Progress, decline, and the gospel

Via Arts and Letters Daily, a review of Stephen B. Smith's Modernity and Its Discontents: Making and Unmaking the Bourgeois from Machiavelli to Bellow (hardcover, Kindle) that makes for an interesting read. Does modernity really afflict us and set us up for a dystopic future? Smith thinks so, concluding, "The narrative of progress is no longer sustainable…The regime officially dedicated to the pursuit of happiness [the United States] has found the attainment of happiness an increasingly elusive object of desire." Is that really the case?

Points:

• Modernity defined: "…a handful of core convictions: the value of freedom and equality; the importance of being able to think for oneself; the real possibility of universal enlightenment."
• Modernity born: "…in the past two centuries those who have moved to a city and entered into ever more cosmopolitan social relationships have experienced accelerating change."
• Modernity resisted: "…new forms of fearful rural populism and religious fundamentalism have arisen, furiously resisting the main currents of social change."
• Modernity rationalized, according to the reviewer: "…we can, and should, acknowledge improvement when we see it. Our discontents are real, but so is our uneven progress in the past 200 years in reducing poverty, spreading literacy and lengthening the life span for ordinary people around the world."

Book reviews are useful to read. The reviewers don't just summarize the book, they also bring up points the author may not have considered or considered and disregarded. A review also gives us food for thought. In this case, we have to deal with a dilemma, the grim future in Smith's book and the reviewer's assertion that progress is still possible.

Christians have a third way, a way off the horns of that dilemma. The gospel is good news because it's about an intervention from outside, the Word made flesh. The incarnation happened at the height of the Roman Empire, a response to the dilemma of a oppression by the dominant empire and the good news the Emperor Augustus proclaimed.

So you're presented with 2 alternatives from the same source, the world shows you a dark trend but promises a bright future if you only believe it's message. The gospel of Christ punches a hole in that, giving you a 3rd way, a world that's outside of this one and not subject to the contradiction of decline and progress.