The Realities of Modern Life
I have often felt that it might be important for someone, maybe me, to make a concerted effort to help modern folks understand just how uncommon our lives are. The presupposition I notice many people bringing to any given conversation is that we are basically the same as those who came before. Very few seem to appreciate the ways in which modern life radically separates us from pretty much all people born prior to 150 years ago. We feel quite normal: Ancients would look upon us a demigods living in Elysium.
There are dozens of ways in which our circumstances and lifestyles differ from virtually all people of the ancient and medieval worlds. For instance: Until the 1950s, there was no air conditioning. How different would our lives look if we could not regulate the temperature of buildings we were living in? Prior to the 1880s, there was no electricity market. It was only a decade earlier than the internal combustion engine was invented. How many of our daily devices require electricity and/or engines? Cars, lights, phones, computers, health sensors, food preparation items, etc. The majority of our waking lives is spent around devices that did not exist and were thought impossible just 200 years ago. Remember that humans have been around for several thousand years. The vast majority of our history, the human mind/psyche has been informed by the material realities of life surrounding us/them.
These realities were of harsh weather conditions, predators, monarchs, silence, hard work by the sweat of their brow, tribes, hardness. People had to be hard, vigilant, and industrious, otherwise many would die. There was much cruelty and injustice. No notion of human rights prior to the 18th century. Their silence couldn’t be filled with artificial music or television. Their crops had to be plowed and planted by hand. The vast majority of humans had daily laborer jobs, basic subsistence living. Do we imagine that all these differences in human limitation, how they spent their time, how comfortable they were(n’t), created only small differences between us and them?
One of the things few people know or think about is that, for all of premodern human history, human families lived in single-room dwellings together. The reality of large homes with multiple rooms, in which children have their own rooms and there are multiple beds for everyone to sleep separately, is new. It has only become normal because of the normal wealth of modern Western culture. We are swimming in wealth that we don’t even see or appreciate. Indeed, we feel entitled to it.
What difference do you think it makes in a person’s psyche when they have very little private time in the home? The only privacy people had was in the wilderness surrounding their villages, which were often dangerous places. It is fair to assume that the average person was in the presence of others at all times, in bed sleeping, eating around a dinner table, working in the field, doing the laundry in the yard, hunting, cooking, weaving, bathing. People didn’t grab a beer and zone out in front of the television. They gathered around a fire, enjoying the harvest or recent kill, singing songs and telling stories.
The Threat of Privacy
The thing I am getting at is that humans were designed for formation in group environments. We were not made for the massive amount of privacy and personal space that the average modern person inhabits. I say this as a man with a very strong personal bubble who takes great offense to my government or any other entity getting involved in my business. Even so, though I do not want a strong federal government, it seems clear to me that my personal emotional and psychological health, as well as that of every other human, depends on regular involvement in communities. Of course, I believe the church is supposed to be such a community. We are supposed to be watching over one another in love, holding each other accountable, ministering to one another.
We cannot live in the light if all our lives are darkness.
“And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.”
-John 3:19-21
People have always desired privacy. That yearning, when met, has often been met with eager sin. One of the parts of Mosaic Law that has always haunted me is the instructions around how to dispense justice after a man rapes a woman:
““If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor's wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.
“But if in the open country a man meets a young woman who is betrothed, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. But you shall do nothing to the young woman; she has committed no offense punishable by death. For this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor, because he met her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her.”
-Deuteronomy 22:23-27
The impression one gets is that people were lying in wait in dark and private places to take advantage of others. Indeed, that is what happens to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, in Genesis 34. It is what happens with Tamar when she and her brother Amnon were alone in 2 Samuel 13. To be alone is to be vulnerable. To be together is to be protected.
Even when humans are not preying on one another, satan whispers in our ears to use our freedom for sin. I remember reading an article more than a decade ago that talked about how damaged people who work at content reviewers on the internet get. When reviewing the private browsing information of people online, they were struck by just how many people use their freedom online for depravity. Not just pornography, which is bad enough, but very disturbing stuff, is more common than most would think. Humans, outside of the regeneration that comes in Christ, are warped. In the darkness, we get even more warped. Satan continues to confirm in us that we are basically good, that we can be trusted with privacy, that the sins we do in the darkness are not a big deal.
Ancient people did not have the regular temptations of darkness and privacy that we do. They could not stay inside their own homes or rooms all day, playing video games, ordering food delivered, in air conditioned rooms, sleeping alone. They certainly could not take huge swaths of time to isolate themselves from one another, refusing to breathe the air of others, refusing to stand closer than six feet to others. They did not have these magical screens in front of themselves to show them whatever their hearts desired. They couldn’t be connected digitally with others who would exacerbate their tendencies toward the depraved and disgusting. Our era is exploring the depths of depravity and alienation. It is having the results that one might anticipate.
It is worth remembering that on the Day of the Lord, when the books are opened and we all are called before the judgment seat of Christ, everything we have done in the darkness will be brought into the light. Our deeds in the darkness will be laid bare for all to see. The reality is that we do not have any true privacy. The all-seeing eye of God…sees all. When the church gives people space to participate in the illusion that they are able to operate in secrecy, we behave hatefully. The best thing we can do for one another is to prepare one another for that day of judgment, such that when the books are opened, there will not be anything on those pages that surprise or scandalize your brothers and sisters in Christ. Salvation is a group affair; we are wrong to let our fellow brothers and sisters to imagine that they should be doing this alone. It is not good for man to be alone, right? Even if people are practicing celibacy in singleness, they should still have intimate, accountable community. Otherwise we make room for the evil one. This is a true threat.
Call to Repentance & Reclamation
I believe Christians need to intentionally deprive ourselves of privacy. If we know ourselves, then we know how easy it is to fall into sin. Rather than continue to dance with the devil, we need to design for ourselves lives of accountability and transparency. Every single serious believer needs to be in an intimate group with other believers of the same sex who will speak truth to our lives, watch over us in love, reprimand us when we fail, reinforce good behaviors. We need people praying for us, supporting us, rooting for us. We need to make decisions that guarantee that we are engaged in right relationship with the people we live with, live around, work with. We should intentionally limit our time in artificial worlds online. We should make significant time to meditate on the scriptures and to recreate in our own lives the lives of hardship and resilience that ancients had to have. Fasting is a big part of that. More broadly, self-denial will unite us, not just with the ancients, but with Christ himself.
What I’m talking about is not something peripheral to the Christian faith. Rather, it is at the heart of the calling to be the church. Today’s alienation and depravity is a direct result of the church having failed to follow clear biblical instruction about actually being the beloved community. We gave each other space, and people used that space for evil, self-justification, and sin. We are at an inflection point at which we should be repenting and turning back, but instead so many voices in church leadership are calling for the church to continue catering to consumer impulses. I think this needs to be more commonly seen as a dividing line between true and charlatan leadership. Rather than an optional part of faith, participation in the body of Christ is an essential means of grace, designed for our salvation, and not to be neglected out of concern for privacy or any other concern.
I want my government to leave me alone because no worldly government can save me. It is not in the purview of worldly kingdoms to save. They will only warp what Christ alone can do. Conversely, the church shouldn’t leave people alone. If a person says they acknowledge Christ as Lord, if they acknowledge they have been bought at a price and that their lives are not their own, then church: take thou authority! Instruct one another in the paths of righteousness. If people refuse to receive instruction or be held accountable, then though they claim to be descendants of Abraham, they are actually sons of the evil one (John 8:39-47). Exercise discernment in the body, and though there will be some heartache and conflict, there will also be salvation. In case it needs to be said, I doubt salvation is to be found in any churches that do not insist on these standards of righteousness. The grace they preach is a cheap grace. This is worth making a big deal out of.