"Plastic People in a Liquid World"
Strange New World by Carl R. Trueman
Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools. - Romans 1:22
They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator - Romans 1:25
Carl Trueman’s book, Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution, connects the dots between the philosophies of some of history’s most notable thinkers - including Rousseau, Nietzsche, Freud, Hegel, Marx, and Marcuse - to show how they influenced and subverted the concept of self in our western culture. Trueman shows how the progression of their ideas gave rise to the sexual revolution and how this new sense of identity, which he labels “expressive individualism,” has wrought destruction on the modern culture’s sense of morality, justice, mental stability, and faith. In the final section of the book, he admits how the Christian church today has been complicit in allowing this new therapeutic culture to take hold and how it can move forward with compassion for the lost.
The Real Me
Trueman defines the concept of self as “the deeper notion of where ‘the real me’ is to be found, how that shapes my view of life, and in what the fulfillment or happiness of that ‘real me’ exists.”
He sums up this rise and triumph of the modern self (which is the title of his larger volume on this subject) in three steps:
The self became psychologized
The psychologized became sexualized
The sexualized became politicized
Step 1: The Self Became Psychologized
Up until very recently, the internal self, which consists of desires, feelings, and morals, was ordered by the external – religion, family, community.
Today, it is the cultural norm to expect the external world to be ordered to and adapted to our inner selves. But this modern idea would have been completely foreign to the average person just a few generations ago.
If you don’t recognize this self-first mentality in our present lives, consider just for a moment something as seemingly innocent as the lyrics to a few recent Disney songs:
“No right, no wrong, no rules for me. I’m free.” - Frozen
“And the call isn’t out there at all, it’s inside me.” - Moana
“Step into your power/ Grow yourself into something new/ I am the one I’ve been waiting for all of my life.” - Frozen 2
“The miracle is not some magic that you've got/ The miracle is you, not some gift, just you.” - Encanto
Or consider the saturation in pop culture of the mantras of self-love: “you be you”: “be your authentic self,” “you are enough,” “follow your truth….”
The result of this new psychologized self is our western culture’s most prevalent new religion: Expressive Individualism. While Trueman admits that expressive individualism “is correct in affirming the importance of psychology for who we are and in stressing the universal dignity of all human beings.” and has a place in Christianity, he points out the fatal flaw in the psychologizing of the self:
“The modern self assumes the authority of inner feelings and sees authenticity as defined by the ability to give social expression to the same. The modern self also assumes that society at large will recognize and affirm this behavior. Such a self is defined by what is called expressive individualism.”
This monumental shift from finding identity in an objective, external source to being entirely psychologized is what Trueman refers to as “plastic people in a liquid world.”
“For our culture is one marked by plastic people who believe they can make and remake themselves at will; and by a liquid world in which, to borrow a phrase from Karl Marx, all that is solid seems continually to melt into air. The coincidence of these two things—plastic people and a liquid world—is central to the issues we now face in our culture, from identity politics and LGBTQ+ rights to the growing impatience in some quarters with traditional freedoms such as those of speech and religion.”
Step 2: The Psychologized Became Sexualized
Trueman goes on to show how a symptom of expressive individualism has been the sexual revolution. Where morals are relative and desires are identities, it follows logically that we would believe that our sexual desires should be unrestricted and without consequences.
“In short, the sexual revolution does not simply represent a growth in the routine transgression of traditional sexual codes or even a modest expansion of the boundaries of what is and is not acceptable sexual behavior. Not at all. Rather, it is the repudiation of the very idea of such codes in their entirety. More than that, it has come in certain areas, such as that of homosexuality and transgenderism, to require the positive repudiation of traditional sexual mores to the point where belief in, or maintenance of, such views has come to be seen as ridiculous and even a sign of serious mental or moral deficiency. And to understand this, we need to see the sexual revolution as a particularly sharp manifestation of the characteristics of expressive individualism. If the individual's inner identity is defined by sexual desire, then he or she must be allowed to act out on that desire in order to be an authentic person.”
Sex has become no longer a matter of behavior, of what we do; it is now seen as no less than a matter of who we are. An identity.
Step 3: The Sexualized Became Politicized
Once our inner desires are prioritized, we believe that we can invent or build our own identity with full expectation that we should be able to mold the outside world to accommodate us. If it doesn’t affirm and validate the identities we have built for ourselves, we must fight to make it so. Every disagreement now becomes a personal attack. Everything is now political.
“If a person is in some deep sense the sexual desires that they experience, then how society treats those desires is an extremely important political question. Further, the political struggle itself shifts into the psychological realm: opposition is now not simply something that involves being deprived of material prosperity or physical freedom: It is something that has a psychological component. And while Reich brings out in sharp terms the implications of this for sexual codes, for education of children, and for society's attitudes to sexual behavior, it has implications far beyond sex. We can now see that once identity is psychologized, anything that is seen to have a negative impact upon someone's psychological identity can potentially come to be seen as harmful, even as a weapon, that does serious damage.
This includes those words and ideas that stand over against those identities that society chooses to sanction. This has clear implications for traditional freedoms: religion and speech.”
Trueman writes that in our modern society, there is no longer a “pre-political”. We can no longer have disagreements. There are now only wars between oppressors and oppressed. If there is no objective moral authority – if we are all just “living our own truths” – the winner of any disagreement is always going to be the group with the most influence and power.
“Human selves exist in dialogue with the terms of recognition set by the wider world. When that world is liquid, those terms are set by the loudest voices and the most dominant narratives.”
A Way Forward
While reading this book I was disheartened, to say the least, at the realization of how deep and long-brewing this collective loss of identity truly is. In his review of the book for The Gospel Coalition, Shane Morris, writes:
“It seems to me, though, that the real value of this book lies in how it demystifies all those crazy headlines. It turns out the LGBTQ+ movement and the wider sexual revolution are not the result of a sudden and inexplicable breakdown in morality, as bewildered Christians often suppose. As much as the counterculture of the 1960s, the Obergefell decision, and drag queen story hour deserve our criticism, none of these things happened spontaneously or in isolation. They were predictable pit-stops on a journey Western civilization has been on for generations—a journey in which we’ve all taken part—a journey away from seeing our bodies and creation alight with divine purpose to seeing the world and each other as pliable playthings lacking intrinsic meaning.
Ironically, this realization helps us understand the moral energy with which modern activists shout their demands and advance their causes. They’re not just miscreants looking to corrupt society. They’re not just predators looking to groom our children, though such threats certainly exist. The average transgender activist is possessed of a deep, albeit misguided, conviction that he or she is liberating people to be authentically themselves. And because of the process Trueman describes, millions of modern people share that conviction and see that authenticity as the highest goal to which human beings can aspire.
Knowing this puts us in a position to be far more compassionate and understanding toward those who disagree with us. They’re looking for something they won’t find by looking within. It also reminds us of that Augustinian truth that the human heart is made for God, and will not be satisfied with anything less.”
The book ends with a way forward for the Christian church to resist this strange new world that is antithetical to the truth of the Gospel. Trueman advises us to first understand our own complicity in perpetuating the idea of expressive individualism, learn from the ancient church, engage in biblical worship, recover a biblical theology of the body, and teach the whole counsel of God. He writes:
“Christian truth is not a set of isolated and unconnected claims but rather stands as a coherent whole. The church’s teaching on gender, marriage, and sex is a function of her teaching on what it means to be human. The doctrines of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation are important foundations for addressing the specific challenges of our time. If, as I have argued in this book, modern sexual and identity politics are functions of deeper notions of selfhood, then we need first to know what the Christian view of the self is in order to address them. And as the Bible teaches that the human self is made in the image of God, we need a good grasp of the doctrine of God. In short, we can stand strong at this cultural moment and address the specific challenges we face only if our foundations in God's truth are broad and deep.”
Lastly, he tells us to not despair but also don’t become complacent or overly optimistic.
“We need to prepare ourselves, be informed, know what we believe and why we believe it, worship God in a manner that forms us as true disciples and pilgrims, intellectually and intuitively, and keep before our eyes the un-breakable promises that the Lord has made and confirmed in Jesus Christ. This is not a time for hopeless despair nor naive optimism. Yes, let us lament the ravages of the fall as they play out in the distinctive ways that our generation has chosen. But let that lamentation be the context for shaping our identity as people of God.”
Trueman is exposing how once again we are falling for the oldest lie in the book - that we are our own gods. The only true identity we can have, and the only identity that we can actually carry without being crushed by, is the one given to us by our creator. This is the only Truth that will set you free.
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. -Galatians 2:20
For further contemplation:
Article: Your Identity in Christ: How God Sees You
For Kids: Who Are You? A Little Book About Your Big Identity by Christina Fox
Podcast: An interview with Carl Trueman at axis.org
For Parents: Listen to Foundation Worldview’s podcast episode, “What Does Identity in Christ Mean? Is It Biblical?”
Book: Carl Trueman’s larger work on this subject, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self
Book: You're Not Enough (And That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love by Allie Beth Stuckey
Article: 10 Things You Should Know About the Sexual Revolution by Carl R. Trueman
Book: The Case Against the Sexual Revolution by Louise Perry - A secular feminist case against the sexual revolution. Also watch: Was the Sexual Revolution a Mistake?
Article: We Need Moral Direction by Freya India “…in our individualistic culture we call it boundaries, another thing that closes us off from other people. We don’t teach young people a framework of moral values to live by, only how to cut themselves off from behaviour they don’t like. Now we enforce boundaries and move further apart. We use it as another reason to retreat from people.”