The Modern Attack and the Ancient Dance
It is a peculiar fact of our times that we are constantly being told that Christianity is dying, and yet its supposed death seems to require an extraordinary amount of effort on the part of its executioners. If the faith were truly as dead as they claim, they might simply leave it alone, as one leaves alone a fossil or an ancient ruin. But instead, they gather around it with an almost religious fervor, wielding their scientific hammers and philosophical chisels, determined to break it into ever smaller pieces. The very violence of their attack suggests that the thing they assault is terribly alive.
The modern world has developed a curious habit of declaring things dead precisely when they begin to move. It pronounces democracy finished just when the common people start to vote in unexpected ways. It declares the family extinct exactly when young people begin yearning for stable homes. And it proclaims God dead at the very moment when millions find themselves unable to explain away the haunting feeling that Someone is looking at them through the stars.
Our new prophets come armed with statistics and surveys, telling us with grave faces that church attendance is declining, that young people are leaving the faith, that science has somehow disproven miracle. They speak as if they have discovered something new, as if they were the first to notice that following Christ is difficult. But of course it has always been difficult. That is rather the point. If Christianity were merely a comfortable set of platitudes about being nice to each other, it would hardly have survived its first encounter with the Roman lions.
The modern attack on Christianity has a peculiar character that sets it apart from the persecutions and heresies of old. Previous ages tried to destroy the faith by force or to corrupt it from within. But our age tries something far more ambitious – it attempts to embarrass Christianity to death. The faithful are made to feel that they are showing up at a party in last century's clothes, that they are somehow behind the times, unfashionable, gauche. We are told that no reasonable person could believe in such things anymore, as if reason itself had somehow been recently invented and had not been the companion of faith for two thousand years.
This is, when you think about it, a very strange sort of attack. It is as if someone tried to defeat an army by suggesting that its uniforms were out of style. It is like trying to disprove mathematics by pointing out that many mathematicians wear unfashionable glasses. The truth or falsity of a thing has precious little to do with whether it is currently in fashion. Indeed, if we are to judge by the history of fashion itself, the fact that something is currently out of style is a fair indication that it will soon come roaring back into favor.
But there is something even stranger about this modern assault on faith. While claiming that Christianity is outdated, our critics seem to be busily engaged in reinventing it. They tell us that religion is dead, and then hurry to establish their own secular religions, complete with saints (called "influencers"), confessionals (called "therapy"), and even indulgences (called "carbon credits"). They mock the idea of sacred ritual, and then fill their lives with elaborate routines of diet and exercise that would make a medieval monk blush. They reject the notion of original sin, only to become obsessed with systemic guilt and inherited privilege.
The explanation for this paradox is simple enough: Christianity satisfies certain permanent human needs, and if you drive it out the front door, something very like it will climb in through the window. The modern world, having rejected the real thing, finds itself constructing increasingly bizarre imitations. Having thrown away the map, it keeps accidentally wandering back to the same destination by increasingly circuitous routes.
What then should be our response to this great modern assault? Some suggest that we should update our faith, make it more palatable to modern tastes, sand off its rough edges. But this is precisely backwards. The very thing that makes Christianity eternal is its stubbornness, its magnificent refusal to change its essential character to suit the passing fashions of any age. It is not a weathervane, spinning with every shift in the cultural winds, but a compass, always pointing toward the same immovable truth.
The proper response to the modern attack is not to retreat but to advance, not to apologize but to proclaim. We should remind our critics that every age has thought itself thoroughly modern, just as every teenager believes they have invented rebellion. We should point out that the faith they consider outdated has outlasted every empire, philosophy, and social system that has pronounced it obsolete.
But above all, we should dance. Yes, dance. For Christianity has always been less a philosophy than a dance, less a system of thought than a way of moving through the world. It is a dance that looks ridiculous to those who have never tried it, yet one that has kept perfect time through the centuries while other dancers have stumbled and fallen. It is a dance that requires both discipline and abandon, both precision and joy.
The world watches our dance and calls it old-fashioned, out of date, behind the times. Let them watch. They have forgotten that the oldest things are often the most radical, that tradition can be more revolutionary than revolution itself. They have forgotten that the most ancient truths are often the ones that feel freshest to each new generation that discovers them.
So let us dance our old dance with new vigor, sing our old songs with new voice. Let us face the modern attack not with fear but with that strange combination of humility and confidence that has always characterized the faith. For we know that this attack, like all the others before it, will pass away, while the dance goes on. The music to which we move was playing long before our critics were born, and it will still be playing long after their criticisms have been forgotten.
-The Seeker's Quill
