*Editor’s Note: What is expressive individualism and how does it relate to contemporary trends regarding sexuality and gender? To help us understand this powerful worldview, I caught up with Dr. Chad Ragsdale, a Christian thinker on worldview and culture. In this conversation, we talk about modern views of truth and meaning and how Christians can think through these cultural shifts.
Q. What are the worldview shifts that explain where we are today, with many modern people accepting the idea that, for example, “I’m a woman born in a man’s body,” or accepting the validity of sexual orientations and gender identities which were only recently discovered?
If we want to understand the contemporary LGBTQ+ movement, I think it’s important to recognize its connection to expressive individualism. Expressive individualism is arguably the most pervasive worldview within our culture today, especially among young people.
Expressive individualism is a worldview that essentially says that the most important thing in life is to be true to yourself. Be your true, authentic self. Follow your own heart. That’s what’s going to give you identity. The idea is that what’s going to bring you meaning and purpose in life is to look within.
Now this isn’t really a new worldview. The roots of it go back decades, even centuries, and there are factors that explain its recent popularity.
Q. Help us understand how Western civilization got here.
I think there are at least three factors that have contributed to the flowering of expressive individualism over the last several years within our culture. The first factor is the sense of isolation that we feel from one another. We are increasingly isolated from community and traditional institutions that have in the past shaped our identity and purpose and given our life meaning.
Now we live in a world where we are increasingly atomized individuals separate from one another. When I’m isolated, on my own, cut off from community, and cut off from other institutions, I’m left to listen mainly to myself. I’m left to look within to discover my identity, my purpose, and what’s meaningful in life. Young people especially are feeling this isolation.
A second contributing factor, I believe, is the growth of social media and other digital technology. These technologies incentivize the performing of this identity—to take our own authentic, individual identity and put it out there for public consumption, turning ourselves into a commodity. So, social media has incentivized this expressive individualism.
“Social media has incentivized this expressive individualism.”
A third contributing factor is simply some changing mindsets regarding sex. Sex is no longer regarded as something that we simply do. Sex isn’t so much a behavior as it has become our identity. The assumption is that you can’t really live a meaningful life without sexual expression of one shape or another.
Sex moved to the center of who we are. And so, if I’m going to express myself publicly, and I’m going to perform my identity publicly, then a key important part of that is my sexuality. These three factors—the changing mindset in regard to sex, the pervasiveness of social media, and the increasing isolation within our culture—have contributed to the flowering of this worldview of expressive individualism that lies at the root of not just LGBTQ+ communities, but of much of what we see happening within our culture today.
Q. How does expressive individualism shape our view of truth?
It has become an assumption many people hold today that truth, what is really true, can only be accessed by looking within. So, truth is not determined by any external factors. Truth is not determined by the way that I was raised or by institutions that have been a part of my life. Truth is not even determined by biology or physical realities.
Instead, truth has become something that is subjectively understood. The way I feel—the way I perceive myself to be—that is what the truth is. And everyone else should be made to align with the “truth” of my own subjective reality.
“Everyone else should be made to align with the ‘truth’ of my own subjective reality.”
This assumption lies at the root of much of what we see especially within the transgender movement today. It’s the idea that reality and truth are internal, within my own feelings and thoughts. And that “truth” takes precedence over every other claim to truth, even including physical and biological realities.
Q. How should disciples of Jesus respond to this expressive individualistic view of truth?
One of the most important verses for me on how to live my life faithfully following Jesus within our world is John 1:14. In John 1:14, we’re told that Jesus came into the world full of both grace and truth—holding grace and truth in perfect balance with each other.
All throughout Jesus’ ministry in the Gospels, we see Jesus embodying both grace and truth. One and the other. If that’s how Jesus came into the world, then I’ve got to believe that’s also how you and I should go into the world as well. We need both.
This is because grace without truth becomes flimsy, cheap, and inconsequential. But truth without grace becomes a weapon, a bludgeon used against those who disagree with us. We need to hold both grace and truth in balance, even in tension, with each other, including when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues.
We need to go into the world with the courage of our convictions, knowing the truth, standing firmly on the truth—even when people disagree with us. But we also need to be uncompromising on grace as we speak truth in love and invite them into the love and forgiveness of Jesus.
