Forgotten Christianity
In conversation with an Italian mechanical engineer who builds coffee machines, we stumbled upon an interesting idea. People born after the invention of modern technologies - the iPhone, iPad etc. - cannot imagine a life without them.
Not only that, the misrepresentation of past times leads them to believe that modern times are better. As people really “in the know” about these pre-smartphone times - yes we felt old - it is nearly impossible to explain how these times were better without sounding like an absolute turbo-boomer.
The early life of the young boomer
Both me and the Italian creator of coffee machines grew up in worlds where you met your friends by taking a chance. You’d go to their house, ring the doorbell and…wait. Sometimes nothing, sometimes they would open the door. More often their parents would and tell you the approximate whereabouts of your friend. You’d then venture into the neighborhood, listening for sounds of friends and joining them in whatever they were doing.
Explaining this to people in their early twenties makes you sound like a fossil incarnate. Insisting this was actually better gets you a one-way ticket to a retirement home.
But was it better? Maybe yes, maybe no. That’s not for this piece. The interesting part is that it is possible to be oblivious about something while judging it as worse. To imagine something you have not experienced as worse, and thereby defining the era you live in as “better” in comparison.
The Bunkerized Christian as a spiritual boomer
Due to my recently acquired mild obsession with Christianity, I took this idea and placed it in the context of modern culture. Many people in the West live in countries shaped by a culture - the Christian one - that they now reject based on a lack of knowledge or a misrepresentation of what it is.
Modern culture defines Christianity as some strange belief in a man in the cloud that knows and controls everything. It paints Christians as a bunch of half-wits that used it to fill the gaps of knowledge that people in history suffered from. Yet now, with the advances in science, these knowledge-gaps are filled so a belief in man-in-the-clouds betrays a specific form of retardation.
It is useful for modernity to frame Christianity as such because it puts the bar very low for doing better. Sure, modernity throws out virtue, chases pleasure and turns billions of people into addicts by exploiting their vices. But hey, at least we do not believe in man in the clouds!
But “man-in-the-cloud-people” actually managed to build cathedrals of timeless beauty, and modernity keeps pushing out one uggo building after the other. That should tell you something. Garbage in, garbage out etc.
I think a fair representation of the richness of Christianity is no match for the vice-fueled emptiness of modernity. But it is very hard to explain this to people who have no connection or a false connection to it. The result: we cannot tap into the wisdom of Christianity, wisdom that built the worlds we live in, to save our souls from the spiritual - and therefore material - wasteland called modernity.
Be in this world, not of it
I do not think the world before phones was perfect, just as I do not believe the world before modernity was perfect. Many things have gotten better through advances in science. But science isn’t spiritual. It does not care for the soul.
Modern life abuses the soul. That realization is both terrifying and extremely sad. It makes you understand the GenZ’er who defends the modern way of life. It is of great psychological use to view the times you live in as better. It saves you from the torment of wanting the world to be different.
That is where Bunkerized Christianity can help. Albeit imperfectly, it allows you to be in the world without being of it. To connect to timeless ideas that held as true today as when Jesus was walking the Earth.
That’s why I think it is important to speak of an honest representation of Christianity. As a bridge back to God. For I don’t believe we have killed God. We merely lost sight of His light within our souls. Those who feel similar about the lacks of modernity and who want to care for their souls are welcome to voluntarily walk this bridge back to God.