The age of apathy | Carl Trueman

If there is a vice or characteristic that is often regarded as typical of the modern Western world, it is apathy: that lazy, couldn’t-care-less indifference which marks out the couch potato, MTV world in which we live from previous generations.

Whether it is low voter turn-out at election time, or the seeming impossibility of raising public consciousness on big issues such as world poverty, apathy, it would seem, rules the day.

Apathy, however, does not exist in a vacuum, but must be understood in the context of a number of other cultural traits.

Comfort

First, materialistic comfort. In places and times where insufficient resources make life itself a battle for survival, there is little room for apathy. The peasant who has to work hard just to grow enough food for his family cannot be indifferent to the weather, to the condition of the soil, to the quality of the seed he grows, to the amount of time he needs to work, to the price he has to pay to get grain or tools for tilling the land.

The mother whose child is dying of malnutrition or disease cannot be apathetic about the supplies of food or medicine which she needs to keep the child alive. The worker who faces the possibility of unemployment and of impending poverty cannot take an easygoing approach to the standard of his own work, the financial health of his employer, or the technological developments which might change or even undermine his current role.

Thankfully, most of us do not suffer from any of these uncertainties most of the time. One of the unfortunate side-effects of this is that we are frequently complacent and apathetic. At least, complacent and apathetic about things that matter. Our material prosperity and security does free up time and money for us to be passionate about insignificant trivia — sporting fixtures, television programmes and such like.

Cynicism

Second, a pervasive cynicism. The origins of contemporary cynicism are probably manifold. One component is, ironically, the free access we have to information, compared to previous generations. The more we know about the world, the more we realise how difficult, if not impossible, it is for us as individuals or even as nations to make a great difference to the way the world is.

Combine this with the frequent exposure of politicians as venal and self-serving, and you have a recipe for cynicism. No wonder fewer and fewer people turn out to vote at elections. What difference does it make? When the Labour Party can spout policies so rightwing that they would have made Mrs. Thatcher blush, when all parties accept the basic unquestionable status quo of the free market and its structures, when it seems that it is the banks and multi-national corporations rather than democratically accountable governments who actually determine the cost of living, why should anyone bother to vote any more? What difference will it make? If we cease to believe in the possibility of change, or our ability to influence such, we simply give up working towards these sorts of ends.

Mass media

Third, the very form of mass media — whether this is the television or the internet — militates against passionate engagement. The form is simply too egalitarian, too democratic, too incapable of presenting the kind of hierarchy of values which would lead away from apathy and towards activism about important matters. On news programmes, political headlines are juxtaposed with images of war, horrific crimes stand side-by-side with stories of disease and famine from around the world, and the whole lot is rounded off with some ‘And finally’ tale of trivia about a man whose dog can sing, whose granny is a professional wrestler, or whose neighbour has helped him turn his garden shed into a motor vehicle.

The deadly serious stands cheek-by-jowl with the utterly banal, and both have the identical value of being newsworthy. This may not always involve a total trivialisation of the serious, but it certainly introduces a strong gravitational pull, for want of a better phrase, in that direction.

Postmodernism

Fourth, this trivialisation and democratisation of values and concerns has found its quintessential philosophical expression in the various relativising ideologies which are frequently bracketed together under the term ‘postmodernism’. Today, we are all, it seems, the heirs of Marx, Freud and Nietzsche: claims of truth and of value are never quite what they seem but are always masks or codes beneath which other agendas, material, sexual, or political, are hidden. Few of us may have read Nietzsche and wrestled with his thought in any depth, but the idea that truth is merely an expression of taste or preference — a very Nietzschean insight — pervades our culture, from the halls of academia to the Oprah Winfrey Show. And if all truths and values are merely matters of taste, then there is little point in being too passionate about them in the public sphere — what’s the point? Such would be at best misguided and patronising, at worst an arrogant attempt to impose our will upon another.

Is apathy an option for us?

This then leads to the key question for Christians: is apathy an option? Is apathetic Christanity a biblically-sanctioned way of thinking about the world?

Well, if my analysis of the major causes of the current popularity of apathy is correct, the answer must surely be in the negative. Apathy, whether doctrinal in terms of indifference to Christianity’s truth claims, moral, in terms of indifference to Christanity’s ethical demands, or ecclesiastical, in terms of Christianity’s community demands, must be repudiated at all costs.

Think about it. Reflect upon the roots of apathy as outlined above. Should Christians be secure in terms of their material situation? It is a good thing to have enough of what we need, and even better to have a surplus; but Christians have to realise that all these things come from the hand of a sovereign Father. What do we have that we did not receive? Is it not true that the Lord who gives can also be the Lord who takes away — and still be worthy of our praise? It is not complacent self-security, but thankfulness which should characterise our relationship to material prosperity and to the God who provides such. Any other attitude undercuts in practical terms the reality of our dependence upon a sovereign God.

Should we be cynical?

Second, should Christians be cynical? Well, here, I am inclined to offer a nuanced answer.

Yes, Christians should always be cynical of the kind of God-like claims and agendas of mere creatures. For example, no government initiative is ever going to solve the problem of world poverty because poverty is a particular result of the general fallenness of creation, a point which no technical or educational policy can ever address.

This does not mean that poverty is not an evil which we should fight against. It is to say that we need a realistic understanding of what can be achieved at a human level. So there is a sense in which cynicism is vital among Christians in order to avoid being taken in by the ambitious rhetoric of the world around us.

However, cynicism as a life philosophy has to be unacceptable for the Christian because Christianity holds at its very core the notion that change is possible, indeed, imperative.

Individuals must turn from rebellion against God and bondage to earthly idols and put their trust in the great I AM; and the fallen world in which we live must one day be renewed, evil must be banished forever, and God’s creation must become a true and open testimony to his glory and majesty.

Yes, the potential for change on earth is limited in terms of what human technique and capabilities can bring about; but Christians must acknowledge the sovereignty of the God who not only created out of nothing, but will also act again and again to save his people and will finally renew the heavens and the earth at the end of time.

Can we trivialise everything?

Third, should Christians allow their minds to be shaped by the trivialisation which the mass media and the entertainment industry brings to our world?

Of course not. This can be difficult to avoid. We need to realise first and foremost that media are not simply channels through which information passes like water through a pipe, but are rather constitutive of the information itself and how we understand it. We need, if you like, to be self-aware and to develop a critical eye for what television, internet, and such like do to our understanding of the world.

However, we also need to be aware that God is not indifferent to earthly values. He hates greed; he opposes the proud; he seems, if you like, to set his face against everything which the modern West worships. If we are indifferent to God’s hierarchy of values, then it is not too much to say that we are actually in rebellion against God himself. To be indifferent to greed, to have no strong opinions about pride, represents a catastrophic failure on our part to reflect the mind of Christ. And if we do not reflect Christ’s mind, then whose mind exactly are we reflecting?

Suspicion and relativism

Finally, relativism and philosophies of suspicion. Again, as a Christian I want to give a nuanced answer as to how far we should engage in these lines of thinking. There is certainly much in, say, the work of Nietzsche or Foucault to which Christians can say ‘Amen!’ For example, the fact that, sometimes, convictions about truth are driven as much by taste as by well-reasoned argument is surely undeniable. While there is a clear biblical case to be made against homosexuality, it is also true that many people just hate homosexuals and construct their arguments against homosexual practice in order to provide a rationale for their gut feelings. And it is surely true that Christians frequently use doctrines that are true in order to achieve immoral ends: for example, the obligation of children to obey their parents has, I am sure, been used by some parents as a means of abusing their power over their children. Further, all Christians with a solid grasp of human sinfulness know that even our best and purest actions are performed with mixed motives, and that, even in acts of self-sacrifice, there is no pure altruism.

Yet when relativism and suspicion become the most basic and universal aspects of our approach to life, we cease to be truly Christian. The Christian has to be committed to the fact that some things are true (‘God exists’) and some are false (‘God does not exist’); that some things are right (‘Loving your neighbour’) and others are wrong (‘Sacrificing your children to worship some god’). As soon as we acknowledge the dichotomies of true and false, of right and wrong, of, if you like, the absolute authority of God’s revelation in Scripture and in Christ about who he is and what the world is like, then pure relativism is relativised and pure suspicion becomes suspect. Further, we can no longer be apathetic. What we believe about God and how we behave become matters not of indifference or personal taste, but of God’s command and of divine imperative.

Belief and practice

This is where I close: the tight connection between belief and practice. For the Christian, neither is a matter of indifference. I believe certain things are true and certain things are right. That places me under intellectual and moral obligation to think and live in accordance with God’s truth and God’s morality. If I am apathetic, what I am really saying is that God’s truth and God’s morality are matters of indifference; they are of only relative or local importance; and that God is, therefore, not sovereign and I am not dependent upon him for everything. Like the church in Laodicea, I am neither hot nor cold, fit only for vomiting onto the pavement.

Carl Trueman is Associate Professor of Church History and Historical Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He is also the General Editor of Themelios.

This article first appeared in Themelios and is used with permission.