You know those inflatable bouncy houses that people rent for their kids’ birthday parties? I want you to imagine this scenario. Pretend that all inflatables somehow became sentient. In fact, imagine our whole planet was populated by sentient inflatables of every size and shape. After hundreds of years of inflatable civilization, a number of overly philosophical bouncy houses begin suggesting that the belief in air pumps was merely the mythical remnant of a bygone, less enlightened and less scientific era. They insist that modern inflatables know better. Air pumps don’t exist. Air pumps have never existed. Air pumps, or at least the belief in them, are dead.
Initially received as liberating news, this pronouncement has left inflatable civilization in a predicament. How is it that they are to remain inflated without the existence of air pumps? Some clever inflatables will no doubt claim that we have really been the source of our own inflation all along. They may even produce content that teaches young inflatables to believe that despite what they may have heard, real power can only be found “within.” This sounds mildly inspiring until you really think about it and the idea of an inflatable being the source of its own inflation just sounds absurd.
Eventually, this population of sentient inflatables comes to a sobering realization. In a world without air pumps, the only future is deflation ending in a flat, lifeless existence. This scenario, as silly as it is, closely approximates the message of Carl Trueman’s new book The Desecration of Man.
“Eventually, this population of sentient inflatables comes to a sobering realization.”
For anyone interested in tracing how culture is the manifestation of certain philosophies and ideas, Trueman is your man. For Trueman, philosophy is not some abstract academic curiosity; philosophy is more like the blueprint that builds a culture. His earlier book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, is among my most highly recommended books. In that book, he explains how expressive individualism, which seemed to come from nowhere, emerged from hundreds of years’ worth of philosophical ideas that have finally reached maturity. Readers of Trueman will recognize that Desecration is an expansion on some of the ideas introduced in Rise and Triumph, but it also works well as a stand-alone book.
Is Nothing Sacred?
Trueman’s thesis is that “the death of God in modernity has led to the desecration of man.” By desecration he means “the intentional abuse or destruction of something holy, something of more than ordinary significance.”
At the center of the argument is Nietzsche’s famous prophecy regarding the death of God. To Nietzsche, the death of God was not something to be celebrated; it was something to be reckoned with. Like the inflatables who announced the death of air pumps in my fictional world, the death of God has placed civilization in a sobering predicament. Without God, what does it mean to be human? Without God, is anything at all sacred?
We have attempted to fool ourselves into believing that we possess the capacity to maintain the sacred in the absence of the divine. Those who have “killed” God have put themselves in the place of the divine. It turns out that theocide is an act of self-deification. The problem, of course, is that self-deification leads only to desecration. Put another way, one doesn’t attempt to replace God without destroying himself. In “killing” God, we have emptied the world, including humanity itself, of the sacred. We are left as flat, lifeless objects in an uncaring world.
Like many prophets, Nietzsche was ahead of his time. There is a time lag between announcing the death of God and dealing with the consequences of that death. Trueman argues persuasively that we are now living in the era of Nietzsche’s Madman—Nietzsche’s fictional character who announces God’s death to a shocked audience and then realizes that it will take time for the news to sink in. Nietzsche predicted the desecration that we witness virtually everywhere we look. Nothing is sacred, including and especially human beings, because we have “killed” God.
“Nothing is sacred, including and especially human beings, because we have ‘killed’ God.”
Crossing Every Line
The primary way that we experience this desecration is in the rejection of limits. The sacred, if you think about it, requires boundaries and limits. The Jerusalem Temple is a good example of this. At the heart of the Temple was the Most Holy Place with its clearly defined boundaries and limits. Without the veil that separated the Most Holy Place, there was no Most Holy Place. To transgress past the veil was to desecrate what was holy. To a culture that has killed God, this transgression against the holy becomes an imperative. It is perhaps the only imperative left. Limits and boundaries are the enemy of our self-deification project. We must ransack the throne room of God if we are to be his replacement.
Trueman asks a provocative question in the book: “In the minds of Western radicals, what do Hamas, queer theory, transgenderism, and other progressive ideas have in common?” If you are like me, you have been confused by the strange alliance that has developed between Western progressives and regressive terrorists who subjugate and abuse women and homosexuals. It doesn’t make any sense. Trueman explains why this alliance makes sense.
“Simply this: the desire to overthrow what is and to demolish what previous generations considered authoritative, even sacred, whether it be the virtues of democracy, the right of Israel to exist, or the importance of biological sex.”
“We must ransack the throne room of God if we are to be his replacement.”
In other words, it is all a part of the same project of desecration. In a godless age, the good person is the person who is transgressive towards all traditions, all limits, all boundaries, and all values. Trueman puts it well at the very beginning of the book. 
“Transgression of that once considered sacred has become their primary task. And transgression of the sacred is exhilarating precisely because it makes us feel like gods, the creators of our own meanings and our own selves. All we need to do is cross lines previously enforced by the idea of God and we thereby assume the role of being gods.”
This transgression has wreaked devastating consequences on our culture. It turns out that climbing up into the throne of God doesn’t make you God; it makes you into a mere object, stripped of anything sacred.
Trueman gives numerous examples of what this looks like in practice, but probably his strongest chapter is related to sex. The way we talk about sex is incoherent. Sex in our culture is not simply something that we do; it is a mark of our very identity. We have placed sexual pleasure at the center of our self-understanding. But we have also come to believe that there is nothing sacred about sex. There are no limits. No boundaries. We are free to indulge as we see fit. Even “sex work,” previously derided as a scandal against the sacred, is simply a career choice. The horrible irony, of course, is that by stripping sex of its sacredness, we have turned ourselves into mere objects. We are objects either in the pursuit of sexual pleasure or objects to be used for sexual pleasure. In destroying God, we have desecrated ourselves.
“In destroying God, we have desecrated ourselves.”
Consecration
Like a lot of these types of books, more time is spent diagnosing the problem of culture than prescribing any sort of solution. I don’t say this as a criticism. There is much value in reading books like this one which can help us to see more clearly what is happening in the world around us. Trueman does offer some hope, however. The only remedy to desecration is found in consecration. When a sacred space has been desecrated, it is left to the faithful to reclaim and purify that which has been destroyed. With wonderful and straightforward simplicity, Trueman calls us to reclaim a robust Christian faith, in belief, in worship, and in practice. It is either Nietzsche or Christianity. There is no third option.
Much like Rise and Triumph, I gladly give this book my highest recommendation. Trueman is able to talk about philosophical ideas in a very accessible and readable way. If you are like me and have looked at the landscape of our culture with confusion and concern, you will find help for understanding our times in this book. You will also likely be inspired to examine your own life and identify those ways you can begin replacing desecration with consecration.
For more from Chad Ragsdale, check out chadragsdale.wordpress.com.
