Unstable: navigating a complex future
Individualism, shipping containers, and becoming a creative minority.
Uncertainty. Powerlessness. That’s so 2021. Move forward with us into 2022…1
That’s the ad from Deakin University that Spotify feeds me as I write.
Although it’d be wonderful for 2022 to be a completely fresh page—I hate to break it to you, but uncertainty and powerlessness are unfortunately integral to the human condition!
Reaching January 1 (and certainly not by signing up for Deakin!) won’t change that. It’s foolish for us to place our hope in promises written in concrete that is sure to crack.
I’m all for using the new year as a fresh start for habits. It’s great to celebrate milestones and changes in seasons; they are a God-given gift. But unless January 1, 2022, is ‘that day or hour’ which ‘only the Father’ knows2—then the world we’re living in is not going to suddenly be restored to a state of stability.
Many of us have been born into a comfortable existence, living in the top tier of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs3. In particular, our physiological and safety requirements, which few of us have ever had to question, are taken for granted.
There seems to be an underlying assumption that other people around the world have to deal with hunger and poverty and all that—that’s normal—but for me? Surely—never!
We have grown up in a time of ‘accentuated radical individualism’4, with everything at our fingertips.
Few ideas have become so thoroughly associated with the emergence of modernity as that of a globalised, interconnected, secular world. The phrase 'modern world' has in fact become a shorthand for a global environment characterised by scientific rationalism, large-scale economic networks, and agnostic scepticism.
—Ayesha Ramachandran, Yale professor and historian5
Many have drawn connections between the rise of modernity and secularism, or scientific rationalism. Less have connected the links between modernity and the globalised, large-scale economic networks mentioned in the quote above.
It’s undeniable that we live in a networked world.
Take, for example, the device you’re reading this on. Countless individuals designed, mined, constructed, shipped, transported, and marketed the product. Only due to shipping containers, sweatshop factories, and the internet, can you even touch it!
Imagine for a moment that we didn’t have the resources for such massive, globalised production and transportation. Think of the impact of technology on individualism—instant gratification, self-made identities, globalised friends and news.
What a different reality we would live in if computers and smartphones were not the norms! No social media, no email, no Netflix—the list goes on.
It would be easy to blame technology for many of our problems, but it’s not that simple. Products are created as a result of demand.
Technologies may seem to catalyse revolutions, but more often than not, deeper change has been bubbling away under the surface, ready to seize any chance given to it.
There’s a quote commonly misattributed (it’s actually from a 1980 book with a character of the same name) to Socrates6:
To rid yourself of old patterns, focus all your energy not on struggling with the old, but on building the new.
We have the choice to stubbornly hold onto the illusion of the past we knew. Or, like Dr Ransom teaching himself to walk on the floating islands of Perelandra7, we can adapt to this new way of life and find where God is already working.
My combination of youthful ignorance and hunger for spiritual renewal is easily excited by the idea of living in an increasingly challenging world.
Nevertheless, temptations are often very profitable to a man, though they be troublesome and grievous; for in them a man is humbled, purified, and instructed.8
The trials that we’re going to pass will purify us, refine us. All kinds of tests will come ‘so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.’9
What remains of cultural Christianity is taking its final breaths—so then, let it die! May only the true apprentices of Jesus remain—and may you, dear reader, be one of them.
God only knows what challenges await us in the days to come. The danger may simply be complacency—or even the physical threat of death10.
Yes, it’s extremely easy for me to write this as I live in my Privileged Christian Bubble™ —nonetheless, I don’t want things to stay the same, or return to some 2019 ‘normal’. I’d still take quality over quantity any day.
God’s heart is for the Church to be purified and stripped back. We are called to live as a creative minority11, as ‘exiles’, as foreigners to this world.
It was only during and because of their exile that the Jewish people began to represent Adonai as they were called to do. It was only during this time that what we now call the Old Testament was masterfully assembled and completed.
Times of exile bring about deeper creativity and purity of heart.
The immediate future is uncertain. It always has been. But regardless of what happens, let us stand firm12 and rest in the faithfulness of our loving God, our eternally steadfast Rock and Refuge.13
You might like…
📚 Currently reading: On the Road with Saint Augustine, by James K. A. Smith. So far, this book has proved to be a brilliant mix of academic and popular writing. I’m excited to learn more about this brilliant human who lived so long ago and yet feels as relevant as ever.
🔉 Podcast of the week: On the topic of Augustine, too—John Mark Comer interviews Roberta Ahmanson on the parallels between 5th-century Roman culture and our secular moment. I wish it had gone on longer!
That’s all!
Thank you for reading. Feel free to write a comment to share your thoughts, or what stood out to you.
Praise be to God for being our faithful Rock—may you grow to know this Truth down into the marrow of your bones.
Stand firm, my friend. Don’t slip away into the culture.
Grace and peace,
—Bethany
I did skip this ad as soon as possible, and only then did it occur to me that I should write it down. This is from memory, so it might not be verbatim—but you get the point!
Matthew 24v26.
See this page for more information: simplypsychology.org/maslow.html.
Mark Sayers, Rebuilders podcast, Individualism to interconnectivity.
As quoted in the above Rebuilders podcast.
See Perelandra, by C. S. Lewis—a very, very lovely book!
Chapter 13: Resist Temptations, in Of the Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis. I’m reading one of these tiny chapters each morning during my silence & solitude time, and they are overall quite delightful—a splendid way to orientate oneself each morning.
1 Peter 1v7.
I say this mindful that I am someone with a low pain tolerance….
Jewish Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has done some FANTASTIC writing on this. See irstthings.com/article/2014/01/on-creative-minorities. Jon Tyson has also said Good Stuff on this.
Ephesians 6v13.
Psalm 18v2.
It’s seeming more and more to me that the vast interconnectedness of the Western world and secular society as a whole has become our new Tower of Babel. Identity, belief, strength, power are now all sourced from the largest pool of information that history has ever seen. The focus on the individual has once again resulted in people who are their own gods. You say this so well, Bethany, that we mustn’t be enslaved to the little metal light-box, or else we risk losing our true identity in Christ, who should be our true focus.
The desire for a "comfortable" life— something so often highly valued, dare I say even 'idolised' here in Australia— is sadly proving to be something for which our nation may indeed pay an intolerable price, yet ironically, end up with "none" of it.
I love and celebrate your courage and sense of adventure Bethany, as you look forward in faith, confident that Father has good things in store for all who trust Him. Indeed it's through our struggles that we DO experience His Comfort— something that nothing and no one can ever strip away from us. (2 Cor 1:3-4). Keep up your blogs... I'm loving reading them!