Self-Worship: The Issue Behind the Issue Behind the Issue | A Doxological Hermeneutic for Reading and Engaging Culture
Francis Schaeffer opened A Christian Manifesto (1981) with a keen observation, “The basic problem of the Christians in this country in the last eighty years or so, in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals.”[1] The headlines of the early 1980s included the trampled humanity of the unborn, the proliferation of relativistic “values clarification” and New Age ideologies in public education, and the continued assault on family life in the name of sexual liberation. “But” Schaeffer lamented, most Christians in America at that time “have not seen this as a totality—each thing being a part, a symptom, of a much larger problem.”[2]
Schaeffer could have been writing in 2023. Today, humans with X-Y chromosomes in every cell of their bodies—historically known as “men”—have won NCAA women’s swimming championships,[3] taken the crown at female beauty contests, and received “Woman of the Year” accolades. In places like New York City more small black image-bearers are terminated by the abortion industry than are born.[4] In the United States, sex-selective abortions targeting girls are commonplace,[5] and upward of 90 percent of preborn humans diagnosed with Downs are terminated.[6] Meanwhile rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidality have skyrocketed beyond historical precedent.[7] The list of ideological skirmishes and outright culture wars surrounding racism, capitalism, socialism, climate change, social media censorship, A.I. technology, religious liberty, and a hundred other contentious issues fill our newsfeeds.
Weltanschauung and Worship
We would be naïve to interpret these issues in isolation. They are part of a totality, symptoms of a much larger problem. There is a bigger picture to behold. These issues are only the iceberg tips with gigantic masses beneath the surface. There are issues behind the issues. But what are they? Abraham Kuyper began his now famous Stone Lectures of 1898 at Princeton Theological Seminary with the observation that there are “two life systems wrestling with one another, in mortal combat.” The combatants, according to Kuyper, were modernists seeking to “build a world of [their] own from the data of the natural man, and to construct man himself,” striving to vanquish “with violent intensity” those “who reverently bow the knee to Christ.” This Kuyper saw as “the struggle in Europe” and “the struggle in America.”[8]
Certainly, different worldviews—Kuyper’s “life systems”—are at play, competing answers to the ontological, epistemological, ethical, and aesthetic questions of life. Whether we side with Aristotle that “essence precedes existence” or with Sartre that “existence precedes essence,” whether we side with Rousseau’s dogma that man is basically good or Solomon’s belief that our hearts are full of moral insanity (Eccl. 9:5), whether we believe with Moses that we are image-bearers of God or with Louis-Ferdinand Celine that we are just “packages of tepid half-rotted viscera”[9] will have much to do with how we process cultural realities.
But what if there is a factor even deeper than competing worldview commitments that illuminates our cultural moment? For the apostle Paul, worldview is foundational, yes, but there is a still deeper issue. That is the worship issue, the question of ultimate commitments, who or what we elevate as the summum bonum not merely in theory, but in real life. At this bedrock spiritual level, according to Paul’s argument in Romans 1, there are two, and only two, options—Creator-worship or creation-worship.[10] The question is not whether we are worshipping, but what we are worshipping. Worship is an inevitable fact of human existence. Our hearts, as Calvin famously noted, are idol-making factories. “Man,” according to Dostoyevsky, “has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.”[11] For Ralph Waldo Emerson, “A person will worship something, have no doubt about that.”[12] David Foster Wallace of Infinite Jest fame noted that “In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.”[13]
Scholars from a wide range of disciplines are slowly catching up with Paul and recognizing worship (often beyond the pale of traditional “religion”) as a dominant, even ubiquitous force in our culture. Economist Bob Goudzwaard argues that everyone “absolutizes” something. We all serve god(s), take on the image of our god(s), then build society in our (that is, in our gods’) image.[14] Feminist author, social critic, and atheist professor Camille Paglia concurs, “Human beings need religion, they need a religious perspective, a cosmic perspective. And getting rid of the orthodox religions because they were too conservative has simply led to [a] new religion.”[15] Paglia identifies this new religion as “political correctness.” She labels it a form of “fanaticism,” citing her experience with second-wave feminists, whom she likens to “the Spanish Inquisition” seeking to “destroy” her for committing “heresy.”
Culture commentator Andrew Sullivan also recognizes the religious undertones of secular spaces in our society. Sullivan notes that “once-esoteric neo-Marxist ideologies—such as critical race and gender theory and postmodernism, the bastard children of Herbert Marcuse and Michel Foucault—have become the premises of higher education, the orthodoxy of a new and mandatory religion.”[16] Anthropologist Paul Hiebert sees a new “dominant religion in the West.” Says Hiebert, “A new Western religion emerged to offer us meaning based on self-realization, not forgiveness of personal sins and reconciliation with God and others. Self had become god and self-fulfillment our salvation.”[17]
We would do well to wake up to this reality. The most pressing cultural, political, and legal issues of our day are, fundamentally, worship issues. They are contemporary expressions of humanity’s irrepressible religiosity. To ignore this Pauline insight is to limit ourselves to “bits and pieces” and miss the “much larger problem.” What we need, then, is a doxological hermeneutic for reading culture, an approach that recognizes with Paul, Calvin, Dostoyevsky, Emerson, Wallace, Goudzwaard, Paglia, Sullivan, and Hiebert the profound culture-making or culture-breaking implications of our chosen objects of glory (doxa).
The Cult of Self
What, then, are the dominant gods of our age, the objects of worship before which most people lay prostrate? We might list the false gods of government, as G.K. Chesterton memorably noted, “Once we abolish God, the government becomes God.”[18] Schaeffer often lamented the West’s false gods of “personal peace and affluence.” Tim Keller offers a helpful taxonomy of idols including theological, sexual, magic/ritual, political/economic, racial/national, relational, religious, philosophical, cultural, and so called “deep idols” (power, approval, comfort, and control).[19] There is, however, one “god” that occupies a sort of Zeus-like status atop the modern-day Olympus, reigning over all these other “gods.” I refer to the false god of Self.
The cult of self-worship bears the marks of a traditional religion. It has adherents, prophets and saints, sacred songs, commandments, and theological dogmas:
Adherents. Eighty-four percent of Americans believe that “enjoying yourself is the highest goal of life.” Eighty-six percent believe that to enjoy yourself you must “pursue the things you desire most.” Ninety-one percent affirm the statement: “To find yourself, look within yourself.”[20] The cult of self-worship, in other words, inverts the first question of the Westminster Catechism. “Q1. What is the chief end of man?” The chief end of man is to glorify and enjoy yourself forever, an inversion now embraced by an overwhelming majority, regardless of their official religious affiliation, in the United States.
Prophets and Saints. The cult of self-worship is not without its prophets and saints through history. Nero (37-68 A.D.) turned his self-worship into the enforced faith of an empire.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) helped inspire the French Revolution. His goal was to “make known my inner self, exactly as it was in every circumstance of my life,” [21] making him a forefather to the incessant autobiography and stream-of-consciousness emotional broadcasting found throughout the blogosphere and social media. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) taught that “the human being who has become free . . . steps all over the contemptible type of well-being dreamt of by grocers, Christians, cows, women, Englishmen, and other democrats. The free human being is a warrior.”[22] And, “egoism pertains to the essence of a noble soul.”[23] Michel Foucault (1926-1984), a devotee of Nietzsche, saw sexual experiences as the best path to self-glorification, calling us “to exchange life in its entirety for sex itself, for the truth and the sovereignty of sex.”[24] Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) added an occultic element to self-worship, inventing a religion called “Thelema,” from the Greek noun for will, want, and desire. Crowley distilled the dogmas of his faith to the command, “Do what thou wilt.”[25] Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was one of the luminaries of French existentialism, “the first principle” of which is that “man is nothing else but what he makes himself.”[26] We exist in a Godless universe, and it is, therefore, totally up to us to invent our own essences.
While the saints and prophets of Christianity often met tragic fates, placing their devotion to Christ above their own temporal happiness, the saints and prophets of the cult of self-worship met tragic fates for precisely opposite reasons. Nero murdered his mother, Agrippina the Younger, his first wife, Octavia, and, by some accounts, his second wife, Poppaea Sabina. He drained Roman resources building a golden house in his own honor, killed his critics, and, as his popularity waned, killed himself at the age of thirty. With an eye toward his own freedom and self-expression, Rousseau abandoned all five of his children to early deaths at an orphanage. After a deeply lonesome life, Nietzsche spent his last decade on earth in an asylum, known for dancing naked, fantasizing about shooting the Kaiser, and believing himself to be Jesus Christ, Napoleon, Buddha, and other historical figures.[27] When he relocated to Berkeley, California, Foucault threw himself into the sadomasochistic homosexual scene. Sadly, he contracted HIV/AIDS and, like Queen’s Freddie Mercury, continued to gratify his sexual appetites even after he knew he was infected. When Foucault said, “Sex is worth dying for,” he practiced what he preached, not only for himself but for unsuspecting others. In doing what he willed, Crowley became a heroin addict, physically assaulted his lovers (male and female), and appreciated both Nazism and Communism for their deeply anti-Christian themes.[28] Sartre got hooked on amphetamines, hid vodka behind his books to help him get blackout drunk, and talked with imaginary visitors.
Hymns. In addition to adherents, prophets and saints, the cult of self has a sacred soundtrack. Ol’ Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra, famously sang, “I did it my way,” the self-worshipers’ classic equivalent to “Amazing Grace.” Roxette closes its 1980s pop-rock hit with the looping mantra “Listen to your heart,” sung thirteen consecutive times.[29] Country music icon Reba McEntire assures us that “the heart won’t lie.”[30] Proto-punk rockers The Kinks agree that you should “truly, truly trust your heart.”[31] Original bad boys of hard rock Motörhead shout, “Listen to your heart/ Listen all your life / Listen to your heart / and then you’ll be alright”[32] over gritty power chords.
Then there are the children’s songs. In Disney’s Mulan soundtrack, Stevie Wonder catechizes young, impressionable minds:
You must be true to your heart
That’s when the heavens will part. . . .
Your heart can tell you no lies[33]
Little feet tap along with an animated swallow named Jacquimo as he serenades Thumbelina: “When you follow your heart, if you have to journey far / Here’s a little trick. You don’t need a guiding star / Trust your ticker, you’ll get there quicker.”[34]
There are enough tween-targeted self-worship pop songs to fill a year-long playlist. We hear songs about bucking authority, songs about your wildest dreams all coming true, about being a super girl, or some roaring animal goddess who eats people’s expectations for breakfast and excretes fireworks and rainbows. Packed auditoriums of adolescents, hands outstretched in worship, have sung in unison with JoJo Siwa,
My life, my rules, my dreams …
My life I choose who to be …
So I’ma be me…
I follow my own lead.[35]
Commandments. In addition to adherents, saints and prophets, and a sacred soundtrack, the cult of self-worship features its own decalogue:
1) #liveyourbestlife: Thou shalt always act in accord with your chief end—to glorify and enjoy yourself forever.
2) #okboomer: Thou shalt never be outdated, but always on the edge of the new.
3) #followyourheart: Thou shalt obey your emotions at all costs.
4) #betruetoyourself: Thou shalt be courageous enough to defy others’ expectations.
5) #youdoyou: Thou shalt live your truth and let others live theirs.
6) #yolo: Thou shalt pursue the rush of boundary-free experience.
7) #theanswersarewithin: Thou shalt trust yourself, never letting anyone oppress you with the antiquated notion of being a “sinner.”
8) #authentic: Thou shalt invent and advertise thine own identity.
9) #livethedream: Thou shalt force the universe to bend to your desires.
10) #loveislove: Thou shalt celebrate all lifestyles and love-lives as equally valid.[36]
Theological Dogmas. One of the many distinctions between God and us is his unique, authoritative role in determining that humans would exist (we are contingent; he is not), and also why we exist. Human nature is not like a bowl of alphabet soup—a senseless jumble of floating letters that can be arranged at our leisure. Human nature is more like a book—we are authored beings with meaning and purpose. Authoring the meaning of human nature is a God-sized task.
The cult of self-worship, by contrast, pushes the dogma of self-definition. As Ru Paul put it in a recent interview with Time, “Drag has always served a purpose. We mock identity. We’re shape-shifters. We are God in drag. And that’s our role to remind people of that.”[37] Under this doctrinal tenet, the autonomous “I,” the self-creating self, takes the sovereign mantle of man-making that God held in traditional theology. Colin Campbell clearly captures this dogma:
The ‘self’ becomes, in effect, a very personal god or spirit to whom one owes obedience. Hence ‘experiencing,’ with all its connotations of gratificatory and stimulative feelings becomes an ethical activity, an aspect of duty. This is a radically different doctrine of the person, who is no longer conceived of as a ‘character’ constructed painfully out of the unpromising raw material of original sin, but as a ‘self’ liberated through experiences and strong feelings from the inhibiting constraints of social convention.[38]
The omnipotence-demanding task of constructing an entire person’s nature is forced onto our all-too-shaky and finite shoulders. Tragically, many buckle under the impossible weight.
To offset the weight of this autonomy, many turn to other finite creatures to validate their self-made selves. The collective “We” is invoked to do some of the existential heavy-lifting that the autonomous “Me” cannot muster. For deeply spiritual and not mere social reasons, people seek universal celebration of their constructed identities. This takes us to the soteriological doctrines of self-worship. In Christian soteriology (doctrine of salvation), justification refers to, among other things, the divine act whereby God declares a sinner “not guilty!” on the basis of Christ’s redemptive death and resurrection. God is the Judge, Satan is “the accuser,” and Jesus is our Defense Attorney who appeals to his own completed death sentence so we can be declared not guilty. If we leave God out of the process of living free from guilt, then where must we turn for that authoritative declaration? We turn to the next biggest entity we can imagine. We turn to Society. Media, the law, education, entertainment, the local business owner—we must get everyone to declare us, in unison, “not guilty!” We must demonize and silence anyone who fails to acknowledge and celebrate our guiltlessness. The Little Sisters of the Poor, the baker, the photographer, and the Christian university become the collective functional equivalent to Satan and his minions in an historic Christian demonology.
Psychologists, according to Elizabeth Nolan Brown, have found that the kind of moral outrage we typically classify as altruistic “is often a function of self-interest, wielded to assuage feelings of personal culpability for societal harms or reinforce (to the self and others) one’s own status as a Very Good Person.”[39] This constant imputation of guilt to others—they are the bigots, they are the phobics, they are the fascists—offers a subjective sense of something very close to (and yet infinitely far from) what Christ offers in the Gospel.
This leads us to the eschatological vision of self-worship. Sin is no longer an internal category. (How, after all, could telos-defining deities of like us be in violation of a higher moral law if our desires are the highest moral law?) Sin must be found only “the institutions” according to Rousseau and the French Revolutionaries, or “the oppressors” in the categories of neo-Marxism. The great and final triumph over evil, then, becomes a triumph over any institution or oppressor who dares question the self-defined self.
What emerges is a kind of secular postmillennialism in which intersectional alliances of self-defined selves must mobilize for the great eschatological struggle. Cultural, political, and legal efforts become a spiritualized quest to usher in the new heavens and a new earth. This quest is every bit as eschatological and utopian as it was for the 18th century French Revolutionaries and the 20th century Marxists. But, we must say with tears, this new revolution also renounces the Creator-creature distinction. Drastically overestimating our goodness and underestimating our propensity for evil, it will prove just as dystopian.
Conclusion
There’s no understanding and engaging the culture without addressing the issue behind the issue behind the issues that fill our newsfeeds. We must reckon with the cult of self-worship, a cult with adherents, saints and prophets, hymns, commandments, and theological dogmas. The Christian’s task in this cultural moment must be what it has been throughout history—to expose the idols of our age for all of their inadequacy, smallness, and hopelessness in comparison with God. May the watching world see a satisfied worshipfulness in our lives that only makes sense if the supreme God of the Bible is real. May they see an unflinching fearlessness in our lives that only makes sense if the sovereign God of scripture exists. May they see a willingness to die for them (even when we are assaulted and oppressed) that speaks to the reality of our gracious God, who died for us when we were still His enemies. May we show them a relational authenticity in our communities that only makes sense if the God in three Persons, blessed Trinity exists.
Make no mistake: as we seek to engage culture we are up against nothing less than a theocracy, a theocracy of self-worship seeking to enshrine itself at all levels of law and society, a theocracy that like so many historic theocracies seeks its heretics to marginalize and silence. And just like the church living under the false theocracy of the Roman imperial cult in the first century declared “Jesus, not Caesar, is Lord,” may we have the guts to say in our century, Jesus, not Narcissus, is Lord.
[1] Francis Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 1.
[2] Ibid. Three years prior, Alexander Solzhenitsyn delivered his seminal commencement speech at Harvard, “A World Split Apart,” https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/a-world-split-apart. Like Schaeffer, Solzhenitsyn argued that addressing society’s problems at the surface of legal and political categories, rather than root moral and spiritual categories, “prevents one from seeing the size and meaning of events” and “makes space for the absolute triumph of absolute Evil in the world.”
[3] Melissa Koenig, “Swimmer who Tied NCAA Race with Lia Thomas Recalls Horror When Trans Athlete ‘Who is Attracted to Women’ Displayed Penis in Locker Room,” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11215537/Swimmer-lost-NCAA-race-Lia-Thomas-recalls-athlete-displaying-penis-female-locker-room.html
[4] Tessa Longbons, “Abortion Reporting: New York City (2016),” Charlotte Lozier Institute, December 19, 2018, https://lozierinstitute.org/abortion-reporting-new-york-city-2016/.
[5] Clarence Thomas, “Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Inc,” https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/18-483_3d9g.pdf. Justice Thomas cites Mara Hvistendahl, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men (Philadelphia: Perseus, 2011).
[6] Caroline Mansfield, Suellen Hopfer, and Theresa Marteau, “Termination Rates after Prenatal Diagnosis of Down Syndrome, Spina Bifida, Anencephaly, and Turner and Klinefelter Syndromes: A Systematic Literature Review,” Prenatal Diagnosis 19:9 (1999): 808–12.
[7] Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind (Penguin, 2018), 143-162.
[8] Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 11. Emphasis in original.
[9] Céline Louis-Ferdinand Journey to the End of the Night, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: New Directions, 1983), 291.
[10] For a superb theological and cultural analysis of this point see Peter Jones, One or Two? (2010) and The Other Worldview (2015).
[11] Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. David Magarshack (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1978), 297-298.
[12] Attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson in the Unitarian Universalist Hymnal.
[13] David Foster Wallace, “This is Water,” 2005 Commencement Speech, Kenyon College, http://bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu/x4280.html.
[14] Bob Goudzwaard, Aid for the Over-Developed West (Toronto: Wedge Pub. Foundation, 1975), 114-115.
[15] Camille Paglia, “Feminism: In Conversation with Camille Paglia, interview with Claire Fox,” Institute for Ideas, 47:50-48:30 (November 4, 2016), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y3-KIesYRE.
[16] Andrew Sullivan, “America Wasn’t Built for Humans,” New York Magazine (September 18, 2017).
[17] Paul Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change (2008), 170.
[18] G.K. Chesterton, Christendom in Dublin in G.K. Chesterton: Collected Works, Vol. 20 (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 2001), 57.
[19] Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (Viking, 2009), 64-66.
[20] David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, Good Faith: Being a Christian When Society Thinks You're Irrelevant and Extreme (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2016).
[21] Jean Jacques Rousseau, Confessions, ed. Patrick Coleman, trans. Angela Scholar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 270.
[22] Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, trans. Richard Polt (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), 75.
[23] ___________, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Penguin, 2003), 204.
[24] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (London: Penguin, 1978), 156.
[25] Aleister Crowley, Book of the Law (Boston: Red Wheel/Weiser, 1976), 9.
[26] Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre, Ed. Kaufman (New York, NY: New American Library, 1975), 291.
[27] The brilliant philosopher spent his final years in an insane asylum. With his mind tragically broken and his body riddled with syphilis, Nietzsche signed his last cryptic letters in his own blood as “The Crucified One,” under the delusion that he was the Christ. While some credit Nietzsche’s insanity exclusively to his syphilis, many see his own philosophy as a contributing factor. A fascinating piece from this perspective: George Bataille and Annette Michelson, “Nietzsche’s Madness” October Vol. 36 (Spring 1986), 42-45.
[28] Marco Pasi, Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics, trans. Ariel Godwin (Durham: Acumen, 2014), 52-53.
[29] Roxette, “Listen to Your Heart,” released September 27, 1988, on Look Sharp!, EMI Electrola, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCC_b5WHLX0.
[30] Reba McEntire and Vince Gill, “The Heart Won’t Lie,” released February 15, 1993, on It’s Your Call, MCA, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL-hSSZn5Pc.
[31] The Kinks, “Trust Your Heart,” released May 19, 1978, on Misfits, Arista, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8YQ0I2uAss.
[32] Motörhead, “Listen to Your Heart,” released October 15, 1996, on Overnight Sensation, SPV/Steamhammer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR3yOSywVw4.
[33] Stevie Wonder and 98 Degrees, “True to Your Heart,” released June 2, 1998, on Mulan: An Original Walt Disney Records Soundtrack, UMG, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNC6nM8sWeg.
[34] Gino Conforti, “Follow Your Heart,” released February 24, 1994, on Thumbelina: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, SBK/EMI Records, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNY53T7RlDQ.
[35] JoJo Siwa, “Nobody Can Change Me,” released August 28, 2021 on, The J Team (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), Nickelodeon, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aJhMmBAJH8.
[36] For a full treatment of the self-worshippers’ decalogue see my Don’t Follow Your Heart: Boldly Breaking the 10 Commandments of Self-Worship (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, forthcoming).
[37] Cady Lang, “RuPaul on Why Identity Shouldn’t Be Taken Seriously, But Loving Yourself Should.” Time.Com, (April 20, 2017).
[38] Quoted by Craig M. Gay in “Sensualists without Heart: Contemporary Consumerism in Light of the Modern Project,” in The Consuming Passion, ed. Rodney Clapp (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 28.
[39] Elizabeth Nolan Brown, “Moral Outrage is Self-Serving, Say Psychologists,” reason.com (March 1, 2017).
THADDEUS WILLIAMS
Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Talbot School of Theology | Biola University
This essay was originally delivered as a plenary address at the 2022 IACE Faculty Development Conference.