Season 1 of the Re-Enchanting podcast is nearly at an end (there will be ten episodes in all before we take a break over the summer). Episode 8 in which award-winning poet and novelist Paul Kingsnorth shared his unlikely conversion story ranks as one of my favourite of the series.

He was a nature lover from childhood and has been an ecological campaigner for much of his life. But he came to realise that humans couldn’t solve the environmental crisis without solving the spiritual crisis at the centre of their own nature.

Kingsnorth said:

“If you look at the environmental crisis and ask why is this happening? ‘Maybe it’s politics, maybe we need someone else in power.’ Then you realise it’s not that. Then you say ‘maybe we need a revolution’ but that’s not going to happen (or it’ll only make it worse). Maybe it’s about capitalism. Well it is, but its bigger than that as well… You keep gong down and down and down and you realise the crisis is not technological or economic or political, it’s cultural, which means actually it’s spiritual.”

This led him inexorably on a journey towards God. Kingsnorth eventually came to Christian faith in an unlikely journey that went via Zen Buddhism and even Wicca. Ultimately he wanted the real thing.

“If God is real… then God is real. And that means everybody has a longing for God. I think that’s true because even if you look at anthropologically, historically every culture in the world is built around God in some way. They may have a different understanding of it, they may be right or wrong about this, that or the other but they’re all focussing at some point on where they think the Divine is.

It’s always been at the heart of every culture… except this one… which has pretended to decide that’s not real for a bit. But that’s not going to work, because I think humans have a need for God. That’s what we’re supposed to do. That’s where we’re supposed to be orientated. So if that’s true we’re going to want to look in that direction, even though the whole culture is telling us that’s nonsense…”

Certainly, Kingsnorth says there’s a lot wrong with the material and technological idolatry that has captured the West. But I was left ultimately hopeful. Kingsnorth said that God had ‘dragged’ him out of Wicca to orthodox Christianity and that he thinks others like him are ready to hear the Christian story again.

“The more you have to answer these questions: what is a human? What is nature? What is the world? The more people will be ready for actual, serious, Christianity again. Full-strength Christianity. Not the weak version, the real thing. And I think that’s starting to happen, I can feel it.”

And something a bit longer…

Inspired by the first season of the Re-Enchanting my friend Erik Strandness wrote this great reflection on ‘Re-Enchanting the World’, which is too good not to share. Enjoy!

Breaking the Spell

Our culture is undergoing a crisis of meaning. A crisis, which I believe is the consequence of swallowing Richard Dawkins lie that “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference” followed by the inevitable philosophical heartburn of having to contemplate whether “life is or is not worth living.” It is a cultural moment anticipated by that famous metaphysical food critic, Albert Camus, who offered a scathing but prescient culinary review of life by stating that our collective existential dyspepsia is due to an absurd craving for a gourmet meal in a world that serves only gruel. Tragically, his critique of the world’s banquet continues to ruin our appetite for life leading far too many of our young people to cancel their reservations.

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” (Albert Camus)

Psychologist and cognitive scientist John Vervaeke suggests that one of the reasons life has become meaningless is because we no longer have any affection for our world and proposes that the solution is to once again fall in love with reality. Sadly, modernity reduced our relationship with reality to a biological contract and now the thrill is gone. Postmodernity then stepped in and filed for divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable differences because reality stubbornly refused to change her ways to make us happy. Our relationship with reality has been broken and we are left with a culturally heavy heart. We have two choices – love her or leave her. Rekindle the flame and go on a second honeymoon or go our separate ways and live as lonely spinsters until the world ends in heat death.

Enchanted or Addicted

Bertrand Russel famously described life in a purely materialistic universe.

That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms…Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be securely built. (Bertrand Russell)

Is Russell correct? Is “unyielding despair” the proper “firm foundation” upon which to build a successful life, or is it rather a trap door to death? Is it possible to re-enchant our world with divine possibility or must we renew our subscription to meaninglessness?

The world used to be a magical place, but sadly materialist scientists and philosophers have broken the spell, leaving us to wonder whether it can be reconjured?

But before we start waving our Christian wand, we need to ask ourselves what it means to be enchanted in the first place. Merriam Webster defines enchantment as under a magic spell or having or seeming to have a magical quality or made to feel delightfully pleased or charmed.

Materialists would read this definition and dismiss enchantment as a mere psychological sleight of hand and then accuse Christians of being religious addicts who have fallen off the Enlightenment wagon and are once again mainlining the opiate of the masses. I would, however, counter that what they deride as self-medicating is the selfless actions of Christian first responders administering CPR to a world whose firm foundation of unyielding despair is now in the throes of a modernist death rattle. Christian re-enchantment isn’t naively promising a dreamy heaven but is graciously offering a second chance at life to a world that seems to think death with dignity is a more humane option. Enchantment is discovering heaven on earth, but we must be careful not to limit that noble venture to apologetically counting the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin but instead allow ourselves to be spellbound by their choreography.

Postmodern Possibility

I believe that enchantment continues to be a force in our lives but has been banished by modernity to personal safe spaces where it is treated like a favorite blankie or pacifier assuaging the inevitable anxiety and depression that results from living in a world of “blind pitiless indifference.” However, once that enchantment was disconnected from reality, a cognitive dissonance set in because we find it hard to believe that the world’s magical qualities could be reduced to ignorant neurotransmitters failing science 101. The good news is that despite the best efforts of materialists, you cannot short circuit human enchantment just by analyzing neurological wiring.

Materialism, by reducing life to a chemical competition, demotes humans to rats in a Skinner Box feverishly pressing forage and mating levers in the hopes of squeezing some pleasure out of life. Postmodernism, however, found these choices a bit limiting so they added a spirituality lever, but rather than offering a god-reward it administered a shock by revealing just how empty that God-shaped hole truly was. Postmodernism, finding the modernist worldview a bit claustrophobic, did us a favor by once again inviting spirituality to the party but sadly made it promise to cry out “Unknown God” whenever people got too close so as to avoid religious contagion.

While the statistical rise of the religiously unaffiliated None’s is a disturbing trend, the good news is that they continue to be quite spiritual. It may be that the spiritual gate postmodernism reopened will once again allow us to get a divine foot in the door so we can tackle the problem of meaninglessness by introducing an apologetic of re-enchantment.

Back to Boxen

As children, C.S. Lewis, and his brother Warnie, created a make-believe land called Boxen inhabited by talking animals. As Lewis matured, the stories of Boxen were replaced by Nordic, Greek, and Irish mythology. It was, however, a world in tension with his evolving atheistic views. He found himself living a double life, delighting in the mythological literature of the past, while simultaneously espousing views of atheistic materialism, that is, until his friend J.R.R. Tolkien explained to him how the myth that Lewis so deeply cherished had become fact. He was, in his own words, surprised by joy once he realized that enchantment wasn’t an escape from reality but a way to live in it more faithfully.

“What flows into you from the myth is not truth but reality…Myth is the mountain whence all the different streams arise which become truths down here in the valley. (C.S. Lewis)

Once he recognized that the God of myth had become fact, he had to slay the atheist dragons that blocked his return to the enchanted world of his childhood. He then wrote several books which addressed the modernist arguments against God but seemed to realize that apologetics as fact-checking paled in comparison to an apologetic of fantasy where facts are transformed back into myth, where syllogisms become stories, and laws become legends.

As a young man, C.S. Lewis’ imagination took him for a mythological holiday at sea, but his atheism made him pull into port for intellectual repairs. He, however, discovered that life as a land lubber paled in comparison to swashbuckling over the briny deep and so he took his literary skills to a slum-like world that had become content making mud pies and cried “all -aboard.”

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (CS Lewis)

If the world is far too easily pleased making mud pies, then what must we do to get them to join us on a holiday cruise back to Boxen?

Less Nihilism and More Narnia

Narrative apologetics is becoming increasingly popular, and seems a good place to start our re-enchanting project because if myth can become fact then it would seem that fact can also be transformed back into myth. We tend to defend the faith by mechanically referring people to the Bible as if it was the FAQ section of a User’s manual. We assiduously make the case for God’s superior intellect, his incomparable engineering skills, and his stellar moral behavior but miss the far more important fact that He spins an enchanting yarn. Is it possible that the incomparability of the Biblical narrative is further evidence for the truth of the Christian worldview? Does the Bible tell a story, to take a page from Anselm’s ontological argument, than which no greater story can be conceived?

One of the most profound phrases in all the Bible is And God Said… because it means that the entire universe is a spoken word performance. So, in contrast to our materialist friends, who think life is a series of grammatical mistakes in a DNA code, we believe it is a corpus of carefully crafted literature for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see. The world is meaningless if we treat it as series of mutated objects to be dissected and placed in scientific jars but becomes a place of enchantment when we see it as beautiful verse collected in a book of divine poetry.

Enchantment, however, is nothing but a pipe dream if the rubber doesn’t meet the road. If enchantment doesn’t incarnate then it will be lifeless, so as Christians we can’t just condemn nihilism but must show others what its like to live in Narnia.

House of Worship

I think one of the most dramatic ways in which we display our enchantment is through worship. I’m not just talking about the singing, praying and ritual we conduct in our churches but the worship that takes place inside the sanctuaries of our own bodies.

St. Paul described our bodies as temples where the holy spirit dwells. I believe that the temples Paul refers to are our souls, each one architecturally customized to create distinctive acoustics which makes the sound of our worship truly unique, but which becomes even more enchanting when we are joined in chorus by a great cloud of witnesses.

The reason people are disenchanted isn’t because they don’t have temples, or that their temples are improperly constructed, but because of the deities they invite into their Holy of Holies. The atheist boards up the temple so that the only sound they hear is that of rats scrambling about for spiritual scraps. Alternative religions, on the other hand, aren’t afraid to invite spirits in, but fail to audition them properly and quickly find that their gods can’t carry a tune, and the resulting worship sounds like an atonal mess. However, when we allow the God who not only spoke the world into existence but created us with divine voice recognition software to inhabit our temple then we are enchanted by every word He says.

Fools for Christ

Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. (1 Corinthians 3:18-19)

Atheists generally don’t engage in debates over enchantment, seeing it largely as foolishness, but according to the Bible what they perceive as foolishness is actually the wisdom of God. I think this is why many of them admit that there is no proof that could make them believe in God because, convinced that man is the measure of all things, they cannot even conceive of another metric.

Only mystics, clowns and artists, in my experience, speak the truth, which, as Blake was always insisting, is perceptible to the imagination rather than the mind. Thus an animist groveling naked in the African bush before a painted stone may well be nearer to the heart of things than any Einstein or Bertrand Russell, and a painted clown riding a bicycle round and round a circus ring more attuned to the reality of life than a Talleyrand or a Bismarck can hope to be. Jesus was making the same point when He insisted that God has revealed to the foolish what is hidden from the wise. (Malcolm Muggeridge)

Sadly, when we utilize human wisdom and make man the measure of all things, we get the short end of the stick, because when it comes to measuring God’s mystery, we need a Divine ruler.

"Deep is the dwelling place of God. Deep is the character of the ocean…For deep is where the noisy, trashy surface of the ocean gets quiet and serene. No sound breaks the awesome silence of the ocean's heart. Most Christians, however, spend their lives being whipped tumultuously through the surface circumstances of their days. Their frothy lifestyles mark the surface of their lives. Yet those who plumb the deep things of God discover true peace for the first time." (Calvin Miller)

Foolishness is often equated with being child-like, but maybe that's God’s point. What if enchantment, rather than our own individual response to the world, was us channeling God’s delight as He looks at His world through the eyes of one of His beloved children? For those of us who have kids, we recognize that we frequently direct their activities to things that previously elicited feelings of awe and wonder in us when we were young. We become almost childlike ourselves as we expectantly wait to see the sparkle in their eyes when they see Disneyland or Sea World or Legoland for the first time. Since God is our Father, His delight is no different.

In the Genesis account, God declared the world to be “very good” only after humans appeared on the scene because it was at that point God that had created beings in the cosmos who could not only appreciate the “good” world He had made but also offer praise back to its Maker. Proverbs 8 describes how Wisdom was present with God at the beginning of creation like a “master workman” adding a level of enchantment to the world which delighted both God and man.

Wisdom speaking:

and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the children of man. (Proverbs 8:30-31)

Apologetic of Re-enchantment

Apologetics has largely concentrated on proving the existence of the Enchanter rather than cataloguing the enchantment. It has historically engaged its atheist critics over the existence of God but now finds that as the four horsemen of the New Atheism ride off into the sunset, a new postmodern sheriff has arrived in town. A lawman who doesn’t police his citizens with data and syllogisms but rather rules with the iron hand of emotion and desire.

How do we reach a postmodern people who want to create a world to their liking rather than embrace the one in which they live? The popularity of transhumanism and transgenderism, suggests that postmodern people have incredibly rich imaginations and want to live in an enchanted world but instead of looking to the One waving the magic wand they content themselves with a surgeon’s scalpel. Postmodern people still want enchantment but treat it like an add on or an upgrade to the physical world. Already burdened with having to create their own meaning and purpose, their peers insist that they must also add enchantment to their list of construction projects. Enchantment, however, cannot be manufactured but must be discovered. It isn’t costume jewelry but a pearl of great price. It isn’t a golden calf, but a treasure hidden in a field.

1 Peter 3:15 is the apologetic “go-to” verse which I believe gives license to pursue an apologetic of re-enchantment.

but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15)

One of the problems with apologetics is that it fixates on the defense aspect of the verse by seeking evidence and spends far too little time on the hope that is in us. Hope is seeing enchantment where others don’t and if people don’t see that we are enchanted they won’t ask us to give them the reasons for that hope.

I think one of the reasons young people reject their faith is because they no longer find it enchanting. The data suggests that they leave because they have questions that the church is either afraid or unwilling to answer. But what if the real underlying issue is that they have grown bored? What if the academic questions they raise are just lame excuses to leave behind a faith they now find tedious? Sadly, instead of introducing them to the Enchanter, we double-down on a God as an engineer, mathematician, and biologist and forget that He is also a Magician who whose work is spellbinding. Historian Tom Holland said it well on a recent episode of Re-enchanting, “A Christianity that has bled itself of enchantment is a pallid and an anaemic thing.”

Logic is an indispensable component of apologetics, but it has limits and must cede ground to enchantment if we are to be relevant to the postmodern mind. G.K. Chesterton described the tension quite eloquently.

Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens, it is the logician who seeks to get the heavens in his head. And it is his head that splits. (GK Chesterton)

Let us fill our heads with as much logic and reason as it can contain but then be willing to acknowledge that on occasion, we need to leave port and invite others on an enchanting holiday on an infinite sea.

Erik Strandness is a retired physician http://www.godsscreenplay.com/