“God in the Wasteland” by David Wells
“God in the wasteland” by David Wells is so often insightful that it is difficult to capture its essence in a few paragraphs, so I will have to be happy with hints. The book develops its own language to discuss the pitfalls of consumerism and modernism for the church in 1993. Society in 2022 has arguably slid further down these slopes, whether or not the church has, and as such the book is still extremely relevant. Happily, it is part of the genre “well informed Christian rant”. Too many books are either poorly informed, or insufficiently dramatic; it is worth noting however that Wells remains cool and collected at all times. There are multiple offhand comments in "God in the wasteland" that are so potent they could blossom (and probably have blossomed somewhere) into entire books in their own right. This book is a whirlwind of ideas such as the following: we can tell the self has disappeared because we spend so much energy trying to find it. Wells further develops this theme in his previous book "No Place for Truth". Our selves have all but disappeared - there is something so incredibly lost in day to day lives now.
This lostness is something we associate with post-modernism. Wells firstly mentions (something that has been covered in previous work) what he thinks postmodernism often consists of: modernism without a structure of values and meaning. Modernism was motivated and framed by a set of values and beliefs that were passed down through generations, and which were normative. Modernism was also a mechanism of commerce, efficiency, an emphasis on facts, progress, capitalism, and increasingly consumerism. All of these concepts blurred together, but nevertheless there was at least a belief in some higher purpose to it. Now that has dissolved, and we are left with a towering, directionless behemoth with incredible momentum going who-knows-where. In our public lives we are contributing to this machinery which is vaguely equated with the public good, but to many this the assertion has failed completely to be convincing.
If public life is directionless, we turn inwards; unfortunately our private lives are also, in a way, lost. This can be demonstrated with a brief discussion on consumerism. The hold of material things on our passions is incredible, on reflection. “How the world embraced consumerism” by Kerryn Higgs notes that we are taught “skills of consumption”. Acquiring the best things goes beyond pleasure: it is a skill that needs to be taught. Why? Because it has significance beyond pleasure, and therefore an education on how to consume is essential. We need to know which phones are best and why, who is wearing which shoes, and which are the best Nepalese GFO VGA restaurants in order to make progress on essential self development. We now have testimonials by “content creators” about their choices of watches and mechanical keyboards and their merits or lack thereof. We may not see ourselves as hedonistic; the way to achieve this sleight of hand is by elevating consumerism to the level of self-creation. Unfortunately, it has the opposite effect of degrading any meaningful sense of self (eg. growth in character). Furthermore, if we expand the idea of consumerism beyond material goods to include a consumeristic attitude towards other things, it begins to describe many themes of Wells' book. All things are sucked inwards towards the self, in order to provide wellbeing, excitement, fulfilment, etc. Decisions are essentially right if they are authentic, if they promote mental wellbeing, and if they lead to stronger self-acceptance. This is a consumeristic mentality which pulls things (friendships, jobs, family, products, worldviews) inwards if they lead to positive feelings and rejects them if not, like consuming a chicken wing and spitting out the bones. In the end we have a preoccupation with the self that is like C. S. Lewis' dragon in Prince Caspian - hoarding treasure but lonely, with empty souls; empty selves.
Wells draws the connection between this cultural mindset and the swerving of church to become more "therapeutic", arguing that focusing on satisfying peoples' wants and perceived needs has happened at the expense of theological richness, and has led to an anaemic picture of God. This is because we assume that our wants are primary, and because what we want naively is often not what God wants to give, and we have allowed this assumption to dramatically thin our perception of God’s real presence in his full, biblical glory. Many modern churches are therapeutic in that they aim chiefly to fulfil psychological needs/wants. He further explains how these changes have meant that an idea of God that is polarised between "immanent" and "transcendent" became significantly skewed in our preferences and our retelling toward the "immanent" pole. A God who is chiefly "immanent" will feel close to us. However, we have so diminished the "transcendent" dimension that it is now difficult to tell what is God's voice and what is our voice. God has drawn so close to the self that we imagine he is no longer able to critique it. We have forgotten about his holiness and the terror of it that frightened the Israelites.* We have forgotten that God is different to us. In Wells' words the self has "eclipsed" God. He now "weighs inconsequentially" on us. He has nothing to say, because we have forgotten who he is and so are incapable of hearing. Our therapy is self managed and self directed - we choose the therapist and their questions and comments. People might be ostensibly fascinated by God but in reality fascinated by themselves as spiritual beings. We may even say that faith, and God himself is extremely important to us. That sense of spirituality becomes (and has become) yet another self-absorbed preoccupation if we fail to consider the full weight of God's person revealed in the bible. Otherwise, we see God however we intuitively want to.
According to Wells, the church has become “managerial” in that it reorganises dramatically in a corporate sense to draw more people in via the route of “wants”. This historical road to these conditions is fascinating, and I will leave it to Wells to tell that story. The result is that the church has shifted its focus from knowing God to knowing the audience, and marketing has overreached. For a recent example, “The rise and fall of Mars Hill” podcast explains how in the infamous “Mars Hill” church complex, marketing overtook the message being marketed, and numbers of converts became the one metric of “success”. All of this is quite natural in a culture that revolves around consumption. The church must fit into that landscape, must offer itself as a product, and must sell itself in order to orient itself around the centre of the (post) modern world - consumerism.
The book is insightful not just for its subtle grasp on contemporary culture (more subtle that my crude summary above) but also its description of the way in which the church absorbs and mirrors that culture. He does not offer many recommendations, so I will offer some in closing. Our love of immanence, God’s personal presence and his desire to act for our wellbeing is not bad - we need to keep this alongside an understanding of God’s transcendence. This means that we need to remember that although God is close to us, we are very small before him, and he is “holy” and therefore also occupies a different dimension to us. To hold both at the same time, we must understand God’s grace that forgives our very real shortcomings. If we do, then we will not presume that God is the same as us. We are “in Christ”** and therefore his is infinitely close to us, according to the New Testament. However, the moral discussions which can also be found therein suggest that this closeness is in tension with our need to be purified - to “work out” or work through what has already been achieved for us*** and to act in accordance with our identity.
These actions when applied to our cultural context will involve:
-A principled rejection of consumerism
-Worshipping God rather than filling ourselves as a primary focus
-Training to act like Christ instead of building skills of consumption
Finally, as Wells did ultimately recommend, this requires living in a church community of mutual self-sacrifice to show each other God’s love, and build each other up in the faith.
*Curiously this is one of the central points of the aforementioned “Mars Hill” church. There was goodness in that the church recognised and taught the holiness of God. However, in escaping one of the most common distortions of consumerism, they nevertheless did not escape the temptation of positioning the church as a product to be consumed. In order to win mass appeal, they thrust into the spotlight a charismatic pastor who was not mature enough to be in that position, neglecting principles of biblical leadership and ironically undermining the exact point about God’s holiness. If God is holy, if he is to be feared, then their lead pastor must be open to a biblical critique - in other words, must be open to the voice of that God expressed through the bible. This hypocrisy (by no means confined to this church network) is consistent with Wells’ point (addressed later) about the weightlessness of God - we may say one thing about God, but our actions indicate that we do not believe God to have any real weight.
**See for example Ephesians 2:13
***As in Philippians 2:12
