Carl Trueman could not have put forward a better title for his book than what he did - Strange New World. Things have changed a great deal since the turn of the millennium and the times do indeed seem to be getting stranger and stranger as the days pass. The Judeo-Christian values upon which society has been anchored have been replaced over the last 50 years or so by an anything goes mentality and morality. Sex is a free for all between any and all, men can become women and vice versa, gender is divorced from biological sex, sexual and gender norms are vanishing, and our culture seems to celebrate it all.
But for Christians these kinds of changes are - or at least should be - troublesome. Christians are - or at least they should be - feeling more and more uncomfortable in our culture. Trueman acknowledges this reality,
“For many people, the Western world in which we now live has a profoundly confusing, and often disturbing, quality to it. Things once regarded as obvious and unassailable virtues have in recent years been subject to vigorous criticism and even in some cases come to be seen by many as more akin to vices. Indeed, it can seem as if things that almost everybody believed as unquestioned orthodoxy the day before yesterday—that marriage is to be between one man and one woman, for example—are now regarded as heresies advocated only by the dangerous, lunatic fringe.”
This book was written to help Christians understand how and why things have changed so much. Trueman writes in the matter of fact way that is his style, “Welcome to this strange new world… You may not like it. But it is where you live, and therefore it is important that you try to understand it.”
In this short book, around 200 pages, Trueman sets out to trace the thinkers and cultural leaders that have brought us to our current malaise.
He begins by laying out a number of definitions important to his work - the key one being expressive individualism which is his description of the zeitgeist of our time. Put simply it is the notion that “each person has a unique core of feeling and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realized.” In other words, the highest value in our society is the individual’s ability to be whoever they decide to be AND to have the rest of society celebrate and affirm them in their choice.
Trueman looks back at the sexual revolution of the 1960’s as the start of this kind of attitude in North America, but even those decades had a history. He identifies Descartes, Rousseau, and the Romantics at the end of the 18th century as the first thinkers to ground the self in the inner life of each individual rather than in things like culture, family, or religion. Trueman then identifies that through the influence of Marx and Nietzsche this movement inward became politicized. Both men, though in different ways, argued for the relativistic nature of morality - Marx believing morals were a political invention designed to structurally oppress lower classes, and Nietzsche believing that morality to be a fiction identified by one group to rule over another. Finally, according to Trueman, Freud, and the little known to most, Wilhelm Reich added a sexualized dimension to the human psychology that Marx and Nietzsche politicized. Sex becomes a major part of our identity - it is no longer something we do or perform, it is who we ‘are'. Put all of these things together and the result is our current culture -- each person, and the state as our leaders, must not simply affirm but promote sexual freedom in all of its expressions.
Trueman then shows that the raging sexual revolution of the 1960’s was not really anything new as it fought for sexual freedoms of all kinds; those activists of all stripes were simply moving in a trajectory that had already been established. Follow that trajectory and it becomes obvious how we have ended up in our current situation.
The conclusion of this book is a brief look at how Christians can lean into the strange new world in which we find ourselves. He decries the typical evangelical response to culture which involves yelling at it or scolding it through activism and political engagement. Instead he calls for personal reflection and repentance for the many ways we have compromised the gospel to fit into our culture. He then reminds us that we are not immune to embracing expressive individualism individually as well as corporately to devastating effect in the church at large. Trueman advocates a return to the biblical idea of the image of God to define who we are as the best possible way to combat the selfish, sinful inward turn of our culture. We need to proclaim the Christian view of the self to combat expressive individualism. Finally, we need strong bible preaching and God honoring churches in which individuals can be shaped by the truths of God’s word. If people are looking for identity, the best place to find it is in a theologically strong church that preaches the whole counsel of God from Scripture..
Before we leave this review I must address another book by Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self which was released two years prior. [You can find my written review in this same blog space.] This book is essentially a scaled down version of that book. However, he notes in the preface, “[Strange New World is not a precise précis [summary or abridgement] of The Rise and Triumph … [it] covers the same ground in a briefer and (hopefully) more accessible format.” The arguments are essentially the same, but the information significantly reduced.
If you are interested in a deeper dive into the issues, names and movements which have given rise to expressive individualism, read The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. If you don’t have that kind of time or mental energy, read Strange New World. But please read at least one of them.
Soli Deo Gloria
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