Of course I cannot agree with Wilde’s conclusions, that no external source could be the basis for the authority of the individual, “But whether it be faith or agnosticism, it must be nothing external to me. Its symbols must be of my own creating.” These words point (as put perfectly by Imogen Black) “to an existentialist crisis, a man coming to realise that he has nothing but his own perceptions for truth who has made a god of himself.” Yet at the same time, despite this relativising of truth, which the Christian worldview cannot abide, I’m not sure that Wilde’s preferred vision of religion was so far removed from the kind of religion that Christ actually produced. Today I came upon this gem:

When I think of religion at all, I feel as if I would like to found an order for those who cannot believe: the Confraternity of the Faithless, one might call it, where on an altar, on which no taper burned, a priest, in whose heart peace had no dwelling, might celebrate with unblessed bread and a chalice empty of wine. Everything to be true must become a religion. And agnosticism should have its ritual no less than faith. (De Profundis, letter written in 1905)

If we unpack this statement, it proves to be quite revealing. Let us examine each statement in turn and compare it to the religion imagined by Jesus

1. Wilde: “I would like to found an order for those who cannot believe: the Confraternity of the Faithless”
   
   Christianity: The basic prerequisite of a Christian is not someone who has accomplished something great by believing but someone who has failed to trust in God their whole life and has only come to Jesus when they realised how ‘faithless’ they really are. In Christianity, since faith is a gift given only to those who have realised just how faithless they really are, the phrase “confraternity of the faithless” is basically – and uniquely – describing true Christianity. In fact, to call Christans ‘the faithful’ is a complete misnomer; they are not the faithful, they are the faithless who have received the faith of Christ as a free gift. There is no other religious system (and in Wilde’s mind, all frameworks are religious systems, including the secular one) that resembles Wilde’s suggestion here apart from Christianity. Modern secularism is hardly a ‘confraternity’; it is rather a selection of individuals who are united less by their system than by other factors.
2. Wilde: “on an altar, on which no taper burned”
   
   Christianity: This is where it really starts to get interesting. The reason why Christianity does/should not have altars (of course this is in line with my personal unease at the presence of ‘altars’ in most Anglican/Orthodox/Catholic churches) is because the fire has already been spent. On the cross, Jesus passed through the fire of God’s judgement so that those who turn to him would not have to. The sacrifice has been offered on the altar that is the cross of Calvary. What this means is that – in stark contrast to every other religion, both secular and non, Christianity is the only religion where its followers are not in the business of the daily grind of justification. The altar and the sacrifice upon it denotes just this grind, where people are constantly engaged in the struggle to justify their existence, their actions, their place in this world. When Christ passed through that fire, he made it possible for his followers to have ‘an altar on which no taper is burned’
3. Wilde:: “a priest, in whose heart peace had no dwelling”
   
   Christianity: Jesus is called the great High Priest in the letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament. This great High Priest, before going to the cross, states, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death”. Then, on the cross, he uttered a fateful cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” This, more than any other, was the cry of “a priest, in whose heart peace had no dwelling.” On the cross, Jesus suffered the utter desolation of his soul, so that peace everlasting could come into the hearts of those who trust in him. On the cross, he gave up his peace and perfect relationship with God the Father, so that it might be given to mankind as a free gift by faith. This is the religion Christ created, a religion whose great high priest became a man in whose heart peace had no dwelling.
4. Wilde:: “might celebrate with unblessed bread and a chalice empty of wine”
   
   Christianity: The only reason that a Christian believer has to celebrate is through the cursing of Christ, in his body, on the cross. Christ’s body – the bread he speaks of – was the most ‘unblessed bread’ in all of history, so that those who trust in him would be able to celebrate in the new creation with the blessed bodies that he won for them through the cursing of his own. The resurrection is confirmation that this was done in the power of God and that the power that warred against the body had been defeated. Similarly, the chalice of wine (symbolising God’s judgement) is empty because Jesus drank it all on the cross – every last drop. The Christian is able to celebrate because the wine he or she drinks speaks of life when it should speak of death. We deserved to drink this chalice, but Christ drank it instead; that is why the chalice is ‘in remembrance’ and always pointing to Christ’s sacrifice on the cross; not our own offering to God, but that which he offered in our place.

The Wildian ‘ritual of agnosticism’, born out of the general existential crisis common to all humanity, at the final analysis is simply a yearning for the kind of religion that only Jesus Christ provides.

In the end, we see that Oscar Wilde’s desired “alternative religion for the faithless” is actually describing the Christian faith. Perhaps he realised this before he died, perhaps not. The question is: do you?

Now that I’ve had a bit of time to reflect, it seems that the only conclusion I can come to is that the premise of the film is not actually very inventive. Ironic.

So what is the premise? Gervais makes no attempt to hide the fact that the film is based on one main idea: that the stories behind religion in general and the Christian faith in particular are little more than ‘invented’ fairytales. The conclusion is that even though the reality of this world amounts to nothing more than the bare facts of science, people actually need made up stories (aka. ‘lies’) to give them hope, meaning, excitement, purpose and expectation. (Another subtext was that fat guys need this kind of world, that goes beyond the bare facts of science, or else they would have no hope of getting beautiful women – but I guess that was just part of Gervais’ brilliantly self-deprecating humour!).

In the context of the film, the ‘fairytale’ that Gervais’ character makes up which signals the advent of lying is basically a religious system concerning a place in the sky ruled by a man in the sky who can provide a hope beyond death. This is what the people buy into with the result that it creates excitement, gives him power and initially leads to a more pleasant atmosphere, although this eventually breaks down (the implication being that belief in God is not actually beneficial for society or human flourishing).

Ultimately the thing that disturbed me most about the premise of the film was not so much the thinly veiled dig at Christianity; that is not really a novelty anymore. Neither was it the fact that Gervais has typically misrepresented most of the essential facts of Christianity; ideas such as God creating the world already full of evil and suffering and Christianity as a system of works-based salvation are completely alien to the Bible yet this too was to be expected from an atheist lobby that knows only how to caricature and misrepresent Christianity…

The message that disturbed me most was rather the one which emerged out of Gervais’ own secular framework. It was the message that promoted a ‘correct’ picture of reality where there are no (ultimate) happy endings and neither is there any real and ultimate justice, as in these ‘fairy stories’. In order to comfort his dying mother, Gervais’ character invents heaven, giving her the hope of a future, a purpose for her existence and a happy ending. Even though he ‘knows’ that there is no such thing as heaven and that her death will swallow up any meaning her life ever had, he retreats to the use of made up fairytales to help her in her final hour.

There are three problems here for the secularist:

1. First of all, the surgical removal of future hope and ultimate purpose leaves the secularist with only one philosophical system to provide meaning: existentialism (whether this be hedonistic or nihilistic). Such a self-limiting worldview, while not necessarily wrong, is problematic
2. Secondly, this scenario, rather than undermining Christianity, only ends up lending credence to the plausibility of the Christian narrative. For whether they like it or not, secularism is a historical novelty and flies in the face of human experience. This world is a world of fairytale and myth… human culture has always been built on myth-based narratives. And, just so this word, ‘myth’ is not misunderstood here, anyone who has studied literature will tell you that fairytale and myth do not necessarily mean ‘unfactual stories’ but rather they are the depiction of certain realities that transcend what we see before our eyes, but that we can nonetheless sense. In other words, just as science has revealed to us that our eyes often deceive us as to the reality of the physical world (optical illusion, etc), so literature speaks of a similar dimension that is accessible to us on some level, yet not visible. Out of this dimension, every culture and society in human history has produced beautiful and fantastical myths and fairytales and all speak of ultimate happiness and ultimate justice – things which require an ultimate benefactor and an ultimate judge, basically a relationship with an ultimate being. Gervais may have written off this dimension completely, but he finds himself in the position of a numerical minority and a historical novelty. While we are not agreed as to who or what this ultimate being exactly is, humanity in general has always agreed that his hand at work in our world – and indeed in our very minds and hearts – is evident. Now one option is to shrug off this historical witness and just claim that all people before the Enlightenment were needy and ignorant. Despite the historical arrogance of such a position, it is an increasingly difficult one to hold as more people are realising that the only people denying any kind of reality beyond the bare facts of science are essentially fundamentalists and have thrown out decent scholarship in favour of diatribe and ‘religious’ rhetoric. Just note how many reviews of “The God Delusion” by secularists themselves have been dismissive and/or disparaging…
3. Thirdly, while the secularist may claim to have heard this many times before, it by no means lessens the force of this point: such a narrative as portrayal as the ‘correct version of reality’ in the film is simply not existentially satisfying. The biggest criticism (and a fair one at that) that is levelled against Christianity is that of hypocrisy – why do people who speak of love so often fail to be unloving… Behind this question is a fundamental existential concern – why should I follow something that doesn’t work, that doesn’t provide eternal love and unconditional value and ultimate meaning in my life? So why should a similar charge not be levelled at the ‘atheist paradise’? If a world needs to be built on lies in order for it to work, then why should I take it seriously? The fact of the matter is that Gervais’ atheist paradise is based on the idea that people need to be trained to see beyond the bare facts of science – this entails lying. Isn’t this exactly what Christianity teaches? Except that in the case of the Christian message, the solution is not a lie but the truth…

The fundamentalist secular gospel – that there are no ultimate happy endings – might be coherent with the facts of science. But Gervais, in pointing us to a reality beyond the bare facts of science only ends up reinforcing the plausibility of the Christian narrative.

So how does the plausibility of the Christian narrative lead to faith in the Christian God?? And I will close with this.

C.S.Lewis put it best when he wrote that in the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, “myth became fact”… All the myths and fairytales of human history could only ever have been seen as dim shadows and uncertain estimations of the nature and workings of the ultimate being who must be both benevolent and just. Yet in the person and work of Jesus Christ, the expectations of these myths were finally realised. The cross sees the ultimate dispensation of justice as well as the ultimate bestowal of love. Each person who trusts in this God is guaranteed by the resurrection of Christ that their relationship with the ‘man in the sky’ is assured. How? Because the ‘man in the sky’ became a man of flesh and died to redeem us and the world.

The film ends up being not very inventive at all, since the dreary, unimaginative world of bare facts is put forward as the real one and the world of myth, meaning and purpose as the false one.

Voila!

We are all familiar with the countless stories of killers getting away scott-free because there was insufficient evidence to convict them. Here is an interesting take on this theme from our favourite tv series. Consider the quote below:

House: The universe always settles the score.
Dr. Cuddy: Does it?
House: No, but it should.

The idea of justice, the righting of wrongs and balancing of misdeeds – portrayed here as karma – is present in every major worldview and belief system.

Yet it is also a concept that has failed us in spectacular fashion. House puts it best here. Justice should exist. It is ’supposed’ to exist and work to settle the score… but this is not what we see happening.

Enter Dexter, the tv show about an amoral serial killer, Dexter, who has been trained by his foster father to channel his sociopathic serial killer urges using a special ‘code’. According to “Harry’s Code”, only people who deserve to die are killed. So if you haven’t killed anyone in a premeditative way then you are safe from Dexter’s blade.

The series has been a runaway success. And I don’t think that it is just the tongue-in-cheek humour that creates this affection for Dexter. There is something disturbingly reassuring about the existence of such a character (even in the fantasy world of the small screen).

Take the average left-of-centre agnostic/atheist for instance (basically most educated people in London/Athens under 40):

1. Since they either don’t believe or struggle to believe in the existence of God, they cannot hope for a final calling in of accounts where perfect justice will one day be meted.

2. If they are left of centre, they are also against the death penalty as a solution, so they can’t rely on the state.

3. Taking matters into one’s own hands is not condoned and vigilantes are a unsavoury and misguided solution at best.

So Dexter is the perfect solution to the problem faced by the atheist. Dexter settles the score on behalf of the universe without obliging the viewer to condone what he is doing, as it is already established that what he is doing is wrong. Yet our delight in such a ‘neat’ solution is always a secret delight that we dare not admit. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth and still fails miserably at providing an ultimate answer as well anyway.

Even traditional religion cannot provide a solution to House’s problem. For it simply claims that one day all those nasty people will get their comeuppance. House’s words resonate with us because we too need to witness this principle of justice in action, to give us a hope that evil will not always be the status quo, that wrong will not win the day simply by its continued existence, let alone its escaping justice.

The only place this is even claimed by anyone to have happened is on the cross of Jesus Christ. A faultless man taking the place of guilty and evil men and satisfying the full demands of justice… This is what happened on the cross. Justice once and for all, for every deed. This might sound barbaric, but my hunch is that it only sounds barbaric to us because we have sanitised sin so much as to have effectively banished its ugliness from the vista of our lives. But this does not remove it… and nor it does make us any less liable to face justice for our own deeds.

For a world(view) without Christ, Dexter is not just a guilty pleasure, he is the final hope for any kind of justice. He is the disturbing solution to House’s question for those who reject God. No wonder House’s mouse is gagged – he asks all the most inconvenient questions.

1) You have not heard the Gospel

(this includes those who think they have heard but what they have heard is not actually the gospel of Jesus. ie. social gospel, prosperity “health and wealth” gospel, man-centred gospel etc.)

2) You have heard the Gospel and rejected it

(this would include all who hear a faithful exposition/explanation of the gospel and yet reject it – both those who reject what they are actually hearing and those who ‘think’ they are rejecting what they are hearing but are actually rejecting something else ie. they have – willfully or not – misunderstood it.)

I would just like to address this second group for a moment. You see, if accepting or rejecting the Gospel was purely a matter or rational engagement with the Gospel then we would say that the cleverer you are, the more likely you are to grasp it and accept it. This is patently not the case, either in terms of what we see happening or what the Bible actually says about how people become Christians.

Of course, the gospel ‘does’ contain a rational set of arguments. The Christian faith is not a leap in the dark since it ‘is’ based on certain facts that are established through investigation of the evidence and following certain data to its logical conclusion. But to reduce the gospel down to this is not only misleading regarding its content, it is also misleading regarding its purpose. The aim of explaining the gospel is not to ‘test’ people’s intelligence, so that the rational people pass and those of less mental capabilities fail. The content of the gospel, while historical and factual, is particularly concerned with the divine nature of one man, Jesus of Nazareth and the work he accomplished which transcends history itself… while the purpose of the gospel, though entailing a rational appeal, is particularly to do with bringing people into a relationship with a real, living God. This means that Christianity must be engaged with concurrently on two levels – one rational and one metaphysical.

Such a separation has already been suggested in the form of NOMA (non-overlapping magesteria), posited by atheistic evolutionist, Dr Stephen Jay Gould. It is dismissed by Professor Richard Dawkins, however, who argues that certainly no supernational religion can be established without miracles violating the laws of physics. He then goes on to argue pointedly people of faith are either not rational or else schizophrenic.

This brings me us back to the issue of rejecting the gospel. If we are not satisfied with Dawkins’ explanation, that people who believe what the Bible says are either stupid or somehow separating their brain from their heart, then how are we to explain the fact that when presented with the gospel some people (both intelligent and less so) accept it and others (both intelligent and less so) reject it. Is there another parameter that we need to consider?

I believe that there is and we can see it in the words of this beautiful hymn written by Bob Kauflin (you can hear/buy the song by clicking here – iTunes link):

I was blinded by my sin
Had no ears to hear Your voice
Did not know Your love within
Had no taste for heaven’s joys
Then Your Spirit gave me life
Opened up Your Word to me
Through the gospel of Your Son
Gave me endless hope and peace

Here we see both aspects of someone’s engagement with the Gospel:

(1) We have listed for us such faculties as eyes and ears, taste and the Word – the rational aspect. These are not just metaphors here, we need to use all of these things in order to engage with the gospel and to determine its whys and wherefores

(2) We also have listed for us ideas such as spiritual blindness and deafness, distaste for the things of God and inability to comprehend spiritual truth – the metaphysical aspect.

If you are rejecting the gospel today, you need to understand that you are rejecting it on both of these levels.

In other words, you cannot rest assured in the knowledge that you have ‘really’ rejected Christianity if you have rejected it (apparently) on the basis of rationality alone. Until you have also ruled out the possibility that you are ‘wilfully’ rejecting it at the same time, you must at least curb your smugness. For the will is not just influenced by the mind but also by the affections. Therefore, it is irresponsible to be smug about having ‘worked out all the holes in Christianity’ if you are overlooking the fact that your heart just might have had more to do with it than your head. If this is the case then it could even be that you are misrepresenting the facts to yourself and wilfully misunderstanding what you are hearing (assuming that the misunderstanding doesn’t stem from a failure of the person explaining it).

One of the oft-repeated phrases of Jesus in the Gospels is the following:

“He who has ears to hear let him hear.”

What does this cryptic declaration mean? It means simply that you might be ‘hearing’ and engaging with Jesus’ words but it is possible to grasp the rationale and yet still be deaf to the true meaning. Anyone can hear the claim that Jesus died for their sins. They can even repeat it themselves as a mantra. But it is only someone who has truly heard it as for themselves who can then say it with conviction as applying to them.

Just imagine that you are in love. It is reported to you by a mutual friend that this other person requites this love. Yet you are bitter inside from past rejection and even though you repeat this fact back to others, you do not say it with conviction or any kind of excitement because you do not believe it, even though it has been reported back to you reliably by others. You do not believe it, that is, until you hear it yourself and understand that it truly is for you. This might even be after the second or third time that you hear it from the person yourself… the bottom line is that with such matters, it will never be the facts alone that lead you to believe. Your heart must be persuaded as well as your head; true truth must be impressed upon your affections… Then you will find the difference in your vision to be so stark that it were as if you had been blind before.