Disenchantment, Deconstruction, and Disentanglement (1/3)
C.S. Lewis could cook up a metaphor like my mom baking a meatloaf masterpiece. We’re talking perfection. I’d still dump a bunch of ketchup on it though, cuz that’s just how I like it. I’d mix in the mash potatoes, green beans, and corn, and turn the whole thing into a ketchupy, meaty, casserole of joy.
I hope to do the same with Lewis. I’m sure he’d mind. I’m okay with that.
I’ve not had a meaningful conversation with close friends my age-ish in recent history that hasn’t included at least some comment about serious disappointments with evangelical leaders and the movements we’ve all spent a good decade or two around. It seems everybody is going through a little bit of something. We’re all on a journey trying to figure out where it’s heading. I know I am. Maybe you are too.
For a lot of us, the blinders are just off. They are gonzo. We’ve seen how the evangelical sausage is made. It can turn your stomach, honestly. We get it. Many of our heroes are fallen. Just as many have morphed from preachers into political hacks. It’s not a pretty sight.
And since we’re all imperfect, we’re trying not to judge too hard. But it’s pretty disheartening.
I’ve spent my fair share of time behind the curtain in American Christian mega-institutions. So, anything I point my finger at as a problem is something I’ve likely contributed to in my own way. This isn’t one of those posts about how no one else really gets it, or at least I hope it’s not. But for me, it’s time to get real and talk about it.
What are we gonna do with this coming-of-middle-age-angst? There’s a whole lot wrong. Does that necessarily mean there’s nothing right? Let’s not be too quick to draw our conclusions. Some of us need to heal a little more before we make any iron-clad decisions. This series is intended to be honest about the problem, and offer some helpful perspective about a couple of options.
While we’ve grown disenchanted with the glitz, glitter, and gunk of American Christianity, maybe there’s still something worthy of the investment of our lives. While many have responded with deconstruction, a term now used about those who walk away from faith, I wonder if disentanglement might not be another way forward. What if instead of discarding our beliefs, we can surgically remove what isn’t good, true, and beautiful? Is it possible?
We will get to those categories in the next two posts. First, we need to serve up Lewis’s disenchantment metaphor with some sides mixed in and a good covering of tomato paste. It’s gonna be glorious. His thoughts will offer context for thinking through our cultural moment and the fork in the road many feel we are either quickly approaching, or even watching disappear in the rearview. Without further ado, here’s the master metaphor maker.
Excerpt from C.S. Lewis’s essay “Talking About a Bicycle”
“Talking about bicycles,” said my friend, “I have been through the four ages. I can remember a time in early childhood when a bicycle meant nothing to me: it was just part of the huge, meaningless background of grown-up gadgets against which life went on. Then came a time when to have a bicycle, and to have learned to ride it, and to be at last spinning along on one’s own, early in the morning, under trees, in and out of the shadows, was like entering Paradise. That apparently effortless and frictionless gliding—more like swimming than any other motion, but really most like the discovery of a fifth element—that seemed to have solved the secret of life. Now one would begin to be happy. But, of course, I soon reached the third period. Pedalling to and fro from school (it was one of those journeys that feel up-hill both ways) in all weathers, soon revealed the prose of cycling. The bicycle, itself, became to me what his oar is to a galley slave.”
“But what was the fourth age?” I asked.
“I am in it now, or rather I am frequently in it. I have had to go back to cycling lately now that there’s no car. And the jobs I use it for are often dull enough. But again and again the mere fact of riding brings back a delicious whiff of memory. I recover the feelings of the second age. What’s more, I see how true they were—how philosophical, even. For it really is a remarkably pleasant motion. To be sure, it is not a recipe for happiness as I then thought. In that sense the second age was a mirage. But a mirage of something.”
“How do you mean?” said I.
“I mean this. Whether there is, or whether there is not, in this world or in any other, the kind of happiness which one’s first experiences of cycling seemed to promise, still, on any view, it is something to have had the idea of it. The value of the thing promised remains even if that particular promise was false—even if all possible promises of it are false.”
“Sounds like a carrot in front of a donkey’s nose”, said I.
“Even that wouldn’t be quite a cheat if the donkey enjoyed the smell of carrots as much as, or more than, the taste. Or suppose the smell raised in the donkey emotions which no actual eating could ever satisfy? Wouldn’t he look back (when he was an old donkey, living in the fourth age) and say, I’m glad I had that carrot tied in front of my nose. Otherwise I might still have thought eating was the greatest happiness. Now I know there’s something far better—the something that came to me in the smell of the carrot. And I’d rather have known that—even if I’m never to get it—than not to have known it, for even to have wanted it is what makes life worth having’.”
“I don’t think a donkey would feel like that at all.”
“No. Neither a four-legged donkey nor a two-legged one. But I have a suspicion that to feel that way is the real mark of a human.”
“So that no one was human till bicycles were invented?”
“The bicycle is only one instance. I think there are these four ages about nearly everything. Let’s give them names. They are the Unenchanted Age, the Enchanted Age, the Disenchanted Age, and the Re-enchanted Age. As a little child I was Unenchanted about bicycles. Then, when I first learned to ride, I was Enchanted. By sixteen I was Disenchanted and now I am Re-enchanted.”