Expressive Individualism

Carl Trueman investigates this question in his book, Strange New World. He makes the high and lofty theories of deceased philosophers and psychologists understandable to everyday people. Trueman shows how these ideas and theories—which may seem irrelevant—have impacted our thinking, beliefs, and practices. If we want to proclaim and defend our faith against ideas that are incompatible with it, we must first understand those ideas.

Cultural Idea: I Am the Highest Authority

Trueman begins by using the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Romantics to show how they created a framework that views society as corrupting and one’s inner voice or instinct as an authentic authority. Why should someone live in accordance with society if it contradicts how they feel about themselves internally?

Trueman writes, “…we can see why the foul-mouthed politician has supplanted the polite and reserved one, because in a world where the inner voice is key to the real person, the former is authentic while the latter presents a public image…” (47). The pressure to conform to external expectations ceases if we can create our own.

If we no longer conform to an external authority such as the Bible, then “our god is our belly;” our desires are our authority. This was quite literally the case for Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx. The two men share a common rejection of the idea that human beings as human beings have a transcendent, stable, moral nature to which they need to conform to flourish. For Marx, morality is historically conditioned and designed to justify and maintain the current (unjust) economic structure of society. For Nietzsche, morality is a fiction invented by one group to denigrate and subordinate another. For both, moral codes are thus manipulative and must be transgressed to find true freedom (69).

Nietzsche and Marx see morality as oppressive while self-expression is liberating because it defies conventional norms and allows the individual to obey their internal instincts rather than an external authority. For Marx, morality must be erased to declass society and create the “leveling” of communism. For Nietzsche, morality restrains an individual from self-creation: “…we are to be whatever we want or choose to be” (64).

Cultural Idea: I Have Sexual Freedom

How does self-creation lead to sexual expression? Meet Sigmund Freud. Freud held self-expression to be paramount and sexual desire as fundamental to being human. Therefore, sexual desire is the key to self-expression: “If the fundamental form of human happiness is the genital pleasure derived from sex, then we can conclude that for Freud human nature is at its deepest level sexual, and that human beings are therefore defined in a basic way by their sexual desires” (73-74). Freud believes that sexual desire is the core of human happiness, shifting it from an individual’s behavior to their identity.

Again, folks over 40 years old can remember a time when homosexuality was spoken of as a private behavior. Now, LGBTQ+ is a constituency that politicians, sports teams, and celebrities laud in the public sphere. Moreover, the community identifies themselves by their sexual desire, rendering the biblical sexual ethic bigoted because it no longer strikes at an individual’s behavior but the individual, making the offense personal.

Cultural Reality: Disciples and Pilgrims

Yet, the gospel call is to forget ourselves, is it not? We’re called to look to Christ, the cosmic redeemer, the Kingdom proclaimer, and the personal savior: “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11 ESV).

In stark contrast to our “strange new world,” Christians have an external authority. Jesus Christ is Lord and His Word governs our lives. Our fundamental identity is in Him. And we have a hope—the resurrection of our bodies to our eternal home. For this, we are deeply grateful.