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Benjamin Sledge Follow

Aug 24 · 8 min read · · Listen

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On Madness and Christianity

Information overload has driven us insane to the point we act like devils
of hell to each other. Especially the faithful.

Photo of author with additional illustrations made by the author

“Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason.”

— G. K. Chesterton
737 16
It’s reported Spartan boys joined the agōgē as young as seven years old.
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I’ve often dwelt on the concept of the agōgē, a training environment in which young
children were educated, taught physical and military prowess, philosophy, and discipline.
The term now, however, means little to what it once did. There are fitness regimes and
schools that promise to deliver the same experience (or results) as the ancient Spartans.
Though, were these businesses to actually do so, child services and the police would come
calling.

For instance, within the agōgē, children stole food because they were underfed. If they got
caught, their instructors beat them. The historian Xenophon explained that this practice
was in place to teach the boys stealth and resourcefulness. Besides merely being
malnourished, the boys trained barefoot, slept on beds of reeds, and by age twelve, received
one garment of clothing — a cloak.

The point of the school was to prepare the boys for the harshness of combat and realities
they would face on the battlefield. Sparta was, after all, a military state. But perhaps the
more important ideal the Spartans shaped into their children was one of a collective Spartan
identity. As they grew and advanced in the agōgē, they would conform to the Spartan laws
and social norms. In a sense, their indoctrination helped breed the perfect Spartan.

Of course, any sane person living in the 21st century would claim taking our children and
enacting similar practices is savage, but we tend to enjoy — or romanticize — the ideals of a
Spartan lifestyle. It’s why we have “Spartan” races, name sports teams after these warriors,
or try to train as they did (albeit much older and with less violence). Were we to enact a
modern day agōgē where our children and young people beat each other bloody and
conformed to ideals we emplaced, we would — undoubtedly — call it madness. Only a
maniac would treat children and young people with such brute disregard. “The world has
gone mad” we would chirp in our public squares if such a Spartan existence were
enacted.And yet, we already believe the world has done such a thing.

Gone mad, that is.

The clearest evidence for a world gone mad was when the COVID-19 pandemic struck in
early 2020. It was almost as if some time traveler from the future kept trying to fix mistakes
from the past, but made the future progressively worse. People panicked and hoarded toilet
paper despite COVID being a respiratory illness Murder hornets invaded North America
paper despite COVID being a respiratory illness. Murder hornets invaded North America
and became a worry. Isolation because of lockdowns exponentially wrecked
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Fear, worry, and anxiety permeated our news cycles. There were protests and police
brutality. Misinformation at the hands of the media and influencers. Suppression of speech
and thought. Within a matter of months, the madness spread.

Which brings us back to the concept of the agōgē.

The training ground where the old and young came to beat their brothers and sisters
bloody became the internet and social media. The Spartan lifestyle spread, and we fed
ourselves a consistently bland diet of never ending information. We lost sleep, poring over
details, and growing skeptical of our neighbors. The lone garment we dressed in was
“reason and logic,” often with a side of opinion and ideologies. By the end, we conformed to
whatever social norm our agōgē had trained us in, spear in hand, and ready to dine in hell at
the Gates of Thermopylae.

While we quipped that the “world had gone mad,” it wasn’t Mother Nature who inflicted
this madness upon her children. We, alone, were the culprits. The madness spread like a
wildfire, and we smoldered, caught in the blaze.

But it wasn’t just your average person caught in the inferno. Faith communities became a
cornerstone in the madness too.

According to the A.C. Nielsen Company, the average American spends roughly four hours
a day watching television. The average time a person spends surfing social media each day is
2 hours and 27 minutes. More than half of Twitter users receive their news from the site
regularly. Thus, the average American, we can contend, spends almost the same time being
entertained, sucking off a garbage hose of information, as they do at work.

In a story conveyed by a friend who pastors a church in Austin, Texas, he found that most
parishioners and congregants treat church much like their media consumption — infinitely
hopping around and seeking a place they find most entertaining. When questioning these
men and women, they contend they want to be “fed” — a silly Christian term for spiritual
laziness where they listen intently (for maybe an hour) to a message they find entertaining.
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But consider that the average church attendee only goes to church twice a month to grow
more like their “Lord and Savior.” In an indictment as to why the average Christian is “just
the worst” and cannot follow the example of Christ, they spend less time (2 hours) per
month growing in their faith as they do in one day of television or social media alone. It begs
the question: who’s really training who?

More telling is the behavior of those trained in the agōgē of social media. They arm
themselves with “logic, information, and facts” only to be driven mad by those who see
differently. Their opponents are then also driven mad by their incessant screeching. Instead
of creating potential disciples, they cause division, strife, and a new batch of enemies.
Whether they are the progressive Christian woke bro or the nationalistic gun toting Jesus
lover, they toss their sentiments into an endless sea of content and echo chambers. It’s not
as if posting content online changes minds or engages their audience, but sharpens forked
tongues on the edges of an agōgē hell bent on driving them insane.

I suppose that’s why it’s easy to laugh at “Christians” who spend their days posting silly
sentiments about faith, a political idea, or a perceived injustice, rather than living their faith
(and studying church history). At its core, it is slacktivism at its finest and a striking of
orthodoxy. A denial of the risen Messiah who reminds them they will make people who
look like little Christs, not mad devils of hell.

Perhaps that’s the great fallacy we’ve adopted. We claim the words of Christ and his
teachings — even their infallibility — but conveniently skip the part where Christ himself
states “diseased trees bear diseased fruit.” Any sane man who has done nothing more than
to step outside and observe nature can understand such a simple uttering.

For instance, I recently lost a large pine tree in my front yard. My wife had pointed out that
portions appeared brittle and sections of the needles had turned brown. At first, we gave
the tree some time and watched intently to see whether the weather conditions had stressed
the tree. Maybe it just needed time to recover in the cooler months, I surmised. Within the
year, the tree looked like a skeleton with patches of brown pine needles lazily clinging to its
remnants. We called a tree service, and they came and removed the diseased tree within the
month.

When I asked the arborist what brought about the tree’s untimely death he remarked that
When I asked the arborist what brought about the tree s untimely death, he remarked that
a pine beetle had infected the tree. Curious whether I could have Open
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the tree or the other healthy pine still standing in my yard, he shook his head.

“If the tree is healthy, it’ll be strong enough to fight off the disease,” he stated.

I dwelled for some time on the arborist’s comment, thinking of the spiritual parallels. It is
quite natural for trees to produce some fruit that has rot, but overall, a healthy apple tree
will produce a majority of quality apples. My pine tree will shed dead needles, but overall
stays green. But if the majority of the tree looks sick and produces rot? Something is amiss. The
same is true of character, integrity, and a spiritual life. One need only to look online, the
public forum, or the workplace. Does a person’s words, actions, and behavior generally
produce some manner of fruit? Or does it reek of death, division, greed, pride, and malice?

Similar to how the pine beetle infected my tree, our obsession with information to validate
our experience and degrade our fellow man is the malady of the modern man. The sickness
spreads, and like a feral dog with rabies, we attack every passerby. We forget that Christ’s
ultimate command is not “come have your cake and eat it too,” but “come and die.” Die to
preference, die to not loving your enemies, die to your opinions. But that, therein, is the
problem for most. “Come and die” each day quickly becomes mundane while spouting your
opinions and arguments is scintillating.

It makes sense then, why people leave the Christian faith. They’ve been driven mad by the
very Christians who are supposed to be a healing balm. Who can blame them? I certainly
don’t, and see the issue more of an abandonment of key orthodox principles. Specifically, to
love your neighbor as yourself. It would appear in the 21st century, this simple orthodox
practice — that has never once been considered a secondary teaching — is abandoned. We
cannot, and will not, love our neighbor because we put conditions on what qualifies as a
“neighbor.”

The irony is that the modern Christian asks the same question as the pharisaical teacher of
the law did — who is my neighbor? Jesus responds to his question with a parable, that of the
Good Samaritan. The parable goes that a man is beaten and left for dead on a road and a
priest and religious man pass by, but a Samaritan stops and cares for the man at great
expense to his own pocketbook.

This story, though, is often misinterpreted and has become a colloquialism. In antiquity,
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the Jews hated the Samaritans and saw them as half breeds. SomeOpen
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defiling that when on trips that required passage through Samaria, they would avoid the
region. Thus, when Jesus asks the lawyer, “who proved to be the neighbor?” the lawyer is so
appalled he cannot even say the word “Samaritan.” Instead, he states, “the one who showed
mercy.” Jesus’s point being, your neighbor is often the one you have ideological differences
with or hate.

Which brings us full circle to the point at hand: the modern agōgē has culturally honed its
disciples into a bastardized image of Christianity running around in a state of mania. The
tree is infected and produces putrid fruit. Orthodox teachings like temperance, humility,
gentleness, and mercy have been abandoned for whatever brand of rot glows like the
pristine apple given to Snow White. This, above all else, is the greatest giant the church in
the West will have to slay and correct.

Because many of the faithful look more like devils ready for battle than saints shielding the
wounded.

Enjoy my writing? My new war memoir, Where Cowards Go to Die, just dropped everywhere major
books are sold and has been endorsed by major NYT bestsellers and veterans everywhere.

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