The Truth About Culture Wars

Athenian Culture Wars are Really Clone Wars

Today we hear the term “culture wars” used frequently. The Christian version of this term is “world-view wars.” The Christian term is decidedly better, since the word “culture” is ambiguous. “Culture” has a breadth of meanings, some of them quite trivial. “Culture wars” may be used, for example, to characterise a debate over the relative merits of classical versus hip hop music—hardly earth-shattering stuff.

The clash of “world-views” gets closer to the heart of the matter. Take it down another layer and the clash at its most fundamental level can be characterised as between those who believe in and love the infinite, eternal and unchangeable Triune God Who has revealed Himself in Holy Scripture, and those who do not. This is the ultimate world-view clash. There is nothing more fundamental to human existence. There are no issues more foundational to life and being. There is nothing which more powerfully shapes human history. The options are stark: either this God exists and all forms of Unbelief are a delusional lie; or, God does not exist and therefore all bets on anything and everything are off.

For the Christian “world-view wars” implicitly includes a struggle between truth and lies. For the Unbeliever, “culture wars” or “world-view wars” implies a struggle over mere preference, cant, and prejudice. One man's rubbish is another man's treasure. What is sauce for the goose may not necessarily be sauce for the gander at all. And that's all right.

When we survey the Athenian market place of ideas it is hard to get worked up over all the permutations and combinations on offer. When we consider the so-called “culture wars” within Athens between the West versus Islam, Left versus Right, Conservatives versus Whigs, Idealists versus Empiricists, Socialism versus Capitalism, or the One versus the Many—to name but a few of the available options in the Athenian agora of ideas—all have equal claim and relative pedigree.

The highest degree of certainty any “ism” in Athens can offer its own clients is that it may probably be true. But, something that is probably true is also possibly false. There can be no final certainty within Athens about anything—only that the truthfulness of what is espoused within Athens is a mere rolling the dice and calculating relative probabilities. Therefore “culture wars” within Athens are really intra-mural, like the rivalry or competition within a particular university faculty. “You say potato, I say potarto.” They are debates over preference, prejudice, and cant.

This is what the Scriptures call “the wisdom of this world.” Although full of sound and fury, in the end it signifies nothing.

Now to be sure, there are some options on offer within Athens that approximate more closely to the Truth—that is, to the universal reality that prescribes, inscribes, and circumscribes the world as God has created and ordained it to be. For example, there are some stalls in the Athenian market place which assert the reality of sin and moral guilt. Others defend the constructs of crime and punishment. Still others posit immaterial dimensions of reality and existence. Others yet again stress personal responsibility and the defend private ownership of property.

These carry more weight and gravitas because they tell half-truths about the world as it really is, that is, as God rules over it. But at the same time they are also less consistent with the fundamental principle upon which Athens is built—that the ultimate reality of the universe is brute chance, and, therefore, chaos nihilism and meaninglessness prescribe, inscribe, and circumscribe everything.

But there are other options in the Athenian agora which are more faithful to that city's deep magic of brute chance and its corollaries. These options stress the meaningless flux of everything and the ultimate irrationality of all existence. However, these rarely gain traction or weight, adherents or wide following, because they are so at odds with the world as it daily presents itself to us. Nevertheless, they are more consistent with the diabolical spirit of that evil City.

So, Athens will have its culture wars. But they are really family squabbles.

Jerusalem knows this. Jerusalem knows that it is either the Living God, or meaningless prejudice. Therefore, Jerusalem does not make common cause with Athenian approximations to the truth. Jerusalem does not shop in Athenian market places. Jerusalem knows that there is melamine in the milk. The only way it could be made fit to eat is by a complete re-processing and re-engineering to remove the poison.

Jerusalem also knows that there is no sustainable common cause with Athenian approximations to the truth. Athens is bound together by a common confession of faith: despite the fact that Athens trades only in mere probabilities, in order to do so, it must propose one great, eternal certainty that is beyond all doubt, relativity, probability, or question. Athens is absolutely certain that the God revealed in the Scriptures does not exist. That is why all Athenian culture wars are familial, inter-mural struggles.

It is commonly observed that anyone who intervenes to break up, or take sides in, a family fight risks his life. Most often, faced with an outside threat, the warring family members will instantly unite to crush the outsider. Blood is thicker than water.

But faith is even thicker than blood. When it comes down to it, when push comes to shove, Athenians will always close ranks against Christians. For all Athenians have a common unifying confession of faith that is more deep to them than life itself. All Athenians believe that the God of the Scriptures is a myth. He does not exist. He cannot exist. This is the deepest magic of Athens. It is what makes ultimate chaos acceptable. It is the strongest bond that welds together all who traffic in the Athenian agora of ideas into an implacable, serried, closed rank against the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and all who belong to Him.

Athenian culture wars are always wars between clones.