Replacement Culture
“The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction needs to make sense.”
Spoken by actor Armin Mueller-Stahl in The International
Are you happy with America right now? As a proponent of a biblical worldview and the moral foundation it is built upon, I am not. Most of us are looking at our land through a political lens at this moment. We have just concluded a presidential election, but it is not quite settled until the new Congress is in place. As the months go by, the politics will fade a bit and we will begin to think about how our lives will have changed with a new government. We also will reflect back on the pre-COVID19 world and compare that life with the one we will have in the near future with a vaccine available.
What concerns me most about the election result are the reasons people had for a presidential change. For most partisans, the reasons were ideological, a fixed worldview that is about power, and a political agenda. For several million, however, it was emotional and personal. Something moved them to vote for the first time or to change their vote from the last election. They said something like, “We hate Donald Trump, we don’t care how much he accomplished, we find him immoral and odious.” Or they said, “We liked what Trump did, he has been good for the country.” Regardless, millions more voted for the first time and I’m wondering how rational their vote was.
This was an irrational act taken by a majority of voters. So irrational that many conservatives can’t believe it happened. As one commentator said, “…but it should be the other way around. It’s so irrational they should believe it happened. Humanity is not a rational race. It never was, and there’s no reason to think it ever will be. Feelings don’t care about your facts. Humans see situations and make moral decisions about them and fill in the reasoning later.” [1]
Eve’s desire for the attractive fruit that was pleasant to her eye caused her to take an irrational action. Adam engaged in the same foolishness. Adam and Eve’s son, Cain, after a counseling session from the Almighty Himself, still went out and killed his brother. Not a good start for the human race. It seems that humans are easily influenced by many factors, some so deeply seated in the human personality that reason alone cannot and will not control them. Right now, we live in a culture that is shaping its inhabitants’ opinions and sentiments. The sentiments it is producing is increasingly secular and separated from the biblical narrative. Just as a way of review, the biblical narrative is that man is fallen and sinful, separated from God, and is without ability to save him or herself and the society in which they live.
Save them from what you might ask? From the self-destructive tendency to serve self, to take more than they need at the expense of others, to punish and eradicate those with whom they disagree, are different from, or threaten them in any way. This includes saving themselves from the greatest problem of all, the death problem - what the bible calls, “sin and death.” The human race wants to live, they are made to live. No one under normal conditions wants to die, to not exist. People have done everything in their power to extend life, delay death, and even avoid discussion about death. We have come up with various euphemisms for it such as, passing away, transition, buying the farm, kicking the bucket, biting the big one, the big sleep - anything but the raw reality of death, skeletons, and rotting flesh. Humankind would welcome being saved from that; I would think it would be nearly unanimous. I think even our atheist friends might give a nod to this kind of saving. But you won’t hear any of this kind of talk in the impolite exclusive society of the national media.
Existing western culture is laboring under the false impression that reason and science will save them. And for the ruling class who control the flow of information in the culture, religion is pre-modern and primitive in thought. Only the uneducated, graduates of state schools and the lower classes, find any real solace in such ancient enchantments. And many of those who voted for the first time in the last election voted based upon a sentiment developed by the controlling secular narrative. What I don’t mean here is that anyone who voted for Biden was misguided or not Christian. What I am saying is that if their vote for Biden was to bring order to the chaos, calm to the storm, or peace to the conflict, they were guided by a false narrative. That desire for something more normal was developed on a foundation of irrational thought.
The point is that this is not surprising because we are irrational beings. It is just as irrational to believe that a vote for Trump was any more rational. He fueled the fire and resentment in the American public concerning the ruling elite, the press, and claimed they all were fake, crooked, and corrupt. Yes, they were corrupt. Yes, they were fake at times. So was him going back to the birther claim against Obama, the size of his hands, and his inaugural crowd. He discredited himself in ways that were self-destructive. Here is my point: if you don’t like the culture the way it is, then replace it. And we should have started about thirty years ago. How does one go about such a gigantic task?
Building a Replacement Culture
How is it done? Naturally, we would simply observe how the philosophical, theological, and politically left shaped the culture and replace it with a more biblical approach. The most fundamental means was the university. What rose out of the ferment of the 1960’s sexual revolution and the antiwar movement was a concept of freedom that had been twisted and malformed by critical theory. Critical theory basically questioned the basis of all forms of knowledge. Its primary tool was Hegel’s dialectic of Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis. You take for example as a thesis that the story of Adam and Eve is true. The Antithesis is that it’s not true. The dialectic is to argue, go back and forth, about it until you reach a new or more advanced truth called Synthesis.
Something like the Adam and Eve narrative is instructive and helpful and lives in all of us but is not real history. This dialectic continues through time to advance a more refined and elevated truth gradually discovered generation after generation. This critical theory applies to any belief system, particularly moral truth, and the beliefs that undergird institutions such as family, church, government, business, industry, and of course, the academy.
The first step then is to form alternative educational systems that compete with the university. The same goes for Big Tech, who are now more powerful than the government and who control the flow of information. They censor based upon their largely anti-Christian secular worldviews and how that is reflected in politics. They bury stories that they don’t agree with and protect their favorites. They play up what they are for and destroy what is contrary to their wishes. It is dishonest and it will eventually kill democracy and divide the country even more. Because when no one knows who to trust and what is true eludes us, anarchy will reign. As one friend told me, “We will go from ‘I’m right and you're wrong’ to ‘I’m right and you’re evil.’”
Every major institution and force in the culture will need to be infiltrated and transformed, or simply replaced. I believe that many of the major media companies will be passé in four years. CNN, MSNBC, FOX, and even the major networks will be dissolved, absorbed, or radically changed because they have been discredited. The alternative media as represented by podcasts, and new media companies that are more open and honest will rise and replace them. I would recommend the church to flood the zone with bright and young journalists who will return to actual journalism. Do the work of reporting, get two sources before reporting the news, and stop giving an opinion. Journalists are supposed to be the referee, not the participant.
The same strategy goes for films, books, magazines, public schools, private education, and the sports industry in particular. They need to be cleansed of their political bias. This is about fairness, truth, and integrity - without it we are lost.
I write about this because it all has such a powerful influence in how we think, even what we feel. The less we read the Bible and believe it, the more we are controlled by the culture. We are losing the battle right now. People are less educated in the most important ways; we are vulnerable to what we are told. Just think about the confusion about COVID19. The effectiveness of lockdowns, who is safe and who isn’t. What about wearing a mask? Every day I hear conflicting reports from the CDC and WHO, or this study and that study. Who will get the vaccine and when? Will it be done with fairness? Will it be political? Who can you trust? The answer is God alone. But it would help if we could trust our leaders and what they say.
My replacement document is beside me on my desk. It is tattered a bit and really marked up. It is a New Living Translation of the Bible. It is the document I really trust, and I believe what I read in it.
“The grass withers and the flowers fade,
But the word of our God stands forever.”
Isaiah 40:8
[1] Andrew Klavan Transcript, Andrew Klavan Podcast, November 29, 2020
