I began to wake up at two or three o’clock in the morning with a racing heart and an anxious sweat. I couldn’t get back to sleep. During the day, I experienced the tightness of anxiety throughout my chest and stomach. I tried to control my fears subconsciously by obsessing on one or two of them. But then I began to fear irrational things, such as getting fired or losing my home. I was afraid of life.1
WHAT IS YOUR REACTION to such transparency? Does it surprise you? Maybe even make you uncomfortable? Why would one of the leading Christian apologists make such a stark admission? As the essays in this book attest, J. P. Moreland has made his reputation by defending the Christian worldview with logic and cogent philosophical arguments. We stand in awe of his intellect. What is to be gained by informing us that he wakes with a racing heart and is driven by irrational fears? Do such revelations hurt or enhance his credibility? “I can’t stand aloof leaders or communicators,” J. P. states. “We must be real.”2 This essay explores J. P.’s contribution to cultural apologetics by his decision to be real by going public with personal struggles of anxiety and depression. Specifically, we’ll consider the role of cultural apologetics in advancing the Christian worldview, how narrative theory helps us understand the power of shared stories, and how self-disclosure adds to communication competency.
In order to understand why J. P. would be so candid about anxiety attacks and bouts with depression we need to understand the role of cultural apologetics in general, and specifically J. P.’s conceptualization of it.
Apologist Peter Kreeft asks a provocative question in suggesting that Christian communicators need to be conversant in both timeless and timely arguments.
Do we need a new apologetic for our new age? Yes and no. Yes, new diseases need new medicines, new ignorances need new remedial courses. But no, the content of the remedial courses is not new, for neither the laws of logic nor the facts about God have changed. A new apologetic? Yes, because apologetics is a dialogue between two people, and the speaker should always be aware of how his listener’s mind has changed if he is to make contact…. The target moves but the bullets remain the same.3
To be effective, Christian communicators must find this balance. First, he or she must be steeped in theology and classical apologetics. What are the deep and unchanging truths about God? What arguments for His existence and the Christian worldview have stood the test of time? Conversely, an apologist must also know how today’s culture uniquely shapes the perspectives of those he or she will encounter at Starbucks, or in graduate classrooms. The goal of cultural apologetics is to assess how cultural trends inform and mold a person’s perspective. What salient forces within a culture contribute to how a person thinks and behaves? The necessity of understanding how our surroundings impact us is not a new focus created by modern apologists. The men of Issachar were of great value to King David and Israel precisely because they “had understanding of the times” (1 Chron. 12:32). In commanding us to renew our minds before God, the apostle Paul states that we first must become aware of how we are being conformed to “the pattern of this world”(Rom. 12:2). The word world (aion) is a complex term denoting all “that floating mass of thoughts, opinions, maxims, speculations, hopes, impulses, aims, aspirations, at any time current in the world … which constitute a most real and effective power.”4 Christian communicators must understand how the thoughts, opinions, and impulses of this current time in the world uniquely influence an audience. The cultural impulse J. P. chooses to address in much of his writings is our hopelessly modern and deficient conceptualization of happiness.
“We Americans are obsessed with being happy,” J. P. states. “But we are also terribly confused about what happiness is.”5 How does an individual or culture go about defining a word or concept such as happiness? Words or symbols are ambiguous because their meanings are often unclear and dependent upon context. Even seemingly simple words can have different connotations for different people. Jacques Ellul writes:
Even the simplest word—bread, for instance—involves all sorts of connotations. In a mysterious way, it calls up many images which form a dazzling rainbow, a multitude of echoes. When the word bread is pronounced, I cannot help but think of the millions of people who have none. I cannot avoid the image of a certain baker friend of mine, and of the time during the Nazi occupation when bread was so scarce and of such poor quality. The communion service comes to me: the breaking of bread at the Last Supper and the image of Jesus, both present and future.6
If the word bread can arouse such varying connotations, imagine how a complex concept like happiness can evoke confusion. The arbitrary, abstract, and ambiguous nature of words adds both to the mystery and frustration of symbol dependent communication. As Ellul concludes, “All language is more or less a riddle to be figured out.”7 How the riddle of words will be solved is largely dependent on the particular speech community to which you give credence and interpretive authority.
To inform readers what our current definition of happiness is, J. P. consults a common cultural artifact—a dictionary. In it, we read that happiness is “a sense of pleasurable satisfaction.”8 J. P. points out that for many Americans happiness is associated with a feeling that closely resembles pleasure. From this definition springs a powerful ideology where “the good life” is reduced to a “life of good feeling” which becomes a “goal of most people for themselves and their children.”9 Once J. P. establishes his touch-point, he seeks to show the inevitable result of such a view. “Think about it. If happiness is having an internal feeling of fun or pleasurable satisfaction, and is our main goal, where will we place our focus all day long?”10 J. P. concludes that the focus will be solely individualistic and the “result will be a culture of self-absorbed individuals who can’t live for something larger than we are.”11 In the end we’ll become empty selves who lack conviction, fill needs with consumer products, and increasingly slide more deeply into an ideology that fosters anxiety and depression. His assessment is stark: “Slowly, but surely, the contemporary notion of happiness is killing our relationships, our religious fervor, our very lives.”12 J. P. understands that one of the most troublesome aspects of ideologies is that they are often unreflectively embraced and their implications are not immediately seen. Before we consider J. P.’s rhetorical strategy for challenging our cultural view of happiness and establishing credibility through self-disclosure, it will be helpful to define culture and discuss some of its intricate components.
While there are many definitions of culture, it is useful to view culture as “a community of meaning and a shared body of local knowledge.”13 The institutions, structures, customs, and practices of a culture work to mirror and support this shared body of collective knowledge. Specifically, institutions, customs, and cultural practices position certain social groups, actions, and values as good, natural, and normal, while identifying others as bad, unnatural, and abnormal. Social groups who have the power to name an action or behavior normal or good wield considerable social power. Within each culture there are co-cultures around which individuals choose to identify with and support, fostering a common narrative that advances a particular perception of race, religion, ethnicity, ethics, sexual orientation and so forth.
Not everyone born into a particular culture perceives that culture in the same way. Standpoint theorists argue that a person’s social location within culture and the particular groups he or she is born into powerfully shape how he or she thinks about others, themselves, and the social world. The social, material, and symbolic circumstances of particular groups influence and guide group member’s perceptions of all facets of life. For example, a student raised in a white, middle class location may not receive much encouragement to develop friendships with lower class, African-American classmates. Within certain locations, the African-American student is not just viewed as being different in regard to race or class, but the difference is widened to include a sense of what is, and is not valuable.
The roots of standpoint theory are linked to the observations of nineteenth century German philosopher Georg Hegel who noted that the institution of slavery is perceived differently based on social location. The slave owner or master perceives slavery only as it relates to his self-interests. He has no need to be aware of the slave’s perspective, needs, or desires other than how those influence production. The slave, however, needs to be aware not only of his or her own needs, but also must be keenly attuned to the needs and perspective of the master. Hegel’s conclusion was that, where power relationships exist, there is never one single perspective of society. Ironically, while the perspectives of those in lower class locations tend to be ignored or devalued, they may actually have a more comprehensive perspective of society than those in power. Regardless of what culture, subculture, or social position a person belongs to certain concepts come into play.
Ideology is a comprehensive set of ideas, values, and beliefs that organize a group or society’s understanding of reality. It is a code of meanings that informs and encourages people to see social and personal life in a particular way. “An ideology is a systematic and comprehensive set of ideas relating to and explaining social and political life.”14 Growing up in East Detroit as the son of a factory worker, a powerful ideology within my subculture was that hard work defined a person. In this life, a person needs to earn his or her keep. A real job was one that involved physical activity, endurance, and commitment. A good life was one in which a person provided for his family and gave back to the community. It is a set of ideas—an ideology—that still vivifies my daily experience.
Hegemony is more pervasive and abstract than ideology and consists of the assumptions we hold that “go without saying.”15 It is a system of meaning and values that we embrace without reflection or resistance. For example, while growing up in East Detroit, I slowly began to question whether a real job had to be physically demanding. Is it possible that a real job could be something that requires little physical labor, but demanded creativity like being an artist or a professor? While I began to question the pervading ideology of my community, it never occurred to me to question larger hegemonic issues such as the necessity of work or education itself. Why do I have to get a job at all? Do I need a formal education? Is a high school or college education necessary to be successful or have status? “These beliefs are commonly accepted by many people in our culture, but they are socially constructed ideas reinforced seemingly from every direction—from the family, the media, and school itself.”16
The theory of interpellation suggests that we begin to accept a particular ideology when we identify ourselves with individuals, definitions, or situations found in mass media, the arts, or daily life. We insert ourselves into the situation and adopt the ensuing values and perspectives. Over time these values and perspectives seem real to us and inform our expectations and experience. Marxist philosopher and social critic Louis Althusser likened interpellation to how we hail a taxi by calling out to the driver and getting his attention. In the same way, ideology hails us and gains our attention amid a multitude of influences. J. P. shares a powerful example of these influences when he describes the pre-game speech his daughter’s soccer coach gave encouraging the girls to forget about competing and merely to have fun.17 The coach’s perspective, echoing Cyndi Lauper’s song, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” is a subtle, yet powerful form of interpellation that supports the ideology that pleasure—not competing, discipline, or hard work—is the goal of life.
If hegemony is pervasive and assumed, then how did we ever discover it in the first place, let alone resist it? The answer is that certain individuals “are improperly socialized and thus are able to see things that most people, who have been properly socialized, are blind to.”18 Every once in a while a subculture produces a person like the Buddha, who questioned individualistic materialism and desire after stepping outside the ideology of his father’s palace, or like Martin Luther King Jr., who indicted the unspoken hegemony of the then racist South. These individuals, for whatever reason, started to see political and social life differently, resulting in a questioning of the status quo. When a person does so, he or she enters into what cultural theorist Stuart Hall calls “a theatre of struggle.”19 To oppose a dominant ideology we must first become aware of the dangers of a particular set of beliefs and resist them by finding an alternative ideology, either created by others or us. It is this theatre of struggle that J. P. wants to create for modern consumers of culture as he proposes an alternative to our current and destructive ideology of happiness.
If the above conversation about culture seems overly technical, keep in mind that “culture is nothing more than the constant and curious conversation that goes on between every one of us and the environment in which we reside—we ourselves being part of that environment.”20 J. P. conceptualizes cultural apologetics as an entry point into this cultural conversation. “How can you allow people to hear you?” is the fundamental question of the apologist.21 J. P. suggests that cultural apologetics can be broken down into two considerations. First, find out where people are at and select a touch point. Second, help them understand where ideas will lead if not challenged.
In attempting to cause readers to consider the implications of an ideology that equates happiness with a pleasurable feeling, J. P. has a rhetorical decision to make. Does he address an audience of empty selves struggling with anxiety and depression from a detached, analytical position, or does he address individuals from a personal perspective as one who also struggles? “I am convinced that this inability to face our deepest anxieties is at the heart of why we have trouble being happy.”22 Is the use of “our” or “we” merely rhetorical devices alluding to a literary solidarity, or a personal admission? J. P. clarifies:
If you are like me, you want to live a life of integrity. But there’s a problem. I find myself to be a broken person in so many ways, and these areas of fracture and fragility easily distract me from living a full, rich life with the sort of wisdom I deeply desire. Therein lies a big story that I will unpack in the pages that follow.23
In addressing the ideology of happiness, J. P. makes two rhetorical decisions. First, he chooses to identify with a fractured and struggling audience by describing a faith journey that includes fractures and struggles. Second, he decides to present his journey in a narrative form that he carefully unpacks for readers. Both decisions warrant our attention.
Rhetorician James Herrick argues that every speaker must fundamentally deal with the issue of identification. “You persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your way with his.”24 The essence of rhetoric is to look past the many differences between individuals to find common meaning and ways of acting together that promote unification and cooperation. J. P. attempts to cultivate identification not by adopting the persona of an aloof academic theorizing about ideology, but a co-traveler choosing to enter a theatre of struggle while opposing a dominant and flawed ideology. “If you and I were talking over coffee, I would look you in the eye and say with complete honesty and conviction that my life cannot be explained without the existence of the Christian God and the truth of Christianity.”25 However, the life he presents is not a pristine Christian journey with all struggles and doubts minimized or removed. Theologian Frederick Buechner calls such portrayals of the Christian life “highly edited versions” of ourselves where failures, disappointments, or shortcomings have been sanitized.26 J. P. does little editing when presenting his journey. “I wish to say at the onset that I have had periods of dryness in my pilgrimage, time where God seemed absent and hidden, numerous times when God said no to my prayer requests and other times when I sensed no answer at all, just complete silence.”27
In part, J. P. hopes to counteract the stereotype of distant, cerebral philosophers by presenting an unedited version of his spiritual pilgrimage. “The danger of being a philosopher is that you can start to believe it’s possible to merely live a life of the mind. In reaching out to others, I want to expose my heart.”28 By exposing his heart, J. P. is hoping to avoid what Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci calls the “intellectual’s error” that consists in believing that we can gain understanding without engaging our passions or feelings.29 To hear such a noted defender of the faith admit that sometimes he only encounters silence when seeking God is rare and, to many of us, refreshing. What influenced such candor? “Reading A Grief Observed gave me permission to feel that way about God and to be open with others. I view it as a type of permission giver.”30
The permission giver J. P. refers to is a series of personal reflections written by C. S. Lewis after the death of his wife, Joy Gresham. Shortly after her death Lewis writes: “Where is God? … Go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is in vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and the sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.”31 In commenting on such raw confessions, Lewis describes them as literary shouts of pain, rather than coherent thoughts. “I wrote that last night,” reflects Lewis. “It was a yell rather than a thought.”32 His scattered observations were a private means of coping with bereavement and overwhelming emotional pain. Even in his pain, Lewis understood that such stark honesty might be disturbing to the faithful and thus never intended to publish them. Only after his friend and publicist, Roger Lancelyn Green, pleaded with him to publish his thoughts did Lewis consent to do so under a pen name, N.W. Clerk.33 J. P. also understands the risk of making private thoughts public, but feels the reward outweighs the risk. “By sharing my struggles I can give hope that these struggles can be overcome.”34 The struggles common to many Americans can be overcome not by attempting to make the dominant ideology work, but by adopting a set of beliefs that are countercultural. If individuals are to question today’s conception of happiness, then they’ll have to resist a seemingly intuitive hegemony that defines it as pleasure. “Real life does not come naturally. It is counterintuitive.”35
“Therein lies a big story that I will unpack….” Not only does J. P. decide to be transparent, he selects the language of our culture—narrative. In the past thirty years, the single most dominant theory to transform how we view human communication is narrative theory. This theory, conceived by Walter Fisher, asks and answers a key ontological question: What is the essence of human nature? Fisher argues that we are storytelling animals who “experience and comprehend life as a series of ongoing narratives, as conflicts, characters, beginnings, middles, and ends.”36 Because we are human storytellers who continually narrate our lives and experiences by putting things in sequence and order, we are persuaded, or moved more by stories than an array of statistics, or purely logical deduction.37 Fisher was skeptical of our Western emphasis on logic and rationality as the dominant motivators for human decision making. He did not reject Western rationality, but viewed it as overly restrictive. In response, he contrasted what he described as a rational world paradigm with a narrative paradigm. In a rational paradigm people are seen expressively as rational beings that make decisions based on logical arguments and reasoning, while in a narrative paradigm people are storytelling beings that make decisions based on good reasons for accepting or rejecting stories.
Central to a narrative paradigm is the concept of narrative rationality. While stories move us, not all stories are equally compelling. As storytelling beings, we judge a story according to its fidelity, which Fisher describes as the extent to which a story resonates with a person’s own experience.38 In short, does this story resonate with my life and are the characters believable? “Obviously some stories are better stories than others, more coherence, more ‘true’ to the way people and the world are—in perceived fact and value.”39
In telling his story, would J. P.’s narrative ring true with his audience? J. P. notes that according to leading psychologists the baby boom generation has experienced a tenfold increase in depression and anxiety. If true, then many of his listeners themselves would make up part of that increase—readers who would consider his narrative and subsequent exhortation to redefine happiness “as a life well lived, a life of virtue and character.”40 Yet, central to the criteria of fidelity are salient questions: Do I find the character believable? Is he or she one of us? Does he or she understand my narrative? Pursuing identification, J. P. writes:
I found myself overwhelmed by a set of major stressors that sent me spiraling into an emotional tailspin … two related to extended family, another concerning an unexpected financial burden, then the discovery of the body of a friend who died from alcoholism—all ganged up on me to overwhelm my emotional resources. Further, I was diagnosed with a rare skin disease that placed me at high risk for colon and genitourinary cancer…. To top it off, I was worn out from work.41
After reading his confession, what would a reader conclude? That as a Christian intellectual, J. P. navigates life untouched by worry or stress? Or, that he is a man who struggles with family issues, financial pressure, tragedy, health concerns, and over-exhaustion? Does his narrative ring true with an audience comprised of individuals facing the same challenges and stressors? By telling such a transparent narrative, J. P. understands that all communication contains both a content and relational level.
Communication is complicated by the recognition that all communication involves two levels of meaning. The content level expresses the literal or denotative meaning of the words being spoken. The relationship level expresses the amount of acknowledgment, responsiveness, and power that exists between two people. This dual level of communication is evident in the Scriptures when the apostle Paul admonishes us to speak “truth [content] in love [relational]” (Eph. 4:15). Similarly, Peter encourages believers to be prepared to “give an answer [content]” to everyone who inquires about our faith, but to do it with “gentleness and respect [relational]” (1 Peter 3:15). Communication theorists agree that if the relational level is lacking, it greatly compromises or nullifies content. In other words, if a person does not feel acknowledged or respected, our content will be easily dismissed. When it comes to the content level, J. P. excels at explaining complex philosophical or apologetic arguments in defense of the Christian worldview. By crafting a narrative that not only acknowledges the struggles of his listeners but shares them, his content is significantly augmented by the relational.
Communication scholars use the phrase, “communication competence” to identify individuals whose communication is both effective and appropriate. Effectiveness involves the ability to construct, present, and achieve communication goals in a given context. It is one thing to recognize that a friend or family member needs comfort, and another altogether to craft and present a message that accomplishes the goal of providing aid and care. The same is true in applied apologetics. While our vast array of apologetic arguments, ranging from the cosmological to the teleological to the moral, may be sophisticated and logical, we must ask if they are actually effective in convincing people of God’s existence? The goals of rhetoric primarily focus on achieving specific results, such as voting for a particular candidate, or persuading a person of God’s existence. As the essays in this book attest, J. P. is exceptional at presenting arguments that actually work with both the intellectual elite and an audience member with no apologetic background.
Communication competence also includes a focus on appropriateness, which entails adapting our communication goals and style to a particular context. A word spoken in the right circumstances at the right time, suggests the ancient sage, is like “apples of gold in settings of silver” (Prov. 25:1). Situational factors such as the person with whom we are speaking, timing, cultural and social setting, and existing communication norms must all be considered. It is here that J. P. continues to adapt as a communicator. In a culture steeped in narrative that continues to define happiness in ways that foster anxiety and stress, J. P. adopts a rhetorical strategy that includes telling his story with candor. By establishing the relational element through the narrative of his life complete with honest self-disclosure, people are given access to the authentic, life-giving content of his words. “Being authentic,” concludes J. P., “is to be vulnerable.”42
1. J. P. Moreland and Klaus Issler, The Lost Virtue of Happiness: Discovering the Disciplines of the Good Life (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2006), 156.
2. Personal correspondence, February 12, 2013.
3. Peter Kreeft, Fundamentals of the Faith: Essays in Christian Apologetics (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 17.
4. Quoted in Kenneth Wuest, Word Studies in the Greek New Testament, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1955), 207.
5. Moreland and Issler, The Lost Virtue of Happiness, 14.
6. Jacques Ellul, “Seeing and Hearing: Prolegomena,” The Reach of Dialogue: Confirmation, Voice, and Community, eds. Rob Anderson, Kenneth Cissna, and Ronald Arnett (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1994), 121.
7. Ibid., 123.
8. Moreland and Issler, The Lost Virtue of Happiness, 16.
9. Ibid., 16.
10. Ibid., 17
11. Ibid., 23.
12. Ibid.
13. Alberto Gonzales, Marsha Houston, and Victoria Chen, “Introduction,” Our Voices: Essays in Culture, Ethnicity, and Communication, eds. Alberto Gonzales, Marsha Houston, and Victoria Chen (Los Angeles: Roxbury, 2004), 5.
14. Arthur Asa Berger, Cultural Criticism: A Primer of Key Concepts (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995), 58.
15. Ibid., 63.
16. Stephen W. Littlejohn, Theories of Human Communication (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1996), 235.
17. The coach specifically said, “Girls, don’t worry about the score. The reason we play soccer is to have fun; so let’s try to have a blast during the second half and go home happy whatever the result.” Moreland and Issler, Lost Virtue of Happiness, 16.
18. Berger, Cultural Criticism, 64.
19. Stuart Hall, “The Problem of Ideology—Marxism without Guarantees,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 10 (1986): 28–44.
20. Richard Lints, The Fabric of Theology: A Prolegomenon to Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), 104.
21. This quotation and Moreland’s view of cultural apologetics is based on personal correspondence, February 12, 2013.
22. J. P. Moreland, The God Question: An Invitation to a Life of Meaning (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2009), 18.
23. Ibid., 9.
24. James Herrick, The History and Theory of Rhetoric: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (New York: Pearson Education, 1997), 223.
25. Moreland, The God Question, 131.
26. Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 100.
27. Moreland, The God Question, 132.
28. Personal correspondence, February 12, 2013.
29. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 418.
30. Personal correspondence, February 12, 2013.
31. C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (New York: Bantam, 1976), 4.
32. Ibid.
33. To read an engaging and insightful synopsis of A Grief Observed and Lewis’s struggle to write it, consult Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: Companion & Guide (New York: HarperCollins, 1996).
34. Personal correspondence, February 12, 2013.
35. Moreland and Issler, The Lost Virtue of Happiness, 14.
36. Walter R. Fisher, Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1987), 24.
37. It is worthy to consider how much Jesus uses narrative to explain key theological concepts. For example, when the Pharisees complain about Him keeping company with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus decides to teach about the vastness and indiscriminant nature of the Father’s love. To do so He crafts three stories focusing on a shepherd who searches for a lost sheep, a woman frantic to find a lost coin, and a father who waits for his wayward son (Luke 15). Each story represents God’s enduring love. Jesus understood that a well-crafted story would be universally moving and memorable.
38. Narrative rationality also includes the criteria of coherence. When encountering a story, we ask if all parts of the story seem to fit together in a believable fashion, or do elements strain our sensibilities? Given the plot and cast of characters, does the ending seem valid? In short, does the story make sense to us? This particular criterion has interesting implications for apologetics. Considering the resurrection narrative through the criterion of coherence yields persuasive results. Given our cast of characters (common individuals turned disciples) what makes the most sense in explaining their conversion into bold proclaimers of the gospel after the death of Christ? Did they merely get their act together on their own, or did something extraordinary happen to bolster their commitment and faith and cause them to risk persecution? Applying coherence, what element—post-mortem appearances by Christ or human resolve—would make the story most believable?
39. Fisher, Human Communication as Narration, 68.
40. Moreland and Issler, The Lost Virtue of Happiness, 25.
41. Ibid., 155.
42. Personal correspondence, February 12, 2013.