The makeup of post-Christian belief
Post-Christianity builds a kingdom without the king
While attempting to move past Christianity, post-Christianity feasts upon its fruit. It attempts to keep the solace of faith while gutting it of the costs.
Individually and corporately it yearns for the justice and shalom of the kingdom, while maintaing the reign of the individual will.
Forms of atheistic humanism often preserved a number of values that were Christian in origin; but having cut off these values from their source, they were powerless to maintain them in their full strength or even in their authentic integrity. Spirit, reason, liberty, truth, brotherhood, justice: these great things, without which there is no true humanity … quickly become unreal when no longer seen as a radiation from God, when faith in the living God no longer provides their vital substance. Then they become empty forms. – Henri de Lubac
Idol stories are counterfeit gospels that can’t fulfil. That’s why collectively we are restless and have a yearning for more.
The paradoxes of post-Christianity
Post-Christianity paradoxically upholds both pleasure and performance
Radical individualism taken to its natural conclusion would create a hedonistic free-for-all world that leads to the collapse of society.
Yet, the individual is both a pleasure seeker and pressured by a competitive society which values performance. Those who let themselves go or looked down with disdain. There is a perpetual possibility for pleasure that rarely gets taken on and if, hidden for fear of consequences. The author labels this “half-hearted hedonism”.
Post-Christianity paradoxically upholds both meaninglessness and progress
”Nihilism without the abyss” –Allan Bloom
In it all, there is the thought to “make it up as you go along, take ironic delight in the truth that there is no truth; there is no home that answers to our homelessness; definitely (but light-heartedly!)” (–Richard John Neuhaus)
Ironically, in radical individualism the collective holds more power
We shift the authority from the vertical authority of God to the authority of the crowd. In a positive feedback loop we look to one another for guidance.
Post-Christianity and institutions
→ Post-Christianity corrodes institutions.
The paradoxes of post-Christianity create greater personal fragility
The individual is cross-pressured by the anxiety of falling behind in a competitive society and the celebration of the self. It is torn in the meaninglessness of it all and yet the idea that ‘somehow’ there will be a better world. It works hard for independance, yet is crushed by loneliness.
Individuals are forced to naviagte the terrain between unprecendeted freedom and the fading of those institutions and communities that gave people meaning.