We Are All Control Freaks Now
All of us, religious or not, are searching for the True Church — the church where no one is hypocritical and everyone holds to “right” doctrine. However, many of us believe that that “church” — whether it be a family, a neighborhood, a community organization, a political party, or a house of worship — solely comprises of those who think and act exactly like us. Dissident opinions are anathema, and luckily for us, we are increasingly able to crowd these opinions out. At our worst, we relish the opportunity to cancel our fellow internet users, friends, and even our parents.
Let’s take two examples of how this plays out. First, Calvinist Christians believe that once you have been saved by faith in Jesus, you will remain in that blessed state and persevere to your heavenly reward. You are “eternally secure,” so secure that you cannot sin in such a manner that you will be lost to God. If we trotted a former Calvinist, now raging blasphemer in front of a committed Calvinist today, the latter would say that the apostate was never saved to begin with. He has shifted the goalposts.
The transgender community functions similarly. If a transgender-identifying person reneges on their desire to transition, he or she was never truly trans to begin with. In the minds of activists, being transgender is written on the soul, and is therefore immutable. In like fashion, if an involuntary celibate man rejects the blackpill, betters himself, and finds a girlfriend, his former compatriots will turn on him faster than you can say “looksmaxxing.”
No organization is immune to this, not even the oldest institution still extant: the Catholic Church. Dysfunction abounds; debates over who the true “Scotsmans” are rage. On the rigorist right, you’ll find influencers claiming that if your wife works outside the home, you are contravening God’s design for marriage and thus betraying the Church. On the lackadaisical left, any restriction on one’s freedom to choose such evils as contraception, homosexual “marriage,” or a sex change is met with similar alarm.
Fortunately, one very important Jewish rabbi told His Church that they would not be able to ferret out the false believers from the true ones until He came to sort them out Himself. Per His words and due to our unfortunate predicament as limited beings locked in time, we are destined to live in uncertainty about ourselves and our neighbors. But in our age of profound upheaval, we want easy answers. We want black and white, we want to know who’s in, who’s out, and who’s in charge of this mess.
I think we sense that there is a now-vacant seat of power in our culture and that it needs to be occupied. We are trotting forth all sorts of contenders for the throne in an all-you-can-eat buffet of religiosity. Syncretism is rampant — there is the avowed Christian woman who uses crystals and believes in horoscopes, while the agnostic man practices Buddhist meditation, Wim Hof breathing techniques, and dabbles in psychedelics to have spiritual experiences.
We are all trying to find the Truth. Or at least if not Truth, we yen for a sort of eternal security, à la John Calvin. If we try to find that security outside of Christ, we are inevitably led to cults, even one-person cults with us as the charismatic leader. These solitary cults can be even more dangerous than the typical kind; the sweet Kool-Aid of one’s own pet religion is more intoxicating and may just damn your soul.
To that end, I am most concerned for my friends and family who profess Christ but do not go to church because none of the nearby churches (and their fallible parishioners) vibe with them. It’s one thing to not know the Truth, but still seek. It’s quite another to know the Truth and ignore it. Individuals who subscribe to a weak god (who agrees with everything they say) or no god at all are prone to isolation and radicalization. And at some point, isolated individuals no longer heed dissenting voices.
One of the hard lessons we learned from the pandemic is that isolation does bad things to us. It leads to us consuming too much DailyWire, MSNBC, or ragebait on social media, all activities that make us hate our fellow man. After we come away from our destructive doomscroll episodes, downtrodden and exhausted, we may attempt to curb our addictive behaviors and atone for our sin of sloth by optimizing every aspect of our lives.
Like Nietzsche, we try to become the Übermensch so that we can be delivered from risk, suffering, and discomfort. In our solitary castle, we wake up at 5 am, meditate, journal, listen to an Andrew Huberman podcast while working out, do a cold plunge, shower, meditate again, take no less than 15 supplements, go to work, work too long and too hard, come home, make a green juice, cook a meal, clean it up, attempt to learn a new skill, read Marcus Aurelius, and go to bed.
If this sounds exhausting, that is because it is. All of this hyper-optimization inevitably regresses us and cuts us off from others, stymieing conversations that humans need to make any progress in the spiritual life and as a species. If my dialed-in hustle gets slightly disrupted, I may even have time to think —an activity my routine was specifically designed to limit. Am I saved? Is anyone? Are these the end times? Should I call my therapist?
All of our attempts to control ourselves and our environment will fail without God. Nietzsche’s approach does not work — it didn’t even work for him. Pagan sacrifices to gods do not work. The New Age Law of Attraction also falls flat — thinking positive thoughts or reciting positive affirmations does not necessarily bring positive experiences your way. Your thoughts do not determine your reality, no matter how much I (a fellow control freak) wish that to be the case. We cannot control ourselves on our own power, much less our neighbors or political system.
If it is clear that self-work will not save us, our alternative must involve others — including God Himself. This is where Jesus’ genius plan comes in. Jesus’ Church — His Body — is visible. It is diverse. It is made up of flawed human beings who are trying, however imperfectly, to follow Christ and love each other well. And while you can become severed from the soul of this Body through sin, you are not cut off from the Body — the door is always open for you to come back in and get back on the wagon.
While I’m biased toward the Catholic Church, whatever organization you enroll in must include other flawed human beings, especially those who are different from you. And don’t worry, no church is perfect because as soon as you or I enter through the doors, it will become imperfect. This is a great comfort and should not be feared. You do not have to do this life thing alone, and you really shouldn’t try.
Further Reading:
I See Nietzsche Fall Like Lightning by
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It’s hard to know how to lead a good life. Very few are willing to share their wisdom and hold themselves accountable for sharing.
Do this. It will be hard. But it will resonate and feel right.