Is Christianity Opium for the Masses?
Friedrich Nietzsche viewed Christianity as suspect, not least for what he deemed its “slave ethic.” He believed a philosophy ought to encourage self-empowerment and the self-expression of the powerful. He deemed this Christian religious approach, therefore, to clip the wings of modern man. Language of service, discipleship, obedience, law, and the like conveyed an image of narrow conformity and subservience unto a debased posture. In our day and age where divine rule reads as human repression, his take has had wide impact. Perhaps no area of Christian repression has so stymied human expressiveness like the heavenly focus of Jesus and his Scriptures, which have been taken by Nietzsche and others as a distraction or opiate for people with genuinely earthy concerns. By turning our focus unto mythic heavens, we are led to linger, perhaps silently, in our ongoing plight and misery. The spiritual, then, preserves the material status quo. The ethereal maintains the earthy injustices and frustrations of our lives.
Nietzsche’s concern has had wide enough impact that not only his followers but even the audience of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity needed to be addressed along these lines.
“A continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.”
The Oxford don surely assesses a concern of “modern people” that a focus upon eternity actually amounts to “a form of escapism.” While his reply is worthy of our attention, the very need to address the question at all suggests that it is not only the atheistic like Marx but also the thinly religious audience of Lewis in mid-twentieth-century Britain who had imbibed a good dose of Nietzschean criticism. Perhaps we ought to ask if we too warrant such reminders?
A cynical approach to heaven is no fate, however. In recent years, D. A. Carson has pointed to the prayers of Paul as an exemplar of the Christian way. In a set of lectures now published under the title Praying with Paul, Carson offers exposition of several prayers found in the Pauline epistles (2 Thess. 1:3-12; 1 Thess. 3:9-13; Col. 1:9-14; Phil. 1:9-11; Eph. 1:15-23; Rom. 15:14-33). While each chapter warrants unique attention, readers are alerted quickly to a common theme and emphasis. Carson shows, case by case, the notably spiritual inflection of Paul’s concerns. While Paul would address some very earthy situations, he did so with a spiritual lens and theological focus, addressing not so much common concerns or comforts but spiritual realities and needs. Paul’s prayers manifest the pattern called for by his Lord and our Savior: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Mt. 6:33). Interestingly, I have not observed or participated in a single conversation about this underlying thread in Carson’s book without great reaction occurring, as those encountering the thesis invariably sense that it undermines legitimate concern for earthly matters (not only their own but those of their neighbors, indeed, of the whole world). That consistent knee-jerk reaction makes me wonder if we tend to imbibe more of Nietzsche than we drink of Lewis.
Why do our prayers and thought-lives seem so different from what Carson shows Paul’s priorities to be? We can look outward and see how American worries about the impractical or esoteric tend to lead against concern for anything that isn’t concrete and practical. But it’s not merely the superficial or materialist tendencies of the world that explain our earthiness. Some trends within the Christian world have also reduced our ability to lean against worldliness.
Combating Dualism By Focusing On Holistic Discipleship
One of the most significant emphases of the Kuyperian movement has been to combat so-called dualism. So many of us are tempted to operate in dual spheres: the sacred sphere belongs unto God while the secular sphere is devoted to other causes and concerns.
What’s motivating this Kuyperian concern? Well, influence from Luther has been significant, but ultimately it’s a concern to honor certain biblical truths. One of the most central passages of the entire Old Testament is Deuteronomy 6: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength” (6:4-5). It’s thematic for this book preparing God’s people to enter the land of Canaan. They have lived in Egypt for centuries, surrounded by its polytheism, and they’re about to enter another land rife with idols and pluralism. So God here tells them he is the only God – something he’d proven in Exodus 1-15 by thoroughly mocking the gods of Egypt with his plagues and then defeating Pharaoh – and that therefore he is to be loved with everything they’ve got, whether it involves their body or their soul, their mind or their capital resources, their relationships or their affections. It’s a summons to love that brokers no competitors. All eggs are to be placed in one basket. In the kingdom of God, there’s no diversifying our portfolio, as much as all other experiences might make that hard to imagine. Faith involves plunging all our love and trust ultimately here in the God who will be as actively committed to providing for my workday as to my fate on the judgment day yet to come. We are to trust God not only for our eternity but also for our earthly experiences.
This kind of holistic emphasis makes sense too because their God is different from that of the Egyptians or the Canaanites. See, those gods were all niche service providers. This god might oversee the harvest. That god provided fertility. Still other gods were relevant in war or in peace. As with covering a litany of accounts today, then people had to provide a bit of love or sacrifice to each of those gods (in the same way I have to keep all my accounts current and can’t presume to tell one provider that I made another whole, as if that will satisfy them and their invoice). But Israel’s God is one and only; he is the God above all, King of kings and Lord of lords. Because he reigns in every sphere, ultimately speaking, he can and should be given all our love. No middlemen or divine pantheon to pander to or with which to keep current. It makes all the sense in the world to deal wholly and directly with our living and true God, even if the Egyptian or the Canaanite wisdom would imagine it a foolish and risky investment strategy.
That kind of global lordship and that emphasis on holistic discipleship flows out of the emphases of Kuyperian thinking. It’s a magnificent gift not merely to the Dutch Reformed Church but to all Christians, something that helps us see more of the gospel (in its breadth) and of discipleship (as we imagine its implications in our whole lives, every sphere). It’s the great triumph really of the Neo-Calvinist or Kuyperian tradition. It remains perennially important, because the tendency to dualism or fragmentation is basic to human experience east of Eden. It’s not modern techno-global culture that has instigated our scattered and segmented lives; those ancient Near Eastern peoples were also splitting their devotion in dozens of directions, and God’s people had to be summoned by the words of Deuteronomy toward wholeness. The fragmented self is as old as the fallen self, so a word about the restoration of wholeness is evergreen.
Seeking the Kingdom of Heaven Has To Be First
That significant contribution of Kuyperianism can’t be our only concern, for we also need to pay attention to ways in which it has led to another temptation: misplaced priorities in thinking about sacred and secular. The secular isn’t godless, but it’s also not ultimate. The danger arises when the rightful Kuyperian response to dualism disables another important biblical teaching. We do need to pay attention to all that God does and cares about and to all that God demands. God concerns himself with the secular, we might say, as well as the sacred. Yet the Bible also does speak of priorities or central elements of its picture of Christian faithfulness. Jesus tells us to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added to you” (Mt. 6:33); worldly cares – like housing and provision (in Matthew 6:25-32) – matter, but they aren’t ultimate. Still further, they risk being distractions if we don’t carefully keep biblical teaching in order. In this, sometimes it’s possible to risk widening our vision so much that we can miss what’s right before us.
To read our Bibles well and to think wisely we do need to pay attention to all that scripture says, not just parts we like or find less challenging. To read further involves honoring the importance of the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:), perhaps especially the parts that will unsettle us either in our despair or our presumption. But reading well and living wisely also involves increasingly having our priorities and passions – our gut-level appetites – formed after the emphases of God. Augustine provides guidance here as he speaks about the importance of “ordering our loves.” His Confessions serves like a personalized memoir that relays the teaching of Ecclesiastes which we Kuyperians need to hear. He spoke of his experience that knowledge, wealth, moral growth, and esteem from peers are all good and enjoyable for a season but ultimately “vanity.” The word there could be translated “vapor,” like a fog so thick that it’s hard to maneuver through and yet that has dissipated and has been forgotten shortly thereafter. Augustine learned from Ecclesiastes that those things – things given by God and meant to be loved as gifts of God – will not satisfy and cannot be ultimately prized. Where Ecclesiastes would say we need to learn to “fear God and keep his commandments” (12:13), Augustine would confess to God that “you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you” (I.1).
We need to acknowledge that our rightful emphasis on whole-life discipleship can easily be manipulated – by marketers without and our sinful inclinations within – as a justification for caring about the things that we would have cared about irrespective of Jesus. Kuyperians rightly know to seek to live in love to God by engaging in every area of life with real Christian energy, but the precipice on that edge always involves the threat that our priorities, our focus, our orienting concerns will not be challenged. Especially given the relatively well-resourced and prosperous condition of most who embrace Kuyperianism in the last century, we ought to be keenly aware that it can be twisted to cover over our inordinate love for earthly goods. If even the secular is a good to be received with thanks from God, how much more shall we long for the better hope of the sacred kingdom of God?
