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540 - God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams |
God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in
a World of Fading Dreams
By David F. Wells
Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1994. 278 pp. $19.99.
Not all sequels are necessary or desired. Did the world really need Scarlett or Die Hard 2 and 3? Gordon-Conwell theologian David Wells's recent hard-hitting indictment of North American evangelicalism, No Place for Truth (1993), however, begged for a follow-up that moves beyond critical analysis to construction, and, in part, God in the Wasteland fits the bill.
The thesis of No Place for Truth was simple: Evangelical Christianity, no less than liberal Protestantism, has capitulated to modernity's triumph of the management and therapeutic mind-set. In the process, truth (and theology) gets shunted aside by pragmatic market forces; the religious consumer, not Christian doctrine, is sovereign. God in the Wasteland continues the attack, now using the biblical category of "worldliness," but also vigorously argues for a recovery of a sense of God's transcendence and holiness as a necessary countercultural antidote to modernity's seductions. In Wells's words: "Only those who are countercultural by way of being other-worldly have what modern culture most needs to hear-a Word from God that can cut through the deceits of modernity to reach the hearts that lie within."
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542 - God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams |
The most profound consequence of modernization, Wells contends, is the reordering and redefinition of the self. Modern people have been robbed of their external forms of connectedness (to local cultures, family, community, and craft) and of transcendent reference points. "Thus thwarted in their efforts to find meaning outside themselves, moderns have sought to relocate all reality internally, detached from any fixed moral norms." Innocent of sin because no moral accountability beyond the happiness of the self is acknowledged, "modernity dispatches the God who is outside, and all that remains is the God who is inside." In this way, modern persons "have ironically precluded the possibility of redemption in the area of our greatest need-tyranny of the self." Instead of a God who speaks and has the power to deliver us from the "great darkness of corrupted human life," we have a God whose best effort "is to offer counsel like a Rogerian therapist, listening carefully but non-judgmentally, necessarily detached in his kindness from the deepest pains, the most destructive realities of our lives." Evangelical churches, too, Wells insists, have turned inward, contracting what God is doing in the world "into what he is doing for us personally and privately," thus turning "God into a product and believers into customers."
-Wells's critique is compelling and useful and not only for those who consider themselves evangelical. Many non-evangelical an even secular contemporary forms of spirituality that tend to merge God and the self are illuminated by Wells's summary of modernity's prevailing pressures and would do well to heed his exhaustive and well-documented diagnosis of the many personal and social dysfunctions that result from these pressures.
What about the cure? Is Wells right when he claims: "Until we acknowledge God's holiness, we will not be able to deny the authority of modernity"? As important, can the North American evangelical church dissociate itself from modernity's charms and recover "the outside God," a God "understood to be transcendent in his holiness," along with a praxis of worship and discipleship that takes the cross more seriously?
From an evangelical point of view, the answer to the first question is obviously yes. Only the Holy Spirit, of course, knows the answer to the second, though the legacy of Karl Barth's example in the twentieth century is a sobering reminder that recovering divine transcendence is not easy. On this, Wells's survey of recent evangelical seminary students, summarized in the eighth chapter ("The Coming Generation"), gives mixed encouragement. These seminarians take Scripture and theology seriously but also exhibit the typically modem fascination with the self as the locus for experiencing the divine.
Does this sequel satisfy the demand for it suggested by No Place for Truth? Not fully. The gripping and powerful constructive sections of God in the Wasteland are the extended biblical expositions on holiness, transcendence, the cross, and providence in chapters six and seven. More
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544 - God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams |
than two-thirds of the book, however, is cultural analysis akin to its predecessor. At times, repetition and overlap overwhelm and even discourage the reader. Furthermore, two specific areas of evangelical church life most definitely affected by the pressures of modernity, namely, worship and theological education, cry out for further attention. The evangelical world needs its own Edward Farley or David Kelsey. Wells himself judges this volume as a "modest" "outline" of a "first step" to remedy the problem described in No Place for Truth. Further sequels to the volume under review, perhaps by the author, are still needed.
John Bolt
Calvin Theological Seminary
Grand Rapids, MI