Throughout this series, I have explored the task of Christian witness in light of the three classic “transcendentals”—goodness, truth, and beauty. I have argued that all three of these ancient categories play an important role in persuasion and that Christian witness should attend to each of them carefully. Humans are complex creatures driven by multiple horizons of motivation. At some fundamental level, everyone wants to live morally, believe the truth, and create beautiful things. Though, as John Calvin laments, “this longing for truth… languishes before it enters upon its race because it soon falls into vanity.”[1] Sin twists human perceptions, leading many to think of falsehoods as truths, to see ugly things as beautiful, and to do evil things, believing them to be good.
An apologetic that attends to just one of these categories—say, a series of syllogistic statements demonstrating the reasonableness of belief in God—runs the risk of being an anemic act of Christian witness if it isn’t situated within a larger story that also demonstrates the goodness and beauty of Christianity. This is not because the syllogisms are unhelpful or unimportant! Those sorts of arguments can absolutely help demonstrate why Christianity is “true.” Many people, though, won’t even pay attention to those syllogistic arguments if they believe Christianity is evil, repressive, or irrelevant; they may simply dismiss, out of hand, any argument in favor of that “evil and outdated” belief. For our neighbors who are already convinced that Christianity is immoral and ugly, we need ways to surprise them into reevaluating their subconscious dismissal of Christianity.
Witnessing to the Good Life
Better apologetic arguments alone cannot get us all the way to this needed reevaluation. For someone already tuning out the arguments, more apologetics will just increase the ever-droning background noise. Instead, distinct Christian practices that directly encounter the lives of our unbelieving neighbors are necessary to “break the spell” of ambivalent rejection. In our late-modern and disenchanted world, this is not as difficult as it may seem. Practices that may have once been commonplace are often wholly absent from the lives of our neighbors, and the glimpses of sacredness that they observe through our actions and lives are now alien and—at times—captivating. Christian practices have a real magic. Consider, for example, Jonathan Haidt’s recent work, The Anxious Generation. In the last article within this series, I discussed how Haidt’s work tells us about an alarming increase in anxiety rates over the past decade. Embedded within his work, though, is a testimony to the power and significance of Christian practices. Haidt, who is not a Christian, identifies six practices that have been shown to decrease anxiety which are traditionally associated with religion generally and Christianity in particular:
- Shared Sacredness
- Embodiment
- Stillness, Silence, and Focus
- Self-Transcendence
- Being Slow to Anger and Quick to Forgive
- Finding Awe in Nature
These practices, which have been hollowed out in our lives by the acid of social media and its phone-delivered instantaneous dopamine, offer a better way to live than our modern milieu naturally generates. This gives Christians an unparalleled opportunity to demonstrate the value and power of these Christian practices to our unbelieving neighbors. While Haidt and other unbelievers can recognize the functional value of religious practice, Christians have the distinct advantage of understanding why those practices are integral aspects of the good life. Christian anthropology—that is, our understanding of human nature—gives us a robust narrative that makes sense of the magic embedded in these practices. As Blaise Pascal argued, there is a God-sized hole in every human, and no person can be at peace until they are at peace with God. As Augustine argues, our hearts are restless until they find rest in God.
As we engage in Christian practices, we get to tell a story about why we are engaging in those practices. We get to explain to our friends and neighbors what those practices mean in light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. To that end, here are four practices that you can regularly engage in that may provide a glimpse of the transcendent to awaken your neighbor’s curiosity, along with some reflections on how each practice relates to the goodness, truth, and beauty of Christianity.[2]
Everyday Practices that Narrate Christianity
- Participate in the Sacred Together
Our world, even as secular as it is, bursts at the seams with sacred moments. Every time a child is born, a marriage covenant celebrated, or a funeral ceremony observed, the sacredness of life breaks into our daily routines. Rather than shy away from these moments or simply put our heads down and shuffle through them, Christians should be the clearest voices in recognizing the significance of these moments and explaining that significance in light of the Christian story. Each baby—from the moment of their conception—is of eternal significance, capable of knowing and loving God forever, and when that child is born, God is delivering a priceless gift to that child’s family. In a world that intuitively prioritizes selfishness, the self-giving foundations of marriage are radically Christian. While sin tears creation apart, marriage covenants bind otherwise sinful people together. Death, and the accompanying loss and pain it brings, is a constant testament to the brokenness of our world and its need for redemption. We all intuitively recognize that death is not right, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ gives us a way to deeply mourn the brokenness of the world while still moving forward in hope for the world to come. There is, for Christians, a resurrection after death, and that changes everything.
- Slow Down and Pray
The siren’s song of meritocracy is seductive in our late-modern age. It can be tempting to measure your worth based on the prestige or salary that comes with your title, but that kind of calculous can quickly lead to a life restlessly chasing after the next piece of success. This never-ending drive for more is part of why Haidt suggests the practice of “stillness, silence, and focus” is effective at combating modern anxiety. It silences the siren’s song so that the melodies of thankfulness and joy can break through the noise of our daily tasks.
For Christians, stillness and silence are not simply more tasks to master, but thankful responses to God’s gracious love towards us. We are drawn into prayer so that we can know God and entrust him with our fears and desires. It would be wrong—and undermine the magic of what prayer does within us!—to pray in public for the purpose of eliciting the reactions of others (Matthew 6:5, for example, would call this hypocritical). However, if we take the task of prayer seriously, it means becoming the kind of people who regularly slow down and talk to God throughout our days. We should not be afraid of others observing this regular practice in our lives, and we should take every opportunity to explain to them the goodness and beauty of prayer. Laying our fears and desires at the feet of God allows us to take those weights off our own shoulders, and it further form us into people who are capable of being non-anxious presences. Prayer is an ancient practice that operates as an antidote for the pernicious modern viruses of self-sufficiency and its accompanying anxieties.
- Reimagine the World While Meditating on Scripture
Scripture is more than just a series of didactic statements to be academically studied and exegeted. Scripture teaches and instructs, but it also draws us into the story of everything. It draws us into a fantastic tale about the meaning behind our lives and the design of everything we see. It exposes us to an ever-present conflict—that through sin, death and suffering have entered our world. It also promises us a resolution to that very conflict. All creation will be made anew, and there will be no more crying or pain or death. This is not a mundane story; it is a fantastic account that invites us to reimagine our whole lives. The key to living in this story—and not the mundane story our late-modern world intuitively trains us to live in—is meditating on Scripture. As we not only study the word but also reflect on its meaning and significance for our daily lives, we begin to reimagine every aspect of life. This can lead to surprising encounters with our friends and neighbors.
When everyone around us is being drawn toward rhetorics of hatred or fear related to the political climate of our day, Christians can continue to live in hope and love because the pressures of the polis are not ultimate. Politics, for Christians, can be important without being all-important. In light of the far more significant reality of Christ’s kingship, Christians can look at the otherwise terrifying political discourse of our world with a sense of hope. As J.R.R. Tolkien has famously argued, our story is, fundamentally, a “good catastrophe.” Our lives are serious and at times tragic, but due to the surprising grace of God, our lives are fundamentally oriented towards a happy ending. This confidence and peace can offer a striking contrast to the uncertainty and fear our neighbors are feeling. Explaining to them that our comfort comes from a firm belief in the goodness of our God and his plans for us can give them a glimpse of the beauty embedded within the Christian life and story.
Notes:
[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian, 2.2.10.
[2] Theses three practices are adapted from a list of six practices found in Surprised by Doubt, a book I co-authored with Joshua Chatraw and published with Brazos Press in 2023.