The Divine Conspiracy Read online

  However, actual discipleship or apprenticeship to Jesus is, in our day, no longer thought of as in any way essential to faith in him. It is regarded as a costly option, a spiritual luxury, or possibly even an evasion. Why bother with discipleship, it is widely thought, or, for that matter, with a conversational relationship with God? Let us get on with what we have to do.

  This third book, then, presents discipleship to Jesus as the very heart of the gospel. The really good news for humanity is that Jesus is now taking students in the master class of life. The eternal life that begins with confidence in Jesus is a life in his present kingdom, now on earth and available to all. So the message of and about him is specifically a gospel for our life now, not just for dying. It is about living now as his apprentice in kingdom living, not just as a consumer of his merits. Our future, however far we look, is a natural extension of the faith by which we live now and the life in which we now participate. Eternity is now in flight and we with it, like it or not.

  In these three books there is very little that is new, though much that is forgotten. Indeed, if I thought it were new, I would certainly not advocate it or publish it. To see that it is old, and only very recently forgotten, one need only compare it with the writings of P. T. Forsyth, C. S. Lewis, Frank Laubach, E. Stanley Jones, and George MacDonald, among many others of the quite recent past. Then, if one wishes, go on to the greater postbiblical sources such as Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Thomas, Luther, and Calvin—and, finally, to the teachings about the world, the soul, and God that lie richly upon the pages of the Bible itself.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am very grateful to many friends and readers who have encouraged and advised me through the years. At this point in life they are so many that I cannot begin to mention them individually. A few people, however, have really invested substantial efforts in thinking through some of the chapters of this book and advising me.

  This is especially true of Bart Tarman, Ken Yee, John Ortberg, Trevor Hudson, Gary Rapkin, Scott Hilborn, Lynn Cory, Larry Burtoft, Greg Jesson, Richard Foster, Jim Smith, Randy Neal, Roger Freeman, and Jane Lakes Willard.

  I owe a special debt to Patricia Klein’s fine sense of language and composition and to her persistence in helping me say as clearly as possible what I have to say. She deeply invested herself in the content of the book, and I am grateful. Virginia Rich and Terri Leonard made great improvements in the book by their editorial skills, and Mark Chimsky’s encouraging words greatly strengthened me to finish the task. Bill Heatley and John S. Willard helped check the final proofs.

  Jane, Richard, and Lynda Graybeal have, in addition, made it possible for me to write at all, especially by standing effectively against my too-great readiness to accept various kinds of commitments that make it impossible. But without Jane the writing would, for many reasons, never have been actually done. Her loving patience, insistence, and assistance have been, as always, both incomparable and indispensable. This is her book.

  ALL SAINTS, 1997

  Chapter 1

  ENTERING THE ETERNAL KIND OF LIFE NOW

  God’s care for humanity was so great that he sent his unique Son among us, so that those who count on him might not lead a futile and failing existence, but have the undying life of God Himself.

  JOHN 3:16

  Jesus’ good news, then, was that the Kingdom of God had come, and that he, Jesus, was its herald and expounder to men. More than that, in some special, mysterious way, he was the Kingdom.

  MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE,

  JESUS: THE MAN WHO LIVES

  Life in the Dark

  Recently a pilot was practicing high-speed maneuvers in a jet fighter. She turned the controls for what she thought was a steep ascent—and flew straight into the ground. She was unaware that she had been flying upside down.

  This is a parable of human existence in our times—not exactly that everyone is crashing, though there is enough of that—but most of us as individuals, and world society as a whole, live at high-speed, and often with no clue to whether we are flying upside down or right-side up. Indeed, we are haunted by a strong suspicion that there may be no difference—or at least that it is unknown or irrelevant.

  Rumors from the Intellectual Heights

  That suspicion now has the force of unspoken dogma in the highest centers of Western learning. Of course, one has to assume in practice that there is a right-side up, just to get on with life. But it is equally assumed that right-side up is not a subject of knowledge.

  Derek Bok was president of Harvard University for many years, and in his “President’s Report” for 1986–1987 he referred to some well-known moral failures in financial circles and the political life of the nation. He wondered out loud what universities might do to strengthen moral character in their graduates.

  “Religious institutions,” he continued, “no longer seem as able as they once were to impart basic values to the young. In these circumstances, universities, including Harvard, need to think hard about what they can do in the face of what many perceive as a widespread decline in ethical standards.”1

  Bok points out that in other days “the instructors aim was…to foster a belief in commonly accepted moral values”. Now all is changed: “Today’s course in applied ethics does not seek to convey a set of moral truths but tries to encourage the student to think carefully about complex moral issues.” One senses that the governing assumption of his discussion is that these two objectives are mutually exclusive.

  “The principle aim of the course,” Bok continues, “is not to impart ‘right answers’ but to make the students more perceptive in detecting ethical problems when they arise, better acquainted with the best moral thought that has accumulated through the ages, and more equipped to reason about the ethical issues they will face”.

  Later he quotes Carol Gilligan to the effect that “moral development in the college years thus centers on the shift from moral ideology to ethical responsibility”. One should not miss the point that Bok puts “right answers” in queer quotes, and that Gilligan holds what one has before college to be “ideology”—that is, irrational beliefs and attitudes. They are faithfully expressing the accepted intellectual viewpoint on the common moral beliefs that guide ordinary human existence.

  Finally, in coming to the conclusion of his report, President Bok remarks, “Despite the importance of moral development to the individual student and the society, one cannot say that higher education has demonstrated a deep concern for the problem…. Especially in large universities, the subject is not treated as a serious responsibility worthy of sustained discussion and determined action by the faculty and administration”.

  But the failure of will on the part of educators that Bok courageously points out is inevitable. Had he strolled across Harvard Yard to Emerson Hall and consulted with some of the most influential thinkers in our nation, he would have discovered that there now is no recognized moral knowledge upon which projects of fostering moral development could be based.

  There is now not a single moral conclusion about behavior or character traits that a teacher could base a student’s grade on—not even those most dear to educators, concerning fairness and diversity. If you lowered a student’s grade just for saying on a test that discrimination is morally acceptable, for example, the student could contest that grade to the administration. And if that position on the moral acceptability of discrimination were the only point at issue, the student would win.

  The teacher would be reminded that we are not here to impose our views on students, “however misguided the student might be.” And if the administration of the university did not reach that decision, a court of law soon would.

  Of course, if a student seriously wrote on a test that 7 times 5 equals 32, or that Columbus discovered America in 1520, we would be permitted to “impose our views” in these cases. It would not matter by what route the student came to such conclusions because these cases concern matters that—quibbles aside—are regarded as known.
That is what marks the difference.

  Why Be Surprised?

  But if indeed there is now no body of moral knowledge in our culture, then a number of things highly positioned people express surprise about are not surprising at all. Robert Coles, professor of psychiatry and medical humanities at Harvard and a well-known researcher and commentator on matters social and moral, published a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education on “The Disparity Between Intellect and Character.”2 The piece is about “the task of connecting intellect to character.” This task, he adds, “is daunting.”

  His essay was occasioned by an encounter with one of his students over the moral insensitivity—is it hard for him to say “immoral behavior”?—of other students, some of the best and brightest at Harvard. This student was a young woman of “a Midwestern, working class background” where, as is well known, things like “right answers” and “ideology” remain strong. She cleaned student rooms to help pay her way through the university.

  Again and again, she reported to Coles, people who were in classes with her treated her ungraciously because of her lower economic position, without simple courtesy and respect, and often were rude and sometimes crude to her. She was repeatedly propositioned for sex by one young student in particular as she went about her work. He was a man with whom she had had two “moral reasoning” courses, in which he excelled and received the highest of grades.

  This pattern of treatment led her to quit her job and leave school—and to something like an exit interview with Coles. After going over not only the behavior of her fellow students, but also the long list of highly educated people who have perpetrated the atrocities for which the twentieth century is famous, she concluded by saying to him, “I’ve been taking all these philosophy courses, and we talk about what’s true, what’s important, what’s good. Well, how do you teach people to be good?” And, she added, “What’s the point of knowing good if you don’t keep trying to become a good person?”

  Professor Coles proceeds to comment on how ineffectual his efforts to respond to this young woman were. He seems genuinely conscience stricken that he shrugged in response to her disappointment. But he never confronts the fact that he certainly did not tell the students in his courses that they should not treat someone doing menial work with disdain, or that they should not proposition a classmate or anyone else who is cleaning their rooms.

  There were no questions on his tests about these matters. He never deals with the fact that he could not use such questions because no one can now claim to know about such matters. The problem here is less one of connecting character to intellect than one of connecting intellectual to moral and spiritual realities. The trouble is precisely that character is connected with the intellect. The trouble is what is and is not in the intellect.

  Indeed, in the current world of accepted knowledge one can’t even know the truth of a moral theory or principle, much less a specific rule. You could never grade someone for holding Utilitarianism or Kantianism to be true or false. One can only know about such theories and principles, and think about them in more or less clever ways. You can brightly discuss them. For that the young man got his A’s. But that, of course, had no bearing on his character or behavior because it is only literary or historical or perhaps logical expertise, not moral knowledge. And if you are already flying upside down and don’t know it, your cleverness will do you little good.

  The Incredible Power of “Mere Ideas”

  Now, both Bok and Coles are widely and justifiably recognized as people of fine character and intellect. They have a large measure of concern about the practical consequences of a culture that has accepted the view that what is good and right is not a subject of knowledge that can guide action and for which individuals can be held responsible. They have no way of dislodging this view, nor, I think, would they want to dislodge it. But they do not seem to realize the total futility of resisting its practical consequences without dislodging it from the popular as well as the academic mind.

  John Maynard Keynes, who was perhaps an even more profound social observer than economist, remarks at the end of his best-known book that “the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”3

  One could wish this were true only of economics and politics. But it is true of life in general. It is true of religion and education, of art and media. For life as a whole, Keynes’s words apply: “I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.” Not immediately, as he acknowledges, but after a certain period of time. The ideas of people in current leadership positions are always those they took in during their youth. “But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.”

  The power of mere ideas is a matter about which intellectuals commonly deceive themselves and, intentionally or not, also mislead the public. They constantly take in hand the most powerful factors in human life, ideas, and most importantly, ideas about what is good and right. And how they handle and live them thoroughly pervades our world in its every aspect.

  The complaint of the young Harvard woman to Professor Coles is actually a complaint about a system of ideas: a system of ideas about what is good and what is right. This system is one to which both President Bok and Professor Coles willingly subject themselves. It is conveyed to students—and readers, consumers of intellectual product—through the generations, and ever since the universities have become the authority centers of world culture it is wordlessly conveyed to world society. It conveys itself as simple reality and does so in such a way that it never has to justify itself. The truly powerful ideas are precisely the ones that never have to justify themselves.

  The frequent attacks on “Modernity” and “Secularism” usually mistake where the problem lies. We are not primarily in a political battle, nor is there at bottom some kind of social conspiracy afoot. “Secular humanism” is an idea movement, not the work of any individual, and before it, as a whole, individuals are little more than pawns.4 The seeming triviality and irrelevance of the “merely academic” is a major part of what misleads us about the power of mere ideas.

  Merely Academic?

  In 1889 the French novelist Paul Bourget wrote a novel, The Disciple. He described the “egghead” existence of a noted philosopher and psychologist: seemingly lost in things “merely academic,” living up four flights of stairs, caught up in humdrum routines of meals and walks, coffee and lectures. Three times a week he had visits from scholars and students from four to six, and then dinner, short walk, a little more work, and bed promptly at ten. It was the existence of an inoffensive, scholarly man who, in the words of his housekeeper, “wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  Then one day he was summoned to a criminal inquest concerning a brilliant young man who had been his student and had climbed those four flights of stairs to drink in illuminating and liberating discussions. In prison awaiting trial for murder, this young disciple had written an account of what he had done and of how those liberating doctrines enthusiastically discussed in the abstract had worked out in actual practice.5 The results are only infrequently a matter of murder, but world as well as individual events ride upon the waters of an ideational sea. The killing fields of Cambodia come from philosophical discussions in Paris.6

  The absurdity of our existence now falls upon the masses of humanity through several generations of intellectual and artistic elites. It surfaced in its modern form within a very small circle of intellectuals during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It was temporarily restrained, and was even in some measure utilized, by the various fine arts in the ninetee
nth and early twentieth centuries. Great literature, music, and painting emerged, substantially in response to the spiritual crisis precipitated by massive shifts in ideas. But the fine arts capitulated to absurdity by the mid-twentieth century—having briefly exploited the “cute” as a legitimate aesthetic category and then allowed a few quickly trite ways of being cute and clever to dominate the arts.

  Cuteness, like cleverness, has certain aesthetic possibilities—as do sex and violence—but they are very limited. Picasso is the most familiar and brilliant illustration of how it can be well used, and of how it goes to seed. But as we now know, masses of people can be cute, and clever as well, who have no ability or sense of art at all. As creators and consumers they fill the field of pop culture today, which is an economic enterprise and only by accident occasionally has something to do with art. Art objects are now commonly referred to as “product” by those who handle them and only make news when they are sold for absurdly large sums or are stolen. Art is lost in pop “art” as sport is lost in professional “sport”—which is an oxymoron of the strongest kind. Absurdity reigns, and confusion makes it look good.

  Currently, through pop “art” and the media the presumed absurdity of life that elites previously had to be very brilliant and work very hard to appreciate is mindlessly conveyed to hundreds of millions. It comes to us in Bart and Homer Simpson and endless sitcoms and soap operas involving doctors, lawyers, and policemen, along with the bizarre selections and juxtapositions imposed by what is called news. You have only to “stay tuned,” and you can arrive at a perpetual state of confusion and, ultimately, despair with no effort at all.