The Feeling of Absolute Independence

No.93: February 4, 2022

Dear Friends,

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), often called the “Father of Modern Theology,” thought that the essence of religion is man’s “feeling of absolute dependence.” He couldn’t have foreseen postmodern religiosity, even though he unintentionally had something to do with it. Defining religion as a “feeling” was a significant turn toward the kind of subjectivism that characterizes our contemporary identity politics, but we’ve now finally managed to completely invert his maxim: for postmodern religion, it is all about the feeling of absolute independence.

National Review’s Ryan Mills reports that Black Lives Matter is sponsoring a “Week of Action,” supplying a school curriculum based on their “13 Guiding Principles.” Students across the land—Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin—will learn about the evils of the nuclear family unit, how to oppose patriarchy, and that, according to curriculum contributor Laleña Garcia,

Everybody has the right to choose their own gender by listening to their own heart and mind. Everyone gets to choose if they are a girl or a boy or both or neither or something else, and no one else gets to choose for them. 

As a native Montanan, you know I sometimes fantasize about getting “off the grid,” becoming completely independent and self-sufficient. There exists an entire Internet rabbit hole devoted to “prepping” for some apocalypse or another, with forums full of experts willing to share their knowledge of how to have your own water, food, and energy supplies. One quickly comes to realize that the goal of total independence is impossible; drilling and refining one’s own fuel or mining minerals to replace one’s failing solar battery isn’t very likely to succeed. Be that as it may, is it not paradoxical that the road to hoped-for total independence should require such deep dependence on the expertise of others? Perhaps that ought to cause us to rethink our premises. Maybe self-sufficiency is impossible because only God is God, and we are creatures.

Ludwig Wittgenstein ended his famous Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by writing that if you understand him you must then disregard everything he wrote: “[The reader] must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.” That’s what the quest for pure autonomy is like, and it is the mother of all delusions—pure self-deception. Seriously: we are formed in the wombs of our mothers for nine months, receiving all our vitality from her; we bring nothing whatsoever with us. We are then born, utterly helpless, into a world already there and we are nurtured and sustained at every single moment by persons and things and societies and civilizations outside of us. How is it that one comes to conclude that we are self-made, independent, masters of our own destinies, and get to choose if we are “boys or girls or both or neither or something else”?

When it comes to this particular delusion we are, theologically speaking, “born this way” (See: Doctrine of Original Sin). And this obvious and destructive lie of total personal autonomy is what Black Lives Matter would like to teach our children.

Does it sound like a good idea to essentially teach them that they are in total control of their reality and that no one—not God, not parents, not relatives, not teachers, not friends—can question or correct them? Indeed, that questioning or correcting them is somehow “oppression” or “violence”? It seems oddly against the self-interest of people who style themselves educators (see the current predicament of the Dean of Georgetown Law School), and it also seems like a recipe for a society of narcissistic monsters—imagine a whole society of grown-ups who resemble the (thankfully) occasional kid you see in a grocery store screaming, “I want!”

On the other hand and in self-contradiction, Black Lives Matter’s curriculum emphasizes the importance of what they call “a collective village that takes care of each other.” This, I gather, is a mix-and-match society consisting of an open-ended variety of alternative group formations (think polyamory, “throuples,” or a 1960’s hippie commune) and they intend that such “collectives” will someday soon replace the nuclear family as the basic unit of society. 

But what makes them think that the residents of this village, having their total individual autonomy endlessly reinforced, will have any interest in taking care of one another? A society or “village” requires an organic web of relationships and mutual dependence. It requires hierarchies (things like teacher/student), authorities (not least, an OB-GYN saying with some finality, “It’s a boy!”), mutual relationships that allow for critique of one’s self-perception—all the very sort of things BLM deems “oppressive” and “patriarchal.”

One cannot build a society—well, not one you’d want to live in—on the foundation of total personal autonomy (I’m sorry, Libertarians), where “everyone does that which is right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). You cannot weave a tapestry using marbles instead of fabric. And that is what BLM wants to fashion: a whole “society” of hardened and atomized, self-satisfied, self-sufficient people impervious to any reality beyond their own subjective imaginings (including the reality of their own bodies) and any morality beyond “listening to your own heart and mind.” A “collective” of totally autonomous individuals. What could go wrong?

This kind of education is not a benefit to society, but might well produce the end of a beneficial society. It should be emphatically resisted.  

Miscellany

• City Church Corpus Christi has uploaded my “First, the Kingdom” conference sessions to Spotify. I sent the YouTube video links in the last Quarter Inch, but I know that some of you might want just the audio files so you can listen while you drive or jog or whatever you do. Just click on this link.

• This week, after a 4 1/2 week wait, I received in the mail a new fountain pen from the Birmingham Pen Company. I like craftsmanship and entrepreneurialism, and these two Pittsburgh-area brothers started a business making fine writing instruments. Now their dad works for them, as well. I am pleased with my initial impressions—the branding alone is a sight to behold. I even filmed an “unboxing” video, to which my daughter said: “You did an unboxing video!? That’s so Gen-Z.” I don’t know what that means because I don’t speak “Gen-Z,” but I think you can watch it at this link if you’re interested. Buy hand-crafted if you can!

• Thaddeus Williams has done it again, as he does with regularity: he published another outstanding book God Reforms Hearts: Rethinking Free Will and the Problem of Evil. As a revision of his doctoral thesis, it’s a workout. But it is well worth the while of more advanced readers. You can read a nice review of the book here. Maybe good old Calvinism will make yet another comeback, and maybe this time it won’t be an episode of The Young and the Restless. Williams is doing his part.

• My wife and eldest fled the freeze and headed to Arizona for the week. I’m “Mr. Mom-ing” with the other two, and so far it’s been terrific. I wonder if Michael Keaton could get away with making his 1983 “Mr. Mom” movie today? Could he pull off the stereotypical gender roles without getting canceled? Would he have to update it so that the Dad actually becomes the Mom? I suspect so, and it’s helpful to consider how much our society has changed and what direction we’re headed.

  Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!