A search for sense
Our world is a loud and noisy place. Is it possible to find meaning among the chaos?
There is a spirituality that came to our shores in a big way from the 1960s onwards, though it had been lurking in more esoteric circles from the 19th century. It has given us yoga, karma, mindfulness, transcendental meditation, as well as the mainstream religions of Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism. It peaked in the 1980s, when it was known as the New Age movement, but then seemingly disappeared from being just a fringe concern for hippies, vegans and the like, because it has since successfully seeped into the mainstream as part of the rich tapestry that defines our culture, adding to the noise that characterises our society.
But is it a part of the problem rather than a possible solution, filtering meaning out of the noise? We need to ask this question if we want to derive meaning. In my previous articles I have concentrated on very materialistic, secular expressions, of Marxism, Platonism, of secular humanism. We are now playing the ‘God card’, because we are venturing into spiritual concerns, of an ‘eastern’ variety. Are there answers here? Well, first we need to express some sort of question: Is there any real sense out there amidst the noise?
Firstly, let’s try and answer this in relation to the story so far. Until postmodernism arrived, our society was, believe it or not, run according to modernism.This is a world run according to rational thought and the intellect, a process started way back in the ‘Enlightenment’. The latest expression of this is ‘secular humanism’, which serves to remind us that it incorporates no ‘God element’ and is driven by humanism i.e. the human mind. Does this make any real sense amidst the noise? Does it answer authoritatively all the ‘big questions’ of life, such as ‘why are we here’, ‘how should we live’, ‘where did we come from’ and ‘where are we going’? It is very much driven by the ‘cult of the expert’, our modern-day Sophists, and it depends very much on which particular expert one consults, or ‘follows’. Or do we ‘mix and match’ and consult different ‘experts’ to answer the above questions? We know we are going to get an answer to these as the experts are all finely educated and wonderfully articulate, but how can we be sure of the correct answer? Would we ask Richard Dawkins ‘why are we here’? Would Stephen Fry be able to tell us how to live? Could we trust Stephen Hawkings to tell us where we came from? And is David Attenborough the right person to tell us where we are going? Even if the question is within their chosen field of expertise, could we trust them to guide us? We would be trusting not just their intellectual capacity, but also their moral and ethical character and truthfulness or perhaps we ‘cut out the middle man’ and use one’s own intellect to guide us through the labyrinth of life? If we do this, can we honestly self-assess our decisions as correct ones or are we happy to create our own set of rules to live by, because they seem to work for me?
Many truths?
Then, as we slipped into postmodernism, it all became a lot more complex, now that we live in a world inhabited by little identity bubbles, each representing a ‘victim group’ and each with its own truth.What do we do if we don’t identify with any of these groups? Perhaps we create one of our own, and gather others to share in whatever truths seem right? If we do identify with one of the growing collection of causes then are we doing no more than abdicating our responsibility of running our life to an artificial set of rules created by whoever is running the show? It’s a minefield of subjectivity and Plato would be dancing a merry jig in his grave! So we ask the question again. Is there any real sense out there amidst the noise? If there is, it would be surely drowned out but instead we have a cacophony of contradictions, different ‘truths’ often clashing and grating against each other. Here’s an example:
There was a recent ‘Pride’ celebration in London for the LGBT+ community, supposedly attracting around a million participants/spectators. Yet there was discord within. Two associated ‘victim groups’, supposedly part of the larger LGBT+ bubble, were in fact two separate, incompatible bubbles, each with their own ‘truths’. Some feminists have a real issue with transgender men selfidentifying as women, considering it an affront to their womanhood. They march under the banner ‘Transactivism erases Lesbians’ and this seems to be a growing movement, with the rather clever name of ‘Get the L out’ (of LGBT). It’s all a mess and a consequence of the shifting sands of truths that occupy our cultural landscape.
New Age, old lies
So, returning to our ‘Eastern excursion’ to the world of the New Age of spirituality and we again ask whether they have any answers? Before we do so, we must consider that our Western civilisation was founded on a mindset of spirituality. The Church was founded over 2,000 years ago and morphed into a vast organisation known as Christendom, identified by huge soaring cathedrals and a worldwide staff numbering in their thousands and arranged hierarchically, as if in a multinational corporation. History has shown us that, by and large, the Church, unfortunately, has not always followed its ‘maker’s instructions’ as laid out in the Holy Bible but has often found itself riddled with human vices rather than Divine virtues, as typified by such sorry episodes as the Crusades, Inquisition, persecution of the Jews, the religious wars in Tudor times and the fact that the instructions given in their ‘makers instructions’ has resulted in no less than 40,000 different expressions (denominations), a feat that must make the Cultural Marxists green with envy! We now need to ask whether the Eastern variety of spirituality has proven a breath of fresh air … or just more confusing noise?
Is there one central truth that lies at the heart of this Eastern spirituality, the driving force of the New Age movement and that has so successfully wormed its way into many structures of our society, from the health services to business development programmes? There is one principle that all expressions have in common, though it would be contentious to actually call it a truth, although it speaks of … truth.
What it says is that truth lies within all of us.This is remarkably similar to the ‘victim group’ truths of Cultural Marxism, but taken to the extreme. From the control-freakery of the materialistic post moderns, we now have the possibility of as many truths as there are individuals. This is firmly in the spiritual arena and is basically declaring that we are all gods and God is within us all and because we are so favoured, we are free to declare anything we like as truth.
They declare that every person is God. Veteran actress and New Age devotee, Shirley Maclaine said that one should greet each new day with the affirmation, “I am God” or “I am that I am”, to reinforce this ‘divine status’. They also insist that we all plug in to this ‘god consciousness’ and that this connects us all, “in perfect love, perfect wisdom, perfect understanding and perfect intelligence”. All this also ties into their belief in re-incarnation, being reborn after death again and again, in order to work towards ‘perfection’.
He who shouts the loudest?
Does everyone who buys into this worldview realise the full picture they are promoting? Probably not, but what seems to be unmistakable here is that, if everyone has god-like status and authority, we are just adding to the overall noise. If everyone is competing on a level playing field to promote their version of the truth, then surely we have nothing less than a cacophony, with thousands of loud hailers trumpeting away into the ether, with no-one actually hearing anything! So we ask our persistent question, is there any real sense there amidst the noise and we don’t get an answer, because all the New Agers are too busy retreating within themselves, in their own divine empires, to have much of a concern of the real world out there.
How does all of this affect the average man (or woman) in the street? Does everyone have to subscribe to New Age thinking, or secular humanism, or to find comfort inside one of the ‘victim group’ bubbles? No, most people go through life concerned with nothing more than doing the best they can for themselves and their family.
The point is … there’s an awful lot of noise out there and an awful lot of responses (and non-responses) to it. And a lot of this noise is carried along on a wave of emotionalism, adding to its persuasive power. Whoever shouts loudest … ?
Is there any real sense out there amidst the noise?
Of course there is. We know this and it is our task to tell others about the one Person who makes sense of it all, the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is an abridged extract from Steve’s new evangelistic book, Noise,available at all good Christian bookshops or from the website www.sppublishing.com