One of the great challenges of a polarized society is that it creates a strong either/or mentality, a mentality that results in division and confusion. Our society has a very difficult time holding apparent opposites in tension. With this we have lost the art of life, which ultimately is the loss of wisdom.
The coronavirus pandemic has brought our diminished capacity for wisdom into the open. The root of this loss of wisdom, according to Jacques Ellul, is that we are living in the time of the triumph of facts over truth. Our society has become fact-driven. On this, Ellul wrote, “For today’s individual a fact is the ultimate reason, the supreme value, and an unimpeachable proof. Everything bows before a fact. We must obey it…It decides everything.” What this means is that the fact has become god; Ellul refers to this as “the Fact-Moloch" (Moloch being the name of a Canaanite god of Biblical times). The problem is that when facts become god, we lose any reference to Truth, to an overarching account of reality that determines the place of facts. Ellul writes that for the modern world, "Fact and truth seem to everyone as one and the same. And if God is no longer true today, it is because he does not look like a fact.”
Let me be clear: I am not saying we should ignore facts. We need facts. What I am saying is that when facts become the Fact-Moloch, we lose the capacity for assimilating facts into a wholistic account of reality as determine by the Transcendent wisdom of God. The results of this loss are evident in our society today: Each of us adopting the facts we are predisposed to adopt, editing reality so that it is made up of the facts we want, making no attempt to hold in tension facts that challenge ours, and so falling into the trap of either/or thinking. This is why we retreat into our much-commented upon echo chambers of information, lobbing facts at one another, wondering why the others can't see the facts. Inevitably, this results in a diminished capacity for wisdom, for holding facts in tension, for assimilating information into a larger reality.
Now, an encouragement to the church and to pastors leading the church in these uncertain times: We are called to have no other gods but YHWH. This proscription must include the Fact-Moloch. I fear that the church has lost our ability to proclaim the wisdom of God because we have worshipped the Fact-Moloch and have been conformed to the world’s pattern of either/or thinking, and so retreated into our Christian-politico-sociological echo chambers.
Meanwhile, the world is desperate for wisdom. Where else will they hear it if not from us? As we navigate these challenging days, let us pray that God reveals to His Church how we have been captured by the loss of wisdom that dominates our society. And let us pray that He would use this time of disruption to free His church from the either/or mentality of the world that creates division and confusion, and call us to regain our place as a people who can offer Divine wisdom to an either/or world.
Joel Lawrence is the Senior Pastor of Central Baptist Church in St. Paul, MN. He has also served as a Professor of Theology at Bethel Seminary. He holds a PhD in Systematic Theology from the University of Cambridge. He is a member of the St. Anselm Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
