Don't Care So There

Writing at The Public Discourse, Paul Rowan Brian and Ben Sixsmith sketch an outline of the more problematic of the foes Christianity and other religions face in the U.S. today. It's not atheism, but something they call "apatheism."

As they note, high-profile atheists ran rampant (not really, but they were well-publicized) through media and culture through the late Oughts and early Teens of this century. They kind of took the handoff from some of the militant demythologizers of the 1990s, such as the Jesus Seminar and other media-friendly redressings of Rudolf Bultmann's work. Religious people didn't just get Jesus wrong, they said, religious people started from the wrong place because there was nothing "out there" to begin with.

The larger lights of that scene have faded. Of the names Brian and Sixsmith mention, Christopher Hitchens has passed away (and was a lot fairer-minded than even he liked to think), Richard Dawkins has decided to say some things that make people a lot less disposed to listening to his other ideas and Sam Harris finds himself sometimes defended by religious liberty and free speech supporters because he's not always willing to agree with everything folks purportedly on his side say.

But far more of a problem in any event is this "apatheism," which you might see this way. If a religious person says, "I believe," then a polite atheist might ask why. A less-polite one might roll his or her eyes and say, "Idiot." An apatheist shrugs and says, "So what?"

The problem this poses for Christians -- and since that's what I am, that's how I'll argue; I can't speak for people of other faiths -- is that much of our apologetic work over the last century and a half has been lined up to "prove" the reality of God. Faithful folks saw this as a goal as they encountered other cultures where people had not heard the gospel message, as well as the way to rebut those who used things like modern cosmology and evolutionary theory to "prove" God was not real. Some success certainly came from this model, but it proved inadequate to counter, "So what?"

A world in which the idea of any absolute truth is rejected a priori is a world in which supposedly rational proofs for a matter of faith are far less likely to move someone who disagrees. For these folks, the fact that I have proved God's existence to my own satisfaction may be swell for me but has no bearing on their lives -- because all of our viewpoints are valid since there is no one absolute truth. You might ask how we can say there is no absolute truth when it seems like that statement is itself proclaiming an absolute, but then you would be a big spoilsport and a ninny who just won't get with the program.

Anyway, as Brian and Sexsmith note, "meh" is a lot harder position to fight than "bah!" Much of our modern Western Christianity takes away some of our weaponry in that fight. So much of our gospel message has been tweaked and modified for palability's sake that it doesn't proclaim anything that merits a "bah!" in any event. How can we proclaim we share a life-changing message we ourselves heard when we don't show much change in our lives?

This may not have been a good article to read the night before Sunday morning worship, where a goodly percentage of the people I'm supposed to talk to will have treated Sunday just like any other day with soccer tournaments, dance recitals, music shows and what have you. But I've got several hours to get over it, at least.