Prologue (who includes a prologue in a blog post?!)

The title of this post is a play off of the phrase the “Long March Through the Institutions,” which is often credited to Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist from the early 20^th century. Gramsci was referencing the conditions necessary for a societal revolution in the West—namely, by co-opting various governmental and cultural institutions like school systems, corporations, media, and the academy (e.g., Hollywood). Gramsci believed that traditional Marxism had failed to lead to revolution in the West because capitalism was too deeply embedded in western culture, even among the proletariat (i.e., the working class). Thus, a long march through western culture’s institutions must ensue to uproot capitalism and effect revolution. Out of this idea, the term “cultural Marxism” was born.

While I believe a calamitous march of this sort is underway in western society today, the purpose of this blog post is not to further explain or address that. Rather, it is to draw parallels between this concept and that of the journey necessary to combat our own deeply embedded individual corruption and propensity to maintain and present a false self.

The false self is a term apparently born out of psychoanalysis in the 1960s. In short, it is a defensive facade. Virtually all of us have it to one degree or another. Richard Rohr, a progressive Franciscan priest and popular writer on spirituality, describes it like this:

[The false self] is a set of agreements between you and your parents, your family, your school chums, your partner or spouse, your culture, and your religion. It is your “container.” It is largely defined in distinction from others, precisely as your separate and unique self. It is probably necessary to get started, but it becomes problematic when you stop there and spend the rest of your life promoting and protecting it.

To be clear, I do not endorse Rohr or his works. Nonetheless, I believe his definition is apt. For many of us, the false self is deeply entrenched and will not easily uproot. Instead, we must make the long march through the institutions—our very own, i.e., the aggregate of our personal psychological and spiritual characteristics. However, we can’t do this, at least not well, without also undertaking a search for God. For, as stated in the first chapter of John Calvin’s Institutes:

Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God. Our wisdom, insofar as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.

Blog Post

In 2015, a British-Swiss writer and journalist by the name of Johann Hari gave a now famous TED Talk titled, “Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong.” Easily, the most poignant line from the entire talk was the very last one: “[T]he opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection.”[1] Ooh, that’s deep.

Throughout the talk, Hari comes across as thoughtful and sensitive, but emotionally grounded (as could be said of most TED Talk speakers, whose talks all seem to share a similar aura, like that of Serial podcasts and their progeny, no?). However, as Hari closes his talk with the line quoted above, I thought I sensed painful emotion begin to surface and his eyes begin to well. It’s subtle, but real. (You can watch or evaluate for yourself here at 14:15). Perhaps I was projecting my own experience onto him.

I was moved to emotion in part because I was reminded of an even more poignant quote—this one by NYC pastor Tim Keller from his book “The Meaning of Marriage”:

To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.

If you were not previously familiar with this quote, it is worth rereading. In fact, let us do that together as I attempt to expound on it, particular as it relates to our culture at large.

To be loved but not known . . . I believe this phrase encapsulates our culture. According to a 2021 poll by the Survey Center for American Life, for example, 49% of Americans report having between just zero and three close friends. In 1990, that figure was 27%. Close to one in five Americans have zero close friends or just one. In summary, the poll revealed that “Americans are experiencing a crisis of friendlessness.”

While true friendship is on the decline, online “friends” and “followers,” and principles like affirmation and acceptance, are on the rise. Many Americans seem to now believe that validating someone’s inner experience as true, or at least as perfectly acceptable, is love. The obvious example is the LGBTQ community, where affirmation and acceptance are the chief hallmarks and seemingly know few limits.

By making this observation, I don’t mean to criticize the LGBTQ community’s penchant for acceptance without exception. Two Christian authors I very much like, for example—both of whom are gay or same-sex attracted yet have changed their lifestyles because of their Christian convictions—have credited it for its high level of hospitality. See Rosaria Butterfield’s “The Gospel Comes with a House Key” or David Bennett’s “A War of Loves: The Unexpected Story of a Gay Activist Discovering Jesus.”

Rather, I simply mean to highlight the increased emphasis and value our culture places on affirmation and acceptance. Recent examples include Facebook’s fifty-six gender options, terms like “pregnant people,” California’s attempted criminalization of non-preferred pronouns, and bans on “conversion therapy,” etc. Just ten or fifteen years ago, these things would have been anathema, even to most non-religious folks; however, they are now very much in the mainstream and even heralded by various religious groups.

I put the term “conversion therapy” in quotes above because today it is often defined to include “any attempt to change a person’s gender identity,” including that of a very young child. (Historically, the term was limited to efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation by using certain apparent pseudoscientific interventions.) Banning such “conversion therapy” is loving to the transgender person in the sense that it is uber-affirming of their view of self and purports to eliminate any and all threats to it. The question, however, is whether such bans actually love the transgender person, or rather affirm a falsehood they believe about themselves, thereby heavily fortifying their barrier to actually being known.

. . . is comforting but superficial.  Virtually all of us know what it feels like to be loved but not known. It’s when your stressed-out mother fed you ice cream or chips instead of attuning to your palpable emotional needs. It’s when you had a lot of popularity or name-recognition in high school simply because you were good-looking, athletic, smart, or funny. It’s when you gained hundreds of likes or even new followers on Twitter just because you announced you’re no longer straight or cisgender. These things are comforting, but superficial.

To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. I almost left the remainder of this paragraph blank for dramatic effect. When someone knows or sees us for who we truly are, including the bad and the ugly, it is not uncommon for us to experience fear, hide, blame, or worse. A classic example is the story of Adam and Eve, where upon eating the forbidden fruit, they were “afraid,” “hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God,” and then blamed their actions on others (Adam on Eve, Eve on the serpent). (Gn. 3:6-13). To be known by God and not loved was their greatest fear. Nonetheless, that chapter of their story concludes with God going in pursuit of them, alluding to Jesus’s future coming to make things right, and creating “garments of skins [for them] and cloth[ing] them.” (Gn. 3:8-9, 15, 21).

But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. This is a hard pill for many to swallow, me included at times. Is God really loving? This life is hard and incredibly brutal at times. As famous atheist Bertrand Russell ominously described it, “The Life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long.” Russell was an atheist, so the end of his quote makes sense.

As Nietzsche keenly observed, “The gods justified human life by living it themselves — the only satisfactory response to the problem of suffering ever invented.” Ironically, Nietzsche hated Christianity, but his quote suggests Christianity is the only religion with a satisfactory answer. I assume the irony was lost on him, sadly.

What I mean by that is this. At the heart of the Christian message is the idea that “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” (Rm. 5:8). And this: “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Rm. 8:32). In other words, God owes us nothing, but offers us everything.

But if God is so loving, why the pain and hardship in this life, then? As many philosophers and social scientists have realized, love must be freely given and freely received. Peter Kreeft, a professor of philosophy at Boston College, puts it like this in his book “The God Who Loves You”:

Thus even our fall, our sin, is proof of God’s love. Only in freedom can we sin. And only love gives us the freedom to sin. Without that freedom to sin there is also no freedom to love…. We wish God had given us less freedom and had guaranteed that we would stay in Eden forever. We wish that He had put up a sign saying ‘no snakes in the grass,’ that he had given no law that we could ever have chosen to disobey. But that would not be father-love or mother-love, only smother-love. That would not be parenting but patronizing and pandering.

It is what we need more than anything. This claim is substantiated by a 2018 Pew Research Center study, consisting of multiple extensive surveys, titled “Where Americans Find Meaning in Life.” The results of the study can be summarized as follows:

Across both surveys, the most popular answer is clear and consistent: Americans are most likely to mention family when asked what makes life meaningful in the open-ended question, and they are most likely to report that they find “a great deal” of meaning in spending time with family in the closed-ended question.

Now, why would Americans list family as their number one source of meaning when our culture seems to celebrate individuality, career, wealth, prestige, and sexual autonomy and fulfillment more than family? I think it is because, deep down, we realize we want to be truly known, and yet still fully loved, more than anything else. And family (not without exception) is generally our best opportunity to experience that. Our parents, spouse, and children often know us better than anyone, and yet—despite our flaws, of which there are many—often still love us.

It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us. This can be the beauty of being truly known and yet still fully loved: it liberates us from the shackles of our false self, relieves us of our inflated sense of our own goodness, and equips us to experience the freedom of self-forgetfulness.

But herein lies the rub: you need to know yourself and then make yourself known. Only you can do that. And to do that requires what may be agonizingly difficult honesty—with yourself, with others, and with God. This is part of the reason, I believe, Jesus said, “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.” (Lk. 9:24). And this, “‘Even if [a brother or sister] sins against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.’”

Why did Jesus seemingly make forgiveness conditional upon the offender “com[ing] back to you saying ‘I repent’”? Because without repentance, the false self is maintained. The true self remains in hiding. And anything in hiding cannot truly be dealt with.

Below is a short clip of Tim Keller discussing the modern self and the impossibility of finding your identity within yourself. It is only two minutes long, and it’s funny, too. Check it out.

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[1] And Hari wasn’t merely talking about alcohol addiction, but rather “all sorts of addictions, whether it’s to [our] smartphone or to shopping or to eating.”