Commenting on the “American Idol Worship” thread, reader NS has some terrifically insightful words:

I see this thread has progressed nicely but I will add my two cents nonetheless as a college student at a liberal New England college and as a person hailing from a liberal New England family where these concepts are reality, they lie at the core of the culture. As I said in my previous comment, the true crisis here is not a rejection of certain, albeit central, tenets of doctrine but rather the rejection of the concept of doctrine itself. There are two, interwoven ideas that underly this rejection of the concept of doctrine: the rejection of the idea of authority and the rejection of the idea of a worldview. This last is the actual core of it and the rejection of authority and doctrine sprout from this refusal to accept the existence of worldviews.

MTDers [Moralistic Therapeutic Deism — RD] and social liberals (MTDers are normally also social liberals but by “social liberals” I mean the large swaths of social liberals who make no pretense to religious observance at all), don’t believe that they hold a worldview. Instead, they believe that by embracing “live and let live”, they are not imposing anything on anyone and are not committing themselves to any worldview.

For example, I actually just had a conversation last night over dinner about sex and gender with a friend who is on the radical end of the spectrum regarding sex and gender (to her, everything is fluid and nothing is fixed). She was speaking about how she wants to educate children on issues of gender and sexuality, early in life, to teach them that the binaries that culture imposes regarding these issues aren’t real. This gives a great window into this ideology. First, they believe that they are free of the influence of culture, that they have reached culturally-neutral ground. And secondly, this culturally-neutral ground is the “live-and-let-live”, negative pluralism in which everyone can do whatever they want.

She kept on emphasizing that she wasn’t excluding me, and that she wanted my voice present, that I could hold whatever opinions I wanted, but she couldn’t understand the notion that we were really talking about competing visions of what is True. Her obsessively negative pose of allowing “discourse” is an ideological statement about a worldview. It necessarily involves a negation of certain Truths that people profess and offers its own Truth as a replacement. She couldn’t see it that way, she only saw it as her wanting to encourage discussion and me wanting to shut it down and oppress people.

Similarly, I had a discussion about the Hobby Lobby decision with my parents a few weeks ago. They are both MTDers and social liberals (and wonderful, selfless, flawed people). Like my friend, they emphatically asserted that they were not imposing any worldview on anyone, but rather wanted to make everything open to everyone. That, they said over and over again, is not a worldview but just a welcoming embrace. They just wanted to let people pursue their own ends. I tried explaining that that position is a worldview, but they refused to accept it.

Discourse between competing visions of what is True is not only valuable and worthwhile, but necessary to the healthiness of society and individuals. That is real pluralism and this is, in my opinion, the greatest political innovation of the West. But this discourse can only exist if people recognize themselves as committing to a worldview, as committed to Truth. The challenge with many MTDers and social liberals is that they don’t see their position as a worldview. The idea that they are making positive statements about the nature of reality is utterly foreign to them. Even further, the idea that *anyone* could make positive statements about the nature of reality is utterly foreign which is why they have such disdain for religious conservatives who have the audacity to do such a thing. Why? Because they don’t believe in a coherent, graspable reality. Such an idea is beyond the pale. It is outdated, absurd, and oppressive, the domain of fundamentalists and sex-haters. And so they are adrift in a posture of absolute tolerance.

Churches have to start speaking to the stranded-ness of so many souls. They have to strike out upon the unstable ocean of fear where these people reside. I am only beginning to grasp dry land after many years of anguish and listing on this ocean. But there are more people out there like me. There are more people who want Truth and who are seeking it even if they don’t know it or have the language to articulate it. This should be the goal of Churches. They must reconstitute the very notion of meaning, Truth, and purpose in the culture to show people that they want meaning and should seek it before they start replenishing the pews. They must show people that they are lost so that God may help them be found.

Red pill vs. blue pill. 

If we in the churches throw away the notion of Meaning, Truth, and Purpose (MTP) for the sake of trying to make the Gospel acceptable to people who don’t believe in these things, we destroy ourselves.

MPT, not MTD! Churches must be a lighthouse in the storm.

UPDATE: Annie writes:

NS, that is a perfect summation, a really terrific step-back to look at how we’re using words and what our unspoken priorities are.

I have a dear friend who loathes Christian proselytization. Her parents raised her as an atheist and she grew up, with me, living in one of the most liberal areas in the country (yesterday’s aforementioned Montgomery County). The sprinkling of religious kids at our high school were regarded as brainwashed weirdos to be met with raised eyebrows at best (including, I’m sad to say, by me). And yet, to this day, she continues to feel assaulted by Christian proselytizers.

Her continued use of that word made me think: wait, she proselytizes all the time for her own beliefs! She posts polemical articles supporting her worldview constantly, and attacks anyone who disagrees with her or ‘unfriends’ them.

She has a worldview she advocates for, it’s just one with different authorities – the self, our feelings, and some entity called “science” which is useful when it supports what she believes and discarded when it doesn’t. It’s insidious because it maintains an illusion of neutrality (these are “just the facts”), and the authorities it sets up rest upon sand, shifting from logic to emotion without noticing what it is doing. She can’t debate – she can only proselytize. Which is a shame, because I would cherish a real discussion, without proselytizing on either side, but it’s just not possible. Her reactions are too knee-jerk, her condemnation of anyone who disagrees with her too vehement, and her knowledge of philosophy, linguistics, and history are too shallow. Proselytizing is only something bad, hypocritical Christians do, but what she does is called “educating people on their ignorance.” I call it: “But when I do it it’s not hypocritical.”

Still there, but for the grace of God, go I. The thing to do is love her without agenda. And I guess that’s what we’re all called to do as Christians – preach our doctrines, but also our joy.