How do we spread the gospel authentically and in a relevant way today?
For what they are worth, here are some thoughts.[1] In this first blog I will try to give a brief description of our current society. This is very complicated but I will have a shot. The headline is that society is now very individualistic and is set to be increasingly different from what it was even 20 years ago.
Biblically, the key passages which speak to our times are 2 Timothy 3:1-5; Romans 1:18-32; Ephesians 4:17-19. We only have time to pick up on the first one which gives us the lie of the land:
But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. (2 Tim 3:1-4)
Notice in the last days (between Christ’s first and second comings) there will be terrible times. Paul is not saying that the whole last days will be bad, but that there will be terrible periods. They will be difficult for Christians. They are characterised by many aggressive sins, but all of which flow from the rejection of God leading to the love of self (v. 2a), and being lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God (v. 4). The priority of self is the hallmark of those times, and it is the hallmark of our society too – from identity politics, to the breakup of families, to the adoration of personal smartphones.
The headline: Individualism
This, simply speaking, turns into an outlook of ‘feel good’ for each person – lovers of pleasure. That has become the default mindset of most non-Christians, including your friends and neighbours and particularly their young people. Let me try to walk you through a few contemporary authors to flesh this out somewhat.
Carl Trueman (Christian Professor, Grove City College, USA)
In his landmark book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Trueman writes:
The underlying argument is that the sexual revolution, and its various manifestations in modern society (LGBTQ+ etc.), cannot be treated in isolation but rather must be interpreted as the specific and perhaps most obvious social manifestation of a much deeper and wider revolution in the understanding of what it means to be a self.[2]
He traces a history of the way people’s perception of themselves has changed over the last 400 years, because we have left behind the Christian truth that we are special creations, made in God’s image to live for his glory. Trueman sees an unfolding development in how secular people answered the question ‘Who am I?’
It goes something like this: The ‘psychological self’ was followed by the ‘romantic self’. This was succeeded by the ‘plastic (or malleable) self’. Next came the explicitly ‘sexual self’, which has now become the ‘sexually politicized self’.
Setting the Reformation aside, starting with Descartes (and his very individualistic basis for understanding, ‘I think, therefore I am’) and bolstered by Rousseau, the real me becomes the psychological self – what I personally think and feel. Rousseau said that society tends to brutalise people, and that was brought into the popular consciousness via the English romantic poets like Wordsworth, Shelley and Blake. They saw the ‘dark Satanic mills’ of the Industrial Revolution which crushed ordinary people. On this understanding, life is about the inner experience of seeing beauty and enjoying who we are as individuals.
Then came Darwin and Marx, for whom human nature is not fixed. Our selves are plastic, or malleable – shaped by evolution and changing society. Then comes Freud. The true you, for Freud is defined by your sexual urges. Before Freud, sex was for procreation and pleasure (Prov 5:19). But now it became who we really are. The happiest person on this understanding is the one who is able to constantly indulge his or her sexual desires. However, this plays into the hands of powerful individuals, so we need civilization to curb it. Therefore, according to Trueman, from a Freudian perspective, ‘it is impossible for the civilized to be truly happy’[3] – hence all our Freudian neuroses.
Lastly, developing the idea that our interior lives are the real us, the concept of oppression becomes psychologised. Oppression is not just about physical harm or deprivation. It is about how people make us feel. Hence people whose outlooks, especially sexual, are not mainstream are to be seen as victims.
What Trueman has really done is to give us an historical exposition of how individualism, rooted in 2 Timothy 3, has played out in history.
Jean Twenge (Professor of social psychology, San Diego)
Twenge’s initial research was in the area of narcissism. Although sinners have always tended to be selfish, the conditions of the contemporary world have pushed people further in this direction. The modern world legitimised individualism and the priority of focusing on oneself even further. Twenge writes: ‘Until the twentieth century, it was difficult to live alone or find the time to contemplate being special, given the time and effort involved in simply existing…Daily living in (previous) eras was a collective experience.’[4] Technology makes individualism possible. She asks, ‘Why is religion less popular with Millennials?’ Her answer is, ‘In short, because it is not compatible with individualism – and individualism is the core value with Millennials above all else’.[5] This individualism has rubbed off on many Christians.
Here is her list of general attitudes and behaviours likely to be displayed by Gen Z, those now 12 to 29 years old: they believe in gender fluidity; more LGB[6] people among them; less actual sex; growing up slowly; delayed adulthood; restricting speech (if it offends); staying safe (physically and emotionally); racially conscious; dissatisfied and depressed (mental health disturbed by the pandemic); more online communication; pessimistic; politically polarised.
Jonathan Haidt (Professor of social psychology, New York)
From a secular or atheist perspective, your life becomes the most precious thing you have. With that in mind we saw in the 1990s the rise of ‘Safetyism’: the risk averse society. In his book (with Greg Lukianoff) The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt proposes that young people were taught basically three Great Untruths. 1. You are a frail person – what doesn’t kill you will leave you weaker; 2. Always think with your feelings – do what feels right for you; 3. The world is very black and white – those who don’t see things your way are your enemies.[7] So, from the 90s onwards people were groomed to have a kind of permanently defensive mindset. They are set up to be worriers.
The central theme of his latest book, The Anxious Generation, is that with the invention of the smartphone we have seen ‘overprotection of children in the physical world and under-protection in the virtual world’.[8] We let adolescents loose on this technology during the years that crucial areas of their brains were still developing with no idea how it would affect them. No-one had ever thought about the what the outcome would be. Tech firms’ only concern was to keep youngsters looking at their screens and so garnering their data. They changed from a play-based childhood, to a phone-based childhood. Haidt calls this the ‘Great Rewiring’ of young people. Now time has passed we are beginning to observe the tragic consequences. Haidt sums these up under four headings. 1. Social deprivation (face-to-face time with friends plummeted); 2. Sleep deprivation (in the isolation of their bedrooms, boys on games and porn, girls on social media); 3. Attention fragmentation (the inability to stay on one mental road with hundreds of ‘alerts’ to distract and encouragement to keep flicking through the screen page after page); 4. Addiction to iPhones – the brain chemistry yearns for the food of continual stimulation.
And without ever really having a ‘home base’ or agreed framework (as Christians have in the unchangeable Creator and Saviour), they feel their lives are a blur of disorientation – hence the anxious generation.
Here are a couple of quotes from Haidt, from his research: ‘The more time a girl spends on social media the more likely she is to be depressed’.[9] Again, ‘The great irony of social media is the more you immerse yourself in it, the more lonely and depressed, you become’.[10] And, sadly, of course, there are online predators. Many of these anxious children were told by online influencers, ‘you are anxious because actually you are not being allowed to be who you really are – do you think you might be transgender?’
This is where the priority of self and its pleasure leads in a high-tech culture. We should weep for lost men and women – an individualism of loneliness and anxiety. This is something of the society into which the church must reach out with the gospel.
And there are other factors that add to the current anxiety. There are things like wars, climate change, mass migration, job uncertainty, Covid ,and it would appear other disasters just waiting around the corner. Can we blame our friends for wanting to escape into a virtual world? Whether it was an election ploy or not I don’t know, but recently, deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden advised every household in the UK to stockpile emergency supplies – 3 days worth of food and water, along with torches and analogue radios – so they can be self-sufficient in the event of a national crisis.
Now, let me say that this does not mean that everyone you meet is (equally) affected in these ways. There are still folk of an older generation, and younger people who are not so affected by what we have outlined. But the overall picture is of individualism, expressed in various ways, amid a generally unsure, disoriented, depressed and anxious society.
Is the tide turning?
Now thankfully, reality (God’s reality) is still on our side and on the side of common sense. So, there are various small shafts of light which have made some people realise that society is on the wrong path – quite disastrously.
The recent Cass report has sent a shock wave through transgender practitioners and those who have been all out in promoting transgenderism among young people. The book by American journalist Abigail Shrier, Irreversible Damage, looking at hormone and surgical treatment, has brought many people to their senses.[11]The message of the secular world is being deeply challenged. It is not good for people to believe ‘I can be whatever I want to be’ (extreme individualism). We do not live in a ‘make-it-up-as-you-go-along’ universe. That’s on our side as Christians.
Even though Jonathan Haidt is an atheist, he has a section in The Anxious Generation on ‘spirituality’. He argues that there is something moral about us whether we acknowledge it or not, writing that:
When people see morally beautiful actions, they feel as if they have been lifted up – elevated on a vertical dimension that can be labelled divinity. When people see morally repulsive actions, they feel as though they have been pulled downward, or degraded. A phone-based life generally pulls people downward.[12]
Phones tend to centre us on the individual and self-pleasure. But what human beings need is self-transcendence. Again, this plays into our worldview as Christians. What Haidt means by morally beautiful is usually to do with Christian values – things like denying yourself or sacrificing yourself for another’s good.
Further, more directly there are other intellectuals who are now more open to Christianity. The historian Tom Holland has been arguing that the values we prize most in our society came from Christianity – not the brutal world of ancient Rome etc. Even Richard Dawkins (steadfastly atheist) says he wants to see Christian ethics in society – as opposed, for example, to the ways of Islam.
Now, this needs to trickle down into the thinking of ordinary people if the gospel is to gain traction again among them. We will try to say more about that in a second blog.
The truth
However, the point to notice from Paul in 2 Timothy 3 is that it is in just such a society as ours he commands God’s people to not let go of the truth. The temptation is to want to please people, but we must graciously hold on to the gospel and the total reliability of the Bible as the word of God himself. Those great proof text verses about the nature of Scripture are embedded right in this context. ‘All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work’ (2 Tim 3:16-17). It is the Bible that will equip us with all we need in today’s society.
An anxious society needs something rock solid they can rely on – and that is God’s truth, the gospel. There is indeed a God of infinite goodness, faithfulness and love existing outside this dark planet to whom we can look through Jesus Christ.
[1] This material was first given at an away day Saturday for Abbey Chapel, Abingdon, near Oxford.
[2] Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (Crossway, 2020), 35.
[3] Trueman, Rise and Triumph, 164.
[4] Jean Twenge, Generations: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents – and What they Mean for the Future (Atria Books, 2023), 11.
[5] Twenge, Generations, 301.
[6] Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual – Twenge looks at Transgender separately
[7] Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind (Penguin 2019), 4.
[8] Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation (Allen Lane, 2024), 9.
[9] Haidt, Anxious Generation, 147.
[10] Haidt, Anxious Generation, 170.
[11] Abigail Schrier, Irreversible Damage (Swift Press), 2021.
[12] Haidt, page 216
