A New Hunger for Rules We Hated?

In those days* there was no king in Israel. 

Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
   *1300-1050 BC  -- Book of Judges 21: 25 ESV

I am a member of the high school graduating class of 1965.  The 1960’s greeted us baby-boomers with the Beatles, the Beach Boys, sporty cars, and many opportunities and invitations to become breakers of moral and social rules.

Now that I am in my seventies, I have lived through the transition from the “modern” to the “postmodern” era.  During the modern era which included the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and the scientific revolution, many believed that all major truth claims about reality could be harmonized through the lens of the natural sciences and mathematics.  Revelatory truth from a supreme creator God was supplanted by a belief in the supremacy of human reason.  Many accepted humanity as being the most highly evolved species on the Darwinian tree of life, destined to transform the natural world into a utopia.

Then, in the 1960’s, the rule-breaking baby boomers “matured” into post-modern “thinkers” of the 1970’s and 1980’s.  This period saw major upheavals in the global economy (Think “oil.”), growing environmental deterioration (Think “endangered species.”), and a loss of confidence that America was a rightful leader on the world stage (Think “Vietnam.”).  Our society began to move away from a respect for time-honored virtues to a rejection of rules which were viewed as stifling of individual freedom. 

Postmodernists dismissed the notion that truth is a “transcendent, timeless, universal absolute that is present everywhere and applicable everywhere (Matt and Rachel Taylor).”  Instead, postmodernists consider truth claims as relative to the community to which each individual belongs (e.g. national, tribal, or ethnic).  A virtuous person is defined as one who is tolerant of people in other communities who may define truth differently and does not to use personal truth claims to wield power over other individuals or groups.

Today, the USA is divided and confused for want of truth and structure for life.  We see evidence of moral relativism in many of the controversial issues that divide our nation—gender and reproductive rights, attitudes toward law enforcement, national sovereignty, immigration reform, religious liberty, freedom of speech, and right to bear arms.  In many cases, political pressures combined with legal and moral ambiguities have caused much distress and even death to people normally protected by objective legislation and law enforcement.

But a strange thing is happening on the way down the path of postmodernism and moral relativism—many are beginning to hunger for “rules for life.”  Books are popping up that are offering just that.  Jordan B. Peterson has authored 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (Random House Canada, 2018).   His YouTube video with the same title boasts 1.5 million views.  In the Foreward to 12 Rules for Life,  Norman Doidge, MD, and author of The Brain That Changes Itself offers his explanation for the sudden interest in rules, particularly among millennials:

…what [Peterson] is saying meets a deep and unarticulated need.  And that is because alongside our wish to be free of rules, we all search for structure.

Doidge continues:  The hunger among many younger people for rules, or at least guidelines, is greater today for good reason. In the West at least, millennials are living through a unique historical situation. They are, I believe, the first generation to have been so thoroughly taught two seemingly contradictory ideas about morality, simultaneously-- at their schools, colleges and universities, by many in my own generation.  This contradiction has left them at times disoriented and uncertain, without guidance and, more tragically, deprived of riches they don't even know exist.

The first idea or teaching is that morality is relative, at best a personal “value judgment.” Relative means that there is no absolute right or wrong in anything; instead, morality and the rules associated with it are just a matter of personal opinion or happenstance, “relative to” or “related to” a particular framework, such as one's ethnicity, one's upbringing, or the culture or historical moment one is born Into.  It's nothing but an accident of birth.  According to this argument (now a creed), history teaches that religions, tribes, nations, and ethnic groups tend to disagree about fundamental matters, and always have.  Today the postmodernist left makes the additional claim that one group's morality is nothing but its attempt to exercise power over another group.  So the decent thing to do-- once it becomes apparent how arbitrary your and your society’s “ moral values” are-- is to show tolerance for people who think differently, and who come from different (diverse) backgrounds.  That emphasis on tolerance is so paramount that for many people one of the worst character flaws a person can have is to be “judgemental.” And since we don't know right from wrong, or what is good just about the most inappropriate thing an adult can do is give a young person advice about how to live.

And so a generation has been raised untutored in what was once called, aptly, “practical wisdom,” which guided previous generations.  Millennials, often told they have received the finest education available anywhere, have actually suffered a form of serious intellectual and moral neglect. The relativists of my generation and Jordan’s, many of whom became their professors, chose to devalue thousands of years of human knowledge about how to acquire virtue, dismissing it as passé, not relevant or even oppressive. They were so successful at it that the very word “virtue” sounds out of date, and someone using it appears anachronistically moralistic and self-righteous.

Norman Doidge concludes his Foreward to 12 Rules for Life with a hopeful assessment of the millennial generation:

One might think that a generation that has heard endlessly, from their more ideological teachers, about the rights, rights, rights that belong to them, would object to being told that they would do better to focus instead on taking responsibility. Yet this generation, many of whom were raised in small families by hyper protective parents, on soft surface playgrounds, and then taught in universities with safe places where they don't have to hear things they don't want to-- schooled to be risk-averse-- has among it, now millions who feel stultified by this underestimation of their potential resilience and who have embraced Jordan's message that each individual has ultimate responsibility to bear; that if one wants to live a full life, one first sets one's own house in order (Peterson’s Rule #1); and only then can one sensibly aim to take on bigger responsibilities.

If it were only Jordan Peterson’s book on rules, we might be guilty of overestimating the human yearning for rules and structure deep within the soul.  But, now a second new book is drawing much attention.  HarperCollins has just released 9 Rules of Engagement: A Military Brat’s Guide to Life and Success (2018) by Emmy award-winning Fox News anchor, Harris Faulkner.  Again, Faulkner’s rules rest upon the same, unapologetic challenge to her readers as expressed by Peterson--take responsibility for your lives.

Finally, allow me to refer you to a third example of a major personality who is offering “rules for life.”  I offer this example with a warning that the rules come in a format that is more informal and somewhat vulgar.  This week, Chris Pratt, star of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Parks and Recreation, received the coveted Generation Award at the 2018 MTV Music and TV Awards.  Pratt, a professing Christian, used the occasion of his acceptance to share some advice with fans by what he calls his “9 Rules Speech."  Pratt’s rules include:  breathe, care for your soul, pray, God is real.

I was encouraged to see these three significant personalities emerge upon the world stage to offer “rules for life” based on a foundation with two important principles.  First, each of us must take individual responsibility for our choices in life; and second, we are responsible to a Being that is more holy and powerful than we are—one Who has revealed the basis for moral standards that are intended to lend structure and fulfillment to life.

The Judeo-Christian Scriptures provide the sorrowful commentary of individuals and societies that have gone adrift in moral relativism as described in Judges 21: 25, quoted at the beginning of this article.  But the Scriptures also include individuals and societies that experienced joy and God’s blessing because they accepted His offer such as is stated in Deuteronomy 30: 19:

Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live!

Today, through His Word, the Bible, and through many other voices, God still calls us to repent, humble ourselves, and live by His moral commands in the power of His Holy Spirit.  The responsibility is ours to choose Life.

How About You?  You may have read this article and are left with a sense of confusion, uncertainty, and even fear.  If you have never encountered the “Good News” or Gospel, let me help.   The “Good News” is summarized in an outline called “Steps to Peace with God” which explains God’s love, our predicament (sin and separation from God), what Jesus has done to address our predicament, and what you can do by faith to receive God’s righteousness (right standing with a Holy God).  If you have additional questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you.  Just post a “Comment” below or e-mail me at silviusj@cedarville.edu