Christ and Nothing (Powerful Essay)

First Things ^ | October 2003 | David B. Hart

[mojito]

As modern men and women — to the degree that we are modern — we believe in nothing. This is not to say, I hasten to add, that we do not believe in anything; I mean, rather, that we hold an unshakable, if often unconscious, faith in the nothing, or in nothingness as such. It is this in which we place our trust, upon which we venture our souls, and onto which we project the values by which we measure the meaningfulness of our lives. Or, to phrase the matter more simply and starkly, our religion is one of very comfortable nihilism.

This may seem a somewhat apocalyptic note to sound, at least without any warning or emollient prelude, but I believe I am saying nothing not almost tediously obvious. We live in an age whose chief moral value has been determined, by overwhelming consensus, to be the absolute liberty of personal volition....

And a society that believes this must, at least implicitly, embrace and subtly advocate a very particular moral metaphysics: the unreality of any “value” higher than choice....Society must thus be secured against the intrusions of the Good, or of God, so that its citizens may determine their own lives by the choices they make from a universe of morally indifferent but variably desirable ends, unencumbered by any prior grammar of obligation or value (in America, we call this the “wall of separation”). Hence the liberties that permit one to purchase lavender bed clothes, to gaze fervently at pornography, to become a Unitarian, to market popular celebrations of brutal violence, or to destroy one’s unborn child are all equally intrinsically “good” because all are expressions of an inalienable freedom of choice.

[mojito]

A lengthy, scholarly essay of great interest and insight.

First published in October 2003.

[jessduntno]

Ahhhhh....the sixties...if it feels good, do it...what a legacy...

[RobbyS]

What concerns me is that many who have been taught to reject Christ do fall into ideological traps, such as the worship of raw power. Communism and Nazism are the modern variants of ancient paganism. The petty gods called ourselves are easily humbled and brought under the control of a political hierarchy of every greater gods.