A constant refrain echoing through our current cultural discussion is a handwringing sense that nobody really knows what is true anymore. No matter the political agenda or belief system, everyone seems convinced that most other people have lost their moorings to reality and are now floating about in hopeless deception. Almost infinite data is now not just accessible but actively flung at us from all angles at all times. The age of information, we were told, would bring about new advances in human understanding because so many would be free to throw off the strict hierarchical structures of the past. We would be able to verify, independently, the information available to us and determine its validity. This is not an entirely negative development, and I have written about the many advantages of decentralized information before. But certainly it doesn't take a diligent search for us to see evidence of fraying connections to a shared understanding of reality appearing across our society. Let's discuss the loss of our maps, and our navigators. But first let's look for an illustration to that paragon of epistemological philosophy, the fictional world of Warhammer 40k.
For a science fiction world inhabited by the grim denizens of the far future, Warhammer 40k seems to be populated by a number of very real and perceptive analogs to important philosophical and religious concepts. One of the more interesting for our discussion is the existence in this fictional world of a grim force of ultimate evil: the ceaselessly changing and baleful presence of Chaos. Always ready to infect and destroy, it manifests itself as actual demons that threaten to extinguish the light of humanity. Subtle, this world is not. In order to travel between the worlds of this galaxy, humans have must traverse a literal hellscape, the Chaos dimension between worlds. To do this, they set out in massive ships guided by psykers, humans with the supernatural ability to discern the safe paths and to shield their own minds from the chaotic assault of the environment they travel. Indulge me for a moment, if you will. This is perhaps the best illustration I have come across to explain the dire need we face in modern society.
Facing the roiling foam of competing narratives, we seem to be drifting listlessly. We live in an era of epistemological chaos and overlapping contradictory realities. We need authorities, trained in how to sift realities and weather the psychic storms of uncertainty and doubt. I've long thought it strange that we continue to profess surprise at each new study showing the depths of anxious malaise we collectively suffer. If this is what the scientists can measure and the pollsters calculate, what about the deeper troubles that we cannot even name? For every crisis facing our civilization, we have now built multitudes of completely antithetical reality narratives that we demand each individual shuffle to select their own customized overlay through which to view the world. Can we not see that this responsibility is too much for the human psyche, and the soul?
We begin to see the signs everywhere. Everyone demands respect for their own chosen suite of authorities, but nobody has the mental tools anymore to demonstrate why exactly any specific authority should matter at all. We are a people without metaphysics or theology seeking to find substitutes among the purveyors of poorly understood studies and the castoff abridgments of a thousand conflicting philosophies. No kings and no priests, no establishment and no elite, but now we roam a waste of demitruths that seems to actively eat away at our logical and emotional senses. The whispered temptations of Chaos demand more and more arcane theories and exaggerated conspiracies as humans seek guides to usher them through the fear and confusion, to explain what they see. The guide we select determines both our destination and the way that we understand and explain our journey. We increasingly realize that self-guided journeys are simply express tickets to the therapist's office and the pharmacy. Choose the wrong guide and soon we perform rituals at the altars of Qanon prophets or Tiktok gender theorists. Anything seems better than the thought that perhaps no one knows the way.
Of course by now you're well aware of where I am headed with this. Like a certain science fiction universe, subtle I am not. I believe that the yawning gap in our society is a source of spiritual authority to help people discern truth. Unless we are to throw ourselves fully into personal relativism, which has suboptimal civic results. If we accept that truth exists, and is knowable, then we enter into a new world in which competing explanations and truth claims need to be evaluated. They can be described as more or less right, if we have a standard of some kind. I am a Christian because I have been convinced that Christianity provides a complete map of the sphere of reality. Wiser and more brilliant humans than me have attested to its total explanatory power. It acts as a tether allowing me to jump through many rabbit holes and come back again, philosophically orientated to a set of unshifting compass bearings. Christianity claims to connect converts to the ultimate Source of universal truth through a direct hierarchy of authority. This gives me what has become in our age almost a superpower: I know what to think. Those who have an external standard of authority to filter their thoughts find themselves able to discern, whether rationally or simply by moral instinct, truth and falsehood. It is a sense that can be honed by checking our dead reckoning and hopes against the charts.
I recognize that for some of you I have just made a series of unsupportable claims that probably sound insanely arrogant. So let me humbly ask this: if this will not be your answer to the problem of total possibility that exists in your world, what will your answer be? A good answer would be intellectually and emotionally satisfying, would be applicable universally and not just to you, would relocate authority and responsibility outside of you and give you a map that explained the world. To ask anything less of your religion is, to quote a much wiser Christian, to be far too easily pleased. And if our current moment teaches us anything, it is that all of us have a religion.
And for those who agree with me, let me remind us: Truth is one of the most important claims of our belief. We cannot fail to offer this certainty and sanity to others. Limply extending pleas to join a do-gooders club or be kind rings hollow in a world filled with decentralized networks populated by radically generous individuals. Insisting on moral demands without demonstrating moral authority and consistency is hypocritical. This is the responsibility you claim when you step into the moral landscape and opine on the behavior of others and the state of society. We had best approach this act with fear and trembling, insisting on our own submission to an external standard that we allow to correct our own errors just as much as we use it to correct others. If Christians do not demonstrate themselves to be lovers of truth at our own expense, then we reveal our own preferences and emotions to be the gods we serve. If we ourselves are sailing aimlessly picking up whatever seems good to us from the waves of chaotic thought, then we are lost. But if we truly believe that we have the map for the voyage each human faces, then we must use it courageously. I think it is a safe prediction that in this decade we will see a flourishing garden of competing spiritualities rising up to fill the massive need for human guidance and authority. Since we believe that Christianity is True, we are obligated to live like it.
Harden your mind against the inchoate void of the possible. Seek the path of truth, and weigh each turning against the charts. You might be a beacon to others, if you can stand the journey.
WGMI 😎