Tim Keller: Our Cultural Tension

so you notice David said that the content of the speakers this year was didn't matter much so he took all the pressure off me I really appreciate that and actually I do like starting this way instead of giving you an inspirational talk with the answers to the great questions of life I'm supposed to tell you what the questions are a little bit of I'm going to give you something of historical and maybe a kind of philosophical background to to everything that we do today I'm going to talk to you about individualism and the tension between the individual and community in our culture today so for example you know that statistics that ninety percent of people say they're unhappy with their work or theirs dissatisfied with their work did you immediately say oh well I don't know what you said I here's what I said I said because I'm old enough to know I doubt very much as 70 years ago the jobs were really better that the jobs were more meaningful a better work environment a better possibility of advancement of more thoughtful Supervisors I doubt very much as seventy years ago the average job was a whole lot better I also doubt very much that ninety percent of the people would have said they were dissatisfied with their work what was the difference I'm going to show you individualism we've changed see our response to the environment is very different even if the environment hasn't changed so let me give you the history that's one of things Dave was talking about I liked by looking at a book called Charles Taylor's book he's a philosopher a secular age looking at the description of where we are I'm going to rely on Robert Della's book his great book happens to the heart I would not by the way say go everybody go read secular age it's a philosophy who wrote it at a for philosophers is not that particularly easy to read it's pretty dense but I would suggest everybody here read Robert Bella's book habits of the heart in which he describes what our society is like now what our culture is like and he calls it the mark of our culture is that he calls it expressive individualism then thirdly I'll say something about after describing even though this isn't supposed to be an inspirational talk it's supposed to be background supposed to be pretty much a lecture being a preacher I won't be able to help myself I may say something inspirational at the end just warning you but I'm not here so much to say here's the answer as much as any way to set up all the other speakers to make sure you understand the background against which we're doing all of our discussions and and working to talk about how we do our work today first of all the background Robert Bellah calls where we are today expressive individualism of Charles Taylor calls it the age of authenticity but here what Taylor says is is this and this is Taylor says how we got here was very complicated let me just give you three three ways we get to the place where we have a society today that stresses equal rights that stresses the worth of every individual the equal dignity of every individual the importance of having equal freedom for every individual see that's that's the stresses on the importance of the individual where did that come from let me show you how different it can be on the one hand the whole idea of human rights the whole idea that every individual has dignity and worth regardless of caste or class or race where did that idea come from it did not arise out of Asia did not rise out of Africa it arose out of frankly Christendom it rose out of Europe it rose it arose out of a society that believed what the Bible said about the fact that every single human being is made in the image of God there are some very very very definitive very decisive very comprehensive and very convincing now there's a lot of scholarship that basically says where did the idea of individual rights came to come from it came from Christian roots or came from biblical roots judeo-christian roots it comes from Genesis it comes from the idea that every human being is made in the image of God and it's true that all those ideas for example that you should take care of the poor that you should that every that there should be universal benevolence everybody we should be trying to improve the lot of everyone that every every human being has rights that shouldn't be violated that idea grew up out of Christian roots now I'm going to get back to what you know even though that even though the idea came from Christianity doesn't necessarily means that Christians necessarily executed on those beliefs but that's where the ideas came from secondly Charles Taylor points out Protestantism not just Christianity but Protestantism Protestantism comes along and says that you actually are saved not by joining a body you know Catholicism would say you're saved you get God's grace by joining yourself to the church Protestants say no you get God's grace by going directly to God and putting your faith in him and that was actually another very powerful influence that moved Western people to an understanding of the importance of individual choice and the importance of individual decision individual freedom another hand you had the religious wars because originally in Europe everybody believed every nation had had one Church everybody had a belong to one religion that you couldn't have a solid nation unless everybody believed the same thing you had these religious wars every single you generally Protestant Catholic but not only Protestant Catholic but there were these enormous bloody lengthy wars that happen in Europe in the sixteenth century in particular seventeenth century in which there was enormous fighting because everybody said what will be the Church of this society and so there was bloodshed and then there was a motive that came up and said isn't there some way maybe that we could have a society in which everybody didn't have to belong to the same church what if instead of a society run by the church it was run by individuals and the individuals came along consent of the governed and individuals could belong to all sorts of different churches but they would bring themselves together they come together and they would decide how they wanted to be governed and as a way of trying to get away from the the religious strife John Locke and other people came up with ideas that said let's put more emphasis on the consent of the governed let's put more emphasis on individuals deciding how they want to be governed regardless of the religious background well Taylor goes through and I just skim the surface and I probably took too long even there I don't let your eyes glaze over Taylor shows all the ways in which we got to the place of what you and I could call political individualism political individualism says everybody's got a vote everybody's got to say every no one should be every there should be equality basically in in society political equality one group shouldn't oppress another group all of those things actually came down to us and we had a more individualistic society than what you have in Africa Asia or parts of Latin America and so forth but then starting with World War two Charles Taylor said there was an explosion in which the political individualism became what was called expressive individualism what Taylor's the way Taylor describes it goes like this that before World War two by and large we put a lot of emphasis on individual rights but individual rights and individual desires had boundaries to them you had your family you had your country you had other sorts of very powerful ancient traditions and institutions you had your faith and even though individuals all hide equal rights it didn't mean that they had infinite amount of leeway in what they did they still had to bow their individual interests and desires they had to sublimate them to the needs of the family that needs the state or or what their God said and what Taylor says is after World War Two he says something happened in which individualism became absolute eyes so the way he put it was individualism had been up to or were to check by deep and ancient institutions and traditions but now the new consensus he said became that the interests of the individual always outweighed the needs our wishes of the group whether it's the family or the neighborhood or the country and to say otherwise is not just mistaken but evil and oppressive that's a new idea and we moved what he took what he calls expressive individual might get back to what that means from from you might say political individualism limited individualism to a kind of absolute eyes individualism now he gave a number of reasons why after world war two it happened and I'll just say this really briefly again this is one of those places remold enough to kind of know what he's talking about one thing he said which was important was material prosperity and capitalism or what you call consumerism let me read you a quote that for those of you who are younger you may not quite understand this he says put with post-world War two affluence and the diffusion of what many had considered luxuries came a new concentration on private space and the means to fill it older modes of mutual help dropped off and people concentrated more on their own lives lived more on their own tried to make a life out of the ever-growing gamut of new goods and services on offer and the freer individual lifestyles that material prosperity always offered now here's what he's trying to say televisions replaced it porches you know what did you do at night you sat on the porch with other people and you now you go in you watch television the automobile replaced how do you say it in the pack in the past the way you did recreation was you played cards with your neighbors the way you went on vacations extremely rarely where you left but now interstates and automobiles you got mobile and you did what you wanted to do washing machines after World War two washing machines are very individualistic because you do all your wash inside instead of going outside and doing with other people but what of course we get down to cell phones but the point is every single technological advance by and large takes mate gets you away from what he called older modes of mutual help things that you had to do with other people or you could do with other people you don't do with other people and so he says on the one hand it's not just true that material prosperity individualizes but it's also true that the best way to sell a product is to appeal to individual tastes and so to tell people for example if you want to if you want to be if you want to tell the world you're like this you need to buy this kind of hat this these kinds of stockings wear this kind of makeup and there's also the ways of talking about that what you really you're saying is what what Taylor would say is is one of the best ways to sell a product it's not just that new products individualized but one of the best ways to sell a product is to individualize and I say you don't to be like these other people you want to be yourself and this is how you let the world know who you are so consumerism capitalism prosperity individualizes the other major effect you might say it's circular is it not it's not only an effective individualism but it was also a stimulus individualism is a sexual revolution not just the consumer revolution the sexual revolution and but Taylor says is the marks of the sexual revolution are these this is number one it's only after world war two that sexuality became an end in itself and secondly sexuality became your identity he says that he called it quote a new conception of one sexuality as an essential part of one's identity which not only gave an additional meaning to sexual liberation but became the basis for the emancipation of a whole host of previously condemned forms of sexual life now sexuality was not a matter of healthy or even natural appetite but it was who you were now what he's saying is quite crucial let's take a look at both these the sexual revolution and material prosperity in the past you made money and you had sex as a way of building community if you made money was for your family if you made money it was it was to bring your people up if you made money with so you know raise your family in your clan if you had sex it was to build a community it was to it was to have children it was to nurture a relationship between husband and wife it was a way of building community and he says before World War two basically you made money and you had sex in order to create community and after World War two you made money and you had sex in order to create an identity that's a massive change before it was to nurture community afterwards it was to create your own identity and that's the reason now we get to the second thing I want to share with you is let me describe this that's the reason why this has been called expressive individualism now Robert Bellah in his great book habits of the heart talks about expressive individualism like this these are his words he says in most places and times that has been believed that our identity came through relationships and the roles and responsibilities that came with them the person was expected to find who they were by connecting with some source outside of themselves either God or some other cosmic good or family or society however now after war to the source we have to connect with is not just outside us but deep within us there's a massive subjective turn in our culture a new form of inwardness comes up in which we come to think of ourselves as beings with inner depths and in late modern culture you get identity by going down see put it this way I was just I don't particularly like it but it's kind of funny but my wife very often watch a sitcom called Big Bang Theory and it was just a very funny there was some older woman who a therapist who is a very haughty and she was talking to some poor young woman and trying to explain to her why she was such a mess and she says you know the problem is the locus of your identity is external to yourself and the woman the younger woman says oh no that's I knew it I generally go that way and her whole point was her whole point was which is very typical is before you might say what we're to in the older culture you had to go outside of yourself to find out who you were you went out to go in in other words how do I know that I'm an admirable person how do I know I'm a worthwhile person how do I get self-worth I get it by going outside of myself and finding God nation family or whatever and supplementing sublimating my individual interest for the good the greater good in other words if I sacrifice for my family if I sacrifice for my country if I sacrifice my interest for my god now I'm a good person so in other words you go outside in order to come in and to feel hey I'm okay but that's not what that's not what the lady was saying in the sitcom and that's not what our culture said you go in before you can come out you have to go down you have to figure out who you are you have to get in touch with your inner depths and once you figure out who you are then and only then will you have the self-esteem to move out into the world and the whole idea of course then is older culture said you are your duties our late modern Western culture says you are your desires the older culture said basically what you do is you become a good person by sacrificing yourself self-sacrifice and today you become yourself by self assertion and the older times you actually got a self by sublimating your individual interest to what society said or what the nations that are what your family said today the heroic narrative is the opposite the only heroic narrative is you look inside you decide what you want to do and what you want to be and you assert that in spite of what your family says in spite of what society says in spite of what the culture says it's certainly in spite of what the it says and that's the new heroic narrative got it that's new heroic narrative you know the old heroic narrative was John Wayne you know tough true loyal sacrifice for whatever the new cultural narrative is babe I don't if you ever saw the movie babes it was a pig that wanted to be a sheep talking of it says no you can't in the ND the pig becomes a sheepdog and handers you know and they play the you know you know it went when when the pig does it you know the fourth you know the fourth movement of the sand songs you know the I think it's the fourth symphony with the organ and everything it's incredible because the the pig you know brings the sheep in to the fold and as Wow and that is the modern that's that's the only heroic narrative you've got that's the only narrative we got left yeah I'm not making fun of it because I'll show you in a minute so I got I got time to show you something okay so that's the description of expressive individualism you have to be yourself don't let anybody tell you who you are you recognize yourself you bestow dignity on yourself you don't care what anybody else thinks see that's keeping the locus of your identity external to yourself you don't care you don't look at to what anybody else thinks you decide who you want to be and then you bestow dignity on yourself you don't you don't get your identity from what people tell you no no you decide yourself and you should be free to live any way you want to live that makes you happy and that it's true to your identity as long as you're not harming someone else and that's expressive individualism now what are the results this is the third thing I wanna tell you and then I have a little just a little brief Christian response what are the results let me tell you what the results are first of all the results of individualism are some massive goodness massively good things but also some terrible things see is individualism good or bad you got it there it is here's the good it's true for example that racial equality and the American civil rights movement was born in the african-american church and it was born in African American Christianity but I will just give you this as I think I could make this case I had time if somebody out there says I don't believe that may feel bad but it might have had Christian roots but the reason why the broader culture finally embraced it was because of the ethos of individualism that basically said everybody's got to have the right to live the way they want to live that's not a pet that is a Christian heresy it arose from Christian roots the idea that everyone is made in the image of God and there's equality but the idea that there but that the individual desires never ever ever have to be have to bow to some greater truth or some greater good or God or something higher that's a that's a that's an absolute izing it's taking God out of the picture and making individual desire essentially the absolute now and because the culture has gone that direction racial equality happened in a way I don't think would have happened frankly if conservative Christians were still in charge of the culture let me give you another one that is gender equality I don't know I don't know if it's single I don't well it's not true actually I hardly know of any Christian as conservative as they are that thinks that wasn't a good idea back whenever when women in Britain and America were allowed to vote I don't have any Christian that didn't think that was a good idea in fact you can easily see take a look at what the Bible says you know in all the various places about the image of God and all that I don't know how in the world you would not think as a Christian even a very very conservative Christian that that isn't a good idea and yet here's the question if conservative Christians were really really really in charge would would that have happened here's what Charles Taylor says it's one of the most provocative things I've ever read in the last 10 years and I'm going to tell it to you right now Charles Taylor says on the one hand what secular people don't want to admit but Friedrich Nietzsche is constantly reminding them and that is that their most cherished ideas that we had to take care of the poor that we ought to work for the Equality of every human being that every single human being has is precious and has absolute dignity and must never be violated what Nietzsche points out and what Taylor says you can make a good case for is all those ideas came from the Bible all those ideas came out of Christianity Friedrich Nietzsche was constantly saying there is a you know there was a guy who was a Nietzschean who put this in a put nici's broadsides in one sentence okay this is Nietzsche Friedrich Nietzsche his entire arguments in tired of his arguments in one sentence ready man descended from apes therefore let us love one another okay now what's the point of that if there is no God and we're just the product nothing more than the product of the strong eating the weak nothing but the product of blind forces that brought us here how can you turn around and say oh everybody has equal dignity we ought to love one another it just not compute that idea came from Christianity Nietzsche says and if you get rid of God and he get rid of Christianity you got to get rid of the idea of equal rights you have to nobody's ever refuted Nietzsche they just they just put him in philosophy classes they just you know they just put them over here and what Taylor says is on the one hand those ideas came from from the faith they came from they make sense in a universe in which there's a God they certainly make sense in a universe in which God becomes a person in Jesus Christ and shows the love he does makes perfect sense you take away all that doesn't make sense of what's with Nietzsche oh he said but the church did not execute on its own best ideas and as a result Western society knew it could not make progress unless I did something to marginalize the church it starts with I mean Taylor mentioned several just here's just some famous examples the corruption of the medieval church the the Wars of Religion the 16/17 the support of so much of the church in America for the African slave trade leading up to the American Civil War Mark Knowles written a book called is this great historian a book called the Civil War's of theological crisis it was a place where everybody realized the church we're never going to we're going to have to have a war because the church wasn't able to solve this and he says even down to both the Catholic and Protestant churches of Germany not failing to confront fascism in Europe in the 1930s what's he saying what's what's Taylor saying Taylor is saying on the one hand Christians have got to recognize the fact that the reason that individualism is there is because it's because the more limited balanced proportional kind of individualism in which there's a balance with community life there's a balance with the Word of God there's a balance with this the Christians never were able the church was never able to show that it would if it was really really powerful in society that it would know how to act on those things so Christians have got to repent and admit that but secular people according to Taylor need to admit where their ideas came from and by the way I want you to know that alas less than 1/10 of 1/10 of one tenth of one percent of either group as far as I know is even open to the suggestions here's the last thing Taylor points out by the way what you we all know and that is the individualism is hurting community at one point he says communities are eroding families and neighborhoods even the polity are eroding institutions are in trouble Millennials in particular who are the most individualistic of all Millennials are just don't trust institutions political parties are having trouble because people don't align with them denominations I've troubled people don't align with them families are having trouble people don't want to get married I mean all the institutions are in trouble really in trouble and there's problems involved with that I have plenty a long list but I'm I'm not going to go into them you-you-you know you read about them almost every day somewhere and so what you know the real question of course is so where do you go from and here is what Christians have to do what Christians need to do first of all especially in a place like this here tonight and this weekend is Robert Bellah in his book habits of the heart says that the idea of work as nothing but a way for you to personally advance you know what's in this for me that is individualism that's killing us the idea of vocation meaning my work is really a means to an end of serving my God and my neighbor you love God with all your heart soul strength and might love your neighbor as yourself the hope that both Commandments Jesus says all all of love is summed up in that and all the commandments are summed up in those two things and if you actually take your job and put it into that how do i with my job serve my God and serve my neighbor and if that's your primary thing if that's the primary reason you you have recaptured vocation Robert Bellah says that one of the only things that's going to start to reweave society which is falling apart fragmenting because of individualism is we get back this idea of vocation but I can go a little further than that Christians have to understand this very idea some of you come by the way from you know some of you might come from Africa or Asia you come from more traditional non individualistic societies you know not only your parents with especially your grandparents put all the emphasis on family all the emphasis on family and now here you are in Manhattan make for there but we're all the emphasis on the individual so is the traditional approach that put all the emphasis on patriotism and family was that the way to go or is the modern individualistic Western way is that the way to go at the Christian answer is neither of those ways because both of those ways are first of all they're both suffocating they both make idols out of something that are not gods the traditional approach made an aisle out of family it was very exploitative it could be incredibly suffocating some of you know that because what mattered was the family no matter what there could be violence in the family you didn't say anything about it see that's the problem when you make an idol out of blood or out of family or out of nation but as we've been seeing if you make an idol out of the individual such loneliness such such social fragmentation where do you get your identity do you get your identity from your family from your people or do you get your identity you know from your own expressing your own insides and and following your dreams and the answer is of course you should get your identity from your relationship with God what Christians would always say God's got to be the source of your identity not your family and not just your own individual desires on the inside and see individualism is actually doesn't work you know why ultimately you can't say I don't care that everybody else in the whole world hates me I like myself that's just not going to work we're social beings we are relational beings and you will only only only if you get the love and approval of someone you esteem will you ever get self-esteem only if you get the love and approval of someone you esteem we ever get self-esteem if you try to get it from you know your friends if you try to get it from your boss if you try to get it from your children if you try to get from your family ultimately they'll still it'll strangle you but if the one you adore Jesus Christ adores you through his saving love that gives you a stable identity that enables you to participate in community without making it an idol and not letting it suffocate you and also even look into your own heart and express yourself without turning that into an idol either that's the Christian approach that's the way you go forward ultimately in Jesus Christ you can say this this is what CS Lewis says and in his famous sermon called the weight of glory he says to be loved by God delighted as an artist delights in his work or a father and a son it seems impossible a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustained but so it is glory means good rapport with God acceptance by God response acknowledgement and welcome into the heart of things the door on which we've been knocking all our lives will open at last in Jesus Christ what you've been looking for from your family which you'll never get or what you've been looking for from your career which you'll never get which is an absolute solid affirmation that never you can never lose you get that in Jesus Christ and therefore we're neither individualist nor communalist we're Christians you

Channel: Center for Faith & Work

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Id: LTxJ6HIh0U0

Length: 31min 19sec (1879 seconds)

Published: Tue May 17 2016