James Duff July 10th 2016 ~ Uncertain Times

With the uncertain election result and the sea we now find ourselves swimming in, I ponder if in Australia we have a too-optimistic view of human nature?  I’m afraid that in the western world we no longer account properly for the potency of individual freedom for both creative enterprise and destructive self-interest.I believe we always need a framework that governs and transcends the individual. It seems to me that our postmodern culture lends itself to rejecting any absolutes and replaces it with an autonomous individualistic subjective authority. The individual rules supreme!  The irony is this yearning for autonomous freedom actually leads to a destructive form of self-interest.  I think subjective individualism leaves people trapped in their own limited interior world of subjective feelings.  Less people than ever in the west look to a framework or narrative on how to navigate a world that is often so confusing. With huge prosperity and consumerism running rampant, we live more and more in a culture of self-entitlement as we delve further and further into ourselves looking for the answers and guidance that I don’t think we posses.I am far from being completely against individualism, I am a product of it.  I believe, as do most historians, that individualism was born out of Protestant theology.  Roughly speaking the pre-reformation teaching believed that for a person to become a Christian and be saved, one must become one with the church, the community, the body of Christ.  Protestantism placed greater emphasis on the individual to accept Jesus as personal Savior and mediator between the individual and the Father. Individualism has led to many wonderful initiatives and enterprises but as I ponder today’s world, I can’t help thinking we are witnessing the destructive self-interest side of it.Friedrich Nietzsche - the champion of uninhibited freedom of the human will - predicted but warned against the West’s march towards rampant individualism and rejection of the Judeo-Christian worldview.We have left the land and embarked. . .  we have burned our bridges behind us – indeed we have gone farther and destroyed the land behind us. . .  Woe then when you feel homesick for the land. . . there is no longer any land. Many in the West now view any large institutions suspiciously and as a threat to individualism.  I think that our political parties are currently experiencing this, as they wrestle with a culture that is confused on what is right and wrong and just wants things to be like they used to be.  I’m contemplating if this could be partly why Donald Trump has been so successful with his tag line of “Make America great again” and why many people last week voted for some of the independent parties who promise similar things for Australia.The scriptures are clear about the human condition.  Paul, while wrestling with his sinful nature, states: So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature I am a slave to the law of sin (Rom. 7:24).As I continue to muse, I think in Australia, generally speaking, we have a too-optimistic view of our human nature and that will continue to lead us down the path of self-destruction, burning of bridges and destroying the land behind us.  I hope my musing is wrong.  I think Paul gets it, it is only Jesus who can change us: what a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!(Rom. 7:24-25).Blessings,James