How We Got What We Have
In 410, when Saint Augustine received news that his beloved Rome had fallen to the barbarians, he was shaken and went into a period of mourning. Yet almost immediately he was constrained to construct a philosophical and theological ark, in his case what we call orthodoxy, wherein his church could survive the days ahead. Augustine was a great scholar and professor of rhetoric, eventually ascending to the University of Milan in Italy. It was there he came under the influence of the great Bishop Ambrose. It was under Ambrose’s influence that he began to study the scriptures , his conversion took place in a garden in Milan. As he sat in the garden he heard the sing-song sounds of a child in a nearby home. “Take it and read it, take it and read it” So, he opened his copy of the Gospels to Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and read:
“Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrels or rivalries, rather, arm yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ, Spend no more thought on nature or nature’s appetites.”
Romans 13:13
Augustine became disillusioned calling his position at the university the “Chair of Lies.” Very much like our present conditions, he found himself as revealed in his Confessions, that he was addicted to luxury, violence, and self-indulgence. Augustine was particularly addicted to sexual pleasure which he concluded offered a fraudulent ecstasy - joys that expire when the neon lights go out. He returned to North Africa to pursue a new career and he planned a private monastic life with a few close friends. But his gifts were too great, his reputation too big, and the need for his leadership too precious for a cloistered life. He went to Hippo because they already had a bishop, but the church snapped him up, made him a priest, and then bishop. He was forty-three years old when he became a bishop.
Now we return to 410 when Rome fell. This is when he went to work on his massive theological masterpiece, The City of God. It was set against the City of Man. The City of Man, Rome, the city that he loved was flawed and it fell. The City of God, however, would never fail or fall. This work occupied him for seventeen years. It was a great treatise on what man owed to God and what to Caesar. He wrote,
“The Heavenly City outshines Rome, beyond comparison. There, instead of victory, is truth; instead of high rank, holiness; instead of peace, felicity [state of well-being] instead of life, eternity…”
The City of God was written to counteract the accusation among disappointed Romans in 410 and afterward that Christians and their theology of non-violence had been responsible for the fall of the country. Rome had ruled for 1000 years and now, their walls had been breached and their once great kingdom had been broken up. The Mediterranean Sea was no longer a Roman Pond. Many Romans blamed the abandoning of the traditional gods and goddesses. Augustine answered with an alternative worldview and also gave Christians a vision for the future, as said before, an ark to get the church through an uncertain period. Augustine called his Chair of Rhetoric a Chair of Lies. It is demonstratively true that we now live in an empire of lies. How do we get through?
The Shift and Decline of Moral Authority
Moral authority is what an African-American has in any discussion with a white regarding race. The poetic truth erases the distinction between fact and narrative. A poetic truth then, is something that might as well be true for the sake of narrative coherence, whether or not it is ultimately true to the facts. For example, the facts say that 19 black people were shot by a white cop in 2020. Poetic truth is that black men are being hunted by white cops. It may be true that racist cops exist, but it is not true that most cops are racist. Then again, what makes a racist is unclear, and is normally defined by a black person’s personal opinion which is based on lived experience. Which, of course, is a moving target, subjective, and almost impossible to define. To my point, a black person can get away with making all kinds of statements that people from the white or oppressor race cannot make. The white oppressor is considered guilty and has no authority to speak. The best example I’ve seen lately is a young black activist with some conservative views who was debating a white ruling class elite from a popular magazine. The young black defended some very conservative views and the white ruling class progressive was helpless to debate him because of the massive white guilt that weighed him down and kept his mouth shut. He didn’t think he had the moral authority to speak, thus he kept quiet. The black man possessed a moral innocence coming from an historically oppressed race. This is normal operating procedure today. The public narrative conflates the pre-1960s racial policies with what is actually true today. So, how did we get to the poetic truth replacing historical fact or even current research?
The National Hypocrisy
The five movements birthed in the 1960s revealed a good nation’s hypocrisy. Our Declaration of Independence and Constitution was, and remains, aspirational. Our grand experiment in a nation with the people governing themselves had created the greatest society on earth but we had fallen short, and the 1960s exploded around our shortcomings. The movements below represent the pathways that solved some problems, disrupted the national calm, and divided us philosophically.
The Civil Rights Movement
The Vietnam War
The Women’s Rights Movement
The Sexual Revolution
The Environmental Movement
1968 was the year that the entire culture became aware of our hypocrisy. Shelby Steele put it this way, “Has there ever been a single year in all of American history in which the American way of life came so thoroughly under siege? It was hard for anyone to go into that year and come out the same person.”[1]
In general, each of these movements exposed a hypocrisy, an issue where America needed reform. The leaders wanted the American people, as well as the government, to say yes your grievance against America is legitimate and it deserves to be taken seriously and be resolved. The civil rights movement led the way. The problem was clear, easy to define, and the government could act as it did with the 1964 Civil Rights Act to make it illegal to discriminate based on race. The women’s rights movement, the antiwar movement, and the sexual revolution all won the day in the face of American hypocrisy.
By 1968 there was no longer legitimate support for racial oppression, sexism, and arrogance of power abroad with Vietnam. The nation was in moral crisis and the moral authority of the culture began to shift. It became more honorable to resist the rule of law than to submit to it. This led to the collapse of authority. In 1968, you questioned everything - your parents, your college, your marriage, the military draft, sexual mores, and especially your religion. Rebellion made you authentic which gave you moral authority to speak truth to power.
1960s -2021
Having lived through this period from being a young college student to a senior citizen, from being a non-Christian to a serious and seasoned saint, I wonder, what kind of ark would Augustine build now? I would say he would recommend like Archimedes, a place for us to stand. The shift in moral authority from a biblical worldview to the wide deconstruction of truth has created moral chaos. The train to destruction at first looks like Cat Stevens’ Peace Train, but ends up being moral confusion barreling toward an abyss. The church salt has lost its savor because the contemporary church can’t capitulate fast enough to avoid being cancelled by the surrounding culture.
I would not have predicted the culture could fall apart as fast as it has in the last decade. At first, political correctness was something to ridicule, it provided a good laugh. Micro aggressions on the college campus, safe zones, gender neutral bathrooms, suppression of free speech, and the harassing of and outright persecution of a conservative point of view. But the college campus has now become the general culture. Cancel culture, political correctness, suppression of speech, from the university to Big Tech, Big Industry, and Big Media. Yes, it is unworkable. Yes, there will be a backlash. No, it has never worked. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be tried for seventy to one hundred years or more. So, where is our ark when we need it?
I think it is pretty simple. It always has been as simple as reading the Bible, believing it and then doing it. I was reading yesterday about a group of Christians in India whose homes were surrounded by groups of Hindu zealots. They came with torches and threatened to burn down their homes with the families inside. The Christians response was, “Burn our homes with us in them, but we won’t stop proclaiming Christ.” Our culture right now is about revenge and cancelling those with whom we disagree, but Christ taught us something else. He died by the hand of his enemies and asked God to forgive them for they didn’t know what they were doing. And as one of my favorite pastors said recently, “Jesus died for our enemies, he is only asking us to love them.” Augustine’s ark then is ours now. We believe not in the City of Man, but the City of God. And those who reside in that City of God are those who say, “I can’t stop talking about what we have seen and heard.”
[1] Shame: How American’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country, Shelby Steele, Kindle, Chapter 6
