Doing Life Together – When Your Own Identity Is Clear

So, our own unclear identity. How did we get to this point in time when the concept of our identity is so unclear? In a talk on postmodernism and philosophy, a renowned apologist said:

I was asked to speak on what it means to be human. I like the fact that they wanted it defined, but isn’t it fascinating; we’re still trying to figure out who we are. I don’t hear of dogs getting together to define ‘doggyness’. We’re supposed to be at the highest rung of the ladder and we don’t know who we are, and we’re doing the defining.

Dr Albert Mohler sums up this walk down memory lane beautifully. He refers to them as the Four Horsemen of Modernity; Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Frederick Nietzsche and Sigmund Froyd. All rejected Christianity and presented their own alternate concoction of a worldview.

Karl Marx rejected Christianity’s humanity, self, sin, redemptive message, and end times, and replaced every major Christian doctrine with a Marxist alternative. The scary thing is that intellectual Marxism is actually thriving. Now, I’m not a fan of Safe Schools because it promotes ideological separation and is based in identity politics where the collective outranks the individual. However, listen to what Safe Schools founder Roz Ward says:

“Marxism offers both the hope and the strategy needed to create a world where human sexuality, gender and how we relate to our bodies can blossom in extraordinary new and amazing ways that we can only try to imagine today.”

Marxism is a wonderful political system, if you’d like to run a country as a tyrannical dictator. You get to make the rules, you get to decide who can and can’t do and say what, and you can enforce any consequence you see necessary to ensure your power is maintained, because the only moral standard for you to abide by is the one you yourself create. But what about the collapse of the Soviet Union? Fall of the Berlin Wall? Rise of capitalism in China (although China is a unique case)? All that is true. Politically and economically, Marxism is essentially gone except for places like North Korea. Intellectually though, Marxism is well and truly alive and kicking. Identity; look to yourself, but I’ll tell you what type of identity is allowed.

Charles Darwin permitted intellectually fulfilling atheism while providing an alternate worldview to the Christian one. Difference in origins, humanity, and the removal of all special claims for humanity. Darwinism also authorised the conflict between belief in science OR religion. You must pick one or the other. Identity; none. No purpose, no meaning, nothing.

Frederick Nietzsche stated that there is no meaning, there is no truth, and all that remains after modernity is power. No good, no evil. Of course, Christianity challenges modernity on every front and Nietzsche new this. He claimed:

God is dead and we have killed him.

All that remains is power and negotiating power. No such thing as a truth claim; it’s a power claim in disguise. If you try to establish that something is true, you’re really trying to establish a framework that reinforces your power as the answer to the problem your truth supposedly represents. You say that something is true to protect your privileged position. Except when it comes to their own claims of power and truth. Tell me that that isn’t prevalent in our society today. Identity = power.

Finally, Sigmund Freud gave light to the assumption that our problems have been inflicted upon us, either from an identifiable force outside us or a subconscious over which we have no control. Freud removed the human being from creation/fall/redemption and end times, as well as removing moral accountability, thus making of everyone a victim. Identity; victimhood.

So the problems are outside of us and the answers are inside of us. Now it seems to me that Christianity proposes the complete opposite.

Yes, I mention this frequently. It’s one of my go-to’s. But remember that I said that intellectual Marxism is alive and well. Listen to this from a prescribed text as a part of an education Masters degree from Queensland University of Technology.

“If I could have a dollar for every time I’ve heard that phrase – it’s all up to the individual – I’d be a rich person now. It seems to be one of the defining ideas of our society. Yet it is a flawed idea, and the purpose of this chapter is to explain why. The individualistic view of society, it will be argued, is simplistic because it does not take sufficient account of the way society is structured. By extension, it is argued, individualistic explanations for student success or failure at school are simplistic because they do not adequately recognise the ways in which school practices may reflect an unequal social structure.”

Wow. Students, you are hereby absolved of all responsibility. Ignore your parents when they say that it’s important to work hard in school, because it’s not. Just blame the inequities of society. The results quoted in this article claimed that students attending elite high fee- paying schools achieve the highest marks, which is a one-dimensional analysis. Perhaps these students worked the hardest, accounting for their achievements. Students attending low socio-economic schools also achieve high results. I know this, because I’ve taught them. Now you might think to yourself that this is only one article. This was a prescribed text in a QUT course, and most of the prescribed texts in this subject absolved the individual of any and all responsibility for their achievements, rather blaming society and social structure and their apparent inherent, intrinsic, and entrenched levels of hierarchical discrimination. I still have them. They’re fascinating reading. The implication is that social hierarchies aren’t fluid, and we can’t move between so called ‘social classes’. If anything, this viewpoint echoes feudalism, and medieval social structures. Suggesting that issues in education can be attributed to predetermination rather than a lack of effort is worrying, as the idea of working hard to achieve success is the very nature of a merit-based education system and capitalist society, to which those who subscribe to a postmodern liberal ideology appear desperate to undermine.

I ask again, is it concerning that a mainstream tertiary educational facility is telling students that because schools reflect inequality in society, as individuals they’re not responsible for their grades?

What are the lies that have been successfully sold by the intellectual elite and bought by society? Firstly, that there’s an intellectual and philosophical equal to Christianity. What other worldview calls for humility, service, peace, patience, obedience to law and love for others, personal relationships with the central figure through whom we receive grace, forgiveness, redemption, and restoration? Secondly, all of our problems lie outside of us, and the answers are within us. Hence today’s never-ending quest to find ourselves.

Recently though, again pointed out by Mohler, atheism has gone through a popular revival under the likes of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Mohler refers to them as the Four Horsemen of New Atheism. These four in particular have changed the game and have started playing specifically against Christianity and the Bible based on:

* Science – it’s now not only unnecessary to believe in God, but unthinkable to believe in God because belief in God rejects modern science. That’s Dawkins.
* Moral grounds – God is immoral. Look at the violence and intolerance displayed by God in the Old Testament, the irreconcilable differences between this God and the loving and gentle New Testament Jesus, and the Jesus who returns violent and intolerant in Revelations.
* Intellect – they have shifted from suggesting it’s intellectually unnecessary to believe in God, but rather it’s criminally wrong to believe in this God. They know their battleground. It’s not the Islamic east, but the Christian and pseudo-Christian west.
* Reason – moderate belief is not accepted as the moderate Christians allow fundamentalists to still have a voice; religious tolerance is something we can no longer afford; and the scariest one is that they desire religious instruction of children be classified legally as child abuse. If that doesn’t make you sit up and take notice, I don’t know what will.

Christianity is now intellectually, and philosophically, and morally, and scientifically, contempt and without reason. They know their battleground and how to effectively target

it. They’re all current or former university professors as well as best-selling authors who have given up arguing against the established Christian adult. They don’t want me, they want my children, and at universities, they have them. One young person here attending university has spent a term learning how to be politically correct in the classroom. Remember Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion? Funny that even sceptics found fault with this best seller. David Berlinkski is a non-believer yet wrote ‘The Devil’s Delusion’ in response to Dawkins. Quote:

Has anyone provided proof of God’s inexistence? Not even close. Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close. Have our sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close. Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough. Has rationalism and moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough. Has secularism in the terrible 20th century been a force for good? Not even close, to being close. Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy in the sciences? Close enough. Does anything in the sciences or their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even in the ball park. Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on.

So much for intellectually fulfilling atheism.

One evening, my daughter got quite upset telling us that she was being picked on or made fun of at school. The reason? Her height. Her peers were making fun of her because she’s small. Now I’m not one of those parents who will go charging into the school demanding that they do something about it. I understand that children will be children, and for the most part at that age they don’t really understand that sometimes their words can be hurtful. I spoke with her about it when I was putting her to bed. I said to her that we should pray for the children who were picking on her. She asked why, and I said that Jesus told us to pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5). Now I realise that equating being picked on for being small and being persecuted is a stretch, but the principle is the same. So, I prayed. I prayed for the students who were picking on her and asked that God could reveal to them that their words, however meaningless and fun to them, have the potential to cause hurt to others. But then I prayed for my daughter. Picture this; we’re lying on her bed and I’m cuddling her as I say these words:

Dear Lord, thank you for my daughter. Thank you that you have made her in your image, that she is fearfully and wonderfully made. Thank you that you formed her inward parts; that you knitted her together in her mother’s womb. I thank you that she is small and that she has red hair. Thank you for her personality, her quirks, and her traits, and that she is truly unique. I thank you that you love her, and that you do hold her future in your hands. I thank you for blessing us with the gift of this wonderful little girl who is the image bearer of the Most High. Thank you for making her exactly as she is. Thank you for blessing our lives and entrusting to us this gift of a little girl made precisely how you wanted her made. In Jesus name, amen.

I can feel her crying as I’m holding her. I asked her “Why are you crying, darling?” She responds with “Those were really nice things that you said.” Now I don’t tell you this because I’m going to win any father of the year awards. I tell you this because they weren’t my words that I used; they were Gods words.

Matthew 22:

Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words. And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone’s opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why put me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” When they heard it, they marvelled. And they left him and went away.

Yeah, but instead of just marvelling they could have asked another question. Jesus says render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. They

should have then asked “Teacher, what belongs to God?” I imagine his answer would have been “Whose likeness and inscription is on you? Whose image do you bear?”

In love, God predestined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, according to his will, by his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. Thanks to God’s grace which he has lavished on us, in Christ we have redemption and forgiveness.

I don’t know why God loves us. What I do know is that we are made in his image. He does love us, he desires that none perish, and that we need to look to Him in order to find out what it means to be human. The weight of trying find our identity within us is too much when we understand the depth and breadth of the separation between what we feel we are and what God has created us to be. In Christ, our identity becomes clear.

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

If the world does not yet know him, whose fault is that? I’ll finish with this by Dr. Albert Mohler:

The reality is that the disappearance of God is what we note all around us by the fact that most of our neighbours live as if God does not. If the church of the Lord Jesus Christ does not live so obviously by the fact that we believe that he does, then the secularisation is our fault.