Charles Taylor on What Makes Christianity Unique

The paradox of Christianity, in relation to early religion, is that on one hand, it seems to assert the unconditional benevolence of God towards humans; there is none of the ambivalence of early Divinity in this respect; and yet it redefines our ends so as to take us beyond flourishing.

– Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (2007), p. 151

It is often claimed that what marks Christianity out from all other religions is — grace. Christianity holds that people do not work to win the favour of God. A religious life does not consist in the performing of certain rituals and rites to placate an angry God or to secure a place in the afterlife. On the contrary, Christianity claims to God is good, that God is for us, that God is giving and generous, and that God has done something wonderful. 

The above quote from Roman Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor throws this into an interesting light. Compared with all the other Ancient religions of the Near East and Mediterranean worlds, Taylor says that this belief in the fundamental goodness of God is unique. All other religions held that God is either indifferent or hostile towards humanity. People then needed to pray, to sacrifice, to pilgrimage, to go through certain ceremonies in order to get God’s attention, or to bribe God into being on their side. 

So when people wanted to be preserved from disease, sterility, spared from death, plauge or famine; when people wanted prosperity, health, fertility, victory, success, a plentiful harvest, protection or a long life, they would engage in religious activity which would attempt to win the favour of/bribe/pacify an angry or indifferent God.

What Taylor is saying in the above quote is that when you place Christianity within the ancient pagan world, two things become striking.

First, there is no need to placate, bribe or attempt to catch the attention of God.

Second, (and this is where the paradox comes in) although there is no need to catch God’s attention in this way, Christianity held that the purpose of religion was so much more than safeguarding individual prosperity. Ancient religions saw religion and God as the means to the ends of human flourishing. In their case, this means was particularly demanding and elusive. Christianity held that God is not demanding or elusive in the sense discussed above, but having a conception of individual human flourishing as the goal of religion simply would not do. Religion is bigger than a means to ensuring a terrific, safe and full life. Christianity redefines what the end of a human life ought to be and this is fundamentally more than individual prosperity.

This, of course, begs the question – ‘Well just what is the goal of human life to be?’ Taylor leaves this question lingering and does not provide an answer to it, though he clearly believes Christianity has one.

Bringing this insight into the Twenty-First Century, I think Taylor helpfully points out what is still a unique dimension of Christianity. Following Jesus is not a means to a successful job and happy lifestyle, a beautiful family, or the satisfying of particular religious urges. It is much more.

Christianity, Taylor believes, should always ask us to look beyond whatever the settled conception of human flourishing – a good life – may be. Do you think that Christianity is still doing this?

Why I Love Tom Waits

There are a number of things I dig about Tom Waits’s music – his ability to tell a story, his love for the odd and the strange, his ability to switch between his dirty baritone and equally dirty falsetto, his eclectic use of pre-rock music like carnival, theatre and blues, his embrace of the singer-as-entertainer, how he gives everything he’s got in every performance, and his restlessness.

But what I love most about Tom Waits is the statement his body of work makes about restoration, renewal, and redemption. He has a knack for taking the ugly and the repulsive things, the old and the worn out things, as well as the rubbish and scraps, and through sheer creativity turning them into something beautiful. In many of his songs the percussion is provided literally by pots and pans and garbage-tin lids, while a four-string guitar and worn out piano accordion play the melody. I can imagine Tom scouring an alley way for the perfectly disgusting garbage-tin lid, or the stalls of a gypsy fair for the weirdest, most thoroughly broken instrument he can find. These all form the perfect backdrop for his songs which tell tales of tales of tragic, cruel, lonely and odd people. Tom’s voice itself is the centrepiece of this picture: a rough, dried out, gravelly throat, that sounds as though he has been living on a diet of bourbon, cigarettes and nails for the past week, that can hold notes for bars which are nothing more than him gargling on a piece of phlegm at the back of his throat.  And it’s beautiful. He brings all these broken things together to create song after song which I just love.

He reminds me of a God who similarly has a knack for taking the ugly and the repulsive things, the old and the worn out things, as well as the rubbish and the scraps, and through an act of creativity turning them into something beautiful. A God who still says, ‘Behold, I am making all things new’ (Revelation 21:5).

Francis Schaeffer once said:

Some artists may not know that they are consciously showing forth a world view. Nonetheless, a world view shows through…In any case, whether the artist is conscious of the world view or not, to the extent that it is there is it to be judged on such basis…No artist can say everything he might want to say or build everything he might want to build in a single work…Therefore, we cannot judge an artist’s work from one piece…We must judge an artist’s performance and an artist’s world view on the basis of as much of the artist’s work as we can.”  — Art and the Bible (1973)

On this basis, I recommend Bone Machine and Mule Variations to the uninitiated.

Dogmatism and Grace

So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning”  — Aaron Copland

From time to time this blog will degenerate in discussing music. Part of this is just that fact that I love music and want to talk about it. But part of it is that I believe that music has an unparalleled ability to affect the way people experience and think about the world. To walk unashamedly into a cliché – music is philosophy for the masses.

Put it this way, both Plato’s Symposium and Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’ have the ability to shape people’s views about relationship and love; both Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and The Smiths’s ‘There is a Light That Never Goes Out’ can set a person’s orientation in thinking about hope, death and the afterlife. I suspect that both can do so as powerfully as one another, and in both cases it is much easier for the latter to do so. For Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason to affect your thinking on religious matters you have to read a difficult book from the 1790s, probably learn some background details about Kant, German Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion, and enter into a critical reading of the text, considering its premises and analysing its arguments. For The Smiths to achieve a similar result, you just have to listen to the (awesome) 3-minute track a few times. Music does not require the deliberate act of reading and scrutinizing a difficult text and its affect is often gradual and unnoticed.

All this is a preamble, and something of a justification, for saying that I think music can play a large part in shaping us and deserves to be thought about. Lately, this song has struck me…

In Catholic school as vicious as Roman rule

I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black

And I held my tongue as she told me, “Son,

Fear is the heart of love,” so I never went back.

– ‘I Will Follow You into the Dark’ by Death Cab for Cutie (2005)

A couple of Christian friends of mine don’t like this song – taking issue with the shallow, shapeless hope for eternity which runs through the song, and the fact that the band is practically synonymous with The O.C. But it grabs my attention. I think the song is about the deep consolation of friendship and commitment in the face of uncertainty and drastic change, told through promises made from one atheist to another to follow the other into the dark after death, since neither of them will be going to heaven or hell. It subtly blends a romantic rejection of imposed norms with a simple and powerful affirmation of the strength and peace which a loving companion can offer.

The writer, Benjamin Gibbard, recounts a memory from his teenage years when he was repelled by Christianity. A nun dressed in black gave him a good whack on the knuckles for believing the wrong thing, and told him to believe something which sounded utterly unintelligible to him and ran against his deep desire for a loving relationship. This is a tragic scene to me and reminds me of the importance of attempting to communicate about Christianity in a language which makes sense to other people, which speaks to their humanity, and in a way that is soaked in the kind of grace, acceptance, love and invitation to security which Gibbard ended up celebrating as an alternative to Christianity. What if a Christian had told Gibbard about the kind of love they know, the energy they are filled with, and the peace they are assured of in a language which he found intelligible, and in a way which spoke to his deepest human longings which made it hard to disbelieve?

This almost sounds as though I am saying, ‘What if some Christian had been crafty and tricked the young Gibbard into being a Christian!’ I’m not – the scene just makes me sad, and I wonder how many people who now find Christianity strange, cold and a little offensive had a similar moment. I suspect many first gave up on Christianity after an experience which they felt crushed their humanity, hurt them, and asked them to check their brain at the door.