There is a lot of utter crap on religion published these days. People say what they "feel" and then build a worldview of generalizations from which they think everyone else can find reward. This includes scholars of religion, biblical scholars, and most, if not all of the so-called neo-atheist proscriptions of how "bad" and "corrosive" religion is to the enlightened lilly-white elite culture of the great modern West.
It also includes that vast and growing section in the bookstore of "inspirational" material. This group is oddly more respectable since it rarely poses as something to add to one's general knowledge of religion or the bible. It is designed primarily to cater to one's self-enlightened affective relationship to "God" or "wholeness" what have you. If you are among those who affirm the latter, I suggest a change of mind for you have been had.
What tends to abound in the former are false generalizations, caricatures of other arguments, logical fallacies galore, and straw man after straw man designed to up the ante on emotionalism in order to "speak" for those who do not have a "voice". So academic terms like "postmodern" or "hermeneutic" are tossed around with sufficient name-dropping and aplomb to sound as if one understand what the hell they are actually talking about, to whom they are speaking, or who they are deluded in thinking they represent (which is usually a generalization of everyone). Such pomposity and will sell you some books, get you on Oprah (if you are lucky), or at least a plug on the Today Show. What most of the consumers are not cognizant is that what they are deluded into thinking is rooted in fact or highly plausible evidence leading to rational predictions, is actually utter and baseless shit.
As I write, even a blog post, there is something in me that refuses to do it. I cannot skirt what is likely to be true because truth has a sway over my own sense of what is right to the degree that it will not let me jump into the warm and swirly hot tub of superficiality. I would not like to say I am "better" than some people, but to that end, I am grateful that I am not like "them". I need evidence. I crave it. And then I like to see what makes the most sense based on that evidence. I don't care about assumptions unless they have some other foundation other than what one "feels". Sorry, if your book sounds like this last, then it is something I consider utter drivel that is just going to confuse people in the end and harm what we know about religion. The outcome is perhaps rarely, if ever, all that good. No, I have no evidence to support that hypothesis, but as usual, I welcome a challenge to the contrary.
The truth is that we are continually bathed in a comfortable sea of ideology that beckons us to drink more. The axiomatic problem with ideologies is that people make them up to serve their own ends; not all people – but the people who tend to have the most power, or at least puff themselves up with enough haughtiness to believe that they have such power. The truth is that these intelligentsia are a minority in the world. What most people lack is a sufficient stock of knowledge that will allow those not in that minority group to call their projects of religious disrepute into question from the bottom up. That is where people tend to delude themselves into thinking they have nothing of value to contribute to the norms of society.
True, there are a hell of a lot of people who know more than "you" do. The real quesiton is, are you reading those that are using that knowledge to increase our stock of what is true, or reading those who think they are doing this, but are actually doing the reverse; by dumbing down people enough to think they are reading the what is likely true, when they are only reading a poor and puffed-up reflection of it. The moral is that people need to take writing seriously enough not to publish crap, and consumers need to take better heed not to waste their time with such burdens on the environment. So I may never get a book published that is in wide circulation to anyone. But at least I will not sacrifice the God-given task of seeking truth for a paycheck that symbolizes humankind's folly.
Related posts:
"warm and swirly hot tub of superficiality"… I love it! (not the hot tub, of course, but the expression)
Great post! Humility is an important quality and it pains me to see all the rubbish out there – i rarely enter "Christian booksttores" these days – partly ebcause when i do i feel my intelligence and my spirit insulted by the amount of "human inspiration"!
"The truth is that these intelligentsia are a minority in the world. What most people lack is a sufficient stock of knowledge that will allow those not in that minority group to call their projects of religious disrepute into question from the bottom up. That is where people tend to delude themselves into thinking they have nothing of value to contribute to the norms of society."
Here in lies the irony – those humble enough to realise they are not all powerful often restrain themselves while the "intelligentsia" profit financially (and corrupt spiritually). Good sound theology is still being published but it is few and far between (i guess my opinion of what is sound is shaped by my own theology). Here's the other irony, I am a Christian in academia….i write on literature and theology and so what do i do ? – thinking carefully about what i seek to have published would be a start.
Great post! Humility is an important quality and it pains me to see all the rubbish out there – i rarely enter "Christian booksttores" these days – partly ebcause when i do i feel my intelligence and my spirit insulted by the amount of "human inspiration"!
"The truth is that these intelligentsia are a minority in the world. What most people lack is a sufficient stock of knowledge that will allow those not in that minority group to call their projects of religious disrepute into question from the bottom up. That is where people tend to delude themselves into thinking they have nothing of value to contribute to the norms of society."
Here in lies the irony – those humble enough to realise they are not all powerful often restrain themselves while the "intelligentsia" profit financially (and corrupt spiritually). Good sound theology is still being published but it is few and far between (i guess my opinion of what is sound is shaped by my own theology). Here's the other irony, I am a Christian in academia….i write on literature and theology and so what do i do ? – thinking carefully about what i seek to have published would be a start.
[...] 11, 2009 There's a lot in this post from Notes From Off Center that I want to comment on. Really, though, it comes down to this sentence: "There is a lot of [...]
[...] out of the picture when it comes to new theories. Popularizers are important in this regard, but, as Drew Tatusko has pointed out elsewhere, a tremendous amount of popular non-fiction literature is utter garbage. The reduction of tenure [...]