"I was helpless, and he saved me"

We haven't talked about this much in this series, but Psalm 116 is one of those psalms that create the different numbering of the Psalms in Catholic Bibles versus Protestant Bibles. I expect most Protestants aren't aware of this, but if you've ever picked up a Catholic Bible you might have noticed how the Psalms, in some spots, seem to be off by one or two numbers.

The difference has to do with the role of the Septuagint and Latin Vulgate in the Catholic tradition. The Septuagint was the Greek translation of the Old Testament made by Jewish scholars in Alexandria in the 3rd century BC. This Greek text was the basis of St. Jerome's initial Latin translation of the Psalms, though he later produced a Hebrew-based version as well. We should also note that the Septuagint contained the Deuterocanonical books (also called the Apocrypha). The Vulgate functioned as the Bible of the church until the Protestant Reformation.

After the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, rabbinic Judaism worked to standardize the Hebrew text of the Tanakh (what Christians call "the Old Testament" or "the Hebrew Scriptures"). This work was safeguarded and preserved during the 6th–10th centuries by the Masoretes, Jewish scribes in Tiberias, Babylonia, and Palestine. Their work produced what is called the Masoretic Text. This text had different numbering for the Psalms compared to the Septuagint and Vulgate. The Masoretic Text also did not contain the Deuterocanonical books. During the Protestant Reformation, the Reformers began to base their translations of the Old Testament on the Masoretic Text rather than the Latin Vulgate. Consequently, Protestant Bibles have different numbering for the Psalms and do not contain the Deuterocanonical books.

Basically, it boils down to the Septuagint versus the Masoretic Text as the basis for the Old Testament. 

The different numbering of the Psalms in the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text are due to four splits/combinations. These are:

Masoretic Text Psalms 9–10 = Septuagint Psalm 9

Masoretic Text Psalms 114–115 = Septuagint Psalm 113

Masoretic Text Psalm 116 = Septuagint Psalms 114–115

Masoretic Text Psalm 147 = Septuagint Psalms 146–147

As you can see, Psalm 116 is one of those places where the split/combination occurs. In Protestant Bibles, Psalms 116 is a whole. But in Catholic Bibles Psalm 116 is split into two. Where does that split occur in the poem? It happens between verses 9 and 10. In Catholic Bibles, Psalm 114 ends with:

I will walk before the Lord
in the land of the living.

Which is verse 9 in Psalm 116. Psalm 115 in Catholic Bibles then begins with verse 10 of the Psalm 116:

I believed, even when I said,
“I am severely oppressed.”

///

Sorry for the history lesson, but this is the sort of stuff I enjoy. Let's get back to some devotional thoughts. 

Psalm 116 is an expression of thanksgiving for deliverance. Recall, again, how Psalm 116 is a part of the Hallel psalms used during Passover. The poet finds himself in a dire situation and cries out: 

The ropes of death were wrapped around me,
and the torments of Sheol overcame me;
I encountered trouble and sorrow.
Then I called on the name of the Lord:
“Lord, save me!”

The Lord hears and rescues:

The Lord is gracious and righteous;
our God is compassionate.
The Lord guards the inexperienced;
I was helpless, and he saved me.

One of my concerns with how salvation is described in progressive and conservative Christian spaces is how moralized they are. To be sure, they are moralized in different ways, but both focus upon some vision of moral purity.

For conservatives, the moral purity is achieved juridically, being "justified" before God due to the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. I am "clean" because Jesus' righteousness is imputed to me. Downstream of justification, we also see conservative concerns about moral purity in places like evangelical purity culture.

For progressives, moral purity is more performative than juridical. (Progressive Christians hate penal substitutionary atonement.) This is the moral influence view of atonement. We are saved by emulating the love of Jesus. And insofar as we love, we are saved. The purity aspect of this moral performance shows up in what I've described, way back in 2015, as the "purity culture" of progressive Christianity. In progressive Christian spaces being complicit in oppressive structures creates an experience of moral contamination. This causes progressives to embrace puritanical displays of moral purity and social quarantine. Cancel and callout culture are examples. Progressives leaving Twitter/X because of Elon Musk is another example, fleeing a morally contaminated space for the purer Bluesky. It's the social media version of social distancing. Recently, I've seen progressives leaving Substack for Ghost because Substack hosts Nazis. Since Substack is morally contaminated, purity is regained via social quarantine. All this is purity culture behavior, fearing contamination through contact. A pursuit of moral purity in a world where “everything is problematic” is also what drives the radicalization of progressive spaces, where purer and purer expressions of solidarity and commitment drive the community toward extremism and individuals to moral exhaustion. If you’re trying to be 100% free of complicity in a world where being morally compromised is unavoidable you’ll never be fully or wholly clean. See Unclean for more about purity psychology. 

My point, again, is how both progressive and conservative Christians define salvation as moral purity.

But as I've argued in this space, what moral purity misses is our need for help and assistance. As the recovery community puts it, our lives have become unmanageable and we need to rely upon a power that can restore us to sanity. And that is the vision of Psalm 116. 

I was helpless and he saved me.

There's a famous passage from John 12:24-25: 

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 

The mystery of love is communicated in these lines. 

Reading this passage the other day, the line that interrupted me was "It remains alone." We know the passage so well we tend to jump to the end, how if we lose our life we'll find and keep it. But what if we refuse to lose our life? The consequence of that choice is named: "It remains alone."

So when I say this passage communicates the mystery of love, this is what I mean. There is a suffering, losing, and dying aspect of love. We say that love is "sacrificial." And that "sacrifice" is yourself, the losing and giving of your life. As the theologian Arthur McGill has described: 

Every action is a losing, a letting go, a passing away from oneself of some bit of one’s own reality into the existence of others and of the world. In Jesus Christ, this character of action is not resisted, by trying to use our action to assert ourselves, extend ourselves, to impose our will and being upon situations. In Jesus Christ, this self-expending character of action is joyfully affirmed. I receive myself constantly from God’s Parenting love. But so far as some aspects of myself are at my disposal, these I receive to give away. Those who would live as Jesus did—who would act and purpose themselves as Jesus did—mean to love, i.e., they mean to expend themselves for others unto death. Their being is meant to pass away from them to others, and they make that meaning the conscious direction of their existence.

This is what I believe Jesus means by "but if it dies, it bears much fruit." If I were to float a speculative mysto-physical idea here, we all are tending toward entropic disorder. We're always moving toward death. I can struggle against that drift, arrogating to myself power and pleasure to either delay or enjoy the ride. Or I can, via my Spirit and the Holy Spirit, direct the flow of my energy to give life to others. But this spiritual-energy transfer takes intention, and we call that intention "love." We call it "living for others," but it would be more properly described as "dying for others." Paul describes this in Corinthians 4:12 when he says about his ministry in relation to the church, "So death is at work in us but life is at work in you." Paul is the dying grain of wheat who is bearing much fruit. His life is being poured into others. 

Now, what if we refuse to take this path? As Brené Brown has described in her famous TEDx talk (now viewed over 67 million times), relational connection and wholehearted living requires "excruciating vulnerability." For the reasons I've described above. Again, that is the mystery of love. There is a giving away in love, but that gift bears "much fruit" in connection and belonging. You lose your life to find it.

And what if we refuse to die? What if we refuse to love? Jesus names the consequence:

For the seed that refuses to die, the life that refuses to love, it remains alone.

Obviously, the big word of this series has been "ontological." "Ontology" is not a common word, but I wrote this series to argue, in a lot of different but convergent ways, that the question of ontology is the issue we need to be focusing on in the church.

As I've described in this series, everywhere you look we are witnessing moral, symbolic, sacramental, and ecclesial drift away from the ontological. We've severed our connection to the Real. We've cut ourselves loose through deconstruction and demythologization. This has created a host of problems, from our mental health crisis to an impoverishment of our moral vision to a deeper slide into post-Christian disenchantment. Churches have begun to traffic almost wholly in the therapeutic and the moralistic and are systematically talking themselves out of existence. 

Given all this, do I have any takeaway recommendations?

One recommendation is this: Pay attention to how your church describes the spiritual life. Notice when our language becomes reduced to the therapeutic and the moral, when the only agents in view are human persons. It is, of course, very good to gather "in the name of Jesus" to "encourage" each other and to "love each other." It is good to "serve the world" and "bless our neighbors." But be alert to how such stock phrases make no reference to the Real. Notice when we are the only players on the stage. Be concerned about the functional atheism on display. 

In one of the letters Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from prison to his friend Eberhard Bethge, he described the decisive moment in his spiritual journey as turning from "the phraseological to the real." Influenced as he was as a German theologian by Bultmann's demythologization, theology for Bonhoeffer had been moral and existential. But during his American sojourn, Bonhoeffer's theology became ontological. He turned toward the Real. This is what the church must do. We must turn to the Real. All the layers--moral, existential, and ontological--need to be stitched back together. 

How to do this?

Following from what I've just said, words matter. We can pay attention to how we talk. Throughout this series I've shown how we can highlight the ontological aspects of faith, from the sacraments to eschatology. Following people like Jordan Peterson, we can remythologize the moral layer. Meaning, remember, is the bread of life. But we need to push past Peterson's agnosticism to reontologize the existential layer. Because if it's all just a symbol, to echo Flannery O'Connor, then to hell with it. 

So that's the first thing we can do, we can remythologize and reontologize faith and the life of the church. 

But we need more than words. Otherwise, like Bonhoeffer, we get caught up in the phraseological and never turn toward the real. Reontologizing the faith isn't about shuffling words around, like rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship. We need to encounter the Real.

Given this, let me, once again, share the insight of Karl Rahner: 

The devout Christian of the future will either be a ‘mystic’—someone who has ‘experienced something’—or will cease to be anything at all.

At some point we must pivot away from the moral, the political, the therapeutic, the symbolic, the existential, and the propositional toward ontological encounter. Mysticism is the path. And if this path seems vague or elusive, pick up Hunting Magic Eels and The Shape of Joy as two accessible and practical books on everyday mysticism.    

It is time to encounter the Real.

In 2023 I shared a post lamenting what I described as "sentimental nihilism." The topic of that post, and what triggered my lament, concerns the subject of this series. 

As I described it, there are many ex-Christian people who continue to embrace the role and mantle of social justice "prophet." That these ex-Christians continue to embrace the Judeo-Christian ethic regarding concern for the oppressed shouldn't be a surprise. Most ex-Christians reject Christianity on very Christian grounds. That is, in fact, one of their chief complaints, how Christians are not very Christian. 

Using the framework of this series, these ex-Christians continue to embrace the moral and political layer of Christianity. They don't, generally, become Nietzschean or acolytes of Ayn Rand. As I said, their rejection of Christianity tends to be very moralized and politicized. What is making these people ex-Christian isn't moral or political but their jettisoning of the ontological layer, a rejection of Christian metaphysics as being Real or True. The moral and political commitments related to social justice and creation care are retained, but dogmatic metaphysical convictions are rejected. 

This, however, is an untenable situation. As I've put it, these are prophets who no longer believe in the Lord. Moral realism, the heart and soul of prophetic criticism, is incompatible with post-modernism. You can't be dogmatic about your moral convictions while at the same time being undogmatic about the ontological truth behind those convictions. Prophets are not post-modernists. You can't be a prophet and a nihilist at the same time. Simply put, if you want to speak truth to power you need to believe in truth. This isn't rocket science.

All this is why I described the moral convictions of these ex-Christian prophets as "sentimental." Since their moral convictions no longer reflect anything Real or True, given how Christian metaphysics has been deconstructed and rejected, prophetic outcry has been reduced to expressions of personal sentiment. Severed from the True, moral speech no longer traffics in obligating and universal duties but becomes an expression of your preferences. Where prophets once roared "Thus saith the Lord!" in the face of oppression and injustice, the best the ex-Christian prophet can offer is, "I'd rather you not do that." 

Now, the ex-Christian prophet might respond, "This is unfair. I can justify my moral commitments without appeal to Judeo-Christian metaphysics." To which I'd respond: Show me. Show me how you can justify your very particular vision of moral realism without any appeal to ontological commitments that look suspiciously similar to the Judeo-Christian commitments (e.g., people are created in the image of God, care for the weak is an obligating duty, etc.). Of course, if you wanted to take up this challenge here it is in full:

1. Moral particularity

Why this value and not another? That is, you want to proclaim particular values--like "We must care for the weak" or "First do no harm"--over against other particular values. This work is responding to the Nietzschean criticism that the Christian ethic of love is a "slave morality" and should be replaced with a "will to power" where the strong lord over the weak. In short, there are many different values at large in the world--for example, "care for the weak" versus "lord over the weak"--and you must justify your particular values from all the available options.

2. Moral realism

Beyond the particular content of your values you need to justify why these values are universally obligating, why these values are not your personal opinion or subjective preference. In short, you need to defend the moral realism of your values, why your values are true.

3. Eschewing Ontological and Metaphysical Appeals

Next, you'll have to justify the particular content of your values (why these values and not others) and the realism of your values (why these values are obligating and true) without any appeal to metaphysics, reality, or ontology. You'll have to defend the content and realism of your values on a purely post-modern and nihilistic foundation.

4. Extrinsic to Judeo-Christianity

Finally, you'll have to do all this without trading on Judeo-Christianity metaphysics and ontology. For example, you can't justify care for the weak by claiming that people possess "innate worth and dignity." That would be smuggling into your argument the Judeo-Christian conviction that human persons were made in the image of God. If you want care for the weak to be your value you have to justify that value with reasons extrinsic to Judeo-Christianity.

I'm confident that every ex-Christian prophet would fail at this task. As I put it above, you can't be a prophet who no longer believes in the Lord. The moral layer must be connected to the ontological. Judeo-Christian metaphysics is integral to the Judeo-Christian moral vision. You can't have one without the other.

And if you think you can, well, I’ve offered my challenge. Show us. Otherwise, admit that your prophetic performance on social media is really just that, performative. Because, by your own admission, nothing you say is true.

Over the course of this series I've explored how the moral, existential, and ontological framework I've proposed can be used to describe and analyze different cultural and ecclesial trends and dynamics. In this post I want to try to map the transcendental values of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good onto that framework. 

Let us identify the Good with the top, normative layer concerning morality and politics. 

Next, let us identify the Beautiful with the middle existential layer, the layer of symbol and narrative.

Finally, let us identify the True with the bottom ontological layer, the location of the Real.

Thus:

The Good [Moral]

The Beautiful [Existential]

The True [Ontological]

Here are some initial thoughts about how such a mapping might be fruitful.

First, I've suggested in this series that working the existential layer is the path forward for post-Christian evangelism. Our culture is thirsting for meaning. But more than that, there is also a desire for beauty. For example, as I describe in The Shape of Joy moral beauty is the biggest predictor of wonder, transcendence, and awe, an experience that creates a "small self," a feeling of connection with a reality greater than your own. There is an aesthetic aspect to the moral life. There is an artfulness to living well. The Beautiful suffuses the Good with zest, passion, unity, and light. The Beautiful keeps the Good mysterious and ineffable. Separated from the Beautiful, the Good becomes grey, grim, legalistic, and puritanical. The Good can even become ugly. 

But the Beautiful needs its connection with the True. The Beautiful must touch the Real. Otherwise, the Beautiful will become sentimental or merely self-expressive. If the Beautiful loses contact with the True it becomes kitschy, a pretty patina. That, or it becomes a reflection of the artist's inner life. Now, insofar as an artist's self-expression taps into the True, giving voice to something shared and universal in the human condition, it becomes art. But given how human persons can be malformed in various ways, creative expressions can be self-indulgent, performative, bizarre, elitist, neurotic, sick, or vacuous. Creative self-expression is not the same as art, and the critical issue is its connection with the True. Lacking contact with the Real creative expressions can function as communication (let me share with you something about myself) or consumed as entertainment, but they fall short of being art.

And let me make a point here about the scope of the True. In our increasingly post-Christian world the scope of the Real has been delimited to subjective human experience. As I point out in The Shape of Joy, the only thing that is "real" for us is the drama within the human mind. Thus, "truth" in art increasingly means "true to the human experience." And while this is correct as far as it goes, when limited to human psychology art becomes a neurotic mirror and loses a capacity for transcendence. Art has suffered in the modern world as a consequence. Consider the beauty of nature, Notre-Dame Cathedral, the music of Bach, or the life of Jesus of Nazareth. The ontological realm of the Beautiful is large and far exceeds inner human drama. Yes, the subjective life of the artist can be a truthful reflection of the human experience. The particular can express the universal. And a feeling of solidarity can result. This is no small achievement. But the Beautiful and the True transcend human psychology. The Real is greater than what is locked up in our minds, and art reaches toward and expresses that transcendent ontological encounter. 

"And those who make idols are just like them, as are all who trust in them."

Psalm 115 is one of the most anti-idolatry polemics in the Old Testament, ranking alongside Isaiah 44 and Jeremiah 10. A taste:

Their idols are merely things of silver and gold,
shaped by human hands.
They have mouths but cannot speak,
and eyes but cannot see.
They have ears but cannot hear,
and noses but cannot smell.
They have hands but cannot feel,
and feet but cannot walk,
and throats but cannot make a sound.

And then, after these lines, the passage I shared above: "And those who make idols are just like them, as are all who trust in them."

You've heard the refrain, "You become what you worship." That's the claim of Psalm 115. You are transformed into the image of your idols. You are conformed to what you trust. You are poured into the mold of what you worship.

This point is relevant to the current series concerning the relationship of the moral and symbolic to the ontological. A point I've made in that series concerns moral and symbolic drift. If we're not in contact with something steady, enduring, particular, and real we're prone to curating and adopting a moral and symbolic worldview that becomes self-referential and self-reinforcing. As I describe in The Shape of Joy, the self begins to loop. That's the vision of Psalm 115, how idols become egoistic mirrors, narcissistic reflections, and self-referential loops. We come to worship ourselves. 

Having brought up Orthodox soteriology in the last post, let me linger here a bit.

A few posts ago I described progressive and evangelical visions of salvation as "moralized." Of course, they are moralized in different ways. For the progressives, we are saved through morality itself. We are saved by emulating Jesus' love. We are saved because Jesus showed us "how to be human." For evangelicals, we are saved through grace and mercy. The blood of Jesus washes away our sins. Salvation is forgiveness. 

The patristic tradition, by contrast, tended to view salvation as more ontological. In this series I've focused upon how Christ's resurrection overcame death and the predicament of human finitude. But the patristic tradition also saw the Incarnation itself as salvific. In fact, the resurrection was really just a demonstration of the ontological consequences of the Incarnation. The effect of God joining His Life with mortal human flesh was made plain on Easter Sunday. What was ontologically true of the infant Jesus was manifested in the adult body of Jesus: that death could have no dominion over his mortal flesh given its connection to God's own Life. This ontological truth about Christ's body is what flashes out at his transfiguration. 

The ontological connection between human flesh and God's Life is Christ's offer of salvation to finite and mortal humanity. By uniting our flesh to Christ's body ontological contact is made with God's Life, and that Life changes us ontologically. As with Christ's flesh, our flesh becomes empowered to survive death. 

Here is how Saint Cyril of Alexandria (c. 375-444), an early church father, describes all this: 

So Christ gave his own body for the life of all, and makes it the channel through which life flows once more into us. How he does this I will explain to the best of my ability.

When the life-giving Word of God dwelt in human flesh, he changed it into that good thing which is distinctively his, namely, life; and by being wholly united to the flesh in a way beyond our comprehension, he gave it the life-giving power which he has by his very nature. Therefore, the body of Christ gives life to those who receive it. Its presence in mortal men expels death and drives away corruption because it contains within itself in his entirety the Word who totally abolishes corruption.

Again, this is a very ontological way to describe salvation, a vision not typically found in either progressive or evangelical spaces. Christ's body confers ontological power, literally transforming the "stuff we are made of" so that decay and corruption become abolished from our bodies. Salvation is more than morality. Salvation is more than forgiveness. Salvation is ontological transformation.

To write The Slavery of Death I did a deep dive into Eastern Orthodox theology. I did so to explore the Christus Victor themes in Orthodox soteriology, how they place death at the center of the human predicament. That is something I've already discussed in this series, how salvation concerns ontology (human finitude) as much as morality (love, social justice, and our need for grace). During my time studying Orthodox soteriology I also explored Orthodox iconography. Because of this, icons have become an important part of my devotional life.

For this series, here's the point I want to make about Orthodox icons. Icons are not merely "art." Icons are not simply "pictures." Rather, as the Orthodox put it, icons are "windows into heaven." That is to say, the icons ontologically participate in the realities they visually display. When you look at, say, an icon of a saint, that saint is really looking back at you through the icon. Just like you and I can look at each other through a glass window. Icons are mystical and sacramental in this way, ontological portals into heavenly realities. When you stand in an Orthodox church all the icons surrounding you display the "great cloud of witnesses" described in Hebrews 11. Heaven is directly "looking upon" the liturgy, connected and participating. 

Let's now map all this onto our moral, existential, and ontological framework. 

As a Protestant, my default approach to icons is primarily symbolic and aesthetic. The icon is "art." Holy and wholesome art, but primarily art. The icon, for me, isn't ontological. It isn't mystical or spooky, a real portal into the Otherworld. The icon isn't a "hole in the universe" through which another World can enter. The icon isn't the wardrobe that takes me into Narnia. My experience with the icon is largely symbolic and existential. The icon represents realities that are not immediately present. Heaven is vaguely "somewhere else" rather than looking directly at me. 

It's this disconnection from the ontological layer that separates Christian art from Orthodox iconography. Christian art is moral and aesthetic, but not ontological. That Orthodox icons participate in and connect with ontological realities is what sits behind the Orthodox practices of icon veneration. Miss the ontological aspect of Orthodox iconography and you'll never understand veneration. 

Personally, I find the Orthodox vision of icons as "windows into heaven" quite lovely. But as a Protestant I don't venerate icons. (Well, sometimes I do kiss icons and statues.) I stand, mostly, at an ontological remove. I find myself mainly on the aesthetic side of the experience and haven't wholly bridged over to the ontological. And a lot of that concerns practices. It's one thing to theologically appreciate an ontological insight. But it's quite another to experience ontological mysteries through practices of veneration. Incense, icon lamps, candles, bowing, kissing, and crossing yourself--these are practices that carry you across the art-to-ontology divide. And in many ways, icon veneration is just an example of what has to happen in all areas of our disenchanted lives if we are to bring the Impingement of the Real back into view. 

Practices of hallowing and rituals of sacralizing, these are ontological interventions, ways to stitch ourselves back into the Real. 

There is a vision here of how to punch a hole in the universe.

When it comes to the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, one of the impacts of the Protestant Reformation was severing these sacraments from the ontological layer.

For example, there's the oft-quoted comment of Flannery O'Connor's about the Eucharist. At a party one evening talk turned to the Eucharist and a person commented, "I think it is a lovely symbol." To which O'Connor replied, "If it's just a symbol, to hell with it." 

In the framework of this series, O'Connor was dismissing any vision of the Eucharist that had cut itself off from the Real, from the ontological layer. The Catholic doctrine in question here is transubstantiation, which Protestantism broke with. 

The issue, though, is a bit more nuanced. Early on in the Protestant Reformation, there was a debate about the Eucharist, the "Sacramentarian Controversy." To one side were the Lutherans, who defended the Catholic-adjacent view of the Real Presence. On the other side were the Zwinglians, who defended a memorialist view. The point to note is that Protestant commitments to the Real Presence, like what the Lutherans were defending in the controversy, do strive to keep the Eucharist tethered to ontology. Christ is really, ontologically there in the sacrament. The memorialist view, by contrast, severs itself from the ontological, leaving only the moral and symbolic layers behind. The Eucharist becomes, in O'Connor's remark, "just a symbol." 

Similar shifts happened with the sacrament of baptism. Ontological views of baptism describe how baptism changes reality. For example, from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission: "Baptism is the sacrament of regeneration through water in the word." (CCC 1213)

Baptism as effecting "regeneration" highlights the ontological aspect of the sacrament. As the Catechism continues:

This sacrament is also called "the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit," for it signifies and actually brings about the birth of water and the Spirit without which no one "can enter the kingdom of God." (CCC 1215)

Note how the description is ontological: Baptism "signifies and actually brings about the birth of water and Spirit." Baptism isn't merely a symbol. Baptism ontologically changes the world. Baptism actually brings about our new birth in Christ.

Like with the Eucharist, Protestants hold mixed views about baptism. Raised as I was in the Churches of Christ, our view of baptism was ontological. Like the Catholic view, we believed that baptism wrought an ontological change. Other Protestants, like the Baptists, hold to a more symbolic view of baptism, the sacrament severed from the ontological layer. 

So, to be clear, Protestants are divided on the degree to which they tether the sacraments to the ontological. And some traditions, like my own, have mixed profiles. Our view of the Lord's Supper was symbolic, but our view of baptism was ontological. But in some Protestant spaces, both sacraments are symbolic. Consequently, untethered at they are from the ontological layer, we observe sacramental drift in these churches. The Lord's Supper is only rarely or intermittently celebrated, and baptism is delayed or ignored as something optional. 

We're even seeing drift in traditions that embrace ontological views of the sacraments. The US Catholic Church recently went through a Eucharistic Revival because surveys revealed that increasing numbers of American Catholics did not believe in the Real Presence. And in my own tradition, our practices of baptism have become increasing symbolic, and therefore optional. 

Stepping back, I believe we can see how sacramental drift contributes to Christian disenchantment. If there is nothing Real about the sacraments then is anything going at church Real? Are ontological realities being ontologically encountered in the church? Or is it all just moral uplift and therapeutic encouragement? 

This ontological drift is one of the reasons why, I believe, evangelical churches focus so much on emotions. Without any connection to ontology you have to "feel something." And that "feeling something" tips you toward charismatic preaching and amped up praise services. Emotion has come to replace ontology, feelings now substitute for the Real. 

In short, with sacramental drift comes ecclesial drift, church becoming decoupled from ontology. And as with the sacraments, if nothing Real is encountered in church then church becomes optional. When church becomes severed from ontological realities it reduces to moral pedagogy and therapeutic uplift. Which are good things. But we can get these moral and therapeutic goods from many places. We can listen to sermons on podcasts and stream praise music.

Given this sacramental and ecclesial drift, one of my big soapboxes has become reconnecting church to the Real. And we do this by pushing down through the moral and the symbolic to connect ourselves, the sacraments especially, to the ontological layer. 

Because if it's all just a symbol, well, to hell with it.

In Hunting Magic Eels I describe what I call "the mystical to moral shift" and I describe it as, perhaps, the biggest factor driving Christian disenchantment and drifting away from faith. 

The "the mystical to moral shift" concerns what could be called the moralization of salvation. That is, the goal of salvation is to be a good person--kind, loving, and welcoming. You see this moralization everywhere in Christianity, and for good reason. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and that people would know we are his followers because of our love. Love is a really, really big deal. But when it comes to salvation, love isn't the only deal.

What are some examples of the moralization of salvation? 

One place you see it is in Christological moralization. Jesus lived and died to show us "how to be human." Which is true, but this morally reductive take on Jesus leaves a lot of stuff out (see: the resurrection). You also see this moralization at work in theories of atonement, like the moral influence view. According to the moral influence view of the atonement, Jesus "saves" us by showing us how to love. And again, Jesus most certainly does show us how to love in the cruciform shape of his life and death. But that's not the only way Jesus saves us (see again: the resurrection).

Other places where you see this moralization at work is when the goal of the Christian life is reduced to "being the hands and feet of Jesus" in the world. Again, we are most definitely called to good deeds in and on behalf of the world. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer described it, Jesus is "the man for others." And the church is only the church when it exists "for others." And yet, when the life of the church is reduced in this way, its existence becomes wholly moralized and politicized, as politics increasingly becomes how we express and pursue our moral commitments. 

I'll have more to say about the moralization of the church in the next post, for now I just want to observe how moralization leads to disenchantment. Specifically, if the goal of salvation is to be a good person, along with pursuing a virtuous politics, then it quickly become obvious that God, faith, and church are optional for this endeavor, and therefore readily disposable. You can be a loving person, plant a garden, volunteer in your community, create beautiful things, and march in a protest all without God. You can bake bread, make art, hold space, speak truth to power, do the next right thing, resist fascism, write poetry, take a walk, hold your loved ones close, practice gratitude, be mindful, dance, stand in solidarity with the margins, embrace wonder, and make room at the table for others....all without God. Thus, wherever you see Christianity reduced to such things disenchantment soon follows. Which is precisely what we observe as the outcome of Christian "deconstruction," jettisoning God for some beautiful, creative, liberated, inclusive, and joyful vision of "being human."  

Let's now map all this onto the moral, existential, and ontological layers of this series.

Salvation gets moralized when it becomes severed from the ontological layer. This is why Christians who deconstruct tend to end up liberal post-modern humanists. "Deconstruction" is the name for ejecting the ontological layer, doubting and questioning the Christian claims about the Real. That God exists, for instance, or that Jesus was raised from the dead. That Judgment Day is coming and that heaven is real. All those ontological beliefs are rejected via "deconstruction." What's left over, at least for a season, is the existential, narrative, and symbolic layer. This is what you find in progressive and mainline Christian spaces, the moral vision couched in the Christian story (the middle existential layer) but without the underlying ontological commitments. Simply put, where mainline Christians demythologized the ontological layer ex-evangelical Christians deconstructed that layer. Either way, demythologized or deconstructed, the ontology of Christianity is jettisoned. Salvation becomes a wholly moral and existential affair.   

Now, is this a bad thing?

Well, that'll depend upon your perspective. Personally, I think the moral and political vision of Jesus that you find in progressive Christian spaces is more holistic compared to what you find in evangelical spaces, where "being like Jesus" has been almost completely reduced to being pro-life when it comes to abortion. But again, I lean progressive on these things. That said, I describe myself as a post-progressive Christian because I have serious concerns about the moralization of salvation I've observed in progressive Christian spaces.

What sort of concerns?

One concern is the tendency of progressive Christianity to morph into a spiritual-but-not-religious version of the prosperity gospel. We curate our enchantments--from mindfulness to yoga to manifesting abundance--in order to achieve our best life now. Love means self-care, walking your dog, planting a garden, and voting for Democrats. As I describe in Hunting Magic Eels, there is nothing in this self-curated suite of enchantments that can unsettle or challenge you. Simply because, without the ontological layer, a Reality Larger and Other than your own, there is no capacity for prophetic friction, a location of moral disjunction between yourself and the Ontological Good. The sharp pricks of obligating moral duties are replaced with therapeutic self-affirmation.    

But my deeper concern here, as I've argued over the years, is how the Christian vision of salvation is both moral and ontological. As I've pointed out in this series, these two--the moral and the ontological--go hand in hand. Love and resurrection go together. They must if our love is to take on a cruciform, sacrificial shape. 

Let me share four observations to make this point.

First, Jesus does "show us how to love" on the cross. But that love would have ended in failure and futility were it not ontologically vindicated by resurrection. In a similar way, calling people to sacrificial love and lifestyles demands ontological commitments. Simply put, heaven must be real. Otherwise, when push comes to shove, the calculus of self-interest will tempt us away from sacrificial hardship. This is a rudimentary observation about human weakness, and yet it is a point so often forgotten by those who wish to retain Jesus' sacrificial ethic of love while jettisoning the ontological beliefs that vindicate the moral severity of that ethic.

Second, and relatedly, as I've described in this series, our commitments to love and justice demand a metaphysics of hope. If love and justice are not going to be eschatologically vindicated, if history is just a cosmic dumpster fire, every effort at improving the world will prove to be vain and futile. Despair, rage, exhaustion, and temptations toward violence will eat away at us like a cancer. Nihilism cannot sustain a commitment to sacrificial love, not durably or broadly.   

Third, and still relatedly, salvation isn't just about sin, it's also about death. Death, Scripture teaches us, is our last enemy. These are the Christus Victor perspectives on the atonement. In this sense, the moral influence view of the atonement, common among progressive Christians, has the exact same problem as  penal substitutionary atonement common among evangelicals. How so? Both views are moralized visions of the atonement and make no reference to the resurrection. Put simply, neither the moral influence view nor penal substitutionary atonement addresses the problem of death. Both views ignore the ontological layer, how salvation must address human finitude and contingency. 

And, finally, life is more than being a good person. Most of the time, it's just trying to keep your shit together. As I describe in The Shape of Joy, we're unwell. What we need, by way of salvation, is a little help. Real, ontological help. A power other than our own that can restore us to sanity. That's how the recovery community puts it. Here's the deal. The progressives are right, salvation is about justice and love. And the evangelicals are also right, salvation is about grace and forgiveness. But salvation is also about power, a power we can turn to when life gets hard, hopeless, desperate. That is what moralized visions of salvation leave out of the picture--the Holy Spirit. 

All this is why I've started describing myself as a post-progressive Christian. For the most part, I agree with the progressive vision of the moral and political layer. But I have grave concerns about how progressives have jettisoned the ontological layer through demythologization and deconstruction. My vision, as a post-progressive, is restitching the moral and political layer back to the ontological. Among progressives, I am a town-crier proclaiming the onologization of salvation. God exists. Jesus was raised from the dead. Judgment Day is coming. Heaven is real. Prayers are answered. Miracles happen. The Holy Spirit fills and empowers you. The moral arch of the universe bends toward justice. Love lasts forever. Death, our last enemy, has been defeated. We do not grieve as those who have no hope.  

"Why was it, sea, that you fled?"

As mentioned last week, Psalm 114 is one of the Hallel Psalms used during the Passover celebration. The song's connection with the Exodus is clear in verse 1: "When Israel came out of Egypt..." 

The song goes on to describe the crossing of the Red Sea--"The sea looked and fled"--and the crossing of the Jordan--"the Jordan turned back." Having cited these two water crossings, the poem stops to ask rhetorical questions of the sea and Jordan:

Why was it, sea, that you fled?
Jordan, that you turned back?

The mountains and hills also get queried:

Mountains, that you skipped like rams?
Hills, like lambs?

While nature is regularly personified in the Psalms, Psalm 114 is unique in how it poses questions directly to nature. The questioning is likely a taunt. A mocking intent is in the background. The questions demonstrate the Lord's power over these mighty entities--sea, river, hills, and mountains. The Lord causes these powers to flee, turns them back, makes them skip.

But the power here is explicitly connected to God's salvific acts. It's not a shock and awe campaign. The display of God's power, over water and land, is emancipatory, the liberation of slaves and the release of captives. In contrast to the pagan nature and storm gods, Israel's God was involved with history, and intimately so. 

This creates both the comfort and the controversy of the Christian faith, along with the other ethical monotheisms (Judaism and Islam). That God cares about us, is invested in our lives, brings us peace. We feel seen and known. But that attention is felt by many to be oppressive and restricting. One of the attractions of neopaganism and spiritual but not religious seeking is that the divine doesn't bother you. It sits inert in the background, quiet and unobtrusive, waiting for you to engage with it. It makes no demands and never judges. The God of the Israel, by contrast, engages you. 

Phrased differently, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity are salvation religions. Life is a moral drama, and God is acting within that drama with emancipatory intent. Given these high stakes, God cares what you do and isn't content to leave you alone.

All this sits behind the mix we find in Psalm 114. God has power over creation, but God's actions have a soteriological agenda. The Lord is bringing his people out of Egypt.

In this post I want to gather up some observations I've made before, but using them to illustrate the moral, existential, and ontological layer framework I've been floating in this series.

The question I want to focus on in this post is this: What are some of the things that happen when the moral layer becomes separated from the layers beneath it? 

There are so many things to say, but let me focus on things I've shared over the years and in some of my books.

Let me start with some things about when the moral layer becomes separated from the existential, narrative, and symbolic layer. The first thing to say, as I have throughout this series, is that man does not live by morals and politics alone. I'll say for the fourth post in a row: Meaning is the bread of life. So, while the Judeo-Christian values of liberal humanism and political progressivism may provide one with a moral compass and political commitments, this is insufficient to fill the existential vacuum of secular modernity. 

Another thing that happens when the moral layer is separated from the narrative and symbolic layer is that the moral vision becomes thin and impoverished. For example, when we disembed social justice from the moral matrix of the Judeo-Christian worldview crucial moral commitments and capacities are left behind. This turns "social justice" into a blunt instrument, and is one of the reasons social justice so often goes awry. Here's how I described this in Hunting Magic Eels:

As the saying goes, when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Justice is just one tool in our moral toolbox. A critical, essential tool. But one tool can’t do all the moral work life demands of us. Justice is a hammer, and when you’re looking at a nail— say, oppression—the hammer is the tool to pick up. But the moral drama of our lives isn’t just about oppression. We’re dealing with all sorts of things, from forgiveness to mercy to shame to guilt to joy to truth to peace to reconciliation. And hitting mercy with a hammer just isn’t a good idea. You’ll break it.

Consider an obvious example: how the social justice movement struggles with the issue of forgiveness. With the pervasiveness of what has been called “cancel culture,” can the canceled ever be forgiven? What about problematic allies? What if someone’s moral performance for the cause is less than perfect? The social justice movement struggles here with the issues of mercy, grace, forgiveness, and reconciliation. The reason for this is that justice is a hammer, and while a hammer is an excellent tool for nails, it is not so great with other moral tasks. Forgiveness is a different problem than injustice. You need different tools. The moral drama of life isn’t putting up a swing set in the backyard, easily tackled with the single tool enclosed in the box; it’s building an entire house. Moral life is cement work, brick laying, carpentry, plumbing, electrical, roofing, painting, and so on. You need more than a hammer.

So here is one reason we need to keep the moral layer connected to the narrative and symbolic layer. Moral and political life is complicated and nuanced and that requires a fuller, thicker, and and richer narrative and symbolic foundation. Without this foundation, moral life becomes crude, reductive, agonistic, and incoherent.  

Let's now go one layer deeper. What happens when the moral layer looses contact with the ontological layer, the layer of the Real?

I'll point out two things.

First, as I've repeatedly pointed out over the years, the Judeo-Christian moral vision demands a metaphysics of hope. For two reasons. First, without hope the moral drama of our lives, our small efforts to make the world a better place, will succumb to despair, rage, cynicism, hate, burnout, compassion fatigue, and the violence motivated by what John Howard Yoder called "revolutionary impatience." If the moral arch of history doesn't, ontologically, bend toward justice, then it will be impossible to maintain the Judeo-Christian moral vision of love and justice in a committed, persevering, and joy-filled way. And the critical point to underline here is that hope isn't a moral commitment. Nor is it a symbolic one. Hope is an ontological issue. What sustains the Judeo-Christian moral vision of love and justice is its connection to the Real.

Secondly, the actual content of the Judeo-Christian moral vision is subject to drift, corruption, or replacement. There are anti-humanistic ethics afoot in the world. The liberal humanism of the West, grounded in Judeo-Christian narrative and ontology, is faltering. 

Now, it might be countered here that some of this faltering is due to Christians themselves, their instrumental embrace of authoritarianism and fascism to accomplish short-term political and cultural goals. In response, I'd simply point to Tom Holland's argument in Dominion that these liberal and humanistic criticisms of authoritarianism and fascism are, themselves, rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Which means that this conflict will necessarily boil down to ontology. That is, what is the true and real moral vision of Jesus of Nazareth? Phrased differently, the task of resistance, as ontological critique, is prophetic in nature. Who--really, truly--speaks for the Lord? 

Of course, a liberal humanist might want to criticize Christian nationalism from the outside, in purely secular terms. To that person I'd simply say, "Best of luck!" For a few reasons, but an obvious one is that the Christian fascists, as Christians, believe themselves to be standing on the Real. They're wrong, in my estimation, but they are making ontological claims. The secular liberal humanist, by contrast, is a nihilist. That is to say, the secular liberal humanist--as a pluralistic post-modernist--is unable to defend their moral vision is either real or true. Again, the liberal humanist has cut themselves off from the existential and ontological layers. Their moral vision rests on air. And in a debate between a nihilist and a ontologist the ontologist is going to win every time. In short, if you want to criticize the Christian fascist you're going to have to do so on ontological grounds. You must become a prophet. Which means you have to connect your moral vision to the ontological layer.

One of the most influential German theologians in the modern era was Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976). And one of Bultmann's most influential ideas was that of demythologization.

Wanting to reconcile the Bible with modern scientific understandings of the world, Bultmann argued that the ancient cosmologies we find on the pages the Bible need to be displaced in order to get to the moral and existential core of the Scripture's message. The "mythos" of the Bible--its ancient metaphysical and cosmological assumptions about the structure of the cosmos--could be safely set aside in our search for Biblical truth. Modern persons do not have to subscribe to the ancient visions of science we find in Scripture. We should, rather, seek existential wisdom and moral guidance. 

Bultmann called this process, removing or reading around the mythos of the Bible to get to its existential and moral content, "demythologization." 

An extreme example of demythologization, one that predated Bultmann, was Thomas Jefferson. Unable to reconcile the miraculous and supernatural aspects of the New Testament with his Enlightenment commitments to reason and science, Jefferson famously cut out, with scissors, all references to the miraculous and supernatural from the gospels. What was left over, called The Jefferson Bible, was the historical account of Jesus' life along with his moral teachings. Jefferson had demythologized the gospels, transforming Jesus into a moral philosopher and exemplar. 

For example, did Jesus physically rise from the dead? Is the tomb empty? Christian orthodoxy confesses that Jesus was, ontologically, resurrected. The resurrection really happened as a historical, factual event within history. Some Christians, however, demythologize the resurrection. Christ's "resurrection" is symbolic, existential, and moral in nature. Christ is "resurrected" in our hearts and in our midst whenever we embody and display his love and the spirit that animated his life.

In light of demythologization, let's see how it relates to the moral, existential, and ontological layers I've been describing. As described in the first post of this series, the effect of a Jeffersonian or Bultmannian demythologization was to sever the connections between the moral, existential (mythological, narrative, symbolic), and ontological layers. To wit:

Moral / Political Layer

[demythologization]

Existential / Symbolic / Mythological / Narrative Layer

[demythologization]

Ontological Layer

The decoupling here goes from the bottom up. With Thomas Jefferson, for example, we see the mythological layer being severed from the ontological layer. Jesus and the Bible remain, as a narrative, along with the upper moral/political layer, the Judeo-Christian ethic. Over time, as the West secularizes, the mythological/narrative layer is deemed superfluous and liberal humanism goes on to jettison explicit mention of Jesus and Christianity. In the words of Robert Jenson, the world "loses it story." Stripped of the myth, what remains is the moral/political vision of Judeo-Christianity. I described all this in Part 1 of this series. 

Let me now return to what Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Pageau have been up to. One way to describe their work is the "remythologization" of the Western moral and political vision, along with all the existential benefits that this remythologization brings. Again, meaning is the bread of life. So, we can describe Peterson's project like this, starting now at the top:

Moral / Political Layer

↓ [remythologization] ↓

Existential / Symbolic / Mythological / Narrative Layer

[demythologization]

Ontological Layer

For example, in his work on Genesis we can see Peterson restitching the moral layer back to the existential layer. This explains a bit of why Peterson's work is so multivalent. Since the moral layer involves politics, Peterson's work can become overtly political and partisan. But Peterson's career began with the existential aspect of remythologization. And this early Jungian work was, in my opinion, Peterson's strongest and best work. It explains why Peterson spoke so powerfully into the lives of lost young men. By reconnecting their lives to myth, the call to "order the chaos" of their lives, Peterson was filling an existential vacuum. Peterson was remythologizing the lives of directionless young men. 

More recently, however, Peterson has turned away from the existential to the political side of his project. I'm not a fan of this political turn. Not because I disagree with him about the Judeo-Christian foundation of the West. See Tom Holland's work on that point. My problem is with Peterson's partisan take on this political diagnosis, how he thinks the Judeo-Christian foundation of the West is solely represented by the Republicans. That's a ludicrous claim. 

Regardless, to return to the point I made in Part 1, there remains the issue of the ontological layer. Beyond the remythologizing of our values and moral vision, reembedding them in the Christian story, there remains the issue of metaphysical truth, the question of the Real. As we've noted, Peterson hesitates at the ontological layer. He will remythologize our moral vision and values, but he won't reontologize the myth. And that's the part I'm interested in. Here's a picture of the work I think needs to be done, still moving from top to bottom:

Moral / Political Layer

↓ [remythologization] ↓

Existential / Symbolic / Mythological / Narrative Layer

↓ [reontologization] ↓

Ontological Layer

That is to say, the moral and political layer is reembedded in the story and the story is reconnected to the Real. 

Of course, a person might say, for the reasons I discussed in the last post, that this final step of reontologization, what we might call the "confessional" or "creedal" step, is problematic. Once things get ontological, it will be asserted, things start to get dogmatic and exclusive. Which is a no-no in a pluralistic, post-modern, liberal, humanistic, inclusive, spiritual-not-religious world. So, let's keep things restricted to the top layers. Keep things at the mythological level, like a Jordan Peterson or a spiritual-but-not religious "spiritual seeker." That, or keep things restricted to the moral and political layer, like a liberal humanist or a social justice warrior. 

In response to that desire, I've already described in the prior two posts how the layers will start to drift when they become decoupled. For example, Peterson and his fans are concerned that the moral vision of the West is becoming decoupled from the Christian myth. And while I think they are wrong in their partisan response to that threat, I think they are right in raising the concern that an anti-human worldview will come to replace the Christian myth. 

In a similar way, I've expressed concerns about how Peterson's vision of the Christian myth is decoupled from Christian metaphysics and ontology. Without that ontological connection, I've argued, Peterson's remythologization of the Bible is vulnerable to its own drift into dark, Nietzschean waters. Paul Kingsnorth has powerfully made this point.

In short, if you want to cast an anchor, that anchor has to reach the bottom. You have to make contact with the Real. Anything less deep and you'll start to drift. Values need to be remythologized. And the myth needs to be reontologized.

But a reader might respond, "Well, that's Jordan Peterson's problem." What about, then, the progressive liberal humanists? The social justice warriors? The spiritual seekers? How are they susceptible to drift? 

I'll turn to that in the next post.

In the last post I used Jordan Peterson to illustrate what can happen when the moral and the existential become decoupled from the ontological. Today, some another examples.

We're all aware of the deconstruction phenomenon and the stories of former believers becoming ex-Christians. Most of these former Christians continue to broadly espouse the moral vision of the Judeo-Christian tradition: love, be kind, stand in solidarity with the weak, seek justice, extend mercy. Beyond that top moral layer, many also continue to own the symbolic and narrative layer, reaching for and using Christian symbols, stories, and practices to fill out their existential worldview. Again, man does not live on morals or politics alone. Meaning is the bread of life. 

And yet, these former believers eschew the ontological layer. They have deconstructed themselves out of Christian metaphysical convictions. They no longer believe in the creeds. Christianity has become wholly symbolic.

This happens for a few different, and often related, reasons.

First, the person might become a reductive materialist. They just don't believe in anything beyond material reality, making the ontological claims of Christianity implausible. We saw a lot of this during the New Atheist moment, but it seems to be less common today. Still, it happens.

Second, as an institutional and organized religion Christianity has become a damaged brand. From the Catholic sexual abuse crisis to evangelical support for Donald Trump, many feel compelled to reject Christianity. 

Third, post-modernism. To confess the ontological claims of Christianity--for example, Jesus of Nazareth was, ontologically, the Incarnate Son of God--is to become dogmatic and exclusive in a pluralistic world. Better to be a "spiritual seeker" and "spiritual but not religious" than to espouse firm metaphysical convictions. Limit the Christian story to just being a story and don't let it make truth claims about the Real. Christianity can provide narrative, symbolic, and aesthetic inspiration, but do not call it "the truth."

Back when "deconstruction" was a hot topic, a lot of us watched this slow decoupling of the moral and the existential layers from the ontological among Christian authors, artists, and podcasters. The process of deconstruction chipped away at the ontological foundation, but the existential and moral layers remained. For a season, this kept the public face of their Christianity afloat. Still deploying the Christian narrative and symbols these authors and artists still presented as "Christian" to the public. But there wasn't any ontological belief underneath. Some of this was legitimate liminality, a way station transitioning from belief to unbelief. But some of it was, and remains, a cynical way to keep the money and attention flowing in. Many authors, artists, and podcasters built their audiences as confessing Christians and Christians were their audience. Consequently, to come out as an atheist or agnostic with a confession that "I don't believe in any of this" would destroy their livelihood. To their credit, some people did publicly push the eject button and went on to do things that had nothing to do with Christianity. Others played coy, and still play coy, about their ontological convictions, embracing "mystery" at the ontological level which allows them to continue making a living off of their Christian audience. 

I don't want any of this to be harsh, though perhaps it is. People who start out or establish themselves in a faith-based arena can face some hard choices should they suffer a loss of faith. And with the moral and existential layers still in place, there are ways to keep going. And here's the thing, those existential and moral layers are legitimate and profound. The ethic of love and the story of Jesus are powerful. You might not think that the Christian story is true, ontologically speaking, but it is beautiful and good. And living a good and beautiful life is no small achievement.