There has been a decisive shift in out culture towards emotional hypersensitivity, politically correct monitored speech, emotional fragility and outrage at anyone who would raise issues or disagreements with the prevailing norms and accepted truisms of our day. Many within the new generation (labelled iGen or GenZ) have come to embrace these changes or have simply grown up assuming them to be true.

For me, as someone who was raised in the third world where thick skin is a basic requirement of social survival, the current snowflake culture is quite odd to me. I grew up in a time and place where sticks and stones broke bones but it was a virtue to not let words hurt you. Although words can hurt deeply in non-physical ways, it was seen as a good thing to have the emotional fortitude to be resilient enough to either laugh things off, let it slide or at least give it as good as you could take it.

But, perhaps I’m just an old relic of a time gone past now?

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What happened?

Perhaps you’re reading this and have no idea what I’m talking about.

It’s captured in some of the slogans we often hear like: “You do you,” “speak your truth,” “the most important thing is your safety,” “you need to be affirmed and accepted unconditionally,” and “anyone who disagrees with you is just a hater.” I hope that this series may help some recognize that they’ve been unwittingly brought up breathing in this new cultural atmosphere. In fact, we’ve undoubtably all encountered and even been changed by it ourselves.

This shift has seemed to come at such an alarming pace that many find themselves in a whole new world, with a whole new generation speaking what seems to be a whole new language and wondering what happened. How did we get here? What’s up with the ‘callout/cancel culture’? Why is it that the political divide between left and right seems to have grown to an insurmountable canyon now? Why do we always feel like we’re walking on eggshells trying not to offend each other? Why is it impossible to discuss ideas openly in polite public discourse?

Why this series?

While seeking to better understand our times, in 2019 (before all the COVID hysteria) I came across a helpful book. In The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt offer three explanatory factors for this culture shift. They peg the majority of these shifts in society to Three Great Untruths that have been propagated through our schools, media and members of the ‘intellectual elite’:

1. The Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker
2. The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings
3. The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people

These three insights offered by Haidt and Lukianoff inspired me to consider writing this 3-part series.

They did a great job of diagnosing some of the issues our societies are facing today and some of the reasoning behind it. However, to be clear, I did not agree with all of their views or conclusions. They write from a secular perspective and lean more to the left/liberal side of the political spectrum than I do on several important issues. But, I saw an opportunity to consider how we can think biblically through these issues using Haidt and Lukianoff’s three untruths as a starting paradigm.

Furthermore, I think that it would be unwise for us to dismiss these trends without considering why some people embrace them as compelling and a beautiful vision of what would make our world a better place.

The present fragility

Haidt and Lukianoff are writing as a secular social psychologist and an atheistic liberal attorney who is president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, respectively. They term some of these issues as ‘problems of progress’. Because our societies have been enjoying greater and greater levels of prosperity, peace, ease and luxury, we’ve become accustomed to a certain standard of life. Without the threats of starvation, war, or poverty – we’ve come to expect the good life with many conveniences available at the push of a button or click of a mouse. Thus, it has set our ‘pain threshold’ very low. (Perhaps this is why the whole culture went bonkers with the threat of a virus with a 99%+ survival rate!) The bar for what is considered intolerable risks or discomforts is very low. By the standards of older generations, who fought in wars and survived objectively harsher times, they seem wimpy and whiny trivial things. 

However, this is not to totally discredit everything—since the issues today ‘feel’ real and heavy to this present generation who hasn’t known anything else. If the worst thing that you’ve known is rejection on social media or something else, that can feel like the worst thing in the world to you, because for you, it was. However, that doesn’t mean that it actually is the worst thing in the world.

The people espousing and promoting this new worldview are responding to the brokenness of our fallen world and trying to seek solutions to make it better. Everyone at the end of the day is pursuing some compelling vision of what they consider to be ‘the good life.’

The question though is, “is this the best way to pursue that goal?” Is it actually just a problem of cry-babies needing to toughen up a bit and quit complaining?

Concept Creep

The issue of concept creep is relevant here.

It is when a particular word or phrase which used to have a very specific and limited range of meaning begins to widen its meanings to include a variety of things which were not envisioned at first.

This can be seen in the use of words such as ‘safety’ or ‘harm’ or ‘trauma’.

In the older usage of these words, what was primarily meant was physical safety or harm. When one discussed ‘trauma’ it was a word reserved only for the most severe physical injuries. However, in the popularized usage of today, it has come to include emotional and psychological safety. This ‘creep’ of the meanings of these words has led to the situation we now face where actions and speech that do no physical damage can now also be construed as unsafe or harmful (and punished as such) because they offend or endanger someone emotionally or psychologically.

Legislating Hate Crimes

This ideology is making its way into law.

In Canada, Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, introduced harsher penalties for existing hate speech offences on the internet. It would allow sentences of up to five years behind bars for hate propaganda and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association has warned that its measures are “draconian” and could stifle public discourse through “criminalizing political activism.” Furthermore, according to ARPA Canada,

“Bill C-63 would permit a person to bring evidence before a court based on fear that someone will commit hate speech or a hate crime in the future. The court may then order the accused to “keep the peace and be of good behaviour” for up to 12 months and subject that person to conditions including wearing an electronic monitoring device, curfews, house arrest, or abstaining from consuming drugs or alcohol.”

So, on has to ask: is this a good thing for these terms to broaden in such a way? Does this promote the overall well-being of society at large? Who gets to define “hate” or “harm” and how will these things end up suppressing other freedoms?

For example, in a 2003 case called Johnson v. Music World Ltd., a complaint was made against the writer of a song called “Kill the Christian.” Its lyrics included lines such as:

Armies of darkness unite
Destroy their temples and churches with fire
Where in this world will you hide
Sentenced to death, the anointment of christ
Put you out of your misery
The death of prediction
Kill the christian
Kill the christian…dead!

Now, surely, if there ever was anything that could be deemed hate speech, it was this… right?

While the Tribunal acknowledged that the content and tone appeared to be hateful, because they thought that Christians were not a vulnerable group, it decided this was not hate speech. Funny how the least protected group nowadays tends to be Christians, isn’t it?

Is this where our societies are heading? Is this the price that must be paid to coddle the present fragility? Or is there a more beautiful and compelling alternative offered to us in God’s Word?

Ideological Echo Chambers

Within creative fields and the centres of ‘cultural production’ (or rather propagation?) such as news and creative media, books, film and TV, and the visual and musical arts—these ideas have held powerful sway. Institutions of learning have also played an important role:

“Something began changing on many campuses around 2013, and the idea that college students should not be exposed to ‘offensive’ ideas is now a majority position on campus. In 2017, 58% of college students said it is ‘important to be part of a campus community where I am not exposed to intolerant and offensive ideas.’ This statement was endorsed by 63% of very liberal students, but it’s a view that is not confined to the left; almost half of very conservative students (45%) endorsed that statement too.”
(Haidt & Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind, pg. 48-49, emphasis added)

This sort of ideological vetting of differing viewpoints and sheltering from exposure to offensive ideas can lead to an echo chamber effect that serves to just continue to reinforce a person’s established biases. This helps to explain the phenomenon that many observed during 2020 and the following years, where mainstream media outlets and talking heads seemed to be clueless of any opposing opinions or evidence. Sadly, in their world, they would never have the opportunity to test their viewpoints and see if they could stand up.

If left unchecked and continuing to spread, it would mean the end of civil public discourse and reason on important matters of life and public policy. It could result in, as we have seen examples of already, the effective shut down of all conversations that matter by eliminating the freedom to disagree civilly and express differing ideas and opinions freely.

We need wisdom

Lukianoff and Haidt frame their book’s thesis in the paradigm of wisdom. I think this is a proper paradigm to think within for these issues.

Indeed, the three Great Untruths are actually an exercise in what the Bible would classify as folly. Lukianoff and Haidt mainly utilized secular and other traditional religious sources of wisdom (such as Buddhism) to make their arguments. Our societies, institutions of learning, and the next generation surely do need wisdom.

However, where is that wisdom to be found?

Christian parents, teachers, and church leaders need to instruct the next generation to seek and follow after true wisdom. Much of this problem we face today is as a result of the failure to properly instruct the coming generation in wisdom.

God’s Word reassures us though, that if anyone desires wisdom, let them ask of Him and He will give it (James 1:5). The Bible provides true wisdom to meet these challenges—not only intellectually, but also as a more beautiful and compelling vision of ‘the good life’ and a vision of society the way it was meant to be. So, it is to God’s Word we will turn as we consider some of the arguments that Haidt and Lukianoff put forward.

In this series, we’ll take some of the insights and arguments from their book and use them to explore each of these three untruths from a theological perspective to see what we can learn and what we can do.

The Untruth of Fragility (Part 1): Intent and Impact

There used to be a time where the common maxim of “what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger” would have been generally accepted (with the exception perhaps of some experiences which would literally make you weaker, such as drinking a poison that irreversibly handicaps you). However, in general, most people would have gotten the gist of such a statement: that even difficult experiences in life serve to grow, mature and strengthen us to become more resilient and wiser individuals.

In fact, I think many professional creatives working in big agencies or studios today would still resonate with this concept—having to frequently deal with scathing critiques from Art Directors with no time for tact and carefully worded critiques. Successful creative professionals have to learn the hard way that the hard words and hard things help refine their craft. And while it is good for Art Directors to develop tact and kindness, it is also good for creatives (and everyone really) to be able to appreciate appropriate critique that pushes us to become better. I feel this accutely now in my role as a Creative Director in a Creative Media Agency. Striking the right balance can be tricky, but vitally important.

The rise of trigger warnings

However, today there is a new premise being spread (particularly among young people) that people are fragile and in need of protection. In effect it says, “what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.”

Even if someone doesn’t particularly view themselves as fragile (so the thinking goes) they believe that others are in danger and thus in need of protection from encounters with speech or messages they consider “triggering”. It has led to the emergence of ‘trigger warnings’ on today’s college campuses—a practice where professors/teachers are expected to give students a preemptive warning that they may hear viewpoints which they disagree or find offensive.

Let’s be clear though: these perceived threats are not limited to the categories which were thought of in times past—such as physical violence, threatening or demeaning insults, or experiences which would mame or injure a person irreversibly. These sorts of things were agreed upon to warrant adequate and appropriate caution and protection. No. Today’s threats have been expanded now to include emotional ‘trauma’, ideological hurts by interaction or even the hearing of opposing viewpoints, offenses due to ‘microaggressions’ and psychological damage from real and perceived ‘violent speech’. Even silence can be labelled as violence (as was the case in the BLM slogans).

However, is there something for us to learn from these growing trends of fragility?

Behind every trend and new ideology are reasons some people find compelling to warrant them adopting and propagating it. Let’s examine first one of the factors Haidt and Lukianoff cite as contributing to this trend.

The shift from intent to impact

In days past, a person’s actions and speech was primarily judged by its intent.

For example, if a person accidentally did something that brought physical harm to another (like accidentally hitting them with their vehicle), it was dealt with differently and less severely than someone who did it intentionally (such as a terrorist running a vehicle through a crowded street). Actions and speech which were unintentionally harmful or offensive were treated differently and shown more leniency than those which were obviously intentional. It was also good practice to give the benefit of the doubt when intent could not be reasonably established.

Nowadays though, primacy is being given to impact over intent.

The effect of this shift

This is why, even though someone may innocently say something that is unintentionally offensive, it is reacted to as something worthy of shaming, silencing and punishing—because it impacted others in a certain way.

However, the measurement of the impact isn’t objective. It is up to the subjective opinion and feeling of the one impacted to determine just how severe that impact is. This is problematic as it can lead to very disproportionate responses to minor slights and offences. For example,

In February of 2017, Milo Yiannopoulos (a gay, British, Trump supporter and extreme provocateur whose methods and rhetoric I emphatically disagree with) was scheduled to speak at UC Berkeley. However, the situation turned violent quickly as Antifa and others protested and vandalized to prevent the speech from happening. They hurled Molotov cocktails, smashed ATMs, assaulted officers, set fires and caused property damages in excess of half a million US dollars. In addition to the property damage, the physical attacks on students and others attempting to attend the speech was reprehensible. 

Some were pepper-sprayed, sprayed with mace, brutally beaten and injured. UC Berkeley failed to openly discipline any of the students who were involved in the riots (even though some publicly and brazenly admitted participating on social media). After the riot, op-ed pieces from the student newspaper ran articles under the headline “Violence as self-defense” and one student wrote that asking to maintain peaceful dialogue with someone whose ideas they strongly disagreed with was a “violent act.”

Is this true though?

Is the verbal expression of opposing ideas equal to or the same thing as physical violence to justify such an extreme response (even if the speaker is known to intentionally provoke and try to upset his audience)? Is just the mere request of maintaining peaceful dialogue a violent act?

It would seem that the term “violence” in this case has undergone some serious concept creep!

We’ve seen this same trend pop up in mainstream media which will effectively do the same thing in more subtle ways—suppressing and silencing any dissenting voices from their platforms. This was most clearly seen in the events of 2020 and has frequently happens on social media platforms like Facebook. It has also happened on many of the mainstream news channels where, instead of reporting on both sides of a particular issue, the dissenting viewpoint is wholly ignored and not given air time. Perhaps this is done with the idea that they are protecting the public from what they have deemed as potentially dangerous ideas.

But are people and society so fragile that they need the protection of big tech and news giants safeguarding them? Also, who made them the guardians of society and by what standard?

Thinking Biblically about intent and impact

It is too easy for people to just mock and not take these trends seriously. However, they are continuing to hold sway in our culture today. Also, many creatives and working professionals work in environments where these ideologies dominate.

God’s Word shows us that the intent of an action is important to determining the type of punishment (if any) which is required.

Both in Deuteronomy 19:1-10 and Numbers 35:22-25, we see examples of case law where a person has unintentionally killed someone (manslaughter). In such a case, a provision was made for that person to flee to a city of refuge for safety from someone trying to avenge the blood of the person accidentally killed. This was because it was an unintentional killing and thus warranted a more lenient response than an intentional killing (which brought the death penalty).

So, factoring in intent (to pull from our previous example), Mr. Yiannopoulos may have had evil intent behind his methods (intentionally trying to incite and provoke people through his speech). Thus, he would be guilty of that ill-intent. Which is quite different to someone making an off-comment that unintentionally offended or was not phrased carefully, for example. However, the impact is also an important factor to weigh. If an action has a bigger impact on someone, it requires a greater restoration to make things right again.

Exodus 21:23-25 and Genesis 9:6 illustrate what is called the lex talionis—better known as the principle of “an eye for an eye”. It was a principle of proportionality in retribution and punishment. Instead of unrestrained vengeance in retaliation for a crime, the punishment was to fit and be proportional to the damage incurred. This is also seen in Exodus 22:1-31, where the impact of what a thief has stolen is considered in terms of what is an appropriate punishment and restitution to be made to the one injured.

We see here a Biblical principle illustrating that an act such as offensive speech promoting false claims or bad ideas—while it may be wrong—requires an appropriate response to be dealt with justly. That response should not be escalation to physical violence, but rather a continued rebuttal of the false/wrong ideas being espoused in order to be equal and appropriate.

Could not the students or faculty have brought up objections in the Q&A section after the speech? Could they not write, tweet, record video responses, or plan another speech night in response to Yiannopoulos’s wrong ideas?

What can we learn?

Perhaps the extreme reactions we see today are due to a secular culture that has lost all hope of final justice after death and thus believes that its idea of perfect justice must be pursued at all costs in this life. However, Christians know that God will judge perfectly every evil intent and repay every unjust impact. Thus, we can rest in God’s promise of final judgment, knowing that while we aim for justice here on earth – we will never perfectly achieve it.

The light of common grace

While the current trend is concerning in its extreme forms, it has captured some little portion of God’s truth.

We can often totally dismiss the latest cultural trends wholesale without considering what insights may have been stumbled upon. After all, people are made in God’s image whether they are Christians or not. In the common grace upon all humanity, people arrive at truths (perhaps not perfectly) because they inhabit and live in God’s World. Thus, while I disagree with these ‘untruths’ in their particular form, I do think they are an imperfect effort by fallen people acting on a God-given impulse to desire justice due to the light given to all people which leaves us without an excuse (Romans 1:20).

Those advocating these extreme responses, while misguided, have arrived at a legitimate concept: that there are some things which can be said that can either hurt someone emotionally or propagate ideas that could lead to dangerous consequences. They are wanting a solution to the brokenness of sin in our world.

However, the sad irony is that pursuing this apart from God’s Word actually leads to more brokenness and sin. By charging those with whom they disagree with violence, they commit violence themselves and our society that has been caught up with these misguided ideologies ends up legislating injustice in the name of justice.

Is this not irony that those calling others ‘biggotted’ end up becoming biggotted themselves?

“Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.” (Galatians 6:1)

We must be on guard in our zeal to call out sin, that we do not pridefully fall into sin ourselves.

The Red Pill Movement

While this trend of fragility has been on the rise, there has recently also been a rise of what’s been called “The Red Pill” movement.

This movement pushes back against the effeminacy and wokeness of the present culture and seeks a more rugged, aggressive and masculine outlook—taking conservative stances on a lot of cultural and political issues (among other things). Some have called it “far right-wing”, which is a phrase so abused by the current mainstream media that it often means nothing. This Red Pill Movement (sometimes called the “Manosphere”) has been gaining a lot of traction especially among young men who have felt like the culture has been beating down on them for many years now. Influencers like Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, etc. have gained huge platforms. Many young men are happy to find people who don’t call their masculinity “toxic” and affirm them—in some ways, many are like lost, fatherless boys seeking father-figures.

Some of the things the Red Pill Movement has addressed and brought up are good things. Our culture needs to reaffirm the goodness of masculinity and our created, gendered differences. It needs to recover the proper place for a backbone and firmness, authority and straight-talking against the idols of our age.

However, many of the influencers leading the movement are themselves ungodly men—Absoloms stealing the hearts of the men and leading them astray. Tate, for example, promotes his own womanizing ways and is a convert to Islam. In their zeal to call out the sins of a woke culture, they have falled themselves into sin. Often their words are crass instead of seasoned with grace, and even many Christians can be drawn into their fleshly appeal.

Bringing it back to our main point of intent, the intent of the heart matters as we respond. The sinful intent of many in the Red Pill Movement are not to be admired or followed. While it may feel good to our sinful desires to lash out against the other side, we’re never given license for crass talk devoid of God’s grace.

This doesn’t mean that our words always need to be sugar-coated either. There is a place for straight talk and even harsh words. The prophet Elijah had some biting sarcasm for the false prophets of Baal. Jesus himself was “full of grace and mercy”, yet had some choice words for Pharisees and the likes. There is a time and place for that. But it requires wisdom and maturity to wield Scripture’s serrated edge.

Coram Deo

How do we sometimes fall into this trend of responding disproportionately or misapplying intent and impact in our responses to offenses or ideas we disagree with? Have you ever jumped to judge harshly assuming the worst intent based on a felt or seen impact of someone else’s actions/words? Have you ever thought or wanted someone with whom you disagreed strongly on an issue important to you to be silenced or deplatformed?

The world would be much more beautiful, gracious and just if we were to apply the Biblical concepts of factoring in intent and impact in our judgments. We would want that done for ourselves if we were ever to give unintentional offense. So, we should seek to do that for others. Furthermore, Christians should see it as their duty to testify to the perfect standards of God’s Word in the public square—seeking, as they are given opportunity, to reform legislation and influence politicians to enact truly just standards. We must also model what it looks like to not play the victim. Christians should stand out as those who can “count it all joy… when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” (James 1:2–3)

Let’s be gracious with assuming intent and accurate when evaluating impact.

But what about the question of fragility? Are people inherently fragile and in need of protection?

That will be what we tackle in our next article in this series.