Citing examples from TV, pop music, and best-selling books, an article in Entertainment Weekly noted that "pop culture is going gaga for spirituality." However,
[S]eekers
of the day are apt to peel away the tough theological stuff and pluck
out the most dulcet elements of faith, coming up with a soothing sampler
of Judeo-Christian imagery, Eastern mediation, self-help lingo, a
vaguely conservative craving for 'virtue,' and a loopy New Age pursuit
of 'peace.' This happy free-for-all, appealing to Baptists and
stargazers alike, comes off more like Forest Gump's ubiquitous 'boxa
chocolates' than like any real system of belief. You never know what
you're going to get. (1)
The
"search for the sacred" has become a recurring cover story for national
news magazines for some time now; but is a revival of "spirituality"
and interest in the "sacred" really any more encouraging than the
extravagant idolatry that Paul witnessed in Athens (Acts 17)?
Not
only historians and sociologists but novelists are writing about the
"Gnostic" character of the soup that we call spirituality in the United
States today. In a recent article in Harper's, Curtis White describes our situation pretty well. When we assert, "This is my belief,"
says White, we are invoking our right to have our own private
conviction, no matter how ridiculous, not only tolerated politically but
respected by others. "It says, 'I've invested a lot of
emotional energy in this belief, and in a way I've staked the
credibility of my life on it. So if you ridicule it, you can expect a
fight." In this kind of culture, "Yahweh and Baal-my God and
yours-stroll arm-in-arm, as if to do so were the model of virtue
itself."
What we require of belief is not that it make
sense but that it be sincere....Clearly, this is not the spirituality
of a centralized orthodoxy. It is a sort of workshop spiritu-ality that
you can get with a cereal-box top and five dollars....There is an
obvious problem with this form of spirituality: it takes place in
isolation. Each of us sits at our computer terminal tapping out our
convictions....Consequently, it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that
our truest belief is the credo of heresy itself. It is heresy without
an orthodoxy. It is heresy as an orthodoxy. (2)
While
European nihilism denied only God, "American nihilism is something
different. Our nihilism is our capacity to believe in everything and
anything all at once. It's all good!" All that's left is for belief to
become "a culture-commodity."
We shop among competing options
for our belief. Once reduced to the status of a commodity, our
anything-goes, do-it-yourself spirituality cannot have very much to say
about the more directly nihilistic conviction that we should all be free
to do whatever we like as well, each of us pursuing our right to our isolated happiness. (3) Continue at Michael Horton
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