Logic studies the methods that we use to analyze information and draw valid conclusions. As Norman Geisler and Ronald Brooks put it, “Logic really means putting your thoughts in order.”1 “Logic is the study of right reason or valid inferences and the attending fallacies, formal and informal.”2 “Logic is a way to think so that we can come to correct conclusions by understanding implications and the mistakes people often make in thinking.”3 According to Irving M. Copi and Carl Cohen in their Introduction to Logic, “Logic is the study of the methods and principles used to distinguish correct reasoning from incorrect reasoning.”4

The  study of logic incorporates a number of elements. At the most basic level, logic examines propositions, arguments, premises, and conclusions. The focus is the use of right thinking to come to correct conclusions. Logic incorporates the study of proper thinking as well as mistakes in thinking (fallacies). Through processes of deduction and induction, inferences are made with the aim of coming to correct conclusions.

In addition, logic also sharpens the use of our language and allows us to articulate our idea more precisely and cogently to others. Christian’s should be very concerned about precision and clarity in communication. As we desire to glorify God with our minds, we ought to seek to formulate the proper structure of arguments. As such, learning to do so allows us to be more careful, methodical, and systematic in the presentation of the truth of Christianity as well as other true ideas.

Logic is built upon four laws:

1. The law of identity (A is A) – A thing is what it is.  “A Rose is a rose.”

2. The law of excluded middle (either A or non-A) – “Either a rose, or not a rose.”  But not sort of a rose  (Think about being “sort of pregnant.”)

3. The law of non-contradiction (A is not non-A) – “A Rose is not a non-Rose.”  Here we see that there can be no contradiction in the idea and have it be coherent.  (Think of a square circle.)

4. The law of rational inference – (If P, then Q.  And P.  Therefore, Q.)  “If it’s raining outside, then it’s wet.  It is raining outside.  Therefore, it is wet.)

These laws are foundational to all thinking and reason. One cannot object to the laws of logic without employing them in the objection itself. These laws are grounded in the nature of God.  God is the basis of all truth as the basis of ultimate reality.

Sequacious reasoning is the correct flow of thought.  It is developed using essential elements derived from the basics of logic. In general, everything else is built upon these elements.  The first element is the proposition.  A proposition is something that is either true or false. Think of an indicative statement (a statement that something is a certain way).  Such statements may either be affirmed or denied because they are either true or false.  Other utterances such as commands, questions, or exclamations are not true or false and so they are not propositional.

Arguments are tools in logic that allow us to take propositions and put them in an order which allows us to arrive at a conclusion about something.  When you have a number of propositions that lead to a conclusion, you have an argument. The conclusion of an argument is that which follows from the supporting propositions, which are called the premises of the argument. The telltale words for premises are called premise-indicators:  “Since, because, for, as, as shown by, as indicated by, the reason is that” are some premise-indicators.

A conclusion without its supporting premises is not an argument.  The conclusions of arguments can often be recognized by telltale words or phrases. The words that point to the conclusion are called conclusion-indicators.  For example, “Therefore, hence, thus, so, accordingly, in consequence, consequently, as a result, it follows that, we may infer, which shows that” are all words or phrases that often point to the conclusion of an argument.

When identifying arguments, it’s helpful to make the distinction between arguments and explanations for things.  The key here is the intention of the presenter.  Just because we see some indicator words, it doesn’t mean we are reviewing an argument.  An explanation is meant to illuminate or give insight into a state of affairs.  An argument is used to support the truth regarding the facts of a state of affairs.  Skillful thinker must discern the difference between explanations and arguments by looking closely at the context and intention.

Arguments come in two kinds—they are either deductive or inductive. These are important terms to differentiate. When an argument is deductive, it means that the conclusion follows from the premises necessarily and conclusively. When a deductive argument is valid, it means that if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true.  Think about that…

An inductive argument, on the other hand, is not a conclusive argument. When an argument is inductive, it means that that the conclusion may be true to a certain degree of probability.  That probability may be very high, so high in fact that its all but logically impossible for it to be false.  For example, we hold that unicorns do not exist in the actual world.  We know this aposteriori (via inspection), and we could certainly provide a decent argument for it.  Nevertheless, since it is logically possible for God to create a unicorns, the conclusion is sufficient, but not necessary as it is in deductive reasoning.

Copi clarifies:

A deductive argument is one whose conclusion is claimed to follow from its premises with absolute necessity, this necessity not being a matter of degree and not depending in any way on whatever else may be the case. In sharp contrast, an inductive argument is one whose conclusion is claimed to follow from its premises only with probability, this probability being a matter of degree and dependent upon what else may be the case.4

One way to look at this is as follows: in a deductive argument, no amount of additional information can change the conclusion of the argument. In an inductive argument, the conclusion may change when new information is discovered. Deductive arguments are certain, whereas inductive arguments are probable to some degree.
When an argument is structured correctly, it is called a valid argument. When an argument is not correctly structured, it is called invalid. An argument cannot be true or false, only valid or invalid. Truth or falsity only applies to statements or propositions. The conclusion of an argument can be true or false (because the conclusion is a statement), but the argument is only either valid or invalid.

Finally, when an argument is valid, and all of its premises are true, it is called a sound argument. This is the kind of argument the skilled thinker is looking for.

More to follow…

_____________________________________________________

1 Norman Geisler & Ronald Brooks, Come Let Us Reason: An Introduction to Logical Thinking (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1990), p. 11.
2 Ibid., p. 12.
3 Ibid.,p. 13.
4 Irving M. Copi & Carl Cohen, Introduction to Logic, 11th Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2002), p. 3.
5 Ibid., p. 6.

Just a shout out to any locals in New Orleans to come join us for the “Come, Let Us Reason” Apologetics Conference sponsored by the EPS and Biola University’s Masters in Apologetics Department on November 19 – 21 at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.  There is an incredible lineup of speakers including J.P. Moreland, Greg Koukl, Michael Murray, Paul Copan, Gary Habermas, Michael Rae, Sean McDowell, and more!!

I will personally be speaking on the struggle of gals to defend the faith and what they should do about it. You won’t want to miss this!!

Karen Armstrong says we need God to grasp the wonder of our existence

The Wall Street Journal commissioned Karen Armstrong and Richard Dawkins to respond independently to the question “Where does evolution leave God?” Neither knew what the other would say. Here are the results.

Richard Dawkins has been right all along, of course—at least in one important respect. Evolution has indeed dealt a blow to the idea of a benign creator, literally conceived. It tells us that there is no Intelligence controlling the cosmos, and that life itself is the result of a blind process of natural selection, in which innumerable species failed to survive. The fossil record reveals a natural history of pain, death and racial extinction, so if there was a divine plan, it was cruel, callously prodigal and wasteful. Human beings were not the pinnacle of a purposeful creation; like everything else, they evolved by trial and error and God had no direct hand in their making. No wonder so many fundamentalist Christians find their faith shaken to the core.  Read more…

Recently I watched an online debate on the existence of evil between Deepak Chopra and Mark Driscoll on NBC’s face-off.  In addition to these two guests were an ex-prostitute, who came to give personal testimony to the objective demonic influence in her industry, and a catholic bishop who persistently relegated these experiences to her perception.  The assertion was repeated more than once, "Perception may be the ultimate reality, but it is not the ultimate truth."  In other words, there may be objective reality, but we can’t know it because we are all trapped behind our perceptions.  Perceptual reality, according to the skeptic, is all we can actually know.  Ultimately, objective truth about reality is epistemically unattainable.

Sound good?  Many seem to think so.  I just have one question (okay, maybe several) regarding a teeny tiny little inconsistency that keeps coming back to weigh down my mental makeup bag.  That is, I can’t help but wonder that if perception is personal reality, and everyone is trapped behind their perceptions, then what about those prescribing this skeptical view of knowledge?  Are they themselves also not trapped behind their perceptions of reality?  If so, how then do those who prescribe the view actually know this ultimate truth about everyone not being able to know any ultimate truth? 

It just puzzles me you see, since everybody is trapped behind their perceptions of reality.  Nevertheless, the epistemic genius of the skeptic is really mind boggling.  I mean, how cleaver are they to have figured out a way to get outside of their own perception in order to help the rest of us understand that nobody can get outside our own perceptions. 

But, since this view sounds so good, my perception of it must be true.  After all, skeptics ultimately know best.

TL

Why Philosophy?

Let me suggest three reasons why philosophical study ought to play an integral part in theological training.

First, Christian philosophy is vital to transforming our post-Christian cultural milieu. In America we now find ourselves living in a post-Christian culture that is increasingly coarse, superficial, promiscuous, and profane. Beneath it lies the widespread conviction of religious relativism. There is no one true religion, and to assert that there is to expose oneself as arrogant, coercive—even evil. In the absence of objective truth, religious belief becomes a purely private matter of subjective feelings.

Such a cultural context is antagonistic to the mission of the Church. In order to speak the Gospel effectively, the Church needs an intellectual milieu where the Gospel can be heard as an objectively true alternative; otherwise it will either be dismissed as superstition or appropriated only as “true for me but not for you.”

The Church thus faces, as Charles Malik emphasized in his inaugural address at the Billy Graham Center in Wheaton, two tasks in our evangelism, saving the soul and saving the mind; that is to say, not only converting people spiritually but converting them intellectually as well. And the Church is lagging dangerously behind with regard to this second task. Malik declared,

I must be frank with you: the greatest danger confronting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind in its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough. But intellectual nurture cannot take place apart from profound immersion for a period of years in the history of thought and the spirit. People who are in a hurry to get out of the university and start earning money or serving the church or preaching the gospel have no idea of the infinite value of spending years of leisure conversing with the greatest minds and souls of the past, ripening and sharpening and enlarging their powers of thinking. The result is that the arena of creative thinking is vacated and abdicated to the enemy. Who among evangelicals can stand up to the great secular scholars on their own terms of scholarship? Who among evangelical scholars is quoted as a normative source by the greatest secular authorities on history or philosophy or psychology or sociology or politics? Does the evangelical mode of thinking have the slightest chance of becoming the dominant mode in the great universities of Europe and America that stamp our entire civilization with their spirit and ideas? For the sake of greater effectiveness in witnessing to Jesus Christ, as well as for their own sakes, evangelicals cannot afford to keep on living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence.¹

The average Christian does not realize that there is an intellectual war going on in the universities and in the professional journals and in the scholarly societies. Christianity is being attacked from all sides as bigoted or irrational, and millions of students, our future generation of leaders, have absorbed this viewpoint.

It is the awesome task of Christian philosophers to help turn the intellectual tide back to a milieu in which Christian faith can be regarded as an intellectually credible alternative. Since philosophy is foundational to every disciple of the university, philosophy is the most strategic discipline to be captured for Christ. Malik himself realized this. He emphasized,

It will take a different spirit altogether to overcome this great danger of antiintellectualism. For example, I say this different spirit, so far as philosophy alone—the most important domain for thought and intellect—is concerned, must see the tremendous value of spending an entire year doing nothing but poring intensely over the Republic or the Sophist of Plato, or two years over the Metaphysics or the Ethics of Aristotle, or three years over the City of God of Augustine.

This is not a popular message for seminaries. J. Gresham Machen in his article “Christianity and Culture” observed that “many would the seminaries combat error by attacking it as it is taught by its popular exponents” instead of confusing students “with a lot of …names unknown outside the walls of the university.” But, Machen insisted, the scholarly method of procedure

is based simply upon a profound belief in the pervasiveness of ideas. What is to-day matter of academic speculation begins to-morrow to move armies and pull down empires., In that second stage, it has gone too far to be combated; the time to stop it was when it was still a matter of impassionate debate. So as Christians we should try to mould the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity.²

Like Malik, Machen also believed that “The chief obstacle to the Christian religion to-day lies in the sphere of the intellect,” and that it must be attacked in that sphere. “The Church is perishing to-day through the lackof thinking, not through an excess of it.”

Second, Christian Philosophy is an integral part of training for Christian ministry. What is ironic about the attitude that doubts philosophy’s rightful or important place at a seminary is that it is precisely our pastors and evangelists who are in need of this training. Machen’s article was originally given as a speech entitled, “The Scientific Preparation of the Minister.” A model for us here is a man like John Wesley, who was at once a spirit-filled revivalist and an Oxford-educated scholar. In 1756 Wesley delivered “An Address to the Clergy,” which I wish all future ministers would read before commencing their seminary studies. In discussing what sort of abilities a minister ought to have, Wesley distinguished between natural gifts and acquired abilities. And it’s extremely instructive to look at the abilities which Wesley thought a minister ought to acquire. One of them is a basic grasp of philosophy. He challenged his audience to ask themselves,

Am I a tolerable master of the sciences? Have I gone through the very gate of them, logic? . . . . Do I understand metaphysics; if not the depths of the Schoolmen, the subtleties of Scotus or Aquinas, yet the first rudiments, the general principles, of that useful science? Have I conquered so much of it, as to clear my apprehension and range my ideas under proper heads; so much as enables me to read with ease and pleasure, as well as profit, Dr. Henry Moore’s Works, Malbranche’s “Search after Truth,” and Dr. Clarke’s “Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God?”³

Wesley’s vision of a pastor is remarkable: a gentleman, skilled in the Scriptures and conversant with history, philosophy, and the science of his day. How do the pastors graduating from our seminaries compare to this model?

I can personally testify to the immense practicality and even indispensability of philosophical training for a ministry of evangelism. My ministry involves not just scholarly work, but speaking evangelistically on university campuses with groups like Campus Crusade for Christ. Again and again, I see the practical value of my philosophical studies in reaching students for Christ. The conventional wisdom is that “You can’t use arguments to bring people to Christ.” I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this said. I suspect those who say this just don’t do a lot of campus evangelism. The fact is that there is tremendous interest out there among unbelievers in hearing a rational presentation and defense of the Gospel.

Very often I’ll be invited onto a campus where a local professor has a reputation for eating Christians for lunch in his classes, and we’ll challenge him to a public debate on some issue like “Does God Exist?” or“ Christianity vs. Humanism,” or “Who Was Jesus?” or some such topic.And I find that hundreds and sometimes even thousands of students will come out to hear these debates. Frankly, I don’t know how one could minister effectively in a public way on our university campuses without training in philosophy.”

Dr. Craig, we couldn’t agree more!

William Lane Craig (D.Theol., Ludwig-Maximilliéns-Universität Munich, Germany; Ph.D., University of Birmingham England) is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot. Bill and his wife Jan reside in the Atlanta area, from which he carries on an incredibly productive ministry of professional and popular writing, speaking and debating around the world. He also maintains a web-based ministry, reasonablefaith.org.

However, evangelicalism has sought to be culturally revelant and reach out to the post-modern generations, we have become over-focused on our relationship and personal experience of God.  We’ve lost the understanding of how important it is to love Him intellectually and to glorify Him through our capacity of reason. In a nutshell, in pursuit of our hearts, we’ve totally lost our heads!  

Anti-intellectualism is a serious issue in the American Church.  We must recover a more balance approach to our faith, and this ought to include the pursuit of a well-formed thought life.  Developing the skills necessary to better reason through our worldview and articulate it effectively to a lost and dying world is vital.  God gave us the capacity of reason so that we would be able to love and worship Him with our minds.  It is through ideas that we tear down falsehoods that are set up against the knowledge of God.  A well-formed thought life enables us to better understand the nature of our ideas and what consequences they may have.  

Further, and more importantly, this is the way God intended us to be. Having a well-formed thought life translates into well being because it entails thinking more accurately about ourselves, the world, and God.  Knowing Him and His will for us is the ultimate prize.

Oh…one final thing…if your mentally deranged, you’ll most likely need a different website. But feel free to poke around in the absent minded category!

Recently, a friend broke up with me. There was no explanation, there was no conversation.  My friend just stopped being friendly after 11 years of enjoyable and solid relationship. 

What could I have done?  What could I have said?  Alas, even after making inquiry after inquiry, I received no response to voicemails , e-mails , or Facebook messages .  I had to face it.  I’d been dumped.

It saddens me greatly to see the passive aggressivity in our culture run rampant over relationships. The entitlement issues we have with respect to how we deem we are to be treated, and what we do if we are not treated that way are at epidemic proportions.

Since I’ve been doing a bit of reading on popular culture lately, the analogy of my failed friendship that came to mind was that of a glue dot. Glue dots are quick ways to stick stuff together, they are tiny pieces of thin circular sticky rubber used in crafting to hold things in place. They are easy to use and initially very strong, but they are not permanent adhesions (over time their tackiness degrades). Introduce any stress and the things they hold together typically come apart. My friend’s sudden cessation of communication reflects this; whatever stress he experienced, it was enough in his mind to pull us apart as easily as if we had been held together with a glue dot.

The longer I pondered this, the more I thought how unconscionable it seemed to just allow ourselves to degenerate into a culture that holds this view of community. Now I don’t mean to say it’s this way everywhere, but when those we claim to care about aren’t constantly making us feel Über special or good about ourselves; when they are not totally focused on our lives (because they, in fact, have lives of their own); when a friend expresses disparate honesty that doesn’t exactly meet our incessant need for approval, then it would seem that our our commitment to a "through thick and thin" relationship proves to be ephemeral at best.

As author Dick Staub puts it, "Today’s popular culture generally reveals that humans, despite our magnificent spiritual, intellectual, and imaginative capacities, have chosen to wade in the shallow but spiritually toxic waters of superficiality." In essence, we have become a culture of glue dots.

Sadly, the consequences of this type of glue dot mentality are throwaway relationships. This is obviously most clearly seen in the popularity of social networks. We have Facebook friends, Twitter followers, & MySpace micro-celebrity, and yet how many of us can honestly say we reach out to others on these venues with much sincerity or intent of commitment? Not enjoying someone’s updates? It’s just a click away to "unfriend" them.

Perhaps this is appropriate for online interaction, but do we really want the same spilling over into our face-to-face friendships? We need not squint long to see that the result of a desire to use relationships as entertainment in today’s popular culture reflects a radical diminishment of God’s image in all of us. In so doing, we damage own souls. Staub points out that, as a result, we experience is a lack of a deep sense of self which is instead replaced by façade where our identities are formed through the attachment of purely external features much like ornaments on a Christmas tree.

How can we avoid a glue dot mentality? Well, as always I have some suggestions. First, let’s purpose to dwell on the fact that commitment to community is as vital as healthy connective tissue in the body, and that the virtue of commitment to others is deeply valuable. The Creator had specific purpose for making us communal beings. As such, we should be intentional in protecting our relationships.

Second, let’s recommit to those who have invested in us, especially in light of stress. This year, let’s tell those that care about us that we are a "through thick and thin" kinda friend. Third, let’s take some time to focus on how we are a benefit to those friendships, rather than mainly focusing on the melioration they provide us.

Finally, if you don’t think any of this applies to you, it may be helpful to ask those you feel close to if they think you sport a glue dot mentality. You might be surprised. I was.

TL

Dick Staub, The Culturally Savvy Christian

In the essay “Capturing the Imagination Before Engaging the Mind,” in Apologetics For a New Generation, Craig Hazen writes about a play that he remembers attending as a very young Christian.  The dialogue in a particular scene was written by Eusebius of Caesarea and is absolutely gripping.  Hazen writes, “Skeptics sometimes bring up the objection that the closest followers of Jesus probably made the miracle stories and the account of the resurrection.”  The following dialog “demonstrates in an unforgettable way just how ludicrous that idea is.”  The scene is a group of the apostles of Christ sitting around a first-century fire “cooking up a story” about what lies they were going to tell the world.

“Dear friends, you and I are of all men the best-informed with regard to the character of him [Jesus], the deceiver and master of deceit of yesterday, whom we have all seen undergo the extreme penalty, inasmuch as we were initiated into his mysteries.

He appeared a holy man to the people, and yet his aims were selfish beyond those of the people, and he has done nothing great, or worth a resurrection, if one leaves out of account the craft and guile of his disposition, and the crooked teaching he gave us and its vain deceit.

In return for which, come, let us join hands, and all together make a compact to carry to all men a tale of deceit in which we all agree, and let us say that we have seen him bestow sight on the blind, which none of us ever heard he did, and giving hearing to the deaf, which none of us ever heard tell of: (let us say) he cured lepers, and raised the dead. To put it in a word, we must insist that he really did and said what we never saw him do, or heard him say.

But since his last end was a notorious and well-known death, as we cannot disguise the fact, yet we can slip out even of this difficulty by determination, if quite shamelessly we bear witness that he joined us after his resurrection from the dead, and shared our usual home and food. Let us all be impudent and determined, and let us see that our freak lasts even to death. There is nothing ridiculous in dying for nothing at all. And why should we dislike for no good reason undergoing scourging and bodily  torture, and if need be to experience imprisonment, dishonour, and insult for what is untrue?

Let us now  make this our business. We will tell the same falsehoods, and invent stories that will benefit nobody, neither ourselves, nor those we deceive, nor him who is deified by our lies. And we will extend our lies not only to men of our own race, but go forth to all men, and fill the whole world with our fabrications about him. And then let us lay down laws for all the nations in direct opposition to the opinions they have held for ages about their ancestral gods. Let us bid the Romans first of all not to worship the gods their forefathers recognized.

Let us pass over into Greece, and oppose the teaching of their wise men. Let us not neglect the Egyptians, but declare war on their gods, not going back to Moses’ deeds against them of old time for our weapons, but arraying against them our Master’s death, to scare them so we will destroy the faith in the gods which from immemorial time has gone forth to all men, not by words and argument, but by the power of our Master Crucified.

Let us go to other foreign lands, and overturn all their institutions. None of us must fail in zeal; for it is no petty contest that we dare, and no common prizes lie before us—-but most likely the punishments inflicted according to the laws of each land: bonds, of course, torture, imprisonment, fire and sword, and wild beasts. We must greet them all with enthusiasm, and meet evil bravely, having our Master as our model.

For what could be finer than to make both gods and men our enemies for no reason at all, and to have no enjoyment of any kind, to have no profit of our dear ones, to make no money, to have no hope of anything good at all, but just to be deceived and to deceive without aim or object?

This is our prize, to go straight in the teeth of all the nations, to war on the gods that have been acknowledged by them all for ages, to say that our Master, who (was crucified) before our very eyes was God, and to represent Him as God’s Son, for Whom we are ready to die, though we know we have learned from Him nothing either true or useful.

Yes, that is the reason we must  honour Him the more—-His utter uselessness to us—-we must strain every nerve to glorify His name, undergo all insults and punishments, and welcome every form of death for the sake of a lie. Perhaps truth is the same thing as evil, and falsehood must then be the opposite of evil.

So let us say that He raised the dead, cleansed lepers, drove out daemons, and did many other marvelous works, knowing all the time that He did nothing of the kind, while we invent everything for ourselves, and deceive those we can.

And suppose we convince nobody, at any rate we shall have the satisfaction of (c) drawing down upon ourselves, in return for our inventions, the retribution for our deceit.”

Hazen asks, “Why would any of these “deceivers” face tremendous loss and death to maintain a life that didn’t benefit them, their families, or difference whatsoever?”  The obvious answer?  They wouldn’t. 

When you become so intimately familiar with the truth, lies truly seem ludicrous.  Let’s become this familiar with the reasons for the truth of the Gospel!!

The issue with this is that our focus is too often on ourselves and our own preferences, and we often pray as if God were a cosmic vending machine who exists to bring about states of affairs that please us. I must tell you, this type of thinking is diabolical to our growth and maturity in developing the mind and character of Christ.

Psychologist and Research Professor Jean Twenge began documenting what she calls the cultural “disease of excessive self-admiration” in her books Generation Me and The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement. Twenge says narcissism is deeply ingrained in modern American culture and a statistical majority of those born after 1970 simply take it for granted that “we should all feel good about ourselves, we are all special, and we all deserve to be happy.”

When narcissistic character traits such as pride, conceit, vanity, grandiosity, and self-centeredness are at their worst in us gals, they culminate into what I call the “dysfunctional diva” syndrome. Learning to love God with your mind is a virtuous process, and pursuing virtue is part of what it means to cultivate character. It’s important to understand this syndrome because it is in direct conflict with cultivating virtue and character. Now I think you would agree the display of narcissistic character traits are priorities which are far from healthy. But more than this, as Christians, we are called to comb our souls and root out anything we find that keeps us from forming the character of Jesus.

Narcissistic personality disorder was first identified in 1971, and the research and compilation of the data shows that “almost every character trait related to narcissism rose sharply between the 1950s and the 1990s including assertiveness, dominant, extroversion, self-esteem and individualistic focus.” Further, Jean Twenge asserts that the epidemic of narcissism seems to have hit females particularly hard. This may be because narcissistic traits present more prominently in women due to our culturally perpetuated obsessions with beauty and appearance along with our historical struggle for sexual equality. Psychologist Philip Cushman says that the cosmetics industry, the diet business, pop psychology and pop religion have all experienced tremendous growth in serving this overt need that women have to look beautiful and feel good about ourselves.The 70s might as well have pulled out a bullhorn and announced to the next 30 years that they would be hailing in the age of the dysfunctional diva!

Typically, the dysfunctional diva is self-indulgent and has a pervasive attitude of self-importance. In many cases, she perceives adulation and privileged treatment from others as an entitlement. She has an constant need for attention. When faced with any criticism, her reaction is typically petulant. Being inconvenienced generally invokes irritability. She finds patience to be a difficult practice due to a predisposition toward instant gratification. The dysfunctional diva typically places a high value on personal enjoyment. In the absence of entertainment or external stimulation, boredom is often the result. Dispassionate about introspection to discover identity and develop character, she is rather more interested in gossip over the personal details about the lives of friends, family members, celebrities, and popular people.

In addition, the dysfunctional diva often neglects to appraise how her actions will affect those around her. She tends to favor her own preferences over the preferences of others, and is inclined to pout when her desires go unfulfilled. The learned behavior patterns of self-focus and self-absorption are generally deeply ingrained. True empathy is difficult for the dysfunctional diva, because she has a hard time removing the focus from herself to genuinely sympathize with others. Always the victim, she rarely believes that another’s problems could ever supersede her own.

Read on in Part two

“The empty self is filled with consumer goods, calories, experiences, politicians, romantic partners, and empathetic therapists. [The empty self] experiences a significant absence of community, tradition, and shared meaning… a lack of personal conviction and worth, and it embodies the absences as a chronic, undifferentiated emotional hunger.”

Moreland rightly asserts that when “people live for pleasurable satisfaction, they become empty-selves.” God intended us to live for purpose beyond ourselves, (namely Him) and when instead the primary goal in life is happy satisfaction, we find the result to be the opposite. This is because God did not design us to live for happiness. Moreland goes on to insightfully state that a Church filled with people with the aforementioned character traits would have little theological understanding, evangelistic courage, or cultural penetration.

We can see this because if it’s difficult to put the needs of others before our own, it will be difficult to serve them well. If we tend to make decisions based on how we feel rather than skillful reasoning, we will inevitably make poor choices for the Kingdom. If we are inclined to always give priority to our own preferences, we most likely will avoid the discipline required to pursue the character of God, and shy away from the study of truth in those ideas that we might find difficult or less than entertaining. We will be dispassionate toward evangelism and unable to apologetically provide sound reasons for our faith. Gals, this is one reason why making Headroom is so important. Developing a well-formed thought life helps us to combat narcissism and the dysfunctional diva in all of us. (I think I need an “amen” here. Because after all, it’s really about me.)

Robert Wuthnow, “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind: A Symposium” First Things (March 1995). http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=4018

Philip Cushman, “Why the Self Is Empty,” American Psychologist 45 (May 1990): 600.

J.P. Moreland, The Kingdom Triangle, p. 25

J.P. Moreland, Love Your God With All Your Mind, p. 93