A Farewell Confessional

How (not) to save the world

This is a transcript of The Hinterlands podcast. The audio version can be found here.

Well hello there,

Abram Hagstrom here. Just me today. I hope you enjoyed that little intro with music by The XX and guest vocalist Geena Petermann — a foretaste of similar inclusions throughout today’s episode.

This installment of the podcast will be a little different because it may well be the last installment of this podcast. I’ve decided to switch gears and take a break from casting pods — for most, if not all of 2021 — and I’m doing this in order to pursue a few personal/professional goals.

I’m gonna put the podcast in what’s called Archive mode, which means that as long as I continue to pay a small monthly fee, listeners will continue to have normal access to all episodes. It also means that I can pick up where I left off — if circumstances ever allow for that.

As some of you will know, my wife and I are expecting baby #5 — our second daughter — who’s due in February. So with another little one coming down the pike, I wanna loosen up my schedule in order to be more present with the fam and to be more available to help as needed.

I also hope to reclaim some of that time to focus on writing, which has been an ongoing interest for me since my teenage years. Actually, in a way, both writing and podcasting scratch the same itch for me. They both give me an opportunity to try to explain things that seem worth trying to explain.

For some reason — whether from a desire to please my dad, or the hubris laid on our species through the consumption of a certain fruit, or the drive for meaning through social significance — I am someone who gravitates toward exploration and explanation. That’s just who I am, and if you’re a regular listener, you know that by now.

If you are a regular listener, thanks for going on this journey with me. I first started thinking about doing a podcast back in 2016 when we were living in a two-bedroom apartment and I was selling windows for a living. So, in a way, having published episodes almost twice a month for the past year represents the accomplishment of a small goal in my life.

I recently looked back over the cover art for some initial podcast concepts I developed. I’ll add those images to the transcript in case you’re curious what The Hinterlands might have been before it became The Hinterlands.

Initial Concepts

Let me clarify something for those who may be thinking, “How much time are you really gonna recoup by not doing the podcast? Maybe a few hours a month, tops?” This is a totally fair question from a listener’s point of view. And if I were smarter and faster and more eloquent than I am, maybe that’s all it would take: I would sit down with a guest, record a coherent, helpful, listener-friendly conversation on the first take every time, and hit the “upload” button. But that’s not how it works for me.

Each episode that makes it to completion (and there have been many that have not) has required however many days or weeks or months of familiarizing myself with the topic, hours of preparation for the interview, finding a suitable guest, carving out a quiet time and place to record, and very often, several days-worth of editing — removing mouth noises, verbal missteps, conversational dead-ends, and generally trying to make my guest and myself sound as polished as possible.

Typical editorial cuts

Self-Conscious Scruples

But why do I bother? This isn’t my job. Why do any of us bother? I can tell myself that I do it because the truth is important, that my perfectionism is a form of loving my neighbor, really, by producing the kind of conversations that I would want to listen to if I were on the receiving end. And there would be a measure of truth in that. But it’s not the whole truth.

The rest of the truth is that I’m trying to shore up some image of myself. From the production standpoint, each episode offers an opportunity to look like the smart guy, the brave guy, the one willing to push the envelope and say the hard truths — and then in post, to clear away the chaff like an Instagram filter, so that it all comes out sounding smoother than it actually was.

Now, to be clear, this is par for the course in the world of podcasting, just as it is in the world of writing: you edit precisely because your first draft can almost always be improved upon, and because you want to give your readers or listeners the clearest version you can of what you’re trying to say.

But there’s something about my own self-conscious preening that rubs me the wrong way. And yet even this seemingly virtuous scruple is probably a picture of being hamstrung by my own judgement of others. In other words, in having condemned this same affirmation-needy quality in other people, I may have made it impossible for myself to engage in similar behaviors with a clear conscience.

This means that each time I take my foot out of my mouth in post — when I’m editing — I’m subtly aware of serving personal appearances as well as ensuring a high-quality listening experience. Frankly, the two are inseparable from one another: if the show is clear and worthwhile for listeners, it’ll cast me in a positive light whether it took a lot of time and energy or a little.

On Treasure and Worship

But for me, it takes a lot of both. The more time and energy we give something, the more it begs the question of worship, and opportunity costs, and sacrifice. This is what Jesus was telling us in saying that where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also. And so, I’ve just been feeling that my heart is in the wrong place.

Which this raises two questions for me: #1, do I really want to manage my heart in a way that scatters it out to the general public? And #2, is this project justified in the amount of time it takes me away from other things, especially my family?

For me, for now, the answer to both questions is “No.” And this clarity gives me the opportunity to reverse the sacrifice, which means setting the podcast aside, and with it, the paltry self-aggrandizement and one avenue of pursing the social accolade. Again, I hear Jesus’s words in my head — laying bare the thinly veiled motives of his listeners’ hearts — when He said: “… you gladly receive honor from one another, but you don’t care about the honor that comes from the only true God.”

To paraphrase, what he’s saying is, “It’s no mystery that you have no interest in God — because you have each become gods to one another! — and so it’s for each other that you perform your acts of worship, even though you refuse to call it what it really is.”

In any case, as I told a friend a while back, when it comes to your money, if you want to know if the tail is wagging the dog — in other words, if you control your money or your money controls you — giving it away and getting nothing in return is how to find out. And as another friend told me many years ago: one of the reasons God gives us things is so that we’ll have something to give back to Him. (Thanks, Tim.)

In that same spirit, I get to lay this little hobby at His feet — even, as the very act of explaining myself here demonstrates — I can hardly do so without laying it at your feet as well: hoping, on the one hand, that you’ll think well of me, and on the other, that if you’re someone who happens to need a little nudge to do something similar in your own life, maybe you’ll find some encouragement in my example.

The Trouble with Examples

This is a big part of why I’ve tried to stand before you — naked, so to speak — over the last year: as when I talked about my outright deception of a salesman, or having enjoyed the emptiness of pornography, or falling for someone other than my wife. My assumption is, if I’m this way, others can’t be so different, even if our desire for social acceptance scares us into posturing and pretending for one another in order to avert ridicule and rejection.

So I’ve tried to show that it’s okay to admit to what we really are. And I’ve tried to do that by embodying the message as much as I’ve tried to explain it. Because talk is cheap, right? Better to set an example than to preach.

But here’s the rub: I was trying to “be the change I wanted to see in the world,” as Mr. Gandhi put it so memorably, only to find that… if I even begin to embody that change, I suddenly find myself using that as grounds to think that I’m somehow better than others. And what else could I conclude, really? The seeds that grow the rotten fruit are in the would-be solution: “There’s something wrong with the world… it needs to be changed… you can be that change… YOU are the solution the world needs!”

Now obviously this narcissistic interpretation of Mr. Gandhi’s sage advice is not the only possible outcome of trying to put it into practice. But it’s not hard to see why it’s a likely outcome. And even if I only speak for myself, it has definitely been my outcome: a superiority complex that has led me to talk and act in ways that makes others feel judged, criticized, conditionally acceptable. Which means that in my very efforts to “be the change I wanted to see in the world” — I have been perpetuating the problem rather than becoming whatever change the world actually needs.

Saviors Don’t Judge

I’m not sure if what I just said will even register on your revelation Richter Scale, but for me, it has been a sizable seismic event. What I’m finally coming to see in all of this is that, if you set out to save the world, you must first judge what it needs to be saved from. And in judging the world, instead of becoming its savior, you become its accuser.

As I’ve thought about this catch-22 of sorts, I’ve begun to think that it has something to do with why Jesus went to the cross. I mean, when you think about it: he would have had every right to judge us, but instead he let us judge him. And in condemning him to death, we were unwittingly pronouncing judgement on ourselves. Instead of telling us what our problem was, as every two-bit philosopher and politician and podcaster has done, He gave his very life to let us prove it to ourselves.

He didn’t rail against his accusers. He didn’t condemn the world that condemned him. But without words he was saying, “If I give myself to you, you will act out the wisdom of your nature.” And if our actions don’t speak loudly enough to tell us who we are, we are deaf in a way that words will never reach.

I think our temptation here may be to hold ourselves apart: to imagine that we wouldn’t have crucified him, or that if we had been there personally, we would’ve defended him. But that’s exactly what Peter said. And we know how that turned out.

But still, we may want to insist that we’re not like that, that the message of the cross doesn’t apply to us in that way. And to those who said such things, Jesus simply said, “Right, the healthy don’t need a doctor. But I came for the sick. I have nothing to offer the righteous. Only sinners can receive it.” I can almost hear him saying, “Since you’re so healthy — since your vision is so clear — why don’t you just go with that? Go ahead and go be the change the world needs. Let me know how it works out.”

He knows, at the deepest level, what we are. And the amazing thing is that so far from holding that against us, he actually prayed for the very people who crucified him. He knows that we’re confused; that our understanding is darkened; that we are cursed with an implicit faith in our own assessment of what is good and what is evil, and that the root of our assessments is something like the fear of vulnerability and insignificance hiding beneath a shield of self-protection and self-sufficiency.

Knowing Good & Evil

Anyway, I say all that because I’m beginning to see how my aforementioned failure to be the change the world needs is a clue to something much much bigger. My doomed attempt is a microcosm of a phenomenon that is intrinsic to human nature, and therefore colors every person and culture throughout all of human history.

As far as I can tell, it all boils down to this: we are born with the belief that we know what’s best — both for ourselves and for the world. And as we grow up, whatever motley set of convictions we receive from others or develop for ourselves, can hardly help but build upon and reinforce this foundation — because all moral conditioning conveys the message “Do this, not that” with the implied rationale, “Because this is right and that’s wrong. This is good and that’s evil.”

This is the pattern at the core of every philosophy, irrespective of their differing directives. As I’ve already alluded to, this patterns calls to mind a story that predates philosophy itself. The story of the first two of our kind, acting out this primal pattern in what is arguably the most innocent, most natural way imaginable: by eating… a piece of fruit.

So let me ask you: what are the chances that an ancient story about a snake and a tree could have accurately anticipated the linchpin of all subsequent human philosophy — not to mention all of human history? And remember, it’s not as if the critical element is represented by some sort of symbol that could be interpreted according to the whim of the reader. The author spells it out: the fruit in question is that of the knowledge of good and evil.

And just to be clear, it’s not as if we were somehow transformed by eating the fruit. We ate the fruit because of what we already were. And only when we had decided to shoulder the burden of self-determination and self-protection, did we perceive our nakedness as vulnerability. What changed wasn’t what we were, but how we saw our situation. Again, it wasn’t a magical fruit that cursed the human race. It was simply the object appointed to facilitate an unequivocal judgement-call: trust God or not.

That is the question. It was the question then — and amazingly — it’s still the question today. And for the most part, we’re still answering it just as they did — with implicit confidence in ourselves and none in God.

It’s on display on our faces and in our hearts whenever we don’t get what we want. It’s the central theme in the story of Job, a guy who was bitterly tested when everything he loved was ripped out of his life. We see it in the contrast of the child who finds a way to be grateful, and the child who throws a tantrum. It’s the basis of Law, and we see the wisdom of the way we’re using it in the size of our prison population. And it’s precisely what’s at issue in the story of Abraham and Issac: Abraham trusted God rather than himself, and because he trusted God, he didn’t attempt to control his own destiny.

Trust or Control, Pick One

The musical intro on this episode was from a project I worked on a few years ago. It involved narrating select chapters of the Bible and pairing them with instrumental music. Hebrews 11 was one of the chapters that I narrated personally, and I’d like to play it for you now because it lays out a kind of historical panoply of those among the Jewish people who demonstrated this kind of yielding — yet fearless — trust in God. The music is by a group called Ratatat.

[Hebrews 11]

In our case, by contrast, our so-called “trust in God” has become both the method and the justification of every kind of control you can think of. We control our eternal destiny by checking a box called “belief.” We control our circumstance through wealth and insurance and the right neighborhoods. We control our friends and family through shame and moralizing and lies and rules — spoken and unspoken. We control our kids through fear, and we ourselves are controlled by fear. We control our fellow citizens through the legislature and the judiciary. And we control our enemies through violence. We even try to control ourselves through self-righteous guilt and religious rituals. ALL byproducts traceable to, and justified by, our great “trust in God.”

He’s the one, after all, who showed us the way, the truth, and the life, right? And now it’s on us to bring the world into conformity with the truth He has entrusted to us. That’s what being a Christian in this democratic republic is all about. You gotta vote your values — not because a democracy requires the input of its citizens — but because we have a responsibility to take this nation for the Lord!

And of course there’s not exactly anything wrong with laws and rules and shame and morals — or with helmets and seatbelts and caffeine and antidepressants — and so many of the other precautions and performance-enhancers that we take to make our lives go the way we want. However, in the hands of fearful people who don’t really trust God, these things quickly become the tools we use to impose our “god-like” will on ourselves and on the world — even though that’s not what God does, and it’s not what Jesus did.

Possessed of Control

We, on the other hand, as we try to control the world, something strange happens: as we lay hold of the scales of justice — the knowledge of good and evil — instead of becoming the lords and masters we hope to be, in relation to this knowledge, we end up becoming puppets and slaves.

In trying to possess the power of morality, and to wield it against the world, we end up being possessed by it — which shows us every day that we really don’t know how to wield it. In presuming to play god, we must become the champions of our own self-styled righteousness, with the underlying impostor syndrome and cognitive dissonance and hypocrisy that goes with it.

(By the way, if you’re interested, possibly the most poignant portrayal of this reverse possession in all of literature is the suicide of the antagonist in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. As good as the musical was, I recommend the film version with Liam Neeson.)

But you know, as tragic as this is, it’s all totally understandable, because we do sense that something is wrong with the world — that things are not the way they’re supposed to be. But (and this is a huge but), sensing that things are not the way they’re supposed to be is a far cry from knowing how they are supposed to be, much less how to achieve that or maintain it. But this is not easy to see, and probably harder to admit.

So we forge ahead in our efforts to fix the world, typically by finding some authority — be it a scientist or a rabbi or a holy book — something that will give us the moral jurisdiction needed to make people and things be the way we think they’re supposed to be. And the better we get at controlling things, the more justified we feel in pitching God into the dustbin of history. Which is exactly what we want, because — let’s be honest — in our assessment, he’s never done a very good job.

Oh sure, we’ll trust him to manage our “fire insurance,” but even there, we’ve made sure our contract is “legally binding,” so to speak — even if we’re only fooling ourselves.

Though I doubt we ever see it in this light, our drive to rule out the vicissitudes of life is driven by the desire to eliminate the ego-assaulting pain of living at the mercy of someone else. Even if that someone else is God. Especially if that someone else is God. The God who allows famine and war and birth defects. The God who allows suicide and spousal infidelity, and lets kids die in car wrecks. The God who won’t stop cancer or rape, but who will withhold the knowledge of good and evil — like some miserly control-freak obsessed with protecting his own supremacy. At least that’s what the snake said.

Outrunning Our Nature

And so, as we exercise our strength and our genius, working out our own salvation by crushing everything we call evil, we create the illusion of getting closer and closer to becoming the “self-made” men of our dreams.

Like the distance between 1 and 0, however, even though we may continually reduce the intervening space, we’ll never actually manage to arrive. Because even if we succeed someday in eliminating pain — and even death — from the human experience, doing so cannot and will not provide meaning or purpose. So that those alive at the conclusion of this chapter in human history — those who attain the gold of immortality at the end of this utopian rainbow — will be something like comfortably pickled human question marks.

Although I’m sure by that point we will have discovered how to chemically decapitate the question mark part (our felt need to know what we’re for). Even now, it’s not a stretch to suggest that we all live in a kind of pleasure-laboratory that’s running this very experiment every day, getting better and better at answering the question, how much excitement, distraction, pleasure, and stress does it take to numb the felt need to be a part of something bigger, and to settle down as complacent little islands of consumption?

It’s like we’re taking that saying, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how” and trying to do the opposite. We’re saying, “Yes, but if we eliminate the need to bear every how, we won’t need any why.” And yet, if Nietzsche was on to anything here — and I think he was — the destruction of our hows and our whys won’t be our salvation. It will be something we need to be saved from. So just as we’re already doing, we’ll continue to up our dosage and our intake and our amusement in this downward spiral of trying to keep ourselves from asking why we shouldn’t just pull the trigger.

And let me be clear: it’s not that the scientists running the experiment have anything against the human need for purpose; it’s just that it’s really not something they can offer — or at least it’s not something they can monetize without invoking religion — which, as it happens, is one of the only things prohibited by their religion. So there’s little they can do but leave that demographic to door-knockers and other religious professionals.

That said, you may have noticed a not-inconspicuous syncretism between the religionists and the hedonists. The proselytizing department of the pleasure-scientists — like the salesforce behind cranberries in the juice market — are making major inroads with those who peddle purpose. So much so, in fact, that it remains difficult to distinguish between believers and non-believers. Because however we may dress it up, we’re all still made of the same stuff, and for the most part, we’re all playing at the same game: control, pleasure, status, and self-protection.

Cake-Pan Philosophies

Now what’s so remarkable about all of this — especially for Christians — is how much it’s at odds with the example and the explicit teaching of Jesus — the one we say we’re following. Because whereas the Jesus of the gospels was as mystical as the magi, we’ve made him out to be as practical as a politician; even though Jesus, in executing his office as the savior of humanity, didn’t use our tactics of control and force. He didn’t use law, he didn’t use coercion, and he didn’t use condemnation.

So why is it that these seem to be our go-to methods? I’d like to suggest that Jesus was part of a different philosophical tradition than we are. And by we I don’t just mean Christians. Because, as I’ve tried to explain, most Christians of the western world are of a piece, philosophically, with non-believers in general.

I’m coming to see that we humans relate to our knowledge of good and evil in two very divergent ways: either with confidence or with doubt, with a sense of certainty or a sense of uncertainty about what we think we know. It seems to me that most of us overlook this distinction and land on the same side of it regardless of what we do or don’t believe about God or Jesus or religion.

My guess as to why this is, is that our both our creeds and our non-creeds stem from this common impulse that is so much a part of who we are, and so morally gratifying and existentially reassuring to yield to, that however we may brand our particular version of it, 9 times out of 10, the question of the certainty of our rightness goes entirely unaddressed. It gets baked into the proverbial equation without our even noticing.

To build on the metaphor of baking, this issue is so ingrained in our ethical instincts that it’s like the standard-issue cake pan in which we’ve all baked our creedal confections — and we’re all so focused on our cake’s distinctive flavor and texture and color that we become blind to their fundamental similarity.

I say this is the case 9 times in 10 because there seem to be those within and between and beyond the various traditions that do take stock of the cake pan — that is, those who acknowledge that just because we think we know doesn’t mean we do, and — going further — that even on the assumption that we’re right about some particularity, that doesn’t mean that we have the wisdom or the skill or the holiness to implement what we’re right about without causing adverse side effects as we do.

Two Divergent Paths

Now, lest you take me to be straining at gnats here, or making a mountain out of a molehill, let me take a moment to sketch out the camel and give this little mound of musings a sense of scale. Because the differences between these two paths are, as the demon called himself, legion: for they are many.

If, on the one hand, we begin with implicit trust in our own moral vision, what follows is judgement of the world, legalism, moralizing, interpersonal coercion, emotional manipulation, jockeying for position, making demands, the exercise of force, domination, superiority, anger, scorn, the inclination to harm, and ultimately, murder. Sound familiar?

It makes me think of a line from James 1, where it says, “… the anger of man does not bring about the righteousness of God.” With that in mind, I’d like to pause again and play a recording of that chapter, narrated by a little girl named Sarah, and set to music by a group called The Album Leaf. After the recording, I’ll pick up where we left off.

[James 1]

If, on the other hand, instead of assuming that we have the highest truth, we hold onto the admission of our own uncertainty, what follows is an awareness of our inability to see the bigger picture, a felt need for contemplative consideration of circumstances, acceptance of ourselves and others, humility, confidence in the benevolence of the universe or faith the goodness of God, a deferential disposition, patience, forgiveness, and ultimately, not murder, but self-sacrifice.

In light of the stark contrast between these two modes of existence, it goes without saying that Jesus was in the latter camp, right? But just as the political authorities of his day had no use for him, and just as his devotees wanted to make him the political authority, we tend to take him up as a moral authority in order to see him as having any modern relevance. And of course we would because, in a big way, dualistic morality is the language of our day, and if any given input doesn’t conform to this predetermined pattern, in the words of Jesus, we simply “don’t have ears to hear it.”

(A little side note here: I would imagine that this kind of imperceptible but ubiquitous shibboleth is a kind of holy grail among ideology engineers: because as long as it remains installed in the minds of the populace, it functions as a filter, restricting certain conceptual possibilities without anyone noticing that the filter is even there. Even better, if anyone does happen to notice it and to question it, most people won’t even understand the relevance of the question. And this very lack of comprehension means that its conceptual stranglehold will continue to operate unnoticed in the shadows of our shared oblivion.)

The Kingdom of God

But anyway, getting back to Jesus. I think of the letter to the Philippians, which describes him as one who, “…did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped…” in contradistinction to the human pattern from the very beginning. And even though Jesus did comment — and commented authoritatively — on questions of morality, his teaching was also riddled with something he called “the kingdom of heaven” or, in other places, “the kingdom of God.”

There’s a section in Luke 9 where he speaks to many of the things we’ve touched on so far. So let me quote a selection of his comments from verses 23 through 27. He says, “If anyone wants to come after Me (if you wanna follow me), he must deny himself and take up his cross daily. (Crosses are for dying on, remember). For whoever wants to save his life (i.e. control his circumstance and his destiny) will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it…” And then he says, “But I tell you truthfully, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”

Is he saying that those guys were going to see heaven before they died? Or could this “seeing the kingdom of God” be what happens when we realize that because the King is in control, we don’t have to be? In other words, could Jesus be addressing the very thing that led us to eat the fruit in the Garden?

Death In The Garden

If you know the story, you’ll recall that God said to Adam and Eve, “In the day that you eat the fruit of [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil], you will surely die.” (Genesis 2:17) But as we read on, we see that Adam and Eve did not die — at least not in a way that looks like death to us. They went on to settle down and have kids and figure out how to survive, just like we all do.

(Side note: If you’re someone who thinks that people just made up the stuff in the Bible higgledy-piggledy, it’s remarkable that this kind of apparent miscalculation on God’s part was left in the text. It makes God look both ignorant and given to idle threats. Not exactly the God-like attributes one would expect from unbridled fabrication.)

As I’ve been trying to draw out, the story of the Garden shows that when we turn from God to ourselves, we become obsessed with good and evil, and with trying to show that we are on the side of the good. In this light, it’s not literary happenstance that Adam and Eve gave birth to Cain and Abel.

But if we step back and take God at his word for a moment when he said they would surely die, we have to ask: If that’s what “death” looked like for them, is it possible that we’re all just living out that very same death? And if so, then we may want to consider the possibility that whenever we act in that same spirit of self-reliance and self-protection, we’re preserving the tradition they began: the tradition of living in death.

Born(e) By The Wind

In John 3, Jesus gives us another hint about the relationship between birth and death and the kingdom of God. He’s talking to a religious leader of the Jewish people, a man named Nicodemus, and he says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

I like to think of the “truly, truly” phrase as their equivalent of “Dude, I’m telling you…” Naturally, old Nico is confused, and he’s like, “Man, can’t nobody climb back in he mama and come out agin!” And Jesus was like, “I ain’t said nothin bout no mama. I be talkin’ bout the Spirit, brah.”

You can go read their interaction for yourself, but Jesus essentially tells him, if you, dear listener, have ears to hear it, “Men are born blind to the Great Tao, the abiding sovereignty of God. They can’t see spiritual things without spiritual eyes; and just as physical sight comes with physical birth, the same goes for spiritual sight.”

And then he hits Nicodemus with a metaphor that is as beautiful as it is mysterious, and about as antithetical to our natural control-bound anxiety as can be. He says, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

I don’t know about you, but I think of the apostle Paul in this connection. He was practically an archetype of taking our inborn philosophy to its natural conclusion. In this sense, he was just like Javert, the antagonist in Les Miserables: both men insisted on salvation by the law (the law of the French government in the case of Javert; Jewish religious law in the case of Saul who became Paul). But in both cases, the law led to the man’s undoing.

In Paul’s case, we actually have a physical symbol of the birth of his spiritual sight. And if you know his story, after this change, self-protection was the last thing on his mind: he really became the poster-child for blowing about like the wind. But — and I want to stress this point — this kind of freedom is only possible for those who are so done trying to control their circumstance that they’re literally ready to die.

Mr. Fight Club

I think it was this attitude that made Tyler Durden so captivating in the movie Fight Club. Durden, as you may recall, is the consummate deconstructionist, relentlessly eviscerating the ills of modern civilization, refusing to take the bait, refusing to be defined by a system of shared lies, refusing to be caged by anything other than his own whim. There’s so much that seems right about his critique of our shallow, performative lives — but to what end?

To save the stupid world, of course! Or at least to save himself. He’s right, and everyone else is a dumb sheep. Durden is the archetypal antihero, waging his holy war against the bloated carcass of western consumerism. But he tears down the edifice of materialism, only to set up the ramshackle hovel of hedonism in its place.

Durden is a self-negating cinematic sham: a nihilist possessed of the moral duty to fight for humanity’s freedom. Freedom to do what? The freedom to destroy itself. But not in the slow, insipid, conformist way in which everyone is already busily engaged (and to which Durden’s entire philosophy was little more than a parasitic reaction) — but in the proper mode of self-destruction known only to the enlightened legalist with the balls to proclaim the final gospel: that nothing really matters after all.

But setting aside the contradictions, and the fact that as a Hollywood hit the film ended up satirizing itself along with everything else — feeding the very hand it meant to bite (or, more likely, just being absorbed by the “all-singing, all-dancing” and all-devouring emptiness of consumerism) — setting all that aside, we love Fight Club because it touches on an important truth about the value of life and the meaning of mortality.

It’s like a meme I once saw that said, “Find what you love and let it kill you.” It’s a jarring thought, but it’s also a thought that looks reality square in the face: the reality that since we’re going to live and die for something, we’d better get busy deciding which object or person or mission most deserves the one life we each have to give. As Tyler Durden put it, “This is your life and it’s ending one moment at a time.”

Another Form of Life

If we let it, the inevitability of our death can put our self-protection in perspective. Do we really want to safeguard our every freckle just to hit the casket with a pristine set of wrinkles? I think Jesus was speaking to this same concern when he said, “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”

And when Jesus talks about the kingdom of heaven, it’s as if he’s saying, “Guys, if you want to follow me, you have to learn to see what I see. It’s a reality nestled into the fibers of this world but hidden by confusion that causes pain and pain that causes more confusion. It’s a story big enough to deserve your life and weighty enough to redeem your death. It’s something so precious that those who find it happily give up everything else in order to keep it. Have you seen it?

It’s all around us. When you do see it, it’ll set you free, and the more you see it, the more free you’ll be. Only then can you really follow me. Otherwise, you’ll turn back when I go forward. You’ll lash out when I say ‘peace.’ And you’ll condemn when I accept. Because the kingdom is a place of blessing for the righteous and the unrighteous.

It’s a place where good and evil are allowed to co-exist, and where they will ultimately be separated, but not by you. It’s a place where the smallest things turn out to be the biggest, and the biggest things turn out to be mostly hot air. It’s the mysterious domain of mysterious people who really believe that the King is on this throne. And because they believe that He can work all things together for good, there’s no anxious forcing of their own agenda. They know how to let life take its course.

Can you see it? It’s been here all along. But smart people can’t see it because their trust is in themselves. The rich and powerful can’t see it because their trust is in their power. But little kids can see it. And when you see it, you’ll realize that you can let go. You can drop the heavy yoke of moralizing and take your hands off other people’s throats. Not only that — you’ll realize that you can relax your grip on your own throat as well.”

This is the mindset that comes from seeing what Job and Joseph and Jesus saw: that nothing is wasted because God can take even what was intended for evil and use it for good. And this is such a radical departure from the mindset we’re born with that it needs to be understood as a different form of life.

This is why Jesus spoke of the need for a second birth, and why Paul encouraged us to renew our minds — so that we would be able to perceive the good and perfect will of God. As Richard Rohr has said, “The degree to which you can see the divine image in the world around you — especially where you’d rather not — shows how operative the divine image is within you.”

When Good Men Do Nothing

“Ok, fine,” you might say, “but what about evil? Should we just let it run rampant?” It’s a fair question, and in the spirit of steel-manning, here’s the strongest formulation of this view that I know of: “All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.”

At first blush, there’s something inspiring and noble about this idea. It suggests that we have a responsibility. It affirms the intention of our moral character and gives us something to do. For years, the phrase struck me as essentially unassailable and nicely aligned with the moral vision of the Bible: if you don’t want the Philistines in your back yard, you’re gonna have to take ’em out. Now, however, I recognize its essential similarity to “being the change you want to see in the world” or even to Tyler Durden.

I’m all about doing the good that we can do. But the ever-present danger in doing good is the assumption that because I think something is evil, my opposition to it is therefore good. If we persist in this mindset, we can easily justify each successive outpost in our opposition until we end up with tyranny in the name of benevolence. From a Christian point of view, this is the destiny of the law — of legislating morality — and the major plot line of the history of the Jewish people.

It’s also why Jesus reproached the religious leaders of his day for corralling people into the cattle-chute of this dead-end solution. He called them “blind guides” whose guidance caused others and themselves to fall into a pit. He said, “You have taken away the key to knowledge… You have shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.” (Luke 11, Matt 23)

Paul, too, when he had seen the error of his ways, urged believers not to try to save the world or themselves through moral rectitude, as he had tried to do. If we don’t find the humility to say with Paul, “When I want to do good, evil is right there with me,” I’m afraid this kind of self-defeating legalism will be the pattern of both religious and irreligious people for the rest of time.

Just listen and you’ll hear it everywhere: the unquestioned assumption that my way (or our way) is the right way, and “if I were in the other guy’s place I would do it right.” Why? Because I’m a better person than he is. Want proof? Just look at my resumé. I’m the change the world needs. I am salvation.

But even Jesus, when someone called him “good,” was quick to respond that “No one is good but God,” as if he recognized that even for him, seeing himself as good would be the first step on the slippery slope that leads inexorably to self-righteous evil. And this right here is the needs that pins our view of evil in its original state: our view of evil is the inescapable corollary of seeing ourselves as good. That is what we’re so loath to give up. Yet as long as we cling to it, our control tactics and our abortive attempts to fix the world will follow automatically.

My Journey, My Addiction

As I type out the final thoughts of this little rant, it’s 5AM on the first day of the new year, and I’m sitting in the passenger seat of my trusty little CRV looking out over Billings from up on the rims. I can’t tell you what all of this means for anyone else. Nor can I say how it applies to the unprecedented — if passing — success of western culture. I can only tell you what it’s meant for me.

Control is a powerful drug, and we rarely seek sobriety voluntarily. I struggle with this as much as anyone. Knowledge is my drug-of-choice, and in that sense, I’m just another cookie-cutter addict of the Information Age: seeking to control my life by knowing enough — trying to educate myself into transformation while also trying to make it seem like I’m already transformed.

But as I’ve taken on more and more knowledge, I’ve found that it’s had something like the opposite of the desired effect. Seeing myself as knowledgeable has led me, at times, to harbor a subconscious sense of superiority, which has produced both judgement of others for being “beneath me” and frustration with those same lowly others for not giving me the respect I thought I deserved.

According to Paul, this is exactly what I should have expected. He writes in 1 Corinthians 8, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The one who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know.” Just to be clear, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be as wise as serpents — politically, economically, and scientifically-speaking. I’m saying that true understanding understands its own lack of understanding, and that for all the fruitfulness of these fields, if we let it go to our heads (as we apparently like to do with fruit), then the allure of intellectual progress will entail the rot of spiritual regress.

So the lesson for me is that I can love people or judge them, but not both. Which means that if I want to love others, I can’t reserve any place for condemnation in my heart. I have to surrender my knowledge of good and evil. I have to give up the idea that what I think I know has any bearing on what’s right for other people. Maybe someday I’ll be able to rightly handle such knowledge. But if the whole history of humanity is any indication — such knowledge is too great for me.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once penned in a cold prison cell, “The knowledge of good and evil seems to be the aim of all ethical reflection. The first task of Christian ethics is to invalidate this knowledge.” Bonhoeffer understood my addiction, and maybe it’s no surprise that much of what I’m realizing has long been crystalized in that pithy prayer of addicts everywhere: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

For me, for now, sobriety means learning to walk in the understanding that, in the words of Lao Tzu, Not knowing is true knowledge, and presuming to know is a kind of disease. Or in the words of Charles Eisenstein, if I were in the totality of another’s situation, I would do exactly as he or she is doing. Such light leaves no shadows in which to conceal my high-minded pretensions to pale divinity. Which, in turn, leaves me a little freer to walk in God’s mysterious kingdom and to embrace his trusting, unassuming, childlike humility.

— —

As I said at the top, the decision to reallocate the time and creative energy that I’ve been putting into the podcast, and using it to focus on research and writing and family is part of my own ongoing journey into the Hinterlands and away from the activities of status and performance, at least for a season.

Maybe God will heal my judgmental hangups and give me a clear conscience about all the posturing. Maybe self-consciousness is simply the price of sharing one’s work and oneself with others. Maybe a change of pace will open the door to new possibilities with the podcast or with something else. Whatever the case, any of the above will suit me just fine.

If you’re a Hinterlands supporter, and if the main value you were getting from this project came in the form of the podcast, I completely understand if my change of pace means that you need to cancel or modify your monthly pledge. So please don’t feel any obligation or guilt. Just do what you need to do and all will be well.

I will continue to work and to share what I’m learning, and for the foreseeable future, that will be research notes on books and other written pieces, both of which I’ll publish on Medium. And in case you’re not familiar with my publication on that platform, there’ll be a link to it in the show notes.

You can create an account on Medium and follow me on there if you like, but — be advised — they will definitely send you gobs of suggested articles unless you opt out of those in your Account Preferences.

If you’d be so kind as to share your thoughts with me, I’m curious to know what percentage of listeners may have preferred this monologue type of presentation to the usual interview style. If it worked for you as a listener, it may turn out to be a somewhat less time-intensive way for me to periodically share select written pieces in an audio format.

I’d also appreciate it if you’re inclined to give a little push-back on any part of what I’ve just shared, philosophically, as I’m sure there are holes and other flaws that I simply can’t see.

If you’ve been a regular listener over the past year, if you’ve listened to all or most of the episodes, I’d love to hear from you about how they may have influenced the way you think, or more importantly, the way you live. That kind of encouragement is a form of support that, to me, is as meaningful as the financial kind.

And if you’d like to zoom in on any portion of what you’ve just heard, I’ll post a link to the transcript and related images in the show notes. If you thought my delivery of the above was extemporaneous, God bless your generous spirit. In truth, it took me weeks of thinking and typing with sweaty palms and sweaty armpits to dial in how to explain these observations in a way that, I hope, has been intelligible.

If you’re curious about supporting my ongoing work, you can do that at patreon.com/thehinterlands.

I’d like to leave you with one final musical arrangement. This one is Philippians chapter 4 with narration by the life-coach extraordinaire and CrossFit gorilla, Tim Saur, and music once again by Ratatat, edited and arranged by yours truly.

May the road rise up to meet you, and, as the little emblem of this project suggests, may the sun be always visible through the clouds.