Jed Edgar

What is reality? Are we all just meaninglessly meandering through monotonous

mediocrity? Content to enjoy the dredges and toils of everyday life, searching for

meaning in the randomness of it all? Thomas Hobbes said, “the life of man, solitary,

poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Alfred Tennyson said, “nature is red in tooth and

claw.” Warner Herzog said, “Civilization is a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of

chaos and darkness.” “God is dead,” as Fredrick Nietzesche proclaims; long live the

subjective reality of relativity.

This is the secular reality we find ourselves in today, this is the water in David

Foster Wallace’s speech what is water. In this speech, the only thing Foster Wallace is

certain of is that we cannot be certain of anything. “Blind certainty is a prison”

According to Wallace. Wallace believed that we must educate ourselves to find a

worldview outside of ourselves. He believed the mind was a slave to the self and that

our only hope of escape, is our interpretation of meaning. The Irony however is that

the solution Wallace claims will save us from ourselves is ultimately ourselves. we

must look inside ourselves and find meaning, we must interpret our truth, we must

decide our reality. We have become god, we have the power to create our own

salvation, our own transcendence.

This is what philosopher and Calvin College professor Jamie Smith talks about

in his book How (Not) to be Secular, “God is dead, but he's replaced by everybody

else.” The secular reality has annihilated the idea of transcendence. Everything has

become imminent. Secular society attempts to weave transcendence and imminence

together. But it can’t. Because the supernatural realm has become one of extinction,

one must find that fulfillment within the natural realm, and when it cannot be found

within us it leads to physical transcendence in money and sex. This is the natural

course of enlightenment! Salvation becomes a product to purchase rather than a gift

to recieve or as Kanye puts it, “I had a dream I could buy my way to heaven, when I

awoke I spent it on a necklace, told God I’d be back in a second… wait til I get my

money right then you can’t tell me nothing, right?” Kanye put his faith, his societal

value, his salvation in not only his possessions but the means in which to acquire these

materials. It becomes a new form of radical materialism where social status is about

what’s in your wallet. Kanye becomes this indentured slave in an exhausting exertion

of labor seeking to purchase a gift that had already been freely given.

In a world devoid of meaning, where we have successfully killed God there

nothing left but idols. These idols offer mere glimpses of the salvation we seek. We all

worship something, whether you know it or not. Power, money, love, wisdom, sex are

all just forms of greed, pride, lust and ultimately death. Because as Wallace says

“everything else you worship besides god will eat you alive.” Rapper Kendrick Lamar

explores this idea of rapacious desire in his song Dying of Thirst, “too many sins, I'm

running out, how many sins I lost count… Money sex and greed what’s my next crave?

Whatever it is, know it’s my next grave… dying of thirst dying of thirst so hop in that

water and pray that it works.” Kendrick is aware of his sinful behavior and he's aware

of the consequences. Dying of thirst is a metaphor for his neglect of God. This song

comes at a turning point in the album where his spirit is changed, he recognizes the

futility of his indulges and their fleeting fulfillment. The well in which Kendrick is
drawing from has dried up. Kendrick recognizes his soul is dying and In a last ditch

effort of desperation, he cynically turns to the well of eternal life in hopes of a new

life. John 4:14, “But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. The

water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal

life.” Christian author Dan Allen put it this way, “Our hunger is infinite; it can never

be satisfied with anything finite.” The beauty in this world isn’t meant to fulfill us.

You can’t have progress, you can’t have morality, you can’t have salvation without

God, it just doesn’t work. If there is no divine intervention of human nature all there

is left is the descent into chaos or depression.

The promises offered by a secular society are fraudulent. Secularization is

about utopia. But you can't have utopia without God; utopia without God is dystopia.

Foster Wallace lacked any sense of certainty, because he lacked a meta narrative, a

shaping story. Our shaping story is bound up in Jesus. Jesus is the only way to

salvation because he is the only one, who can intrinsically support the whole of the

human soul. Jesus not only fulfills our insatiable appetites, but also Jesus is the only

savior that offers a salvation outside of ourselves. Because Foster Wallace is right, the

mind is a slave to the self. However, We have certainty he lacked. The certainty in

the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. This certainty is the shaping story

for us. It requires faith, trust. I must bank on it and hope in it. The death of Jesus

tells me who I am. I am precious and beloved. The death of Jesus tells me what to do,

so I can live a life grounded in the acceptance the death of Jesus affords me, and so

that I can die daily to myself and live a life that is other-centered. That was

Foster-Wallace’s aim. His worldview didn’t hold water. It leaked, and he leaked with
it. Submerged under the weight of his identity search, he lost hope. But in Christ,

shaped by His story, inhabited by His Spirit, I can follow Jesus with certainty. And that

is the reality of faith, we are not meaninglessly meandering, but rather we are

flocked by our shepherd.