In one of the more meaningful and oft-quoted phrases in the Declaration of Independence it reads: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”
So, it may surprise you to learn that I don’t believe this. Oh, I absolutely defend the idea that “all men are created equal.” Without question. I just don’t believe it’s “self-evident.” After all, there are many cultures, both past and present, that have rejected this idea out of hand.
Which is to say I agree with Benjamin Franklin who argued against this terminology. His suggestion? “We hold these truths to be sacred and un-deniable…,” wording that properly argues that all men and women are created equal not because it is in any way “self-evident,” but because our Christian faith teaches us it’s so.
You see, Thomas Jefferson, its author, had been heavily influenced by certain French philosophers of the “Age of Enlightenment.” And their novel idea, which today is standard fare, is that truth is determined, not by divine revelation, but by the application of reason and science alone.
In today’s reading from John’s gospel (John 17:6-19), Jesus offers up a decidedly countercultural message that directly contradicts the whole “self-evident” mindset.
Speaking to God, he says, “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I don’t belong to the world…Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”
This is what theologians refer to as “the scandal of particularity,” the idea that God’s truth comes to us not as generalized, universal concepts determined by science and reason, but as particular (divine) truths revealed to a particular community.
To those Jesus calls “the world” (defined as life organized without God), the idea of revealed truth smacks of ecclesiastical mumbo jumbo and of a religious provincialism reeking of incense, candles, and musty old books.
In my younger days, back when I was really smart, I summarily rejected the idea of infant baptism. After all, I had no memory of my own baptism. So how could I possibly have assented to the doctrines of the faith? I mean, what was the point?
Today, being older and less smart, I’ve come to realize something I’d clearly missed back then.
I now think of infant baptism as akin to growing up in a particular family. When I was an infant, in other words, I had no conscious awareness of what my parents believed or what values they held. I hadn’t a clue. Why would I?
And yet – and this is key – I was living them out. Though I had no way of knowing intellectually or rationally what they believed, their values were shaping and forming me into who I was to become, entirely without my conscious assent.
Only later, as I gained intellectual perspective, could I begin to articulate or name what it was my parents stood for, of what it was that made our family different from other families, sometimes in significant ways.
The same principle applies to baptism. It is, after all, the entryway into the life of the church. As a kid, I remember church being different from the world outside of it. It was not like what I found at school, the playground, or in the neighborhood. It was, simply put, distinct from my everyday Monday through Saturday experience. People behaved differently. They were nicer. More gracious.
I still vividly recall one particular moment that might seem altogether ordinary, at least in church. It happened during a time of silent prayer. I observed my father leaning forward, placing his forehead on the pew in front, in deep and reverent prayer. I had never seen such intensity before, even though I lived with him every day of my life.
And it really affected me. If I hadn’t been in church that day, at that very moment, I may never have witnessed the obvious sincerity of his devotion which, looking back, offered invaluable insight into how he chose to live his life which, in turn, played a key role in informing my own.
I now realize that I was being molded and formed (discipled) by the particular beliefs and practices of the church, mostly by lived experiences I couldn’t have named if my life depended on it. And clearly they weren’t the same beliefs and practices commonly found outside the church.
In a similar vein, what Jesus is saying here is that the things of the Spirit and the values and norms of the church are not necessarily universal, much less embraced by the world around us. In fact, he says the world hates them! And yet we’re constantly told the church must defer to the “objective” or “self-evident” standards of the world.
Or, equally problematic, we are fooled into believing that the world thinks the way we do. It doesn’t.
Of course, one of the problems with the “scandal of particularity” is that the church hasn’t always lived up to its Christian mandate. The examples are, in fact, legion. And, indeed, the outside world has taken notice. Which can put us on the defensive.
But because the church is made up of fallible human beings, its failings are hardly surprising. That said, we must admit to them. We don’t always get things right. We do not always align ourselves with God’s will.
But does all this then mean the world’s “truths” are better? Are we required to throw the baby out with the bathwater? Should we crawl up into a fetal position because we have failed to live up to our Christian ideals?
And does this now require us to claim God’s truths are no longer valid because of our failure to get them right?
Years ago, I called on a church member in the Intensive Care Unit. In the waiting room, I used the phone to contact the nurses’ station in order to gain admittance.
The nurse asked me what my relationship was to the patient, and I told her I was his pastor. After I hung up, a woman in the waiting room said to me, “I’ve always wondered. What does the word ‘pastor’ mean?”
I told her it meant “shepherd.”
Typically, we associate shepherds as those who tend, or nurture, their flock. What’s less often understood is that a shepherd is also tasked with protecting the flock from its enemies.
In our age, this latter function seems especially important, at least as I see it. For the church in America today is under attack from a world we always assumed was our ally.
So how did we get here?
For one thing, Jefferson falsely assumed Christian virtues and ethical norms, common in early America, could be extracted from their source, God, and used as universal norms found naturally in the secular world.
Over time, however, as Jefferson’s Enlightenment thinking became dominant, and religion faded, more and more people decided that not only were these truths not particularly “self-evident,” but arbitrary, if not wrong altogether. Which is to say, without transcendent warrant, truth becomes whatever we decide it is. My truth is my truth, and your truth is your truth. That’s pretty much where we’re at today.
In sum, the rejection of the Christian basis for truth helped facilitate the Enlightenment’s gradual move towards a post-Christian society no longer reliant on God, which eventually produced the increasingly anti-Christian culture we are living in today.
In other words, the Enlightenment required the fuel of preexisting Christian truths to make its “self-evident” claims. Eventually, that fuel was reduced to fumes. Today, the tank is all but empty.
The church’s principle task, therefore, is to reclaim its unique place as the rightful recipient of God’s revealed truth and, of equal importance, to once again muster the courage of its convictions in both modeling and proclaiming the Christian way to a confused culture both morally and spiritually adrift.
The world awaits…