Church of the Empty Self

From Moreland and Craig on the mindless, empty self.

Our churches are unfortunately overly-populated with people whose minds, as Christians, are going to waste. As [Charles] Malik observed, they may be spiritually regenerate, but their minds have not been converted; they still think like non-believers. Despite their Christian commitment, they remain largely empty selves. What is an empty self? An empty self is a person who is passive, sensate, busy and hurried, incapable of developing an interior life. Such a person is inordinately individualistic, infantile and narcissistic.

Imagine now a church filled with such people. What will be the theological understanding the evangelistic courage, the cultural penetration of such a church? If the interior life does not really matter all that much, why should one spend the time trying to develop an intellectual, spiritually mature life?

If someone is basically passive, he will just not make the effort to read, preferring instead to be entertained. If a person is sensate in orientation, then music, magazines filled with pictures and visual media in general will be more important than mere words on a page or abstract thoughts. If one is hurried and distracted, one will have little patience for theoretical knowledge and too short an attention span to stay with an idea while it is being carefully developed.

And if someone is overly individualistic, infantile and narcissistic, what will that person read, if he reads at all? Books about Christian celebrities, Christian romance novels imitating the worst that the world has to offer, Christian self-help books filled with slogans, simplistic moralizing, lots of stories and pictures, and inadequate diagnoses of the problems facing the reader. What will not be read are books that equip people to develop a well-reasoned, theological understanding of the Christian faith. . . .

Such a church will become impotent to stand against the powerful forces of secularism and misguided scientism. Such a church will be tempted to measure success largely in terms of numbers--numbers achieved by cultural accommodation to empty selves.

(Moreland, J.P. and Craig, William Lane, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, 2003, p. 5)

Moreland and Craig are philosophers who spend their time in academics. So are they out of touch with everyday life, isolated with like-minded elitists, lamenting the ignorant masses? Or does their disconnect allow them to observe truths that those immersed in a harried, sense-saturated life cannot see?

In any event, Moreland offers practical steps to become less empty. See RAP Blog: Empty Self: Description & Remedy.