Social Media, Immanuel Kant, and the Church

What on earth do these three things have to do with one another? Well, I recently found myself looking at the work of Immanuel Kant, particularly his Religion within the Bounds of Reason, and a few thoughts occurred to me to pass along. In the third section of the book, Kant extends the discussion beyond the need for individual forgiveness and moral transformation to a more communal matter: participation in a community and its role, among others, to furnish eminently teachable moments.

It’s easy to think we’ve morally arrived when we’re sealed in like a hermit away from others, but we acquire patience when we actually have to practice it among other people. We learn love when we strive to have it for people not always easy to love. This is an important reason why community is vital as a sanctification tool.

Kant recognized that victory of the good over evil, and the founding of the kingdom of God on earth, occurs only in the context of community. He thought of such a “community of ends,” or “ethical commonwealth,” as a necessarily religious institution. Why?

When we live in proximity to others, we all too easily have a corrupting influence on each other. Consistent with Christian theology, Kant thought that, despite our potential for good, we’re all also afflicted with radical evil. Believers are in the process of being extricated from our “dear self” that can so easily beset us and derail our best efforts, but we remain susceptible to its allure. Only God’s grace can ultimately liberate us from it.

As I reflected on this, it dawned on me that we live in an interesting historical moment in this regard. Until about a decade ago, social media didn’t exist like it does now, and it has thrust us all, however unwittingly, into a novel relational paradigm, a new robust community. High school reunions don’t mean what they used to; rather than being out of touch with old friends and hankering to reconnect, we get hourly updates about their goings on. Much of this is wonderful, even charming, but it has its downside, and Kant can help us see why.

“Familiarity breeds contempt” is an oft-repeated adage for good reason. The more we’re around others—virtually or otherwise—the greater the temptation to find them a bit wearisome. Patterns emerge; idiosyncrasies begin to grate; and interpersonal conflicts owing to jealousy, selfishness, and a million other causes can easily ensue. This is unfortunate, but Kant also saw such inevitable conflicts in community as potentially redemptive, for they can reveal to us new things about ourselves—our need for deeper transformation, for learning to live with others despite their (and our) moral frailties and failures, and for coming to understand what it means to treat others as ends in themselves rather than as mere means.

Kant thought such communities are forged by a willingness to come together and agree to cooperate based on moral laws. He saw these communities as a kind of church in which we have the chance to learn and grow, becoming better, not worse. The possibility for both exists.

And the context of social media ratchets it all up a notch. Here the ugly underside of the human condition is often on full display: indulgence, rabid partisanship, off-putting communication styles, sophistry, dehumanization, unchecked incivility, shoddy argumentation, disingenuousness, putting on airs, projecting impressions, self-aggrandizement, addictive tendencies, unfiltered commentary, unprovoked tendentiousness, and the list goes on.

The littered trail of not just lost Facebook connections, but ruined friendships—even among strong professing Christians—is adequate commentary that too often social media has brought out our worst, not our best.

To my fellow believers, in particular, I’d like to say this as a word of encouragement and exhortation: of course social media isn’t the (or even a) local church, but we’re all part of the Church universal, and biblical truths apply. If social media is going to serve as a redemptive presence in our lives, we have to remember something that Kant recognized clearly. The ethical commonwealth—the contexts to which we belong, even on social media—is insufficient for true religion. We have to learn to allow God to guide all the members of a group together, all the disparate parts of His body. He’s the Head of the Kingdom of Ends able to coordinate and make cohere all the different roles we’re meant to play.

The same Being or Source is at the root of the moral deliverances to which we all need to heed, especially when it’s tempting not to. From this perspective, the level of cooperation between the members of the groups thus banded together will be a function of how faithfully they follow His lead in their lives. Garden variety conflicts are still sure to arise, but they needn’t—and they mustn’t—irremediably divide; they can instead be means of grace.

Kant offered a good test for actions when it comes to religious practice that would also serve as a useful rule for engagement on social media: Asking whether the word or action conduces to virtue, in oneself and others. If it doesn’t, best to refrain from it.

The Bible would up the ante even more: Is it an expression of love? Is it a way to obey the most important command to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves? If we speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, we are a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. And though we have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and though we have all faith—so that we could remove mountains—and have not love, we are nothing.

In this wonderful and special time of year, a season of soaring hope and charity, and at the precipice of a new year, let’s do something countercultural: let’s allow a spirit of generosity to replace any animus and invective, exchanging harsh tones and cutting comments for words of healing and edification, renewal and mercy, reconciliation and restoration—extending to others the grace that’s been offered to us.

From all of us at MoralApologetics.com, blessed Advent, and Merry Christmas.

Image: Telephone exchange by Cristiano de Jesus. CC License. 

Benedict of Nursia: Intentional Christian Community

Photo by Natalia Y on Unsplash

I dislike reactionary politics. The idea of withdrawal or throwing in the towel in a long conflict just does not sit well with me. So over the past three months, as I continued to run into references to Rob Dreher’s “Benedict Option,” I mistakenly thought Dreher was advocating intellectual, cultural, and moral retreat from an increasingly post-Christian world. When I read his argument more closely, however, I realized that my mental picture of his construct (Christians huddling in a commune somewhere in Idaho) was wrong.

Far from urging Christians to cease engaging the world, Dreher contends that the Christian life was always meant to be lived communally, a model of community hampered by the current cultural moment. Rather than give up cultural engagement, Dreher argues this conflict should force Christians to be more intentional about living near each other and seeking intellectual, spiritual, emotional Christian fellowship, thus bearing out the “one another” commands of Christian love sprinkled liberally throughout the New Testament.

Dreher’s inspiration is Benedict of Nursia, with the “Benedict Option” label evoking visions of the fifth-century father of Western monasticism. Born in the later days of the fifth century anno Domini, Benedict grew to maturity in a chaotic world. The Pax Romana had collapsed, replaced by shifting geographies, marauding barbarians, and unstable economies. Augustine had already written The City of God in response to the barbarians’ attack on Rome, wrestling with the question of Christian identity in a world where the Eternal City proved temporary. Benedict, facing the decadence of Rome, retreated to the hills.

The Benedictine Rule established the way of life for the monks. It demanded three vows: poverty, chastity, and obedience. It called for a life mixing work with prayer, and oriented the brethren towards gospel service.

He was not unique in that response; the third century witnessed a movement of monastic retreat in the deserts of Egypt. Called anchorites, the Desert Fathers were notable for their solitary lifestyle. Depending on which sources one reads, these first hermits performed mighty miracles, wrestled with demons, and eventually discovered that they needed other Christian brethren with whom to live the Christian life. Pachomius is often credited as the earliest of cenobitic monks, those who sought to work out their faith in community.

Benedict himself did not remain alone long. In his cave just north of Rome, disciples found him and requested that he teach them the way of holy living. Legend says that Benedict first established a strict rule, so rigorous that his first disciples tried to poison him. When Benedict miraculously escaped death by poison, his disciples repented, and Benedict reworked the community’s rulebook, known today as The Rule of St. Benedict. The historical narrative picks up with Benedict’s founding of the monastery at Monte Cassino in 529 AD and instituting the first edition of his Rule.

The Benedictine Rule established the way of life for the monks. It demanded three vows: poverty, chastity, and obedience. It called for a life mixing work with prayer, and oriented the brethren towards gospel service.  The Rule describes the monastery as a “school of the Lord’s service.” These places were originally intended as locations of intense discipleship, with the Rule defining the process by which a brother might grow to spiritual maturity.

The three vows bound all brothers together in their common pursuit. Poverty insured that they would not be distracted by worldly wealth, but would instead pursue a treasure “where moth and rust do not destroy.” The vow of obedience taught the monks first to submit in humility to a superior, recognizing the truth of Romans 13 that all authority is from God. As the brothers obeyed, they learned to submit to the divine will. The vow of chastity kept all brothers oriented towards an eternal community. Rather than the concerns of wife and child, the monastic brother found his hope in the heavenly Jerusalem and communion of the saints ruled over by King Jesus.

Benedict concludes his Rule explaining that he intended these steps to be only a foundation leading to maturity, much like Paul’s exasperating voice reminding the Corinthians that he should be able to give them meat, but they can only drink milk! The Benedictine Rule is a carefully planned route to practical discipleship lived together in community.

In that sense, Dreher’s “Benedict Option” is unoriginal. He joins a host of recent authors who see American Christianity as anemic and in need of discipleship. David Platt argues that Evangelical Christianity is distracted by wealth, and his book Radical describes a group of church members in Birmingham, Alabama, who sold their homes to move into the inner city and bring the gospel to the poorest inhabitants. Jamie Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom concludes with an examination of the oddly unchristian notion of college students separated from Christian community, and he proposes instead a Christian understanding of college where students and professors live in the town, seeking to live the gospel together in the midst of a watching secular community. Willow Creek Community Church sparked a small group movement across Evangelical churches with their phrase “Doing Life Together.”

Dreher himself proposes an ancient model of discipleship writ large across American Christianity in which Christians live near each other and provide solidarity as biblical convictions become less and less popular. These communities would not be monastic houses, severed from wife and child, but neighborhoods where church members live near the church. Oddly enough, this solution would also address many of the criticisms of disconnected modernity (Wendell Berry, Neil Postman, et al). It does not, as I once thought, call for Christians to ignore culture or try to escape from it. Instead, both Benedict and Dreher recognize that Christianity cannot be lived alone, and they call Christians to value the kingdom of Christ in exile (the church) more than material success.

What might this look like in practice? I think it could be very simple. Perhaps instead of taking a new job far away, one family determines to remain in a town and faithfully worship at their church. As financial opportunity permits, church members seek to live closer together. Geographic proximity to church community becomes a primary factor rather than house value, school location, commute time, and other practical concerns.

St. Benedict worked out a discipleship model which changed the course of western civilization. By calling men to live out their faith corporately inside a structured framework, education, literacy, and the Christian tradition survived the collapse of Rome and growth of European nations. As American culture becomes increasingly hostile to Christian values, Benedict provides a model for considering the essentials of our faith and the importance of living it out together.