Hope in a Culture of Disillusionment

By Jessica Greer

In September 2018, the Senate became the stage for a modern political soap opera performed before millions of American viewers.

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh wept his way through high school diaries and childhood memories to prove his innocence against an accusation of sexual misconduct leveled by Christine Blasey Ford – who tearfully recounted her alleged rape in high school by Kavanaugh in the early 1980s.

CSPAN coverage morphed into a quasi-Lifetime Original movie that was embarrassing and democratically disturbing, as an already divided America soaked up whichever side of the emotional narrative best fit with their presuppositions of the world. Any vestige of truth, fairness, or justice died as the opponents were offered up to a bloodthirsty court of public opinion in a spectacle worthy of the Roman Colosseum.

In a recurring wave of mob mentality, the so-called “outrage culture” demanded that Kavanaugh be held accountable and the #believewomen campaign (a branch of the #metoomovement) waved its flag of cancel-culture.

Social media has given birth to cancel-culture, a form of democratized Internet that gives power to consumers and the public to chase down anyone in the current crosshairs – from predators like Harvey Weinstein to black celebrities that support Donald Trump like Kanye West.

The spectrum of perceived offenses does not allow for actual democratic principles like due process, trial by jury, or innocence until proven guilty. It is built instead on the arbitrary quicksand of relativism, thus throwing hard evidence and truth out the window.

While boycotting is a long-standing American resource by which citizens may collectively disrupt and strongarm businesses into submitting to the consumer, cancel-culture is an attack of group condemnation launched from a position of assumed moral superiority that more closely resembles the Salem Witch Trials of the seventeenth century.

Cancel-culture is a reactionary practice that most often lashes out at high profile personalities that fall into a political or moral category unaccepted by the popular culture. Whether it is Scarlett Johannsen’s commercial for an Israeli company thought to support the occupation of Palestine, or comedian Kevin Hart’s old tweet that offended the LGBT community – an infinite amount of social faux pas and alleged crimes exist that must be brought out for public lynching.

Twitter and other social media give to the masses a perfect platform for immediate retaliation that is so much more satisfying than waiting for citizens to vote in local elections. The Internet has turned our postmodernist culture very quickly into the Era of Post-Truth. How much sweeter is the indulgence of personal expression as we launch the narrative of our own version of the truth, no matter how subjective or self-absorbed!

Terms like “fake news,” “my truth,” and even identity politics have become so commonplace that to engage in branding ourselves based on these concepts has become a social sport.

We are so oblivious to the infection of postmodernism that we can no longer discern what is normal.

In 1882 one of the postmodern heroes of philosophy, Fredrich Nietzsche, made the famous statement, “God is dead.” Naturally Nietzsche, as a product of the Enlightenment, was speaking figuratively about Western Civilization and what he perceived as the end of reliance on an absolute moral authority based on the Bible or anything divine.

He proposed a theory of Perspectivism, claiming that morality was made up of narratives and points of view, claiming that none were legitimate, none had been canonized, nor could any of them hold the center together. Everything was based on whatever rationale humans would continue to think up; therefore, God had been dethroned and replaced by an infinite number of moral codes all warring against each other for dominion.

The observation had profound impact, ironically contributing to Neo-Marxism, disillusionment, and the Post-Truth era with which we currently grapple.

Consider the role of the “my truth” movement and its roots in moral relativism as a basis for forming our identities. Now follow the logical trail of bread crumbs into a deep, dark abyss where our identity is increasingly defined by our perceived struggles.

Scrolling through social media should clue any one of us in to the onslaught of branding based on identity politics – which is founded on a self-absorbed obsession with all the wrongs and trials we feel we have experienced. Some of these come directly as a result of being a living, breathing person living in an imperfect world, while other tragic identifiers may be based on a race or gender which fell victim to historical narratives as cultures collided in the discovery of the New World by the Europeans.

Whatever our plight, it plays a key role in shaping our view of the meaning of our lives or the lack thereof as people publish entire social media accounts dedicated to the exploitation of their victimhood (a.k.a., sainthood).

Until the legal establishment of time zones in the U.S. in 1918, most states operated on sun time, each setting their clocks according to their own calculations. When it was noon in Chicago, it was 11:50 a.m. in St. Louis and 12:18 p.m. in Detroit. While the differences were slight, they were enough to cause confusion and potential collision. Railroad managers had to track more than 50 different hours, since any miscalculation could cause two massive trains on the same track to plow into one another.

On the surface, America has reformed itself into a prosperous, progressive society; yet the differences created by moral relativism bring an atmosphere of disorder that disrupts justice, equality, and truth.

“My truth” in place of absolute truth has produced such cultural confusions as gender fluidity, abortion, conspiracy theories, and intense political division. The rejection of personal responsibility in place of blaming has created a justification for our collective sin and poured a sense of hopelessness over us.

Currently there is a rise in white nationalism, the ongoing persecution of Bible-believing Christians that do not subscribe to a Pete Buttigieg false doctrine, racial tensions, neo-Marxism, and a marked resentment for one another based on the lowest common denominators that label us.

“My truth” has turned us against one another because it has become a disdainful quest to glorify “my struggle” over all others.

Perhaps the most notorious example of a disillusioned individual engulfing himself in his own struggle was Adolf Hitler, who in 1927 published his autobiographical manifesto, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). Hitler had the demonically inspired ability to infect an entire nation with his sense of disillusionment, to the point that the most perplexing of evil atrocities became an accepted hegemony in a modern culture. This tragedy was yet another product of postmodernism which, having declared that God is dead, leaves humans to replace God’s divine moral code with reactionary dystopian beliefs.

What results is a culture trapped in disillusionment, sucking on the gall that Jesus rejected on the cross.

In Mark 15:23, we read that as Jesus hangs on the cross, He is offered wine mixed with gall (a bitter potential poison) as an escape from the excruciating pain He suffers sin His state of underserved torture. Jesus rejects it. But this culture gladly embraces it.

As much as the mainstream wave of progressives loves to gloat in their ideas for hope and change, the reality is that these Marxist ideas are rather based on resentment and disillusionment.

Consider Greta Thunberg’s generational tantrum thrown in front of the United Nations: “How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” she rants, blaming today’s adults for the effects of industrialization on climate change, which allegedly began in the late eighteenth century. The fragility of our social construct and actual progress to attain the next frontier hang in the balance.

In Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times article, “Pull Yourself Up by Bootstraps? Go Ahead, Try It,” he defends Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s allegations that the American dream is a farce, a power move created by the white male patriarchy to keep the working man down. She claims the average American can never access economic mobility without implementing radical socialism – this from a woman who went from a bartender to a congresswoman within the same week.

The titles of articles in popular publications reflect the truth that today’s cutting-edge ideas are in fact taking us backward. In The New Yorker, “Astrology in the Age of Uncertainty.” In The Atlantic, “Why Witchcraft is on the Rise” and “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake.”

The list of dystopian pseudo-enlightenment thoughts filled with darkness continues to lead the blind followers of their own truths off a cliff and into a new dark age.

Isaiah 59: 1-2, 9-10 declares: “Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear…So justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us. We look for light, but all is darkness; for brightness, but we walk in deep shadows. Like the blind we grope along the wall, feeling our way like people without eyes.”

This is a description of the children of Israel who had turned away from God’s truth, a light that revealed justice and equality. Instead, they were left in their own darkness, forced to follow their own survival instincts which led them into a world of lawlessness and misery.

But in Isaiah 59:20 we read: “The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins,’ declares the Lord.” In spite of our sin, God’s mercy reaches into the midst of our darkness and His truth is a light that instantly and miraculously turns us from blaming others. It empowers us as we recognize ourselves as the sinner and Jesus as the Savior.

In John chapter 4 we read the story of Jesus encountering the Samaritan woman at the well. This interaction between a sinner and Jesus has been considered a paradigm for our engagement with truth.

It is remarkable how this woman, blinded by her sin, does not recognize Jesus the Messiah.

“Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.’”

In this opening statement, Jesus invites the woman to be enlightened by His truth; by the truth.

The woman makes excuse after excuse until at last Jesus deals with her sin. Instantly, she is awakened to her guilt and liberated by the salvation experience, she runs to declare to all that He is the Messiah.

The story of the Samaritan woman showcases Jesus’ most profound and mighty miracle: the miracle of a changed life experienced by every Christian believer as we come to that moment of truth, own our sin, and cry out for our Savior.

While the world has basked in a dethroning of God’s truth and moral codes over the last century, it has brought upon itself a culture of disillusionment – a dystopian world of hopelessness that draws out of us the darkest and lowest parts of our survival instincts while tossing all the blame for it on others.

It leaves us in a state of victimization, unable to see the face of God, and unable to recognize truth or to establish justice. Instead, we feel around in the dark for alternative solutions, and these do nothing but turn us against one another in order to justify our multiple versions of “my truth” versus “your truth,” bringing about a constant state of depression and warring.

Postmodernism has had a detrimental effect on our cultural psyche, leaving us dangerously hopeless and hateful – obsessed with the narrative of our struggle, when the real culprit is our sin that separates us from God and from one another.

The most empowering and liberating joy of freedom comes as we experience God’s truth piercing our hearts, revealing our sin, and redeeming us from a cycle of damnation through faith in Jesus Christ our Savior.