The Socialized Self
When Peter heard the invitation to follow Jesus, he was a fisherman. When Matthew heard, he was a tax collector. Mary Magdalene was a sex worker. Simon was a zealot. Nicodemus was a pharisee. Everyone who hears the invitation to follow Jesus responds from within the social context in which they live. The salvation experience is indeed transformational, but modern evangelistic efforts tend to focus on who a person is being formed into without sufficiently recognizing how the person was initially formed. Our initial formation is what I call the “socialized life.”
The socialized life is split into two phases—primary and secondary socialization.[1] A helpful way to distinguish between these two ideas, and to understand how we are formed during each phase of the process, is to use the model of language learning.[2] By doing so, we will soon realize that each of us is “bilingual” in the social dimension of our lives.
In the phase of primary socialization, we learn the language of the home we were raised in. Our home environment shapes our taste preferences for mom’s cooking, dad’s favorite sports teams, our hobbies, many of our habits, and most importantly our primary language of communication. Moreover, we all know what to expect from whom when we go home for the holidays. Many of our default “life hack” strategies were either formed or significantly shaped by our home environment.
Our spiritual formation began in our home as well. Some of us were raised in a Christian family and cannot remember a unique moment of conversion. Others of us were raised without any knowledge or experience of a religious faith. Some of us were raised within a faith tradition outside of the biblical tradition and have converted. Each of these paths toward apprenticeship to Jesus require us to continually reevaluate our progress as “learners of the faith”, growing in the knowledge of God.
This process of primary socialization is well understood in the field of Christian discipleship. Yet, I suggest that the focus of modern discipleship rests here alone. Modern evangelistic efforts seek to “plug in” recent converts to new believers’ classes and accountability programs to help them to grow in their newfound faith. I consider one of the most significant reasons that the Western church languishes in the daunting reality that it holds no relevance in the face of contemporary culture to be that it has, for the most part, ignored the process of secondary socialization in which every individual learns how to embrace the “common sense”, “this is the way it is”, aspects of adult life.
In the phase of secondary socialization, we learn the language of the culture of which we are a part. This is taught to us at school. In the modern Western context, school takes place outside of the home and is usually sponsored by the state. School is where we are taught what will become known to us as “public truths.” In Western society, we are taught that the “scientific method”, inquiry based upon identification of cause-and-effect relationships through the process of experimentation and measurement of the material world, provides everything we need to know about who we are and where we came from. Additionally, we are taught that history “progresses” toward the end of human perfection through the efforts of humankind itself. A third component of this education is that the individual, seen as autonomous and bearing the ability to reason for him or herself, is the central locus of all change; this becomes the for us the meaning of “freedom.”
The modern Western society in which we live has its nascent roots in the efforts of French philosopher Rene Descartes’ project to arrive at a universal and absolute condition for knowing what is real. He approached his work through the strategy of critique. (Critique is also the basis of “critical theory” which seeks to replace the apparent certainties of modernity with irrational ambiguities.) He choose to doubt every possible avenue for determining what is real by finding fault in own his thinking. Needless to say, this drove him through a frustrating and exhaustive journey to finally put forth his famous declaration “Ergo cognito sum” — “I think; therefore, I am.” After all his effort, this was the sum of all he could say with certainty, but through his effort reason became exalted as the means by which any ultimate and universal reality can be known. About this time, Francis Bacon, known as the father of the scientific method, challenged the world to “adjure speculation and gather up facts.”[3] Thus, modernity arrived on the scene of human consciousness riding the white horse of reason and gathering up facts (cause and effect relationships) at breakneck speed. This, of course, has led to both great technological breakthrough and tremendous human suffering.
As modern Western Christians, new converts as wel as those who are maturing in our faith, we have been brought up to speak both the language of our home and our culture. Our “bilingualism” poses a challenge to our ability to understand and apply the Bible as God’s Word in the public square. Modernity pressures us to speak of our faith privately and to speak in public the language of empirical reasoning. We thus tend to communicate the gospel story in a way that produces “Christianese”, a banal “pigeon” dialect without any real meaning that tries to tell the story of the gospel while holding it hostage to the domain of rational, verifiable, cause-and-effect transactions.
What I call the “cruciform life” is the path we walk that leads us out of the “socialized life.” Although, in order to fully embrace the crucified life, we need to address both the formation we received in our primary and secondary socialization. Repentance is often described by the adage “Change the way you think.” This will indeed reorient us within our modern Western cultural mindset but changing how we think will not remove us from its influence. In order to rise above the modern mindset, in order to truly “have eyes to see” the kingdom of God, we must in fact change the way we know. We must become able to embrace the gospel story, and the entirety of Scripture that it fulfills, as the reality we live within.
The gospel story is alien to the thought processes of modern Western culture. Salvation is not a cause-and-effect transaction. Our faith is not based upon evidence that can be verified through the manipulation of the material world. We are not individuals who are free to reason our way through life. On the contrary, we have become bondslaves to the One who truly sets us free—the Person who is the way, the truth, and the life. Through the knowledge the one true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, we receive eternal life (John 17:3). Our experience of God cannot be codified into the language of modernity. “We preach Christ crucified . . . the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1Corinthians 1:23-24 NASB1995).
Jesus communicated the gospel story by describing spiritual ideas from colloquial perspectives. Yet He spoke in the idioms of the culture for the purpose of bringing transformational understanding to the people who lived within the culture. Those who tried to reframe His teachings to fit inside the cultural contexts of His day became identified as “those with ears who do not hear.” Our challenge today, as the church who lives within Western modern culture, is to develop the boldness to embrace the gospel story as the “facts of life”, and in doing so, carry out our commission to disciple all nations, staring with ourselves. There is a much better way to live. Jesus showed us what that is. He then chose us to show the world The Way.
Photo by VENUS MAJOR on Unsplash
[1] Berger, Sociology of Knowledge
[2] Newbigin, Truth to Tell
[3] Alistair McIntyre, After Virtue