The Death of Ideologies

Two earlier essays explained how I tended to "escape" from the tumultuous or somewhat irrational confusion of my early life. When I "escaped" I would, as it were, "leave" the realities before me and begin to create other worlds. This is a pretty normal activity for children--to create alternative universes. Imaginary companions, made-up-stories, fantasy galore are the predictable indicia of this new world. But for me, I didn't appreciate or desire involvement with science fiction or other imaginative literature; I wanted to create my own worlds. But my tendency to "escape" also made me adopt another thought--it made me believe that ideas and speculation about ideas was the most important thing in life. I would certainly learn the basics about life in the world (indeed, I have a very practical bent to me), but I would always believe that the goal of my life was to get the practical details taken care of so that I could engage in the "really" important work of living--thinking about ideas. There are many positive features about this approach, and I still think I live like this, but the negative result was that I became vulnerable to and weakened by ideologies, ideologies that I only gradually have been able to discard as I live my life.

The three ideologies that have most gouged me in life are: (1) Evangelical religion; (2) Radical Feminism; and (3) Racial cooperation. Each of these has many positive features and desirable attributes, and I have no desire to denigrate them as ideas or strategies to deal with the world. But, to me, they served to enslave and debilitate me. This and the next two essays describe how this was true. As is often the case in life, the influences most deeply embedded in our past are the hardest to shake, so in this case those ideologies first sown remained with me longest. In rough terms, I would say that Evangelical religion remained with me from about 1968-1996; Radical Feminism from 1976-2000; and Racial cooperation from 1990-2004. Each of them has its story, to which I will now turn.

I. Evangelical Religion

After moving from CT to CA in August 1967 and becoming a minor athletic 'star' at my new high school, I suffered a career-shortening knee injury in Sept. 1968. Shortly thereafter I decided to join the Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, a large and influential evangelically-oriented church in my community. During the new members' class I was introduced to, and accepted, the basic Evangelical Gospel--that I was a sinner, that Christ died for my sins, and that I needed to make a decision of faith inviting Christ to be my Lord and Savior. Along with these basic affirmations was the importance of a lifestyle--a lifestyle that would include Bible study, prayer, worship, fellowship and active evangelism. Connection with like-minded young people was also a sine qua non. I adopted not simply this explanation of life and faith, but I became a whole-hearted and eager proponent of it.

This became never more clear to me than when I was watching a recent movie, The US v. John Lennon (2006). Several of the movie's scenes presented events from the late 1960s and early 1970s, and even though I had seen several of the video clips previously, I was amazed at how I seemingly was oblivious to these things while living through them. I had, as it were, "escaped" into the ideology of Evangelicalism, and I thought that the most significant thing I could do in my life in the early 1970s was to learn the Bible and speak to others about the Evangelical Gospel. To that end, then, I was completely unaware of (and didn't participate in at all), the protest culture, the radical student movements, or the political ferment that made that period of American history such a riveting time. I was probably an unreflective conservative, thinking that politics and popular culture around me was fully unimportant, or of decidedly secondary importance to the surpassing riches of the Gospel. I was "hooked" by the Evangelical Gospel; all I wanted to do was to study or speak about it.

The "realities" of life (marriage, graduate study, securing a job, children) came along soon enough (1977, 1977-82, 1982, 1982 and 1987, respectively) but I still clung to significant aspects of the Evangelical religion. I think it deformed me most when I was making important decisions. Rather than knowing how to lay out as many factors as I could and see how things "gelled," I would simply think that God was in charge and that whatever decision I would make would flow from that belief. For example, I was so "faithful "in my unyielding and focused service to God that I never dated. The first woman I dated was my wife, whom I got to know in theological seminary. God surely would bless me, I thought, in marriage, since I had so fully dedicated myself to His interests in my earlier days. But I ended up going into marriage without the slightest understanding, in fact, of what a woman was/is. Though the fruit of that marriage was two wonderful children, I would have to say that my wife and I were significantly mismatched during our 24-year marriage.

Since I saw myself trying to be utterly faithful to what I thought God wanted me to do, I felt I had a sort of immunity from bad decisions. I felt, also, that since God has laced the Scriptures with promises about how trusting God will bring a fruitful life, that if I lived my life trying to trust, I would, thereby, have a fruitful life. But neither of these two assumptions seemed to be justified in reality. I not only experienced a difficult marriage but I didn't get the kind of "promotions" or "kudos" that I felt were due to me as my career opened. I kept clinging to the promises of Scripture even as I kept getting fired from, or not interviewed for, jobs. I had no idea what might have caused these things, and I even denied that they were having any negative emotional drag on me, since God must be "in control." Yet, in hindsight, I gradually slipped into a kind of depression, beginning around 1986, that I only fully pulled out of in about 2004.

Reassessment

Then, in the early 1990s, I finally began trying to assess if the Evangelical beliefs really made sense to me. In the flush of my early eagerness and relentless study and activity, I never really had sat down and asked myself some basic questions about the affirmations I was making. When I began to do this, I realized that I didn't understand almost anything---especially the "mechanics" of how salvation worked through the "sacrifice" of Christ. I tried to come at it through tons of questions and in many ways, but I kept coming up with the thought that I really didn't need a Savior and, in fact, that it was really hard to conceptualize, must less believe, how someone thousands of years ago was responsible for my separation from God (i.e., Adam) and how someone also thousands of years ago could possibly pay some kind of debt that I owed through another's disobedience so that I could be right again with God. It seemed so abstract to me, and I was good with ideas. In other words, the ideas just didn't "wash" with me any longer. I went to theologians to get them to explain to me their understanding of precisely how it was that Christ's death then meant new life for me today; I frankly wasn't convinced by anything they said.

Conclusion

So I saw, in the mid-1990s, that I had to lay this ideology, or collection of ideas, aside. These ideas really weren't doing me any good nor did I see how they could have much to do with "truth," however I defined the term. Their explanation of the world seemed increasingly hollow to me, and I lost energy for them. But one problem remained. I had all this knowledge of the Bible, the history of Christianity, theology and contemporary Christian thinkers. Indeed, I had gotten the highest score on the Bible content examination in the Presbyterian Church--so my examiners told me. What was I to do with this knowledge? Other people I knew, who had likewise had "former lives" as professors (of literature; classics), had seemingly laid all of that aside as they eagerly pursued new callings (law). But somehow the Bible had sunk its claws deep into me. I loved it regardless of whether it was objectively "true" for my life. So, I knew I would never really depart far from it or from some aspects of religious or theological language, despite my leaving the doctrines aside. That is where I am "today" with my Evangelical heritage. But, there is more, and the next essay tells you that story--about feminism and racial issues.

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