I’ve been writing on this subject a lot and for a long time, but among the few things that motivated me to write this one was a new book written by Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of Modern Self. This is not an endorsement. I haven’t read the book. I just thought that people might have thought I had read the book because of the content of this post. Hearing about the book and reading some reviews of the book were one motivation, but not the main one.
God made man in His image. One definition of the image of God, found right in Genesis 1, is God’s likeness in man. One noted characteristic that distinguishes man among many is his upright walk and upward gaze. Watch yourself when you walk outside, how you look upward. The glory of man is the glory of God, man finding His navigation by looking toward His Creator as his North Star.
True believers in God through history looked upward to find their identity and the true meaning of themselves. They received that from God. He defines reality. Some now call that viewpoint “premodern.” Premodernism measured and measures according to God.
Transcending man, beyond and separate from him, comes from God truth, goodness, and beauty; hence, those three are called the transcendentals. Before man gets to specifics such as truth and goodness, he arrives at beauty in the immensity, order, and proportionality of the revelation of God. These are the “invisible things of [God] from the creation of the world [that] are clearly seen” (Romans 1:20). These are the “heavens declaring the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1).
As we work our way through scripture, God’s Word reveals the glory of God, declared by the heavens that He created and sustains, to be the perfections of His attributes. God manifests Himself to mankind first through creation, and that revelation, which everyone knows is the glory of God. But mankind as a race does not glorify God. He does not worship God in His transcendence. What happens or what has happened, and what is the result of that?
When man receives beauty from God’s revelation of Himself, this is objective or absolute. God is the standard for beauty, so for something to be beautiful, it is judged according to God. This was premodern thinking about beauty. It is the truth about beauty.
Beauty was not in the eye of the beholder to premoderns, because it isn’t in the eye of the beholder. Beauty isn’t subjective. It was according to the revelation of God, the plain qualities revealed therein. Those are objective. Beauty starts with God, so it is immutable. It cannot progress. It is transcendent, so invariable.
The truly or actual authentic is the original, like leather to naugahyde. The latter is inauthentic. Related to beauty, authenticity patterns after the revelation of God. In scripture, this is termed the beauty of holiness. Holiness is this transcendence, separation, or majesty. Only that is acceptable to God. If the opposite of beauty is ugliness, then subjective “beauty,” which isn’t beauty at all, is both ugly and inauthentic.
Modern and then especially postmodern thinking looks at man and then inward for beauty. Man first is the measure and then self. This turns from the upward gaze to the inward. Self becomes the standard, and this is subject, that is, from the perspective of self. Authentic with postmodernism means be true to you. Jesus, however, said if any man would come after Him, let him deny his self (Luke 9:23). The beauty of God’s holiness is the glory of God, which is seen in the face of Jesus Christ, not in the face of man or in himself. Man’s heart is deceitful and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9).
Attributes according to the nature of man are sensual and distorted by depravity. It moves beyond lasciviousness to all out sexual perversion. This turn inward for authority also rejects any critique. The idea here, even though it is never applied consistently, is that the acceptable judge is self. Criticism, on the other hand, assumes objective criteria. There is nothing to criticize or reject if any and everything can be good, because it’s all according to the eye or ear of the beholder.
Postmodern authenticity is sheer self approval. This is letting you be you, which can be an anthem for postmodernism. Oddly, narcissism in postmodern psychology says you should be other than you. Applying an objective standard, one from God, and denying self is hate speech worthy of a restraining order or worse. The narcissist apparently presents objective beauty in contradiction of self identity. This is considered harm on the level of physical violence. These concepts undergird future rejection of freedom of speech and further down the road, reeducation camps.
Opposite of God as standard, self as standard is ugly. You reader might like it, but your like of it is not what deems it beautiful. Popular art is ugly, and all the iterations of it, and this in music, drawing, painting, architecture, and fashion. Truth and goodness cannot be separated from God, so with the ugly will follow evil and lies.
I have contended that the corruption of truth, let’s say in the form of an unscriptural doctrinal statement, is not the on ramp to the broad road. Instead, it is ugliness, what is this subjective aesthetic. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not called ugliness. It is called beauty, but it really is ugliness. It proceeds from the imaginations of men, which is a denial of God. It is an alluring and easy access to the broad road and then a speedy fast lane down that road away from the nearest on ramp. This is the road to perdition.
God is worshiped through self denial. If any man comes to Him, he starts with denying himself. An unwillingness to deny self is worshiping the creature. This is apostasy Perversion and distortion follow. Good is evil and evil is good, but first ugly is beautiful and beauty is ugliness. It is the music hall and the art museum of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is blasphemy to the name of God that ends in eternal destruction. It will not enter the kingdom of God. His eyes are so pure that He cannot look upon it.
It is an easy transition from beauty as personal taste, to a self scripted truth and goodness. The god of man’s own imagination is very compliant. He is sovereign and to them a benevolent master, much better than the One and True God, who is judging them and will judge them according to His holy and immutable standard.
Contemporary evangelicalism has for the most part inculcated postmodern culture, rejecting the beauty of God’s holiness for the faux authenticity of self-fulfillment and advocating another Jesus made in the image of self. Each person chooses his own identity. Love is not defined by God and fruit of the Holy Spirit, but is a strong feeling of attraction to what pleases self. Everyone finds his own meaning by expressing himself according to his own feelings and desires.
The institutions of divine authority, including parents, who curb or constrain self-expression, which is the total freedom to be themselves, what they call authenticity, is on the order of a hate crime. This will cause their selves to be “unwell.” It requires them to be someone other than who they see themselves to be, which is their definition of themselves. Violating these boundaries is the new immorality, a narcissistic personality disorder. From their perspective, the only hope of a future relationship is found in not just the absence of criticism or judgment, but the acceptance of what they themselves see as their true identity.
The high octane of personal pleasure fuels faster speed down the broad road. Without the restrictions God has designed to impede, provided through His ordained institutions, including true churches and a father and mother, the adherents to self fulfillment will continue their hurtle toward the catastrophic end. They police themselves from the bromides of their own self help manuals. God, however, will still judge them according to His Book.
As Romans 1:25 says, they have turned the truth of God into a lie. They have turned the beauty of God into ugliness. It is the ultimate form of suicide, spiritual suicide, ending in eternal separation from God in the lake of fire.
You are turning crazy you know. You know nothing about NPD clearly.
I've read a lot about what people call, NPD. When I was young, I remember narcissism being used in a more standard, dictionary definition. Now it's been weaponized as a means to advocate for its proponents to dismiss objective truth. It's such a vague and arbitrary so-called disorder, that it becomes a vessel to use for whatever purpose will work for its functionary.
I can see this in the future. So why are you putting him away? Narcissistic personality disorder. You never see him again.
What is it? A parent's saying, "No, that's ugly and perverted." Dad or Mom won't allow a child independence, that is, opportunity to ruin his or her life in deviant behavior, let alone disobedience to God and His Word.
There is irony in your comment to what I'm writing. I'm turning crazy. You apply a psychological terminology because you can't judge base upon transcendent truth or goodness. Also how can you judge when all judgment is subjective? Isn't this just me being me? I get it though, when you don't have truth as a basis, because you've forsaken it, you must use whatever convention works for a group that accepts your naturalistic view of the world. A man in a dress allowing the real woman out, he's fine, but someone who points it out is crazy. This is the world we live in today.
Mainly I'm not going to publish comments that make pronouncements with no explanation, like one I got that just says I have no clue what I'm talking about and without any explanation. I see it as a "scoffer walking after his own lust."
Anonymous,
I had published your comment, but I decided not to do it. You only did name calling, but something in the comment was tell tale. You mentioned a "neuthetic approach" to counseling.
"Neuthetic approach"? It's nouthetic, because it comes from the Greek word, noutheteo. That alone shows you don't know what you're talking about. You've quoted an "expert," who can't spell the word. It also means you don't know what the Bible says about it, which you're obviously not taking as your authority.
Anonymous,
Not going to publish something that is only name-calling, all it is. If you knew what you were talking about, you would know that "neuthetic" isn't a mere misspelling. It is someone attempting to bash actual scriptural counseling, the use of the Word of God, to work with sin, seen in the uses of that Greek word in the NT, just to keep in force psychobabble like NPD. If you are going to criticize "nouthetic counseling," then you should know what it is and where it comes from. You show that you do not with the spelling of the Word. It would be like saying, I'm a long time student of pistomology and I would like to inform you about it. Your coming in to criticize how I used a comma in the comment section is also tell-tale. It is mock worthy, but mocking is not an appropriate means, I don't believe, of dealing with most situations. It should be very rare, but it's about all you do, so unless you can talk about this in a civil way, you won't comment here.
Beautiful!