Bent Back Into Shape: Serving A Disintegrating World

Modernity bends us out of shape. It fragments our communties and institutions. If this is the case, what does it look like to be bent back into shape?

An Old Insight, Still Fresh

I am fascinated by cultural observers who noticed things decades ago that have only become more true. Richard M. Weaver’s Ideas have Consequences, written in 1948, is one such book. Perhaps his most famous chapter is titled, “The Great Stereopticon.” In it, he describes the challenge of a meaningful existence a culture whose unifying symbols and beliefs have collapsed:

“The problem which disintegration places in the lap of practical men, those in charge of states, of institutions and businesses, is how to persuade to communal activity people who no longer have the same ideas about the most fundamental things. In an age of shared belief, this problem does not exist, for there is a wide area of basic agreement, and dissent is viewed not as claim to egotistic distinction but as a sort of excommunication. The entire group is conscious of this tendency, which furnishes standards for value judgments. When the goal of life becomes self-realization, however, this vanishes. It vanishes right at that point where the ego asserts its independence; thereafter what reconciliation can there be between authority and individual will?

Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976), 92.

Bent Out of Shape: Egotistic Distinction Today

Weaver’s attitude toward dissent is decidedly pre-1960’s. Today, reflexive dissent is practically the key to success in some arenas. It is often easy to spot the “egotistic distinction” just under the surface in much of what now passes for news, analysis, and reflection. Thus, even on a movie review site like Rotten Tomatoes, there is incentive to stand out. For instance, you can get noticed by being one of a handful of negative reviews on a beloved movie. Writers are incentivized to offer the only positive review for an awful movie. Likewise, in the realm of contemporary ideological, nationalist, and identity-based mass movements, it is equally easy to detect the need for “egotistic distinction” in many public figures. Even would-be prophetic clergy are not immune to this pull. In practice, it is often difficult to distinguish “speaking truth to power” from building a platform.

A Haunting Question

Weaver’s question here is hauntingly relevant. When the summum bonum (the highest good) becomes self-realization, what hope is there? How can we shape cohesive neighborhoods, let alone counties, states, or nations? In other words, if my greatest goal is to find or express myself, practically any authority outside of my skin becomes an enemy. Thus we observe increasingly tribal tendencies in America culture. Various groups split and splinter, often turning on each other as egotism runs amok. We see this currently in both major American political parties.

Conclusion: What The Church Offers

What, then, can we do? Our culture has been molded by the self-obsessed vision of consumerist individualism that dominates our institutions. Perhaps the greatest gift the church can give such a world is to teach and embody that life is not a story about us. Western theologians have long described the essence of sin is the soul “curved in on itself.” Egotistic distinction twists us at the ontological level. Therefore, in a world twisted inward, the church is uniquely positioned to bend people back into shape: towards God and others.

To resist fragmentation, we choose community. We lift up the humble and offer a counter-narrative to egotism. Followers of Jesus wash one another’s feet. Give sacrificially. Choose downward mobility. Confess our sins. In short, any act which denies the self in order to serve God and/or neighbor is a step away from disintegration. Pastor and author Eugene Peterson once said, “The kingdom of self is heavily defended territory.” Every assault on that lesser kingdom fits us for the Kingdom of God. As we receive the gift of God’s Kingdom, we are bent back into shape.