment, bullying at school, and loss of place at university, media reports. There are situations where serious and grave punishments are merited for those who harm others – but it is important to note that the power offered in victimhood culture accrues to both genuine victims and any who adopt that identity in work, university or church.
French philosopher Pascal Bruckner paints a bleak portrait of a culture shaped by victimhood:
If all it takes to win is to be recognised as a victim, then everyone will fight for this gratifying position. Being a victim will become a vocation, a full-time job. However, a former abused child who commits a homicide as an adult is no less a murderer even if he excuses his act because of his unhappy youth. Because historically certain communities were subjugated, the individuals who comprise them would thus enjoy a credit for misdeeds for eternity and would have a right to the jury’s indulgence. Society’s debt towards such and such of its constituents would automatically translate into leniency, into forbearance for any person belonging to one of these groups, even long after the time when they stopped being persecuted. What remains of legality if it recognises the privilege of impunity for some, if it becomes synonymous with exemption and is transformed into a machine for endlessly multiplying rights and without anything in exchange? This could lead to an environment of civil war in the microcosm, setting child against parents, brother against sister, neighbour against neighbour, patient against doctor, weaving relations of mistrust between everyone.’[58]
The Conspiracy and Victimhood Cultures of our late-modern Western era offer those who love themselves the invitation to experience power through weakness. Why would young people embrace the identities of conspiracy theorists and victims? Because they are highly plausible and widely encouraged in our culture, and because they offer via an apparent identity of weakness, power over the unknowing and power over the oppressors. All of these attractive benefits are shadow images of the power through weakness that the gospel offers, and they feed the self-love which displaces love for God.
III. Mirrors of Self Love
We are such unstable creatures that feelings we pretend to have, we really do have at the end.
– Benjamin Constant, Adolphe
We have seen four aspects of the ways in which the world exerts identity-shaping pressure upon people. By demanding loyalty, obeisance, and fear; by offering acceptance, pleasure, and satisfaction, these aspects of the world are worshipped and form people into self-loving creatures.
Each of these four aspects of our world reflects back to us a vision of self that the world promises will satisfy and rescue us from our sense of ennui and incompleteness. They combine with one another to destabilise our sense of identity. The private shameful formation of identity via pornography clashes with the pressure to adopt a public persona under the weight of expressive individualism. The posture of weakness ingrained in us by conspiracy and victim culture wrestles with the sense of power we feel as consumers with credit cards. Am I weak or powerful? Am I who I am alone or in public? I do not know and I fool myself into thinking that I am happy with the contradictions.
Advertising leverages and accentuates the weight of these aspects of the world. In the past advertising gave us information about something we needed; today advertising creates in us a longing for things we do not need.[59] The more weight the various aspects of the world have on people’s sense of identity, the more advertisers will utilise them to sell us desires. Pornography, conspiracy and victim culture, and expressive individualism will all increasingly be foisted upon people’s eyes in order to reach their hearts. And so the self is reflected again and again upon itself in a never-ending hall of mirrors.
Technology in general and social media in particular increases the weight of the world upon people’s sense of identity. The ever more portable, ever-on, ever-present phones – which are far more than phones – mean that the world’s messages are always broadcast to us. Advertising from big tech companies makes us feel that our phones are more than mere tools – the company we choose to buy into reflects and forms our identity. In the social media world, we are given ‘free’ services, where we pay the price of ourselves since we are the product.
The weight and power of the world, mediated by these four roads to the heart, are immensely damaging to image-bearing creatures. The next generation are a people who have already been deformed and hurt by being raised under the weight of this version of the world. Since Eden people have loved themselves, but the particular form of damage done by self-love at this stage of cultural development and history is unique to us. The harm done is so deep that many notice it, are sorrowful over it, and wish to bring remedies. That is true of the secular world as well as the church.
The challenge for the church is to embrace the road to recuperation and restoration that Jesus calls us to, rather than wider roads that subtly bow under the weight of the world’s glory.
IV. Missiology of Glory
That person who deserves to be called a theologian understands the visible and revealed things of God seen through suffering and the cross.
A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.
– Martin Luther, Heidelberg Disputation 20-21.
He left the choice of creed an open question, to be decided by the individual as he sees fit. Except he forbade the people to believe anything incompatible with human dignity…
– Thomas More, Utopia
Without scriptural, informed spiritual effort, the flesh will succumb to the weight of the world’s glory. The glory of the world with all the pressure it exerts does not vanish once we enter the door of the church. The world continues to weigh upon our churches and moulds us into people who try to use the world’s methods. Francis Schaeffer warned that “the church’s methods must be chosen with much prayer and care, and results alone will not now be the sole, simple criterion … the church’s or Christian group’s methods are as important as its message.”[60] Without conscious spiritual effort, our methods will reflect the approaches to organisation and work and relationships and life that the world glorifies and values.
When it comes to the task of mission in general, and to the next generation in particular, there is special pressure on the churches to imbibe by default a missiology of glory. A missiology of glory will intuitively avoid causing offence to the gods of this age and will seek to honour both God and the world. Superficial appeals to the Bible will be used to justify valuing the world’s values – being all things to all people; meeting people where they are. Results will be sought and may even in human terms be achieved, collated and published. Positions of influence will be sought (for the sake of the gospel). Celebrities, secular and Christian, will be seen to have significance in building a platform for mission. Motives will at many levels be honourable. “Many who have taken up the tools of marketing have done so out of desires that could be laudable.”[61]
When the organisational, leadership and financial models for mission used by the church to engage in mission, are recognisably relatives of those used by the world to build everything from sales of washing powder to Premier League football teams, a missiology of glory has been embraced. Matthew Roberts reflects at length on the identity confusion in our culture, and also notes that the identity confusion penetrates the hearts of those in church:
Christians may have transferred their worship and allegiance to God in Christ by the power of the Spirit, but still we tend to drift into the worship of other things, and cling to or pick up false identities from the things we worship. These may be things which are in themselves good when done out of worship for God – such as good family relationships, the fifth and seventh commandments – but which we elevate above God Himself and make into an idol. A Christian can be so proud of his family life that he tends to worship it rather than God who commands it. Or they may be things which are in themselves sinful, ideas or concepts or images which we use to justify disobeying God Himself. Such things lead to Christians holding false understandings of themselves, deriving false identities from these idols even while they know their primary identity is in the Triune God. Christians may have true faith in Christ and yet cling to an array of false identities: for example, a particular career, an exorbitant pride in family or nation, even the recognition that goes with a church ministry.[62]
The missiology of glory will be unable to withstand the pressures brought to bear on the church by the world. So, while some metrics of mission improve (more church plants, more conversions, more into ministry training) the underlying spiritual challenges in the next generation of an identity nature will be untouched. Pornography and rainbow flag lanyards will still exert their siren call; victim culture will overwhelm church discipline; materialism and consumerism will reign six and perhaps seven days a week.
If we look at the next generation and see that the world has shaped their identities at deep spiritual and psychological levels, then we need to repent of a missiology of glory. Using the world’s methods to speak of Christ and build churches will not be able to renew the next generation’s sense of identity. Union with Christ, which grants the sense of joy and peace of knowing the holy-loving God, will come only by another, more painful and challenging route. A missiology of glory cannot grant a secure identity, distinct from the world. Repenting of it requires more than a change in method or a new programme to run. It will require us to look at the world and our mission through the shame and brokenness of the cross. We will need to be willing to be treated by the world as Christ was treated. Missiology that forms identity in Christ-honouring ways needs whole churches together to embrace a way of being church that is genuinely crucified to the world. We need to live out an ecclesiology of the Cross.
V. Ecclesiology of the Cross
Christ tells his disciples that each must bear his own cross (Matt 16:24). For whoever the Lord welcomes into his fellowship must prepare for a hard, toilsome, disturbed life – full to the brim with many and varied sufferings … In peaceful times many preen themselves on their great works and godliness, only to learn when humbled by opposition that all this was hypocrisy.
– John Calvin, Institutes 3:7:1-2
It is not that a Christian culture must make the name of Jesus Christ acceptable to the world; but the crucified Christ has become the refuge, justification, protection and claim for the higher values and their defenders that have fallen victim to suffering.
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics
In light of the spiritual realities explicated in this paper, the path towards renewal and restoration can solely be trod by those who accept a missiology of glory and can only be put to death by an ecclesiology of the cross. Worship of the world which deforms creaturely identity can only be banished by being replaced with worship of God. This is more than changing our individual thinking or behaviour; it amounts to being united to God in ecclesial worship, gathered and joined with others who are on the same journey as us – helping one another adopt a communal approach to life and mission which is shaped by and forms identities that are cruciform.
An ecclesiology of the cross is a shared approach to church that sees the glory of the world for what it is, and values the power found in the shame of the cross. Rather than attempting mission in ways that the world finds palatable, Christians who live out an ecclesiology of the cross help one another to praise God in the only way he truly can be worshipped – where Jesus is:
So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. (Heb 13:12-15)
The world casts reproach, shame and derision on any who truly worships Jesus. We may imagine we can worship Jesus while living and valuing the glory this world has to offer – the positions of respectable privilege and comfort in late-modern Western society. However, the Bible says that those who continually praise God must journey to a place of shame like that where Christ was stripped naked, tortured and nailed to a tree. This speaks of more than a mere intellectual understanding of the logic of the atonement; it speaks of bearing the kind of abuse and rejection that Jesus suffered. It is only from that place in life that we can day by day – continually – acknowledge Jesus as Lord.
Any who lives like this will find their identity changed in deep, spiritual, personal and lasting ways. Such people will rejoice to fly the flag of Jesus Christ as master and commander of their hearts, possessions, identities and bodies. This will mean they can worship only Jesus – the one who died to redeem and restore. Conflict and derision from the world are inevitable, for such people will be unable to fly a flag or wear a lanyard at work or in school which proclaims they value the glory of this world. There will be pressure to conform – and some may even urge conformity as a missional tactic. Resisting such siren voices and enduring the shame of being ostracised by the world is difficult. Some will lose their preferred employment. Some children will be unable to follow the careers their parents had. Some churches will have less income and even less social respectability. All of this will be difficult, which is why we do not follow Christ alone but love one another in a church. We are called to not only have a personal spirituality of the cross but a corporate ecclesiology of the cross. In the economy of God’s Kingdom, nobody can have the former without the latter.
Perhaps too many of us in the past have thought we could hand on a form of Christianity that held to some doctrinal truths but resisted the spiritual power to endure cultural opprobrium – we thought a missiology of glory could hand on a theology of the cross. If the next generation of young people in our churches have at deep levels developed identities that are in step with the world’s values, then surely this must be a significant part of the reason. Previous generations of Christians bear responsibility for the depth of spiritual identity transformation (or lack thereof) in the next generation. All of this is to say that the power of the cross to shape the identity of the next generation will be manifested when they see us rejoice to suffer a loss of respectability, prestige, comfort and money – because we value Jesus and his suffering more. The ecclesiology of the cross will show those who might covet the acceptance and solidarity felt under the rainbow flag, that the love between Christians is more real and deep. That love is not tested or proven except in the Church where believers help one another bear the world’s opposition.
Jesus calls us to not be ashamed of his words in our generation. He taught:
If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. (Mark 8:34-38)
So, denying self rather than Christ is the start of our pilgrimage. The world is there to be gained, we can opt to enjoy our culture’s warm embrace and glory in its acceptance. But doing so bears the price tag of our souls. Jesus will return and we need to hold before our trembling hearts that future day for we are surrounded by mottoes, movements and cultural powers that have the ability to tempt us to love the world rather than Christ. The world is adulterous and woos us to love it rather than Jesus. The first step towards building and being part of an ecclesiology of the cross is to see the choice set before us as starkly as Jesus himself put it. Live under the cross together with his body or love the world. Face shame in this world or the next. The choice is ours; may we resolve to reject a missiology of glory by embracing an ecclesiology of the cross.
VI. A supernatural battle
‘All who live devoted to God in Christ suffer persecution’ (2 Tim 3:12). Do you imagine that because we are not currently persecuted by a pagan emperor, that we no longer face persecution? Only if the devil is dead, has persecution ended. But if our adversary is alive, how can he not insinuate temptations, how can he not be rampaging against us, how can he not be devising threats and schemes to trip us up? If only you lived devoted to God, you would find yourself persecuted.
– Augustine, Psalm 127, 16.
The damage to our hearts which makes us doubt that God’s ways are best was wrought by Satan in Eden. We do not feel that a missiology of glory can be relied on instead of an ecclesiology of the cross merely because it makes sense intellectually, nor solely because it seems to work, or it has been modelled to us by previous generations. Rather we long for a respectable world-affirming way to do mission because Satan heads an effective supernatural army with knowledge and weapons well calibrated to seduce our hearts. We are engaged in a supernatural battle (Eph 6:12). If we are resolved to embrace an ecclesiology of the cross, we must recognise that to do so is to take our place in a battle which is supernatural. The means that we must rely on are those which are fitted to the supernatural war. Our strength must come from the Lord (Eph 6:10) not the slick advertising campaign a church administrator puts together for the internet. Only the strength of the Lord will enable us to help one another live under and bear the reproach of the world. Only the strength of the Lord will enable us to model repentance for secret pornography habits. Only the strength of the Lord will enable us to have sufficiently less of a materialistic consumer outlook that we are willing to lose out on promotion, rather than don the badge of Pride in the workplace.
Our corporate prayer will feel urgent, vital and necessary if our church community has members facing genuine problems due to honouring Christ over the world’s values. Such prayer meetings will not look like a slightly religious version of a company’s annual business meeting, but they will feel like supernatural gatherings of people in union with Christ. Were a world-worshipping person to wander in they might fall down in fear and awe at the felt presence of the supernatural God (1 Cor 14:24-25).
Created as creatures to worship God, we are living in a supernatural universe. The invitation to live out an ecclesiology of the cross is one which holds forth the promise of supernatural power to endure, live and die for Christ. All the glory of this world and all its respect, pleasures and pride cannot withstand the prayers of a church committed to living under the cross of Christ. None of us can organise or plan or strategise to make even one church embrace the shame of the cross, but God’s supernatural power can be at work in any who admit their weakness and need of his grace. In churches where people cry out to God for his power to be shaped by the cross, the next generation will find a place where their identities can be formed into the image of Jesus.
VII. The Road Less Travelled
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
– Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
For those who seek to maintain biblical convictions regarding identity, there are a limited number of paths forward. As the years roll on and fruit is tasted, many will sigh with regret and ruminate on the extent to which our choice of path was determined by the expectations of others; our fears; our temperaments; whether the weight of God’s glory or the weight of the world’s glory were our chief ballast; whether our churches will be seen to have strived for a missiology of glory, or the shame of an ecclesiology of the cross. The roads that diverge and which we all must choose from consist of the following:
a. Pivot to Gesture Church
The dominant worldview of the coming generation manifests in pressure to cancel speakers thought harmful, universities’ safe spaces, trigger warnings, microaggressions, reparations for earlier generations’ racial inequalities, identity politics and so forth. One way some churches will try to do mission in such a world will be to pivot towards this culture. They will wrongly think they can use some of the terms, ideas and concepts as window dressing for effective gospel mission, not realising that the ideology of the critical theorist has power and is unleashed merely by utilising its verbal constructs in public. The academic writings of men like Marcuse who outlined the strategy for cultural transformation were very clear that their words were crafted to change the world[63] – they cannot be harnessed or handled as mere window dressing for a cross-shaped ministry. The ministry and church get changed to value the things of this world if the world’s terms and ideas are utilised – even with good motives.
b. Practise Private Piety Church
The world that has its own form of secular power today is so overwhelming and effective in breaking and cancelling those who speak against its values, that many churches will retreat into themselves. Unable to bear the cost of living counterculturally in the world, such churches will seek to keep going through the motions of Christian living – privately and within the church family. Programmes and events will be organised, and private Christian living may be encouraged. Such churches will be able to tell themselves they are Bible believing and Bible honouring. But while the Bible may be privately read and preached in the church it cannot be applied to the culture or those who live in it. Increasing funds will be spent on church staff in such churches – the ‘gospel’ preached will be unable to equip for faithful living outside the church and so one will need ever-increasing staff numbers to model private change in lives hermetically sealed from the world. Compromises will have to be made – for example in justifying wearing rainbow lanyards at work – but they can be for some time hidden from the church leadership who insulate themselves behind their private piety.
c. Puffed-up Chest Church
There will be those churches where people see there are immense cultural challenges and identity-shaping problems. The Puffed-up Chest Church seeks to attack the problems using politics, edgy messaging and aggressive differentiation from the world. Many in such churches will see the world’s problems through political lenses – of either left or right. They will be susceptible to both conspiracy theories and strong leaders. The appearance of power in such a church will in reality be a form of aggression that lacks Christ’s meekness and is unwilling to suffer ignominy. Worldly victory and a worldly fight are sought; the lost are aggressively opposed, not graciously loved.
d. Prepare for Long Haul Church
The road I pray you take – which I have over the past few years committed myself to – is patient, slow and open to the pain of rejection. It is the path which recognises that the spiritual identity crisis the next generation faces has already caused much harm and people will only find renewal and restoration when churches commit to a slow, patient, spiritually-minded commitment to live under the cross, together. It will involve the recognition that the supernatural work of God requires people to commit to being together and forgiving one another and to worship together – over the long haul of life. Superficial and professional relationships will, over time, be transformed into cross-shaped, life-laying-down, love for one another. Over the years as people in the church suffer for their honouring of Jesus over the world’s idols, there will be those happy to comfort, support and care in practical ways. The next generation will see how such believers love one another (John 13:35) and want to be part of a Church that is shaped by the Cross rather than the world. Only in such communities, can the identity that has been deformed by glorying in the world, be remade in the likeness of the crucified Lord of love. There is no programme, strategy or technique that can enable our churches to walk this long road – and it cannot be marketed to the world as attractive or even worth the cost. And yet, for those with ears to hear, Jesus still invites us to find our deepest identity and joy in such a church.
May we help one another to turn from the missiology of glory and live out the identity found in an ecclesiology of the cross, not just for our sake but for the sake of those yet to be born.
FOOTNOTES:
[1]. ‘Nearly all wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But, while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern. No one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God.’ Calvin, Inst. 1.1.1.
[2]. ‘These humans, due part of your creation as they are, still do long to praise you. You stir us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you.’ Augustine, Conf. 1.1.1.
[3]. New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis, Second Edition, Ed. M. Silva, Vol. 1, Entry on δόξα.
[4]. I am very thankful to David Greatorex and Simon Calvert of The Christian Institute for their advice and assistance in collating this research section on trends in British youth.
[5]. See Table 7b of the ONS Statistics: https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/sexuality/datasets/sexualidentityuk/2012to2020/finalsexualorientationtable.xlsx
[6]. ‘Referrals to GIDS, financial years 2010-11 to 2020-21’, GIDS, 3 May 2021, see https://gids.nhs.uk/professionals/number-of-referrals/ as at 1 December 2022; ‘Referrals to the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) level off in 2018-19’, The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, 28 June 2019, see https://tavistockandportman.nhs.uk/about-us/news/stories/referrals-gender-identity-development-service-gids-level-2018-19/ as at 1 December 2022.
[7]. https://gids.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/GIDS-referrals-FYs-2010-11-to-2021-2022.xlsx
[8]. The Times online, 25 November 2018, see https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-groups-under-fire-for-huge-rise-in-child-referrals-2ttm8c0fr as at 20 December 2022.
[9]. Mail Online, 17 November 2018, see https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6401593/Whistleblower-teacher-makes-shocking-claim-autistic.html as at 20 December 2022.
[10]. Mail Online, 23 April 2022, see https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10746771/Nearly-one-15-pupils-leading-secondary-school-identify-trans-non-binary.html as at 20 December 2022.
[11]. The Times online, 11 April 2022, see https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/8-in-10-teachers-school-trans-pupils-53b89n0lf as at 20 December 2022; ‘Most secondary schools now have trans-identified pupils: Sex Matters’ new survey’, Sex Matters, 11 April 2022, see https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/school-survey/ as at 20 December 2022.
[12] First census estimates on gender identity and sexual orientation, Press Release: https://www.ons.gov.uk/news/news/firstcensusestimatesongenderidentityandsexualorientation
[13] https://files.digital.nhs.uk/02/4A5C4C/mhcyp_2022_tab.xlsx. See Table 1.2.
[14]. Ibid, see Table 1.3.
[15]. The Annual Report of His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills 2021/22 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
[16]. https://darkroom.bbfc.co.uk/original/a1a32ec72e502038635964e5194097f0:2be060f6cfcddd02bdd5b489455e64fd/bbfc-parents-guide-to-age-verification-and-online-pornography.pdf
[17]. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-sexual-abuse-in-schools-and-colleges/review-of-sexual-abuse-in-schools-and-colleges
[18] Ibid.
[19]. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/09/babies-born-wedlock-2021-first-time-record/
[20]. New divorce laws will come into force from 6 April 2022 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
[21]. UK lawyers brace for divorce surge in 2023 after ‘no-fault’ law change | The Independent
[22]. Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Everyman’s Library, London (1991), 461.
[23]. Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual, Penguin, London (2015), 352.
[24]. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, Harvard University Press, Harvard (2007), 3.
[25]. Augustine, City of God, 14, 28.
[26]. Greg Beale, We Become What We Worship, Apollos, Nottingham (2008), 22.
[27]. ‘Incurvatus se.’ Martin Luther, Complete Works, Vol. 25, 345, see also 291-92.
[28]. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self, Harvard University Press, Harvard (1992), 35.
[29]. Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution, Crossway, Wheaton (2020). See also the abridged version: Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution, Crossway (2022).
[30]. Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution, Crossway, Wheaton (2020), 60.
[31]. Gilbert Baker, Rainbow Warrior, Chapter 5: www.gilbertbaker.com/rainbow-flag-origin-story/
[32]. Rainbow Flag Maker was inspired by Bible, CNN, 30 June 2015: www.edition.cnn.com/2015/06/30/us/rainbow-flagmaker-gilbert-baker/index.html
[33] Jean Twenge, I Gen: Why today’s super-connected kids are growing up less rebellious, more tolerant, less happy – and completely unprepared for adulthood, Atria Books, New York (2017).
[34]. Children see Pornography as young as even, Children see pornography as young as seven, new report finds | BBFC
[35]. Kühn S, Gallinat J. Brain structure and functional connectivity associated with pornography consumption: the brain on porn. JAMA Psychiatry. 2014 Jul 1;71(7):827-34.
[36]. The Effects of Pornography on the Developing Child, Part 1: The Effects of Pornography on the Developing Child – Compliance Matters Issue 30 (handsam.education)
[37]. Augustine, City of God, 2:7.
[38]. Augustine, City of God, 1:18.
[39]. John Cassian, Conferences, 4:6.
[40]. BISH – A guide to Sex, Love & You. Expert answers to your Qs 14+ (bishuk.com)
[41]. David Wells, No Place for Truth: or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? Eerdmans, Grand Rapids (1994).
[42]. Ibid., 233
[43]. David Wells, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams, IVP, Nottingham (1994), 86-87.
[44]. David Wells, Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision, IVP, Nottingham (1998), 140-143.
[45]. Phillip Goodchild, Theology of Money, SCM Press, London (2007).
[46]. James Davidson Hunter, The Death of Character: Moral Education in an Age Without Good or Evil, Basic Books, New York (2008).
[47]. Pascal Bruckner, Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy, Princeton University Press, Princeton (2011), 74.
[48]. Household Debt: Key Economic Indicators – House of Commons Library (parliament.uk)
[49]. Debt warning for 2 million households ahead of Christmas (yahoo.com)
[50]. Why do so many people believe in conspiracy theories? The Independent, 26.11.22: Why do so many people believe in conspiracy theories? | The Independent
[51]. Mark Meynell, Wilderness of Mirrors: Trusting again in a Cynical World, Zondervan, Grand Rapids (2015); James Beverley, The QAnon Deception: Everything You Need to Know about the World’s Most Dangerous Conspiracy Theory, Equal Time Books, Concord (2020).
[52]. Buying into conspiracy theories can be exciting—that’s what makes them dangerous (phys.org)
[53]. Ibid.
[54]. Nietzsche reckoned this a significant problem with Christianity.
[55]. Pascal Bruckner, The Temptation of Innocence: Living in the Age of Entitlement, Algora Publishing, New York (2000), 10.
[56]. Mike Ovey, ‘Victim Chic’ in The Goldilocks Zone: Collected Writings of Michael J. Ovey, Ed. C. Green, IVP, Nottingham (2018), 160.
[57]. Ibid., 165.
[58]. Pascal Bruckner, The Temptation of Innocence: Living in the Age of Entitlement, Algora Publishing, New York (2000), 141.
[59]. I am thankful to Simon Calvert for making this point to me.
[60]. Francis A. Schaeffer, ‘True Spirituality’ in The Complete Works, vol. 3 (Logos Digital Edition, Crossway Books, 1982), 362–363.
[61]. David Wells, The Courage to be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers and Emergents in the Postmodern World, IVP, Nottingham (2008), 41.
[62]. Matthew Roberts, Pride, Identity and the Worship of Self, Christian Focus, Fearn (2023), 33. I am very thankful to Matthew for letting me read a prepublication copy of his excellent book, which applies the identity shaping theology of the Gospel to the Pride movement in a spiritual and judicious way.
[63]. See Herbert Marcuse, Repressive Tolerance (1968): Repressive Tolerance (full text) – Herbert Marcuse Official Website
Review Article: Complementarism
Faithfulness Amidst Trial and Persecution
Pastoring the Twenty-First Century Church
Sanctification and Consistent Godly Living
Divine Light and Holy Love: Genuine Conversion in the Works of Jonathan Edwards
Glories that Form and Deform Identity – The Roads Ahead
Editorial – Issue 84