Introduction

By observing the Modern Self and the modern worldview demanded of it (i.e., regarding it as an entity—a 'hypothetical self'—external to both Explorers and their guides), by properly observing and scrutinizing its internal structure and the ensuing dictates to which the Modern Self must adhere, Explore establishes a safe psychological and emotional distance for Explorers inside of which the effects of their worldview can be observed without aggression, personal condemnation or the familiar and combative modes of engagement often witnessed in Christian apologetic programmes and platforms. Explorers require contexts rooted in trust, humility, and safety inside of which frank observations of the lived effects of 'both'¹ worldviews can be properly engaged. When done so with care, both the rudiments and the fruit guaranteed inside of both views—views that become ways of life or living systems—can be properly seen. In the spirit of the Christ who frames his call to humankind with the humble invitation, "Those who have ears to hear, let them hear,"² Explorers (Nones) are honoured at the level of their humanity. In other words, they are engaged by the effects of a contravening worldview in a manner that offers gentle exposure of the suppositions and the properties that undergird the secularized modern worldview and its effects. In solidarity with the Spirit of Jesus, Explore guides, firmly established in love of neighbour, are compelled neither by argument or explanation, but by a deep interest in accompaniment. Philosopher, Dallas Willard, speaks well to this impetus as uniquely present in the heart and accordant relational 'style' of Jesus:

"Jesus' aim in utilizing logic is not to win battles, but to achieve understanding or insight in his hearers. This understanding only comes from the inside, from the understandings one already has. It seems to "well up from within" one. Thus he does not follow the logical method one often sees in Plato's dialogues, or the method that characterizes most teaching and writing today. That is, he does not try to make everything so explicit that the conclusion is forced down the throat of the hearer. Rather, he presents matters in such a way that those who wish to know can find their way to, can come to, the appropriate conclusion as something they have discovered—whether or not it is something they particularly care for.

"A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still." Yes, and no doubt Jesus understood that. And so he typically aims at real inward change of view that would enable his hearers to become significantly different as people through the workings of their own intellect. They will have, unless they are strongly resistant to the point of blindness, the famous "eureka" experience, not the experience of being outdone or beaten down.³

Thus, the guiding principle in such encounters with Explore clients is to be present with them with accordant depth and humility. Explore guides trust the Imago Dei in their human neighbors and are not interested in 'teaching them' or patronizing them, as it were from a position of moralizing expertise. Thus, the primary 'motif' in worldview engagement from among Explore guides with Explore clients is not theoretical or merely polemic in nature. Rather, Explore guides represent their worldview by inhabiting the love of Christ as an invitation to their neighbour. Guided in such a manner, interactions with Explore candidates will initially take shape around the needs of Explore clients at the level of their lived experience—and lived dilemmas—inside of the broader themes of meaning, of purpose, of connection and belonging.

What undergirds and permeates the Explore project in its character is a certain penitence with regard to how it addresses the 'un-churched'. Echoes of our shared and truncated interests from the past—to merely save people from hell, to merely put more bodies in pews, to merely increase the numbers of attendance at Mass, to merely increasing 'giving'—each of these belied motivations that interrupted the dynamics of true listening, true exploration, true presence in solidarity with the un-churched neighbor whom we are called by our Lord to love. Explore guides will come armed with an inner caution, aimed, not at their neighbour, but at their own human proclivity for principled interests to become distortions of virtue. C.S. Lewis drew attention to our shared vulnerability along these lines:

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.⁴

If such personal vulnerabilities are not held squarely in the sights of Explore guides as they engage their neighbours, they remain vulnerable to missing Christ's profound admonition against our collective inner lean toward condemning judgment and veiled hubris.⁵ The spacious interest inside of the wish to meet 'Nones' in their lived context—the heart of Explore—is carried along by a very careful humility and a deep love for each individual inside of the heart of Christ. Against such a backdrop, worldview presents, not merely as an apologetic opportunity, but as a ministerial necessity. Inside of the heart of Christ, just as we would (and do) with our own offspring, our own spouses, our own loved ones in community, Explore guides aim at addressing Explore sojourners in the very nature of their thinking for their sake. Such a heart and accordant method of engagement runs as an unbreakable cord through every moment inside of which we witness Jesus in dynamic encounter with every person and every context that He graces with his presence. Such engagement with worldview is not, thus, merely a strategic necessity; it is plainly a matter of how to properly love someone in dynamic collaboration with the interests and Spirit of Christ.

Additional Considerations: Worldview as a Lived System

Having cited above a 'why' for worldview engagement with Explore candidates, it may be helpful to observe some lines of delineation between secularized and (in the case of Explore) Catholic worldviews. To follow, some central features of both are articulated in a manner that Explore guides may find helpful.

• Perhaps the central worldview burden laid upon the 'average global westerner', set such as they are in the secularized West, is that of self-definition.
  • Whatever the nuanced differences in worldview at the level of the localized self in its individual journey, this (self-definition) is the primary distinguishing feature between secularized vs religious worldviews; taking the form of buffered vs porous, disenchanted vs enchanted, imminent vs transcendent, frames.
    • What we've here called the "primary worldview burden" translates itself into the lived experience of the Modern Self as a perpetual weight carried by individual Explorers ('Nones').
    • Worldviews are thus important because they are not merely academic frames and do not exist only as mental artifacts. They become, in each individual case, living systems. In a certain sense, they become the very life lived by the individual self.
  • In a Christian frame (as opposed to other world religious traditions in particular) at the level of the lived experience, inside of the life-quest of the individual, this contrast can be articulated as a burden of self-construction (secularity) vs a lifelong experience of self-reception (cast sometimes as self-discovery) inside of a surrendered vocational journey (Christianity).
    • Such quests are also distinguishable from one another in that one is set in atomized isolation (secular) and the other in an ancient community and commons (The Christian Body, the fellowship of the saints, the kindred bonds of kingdom living).
  • Such a self (Christian) is set inside of a broader and pre-ordained telos as the full range of God's interests for humanity inside of the created order.
  • The Catholic worldview eliminates the burden of self-construction and self-determination by presenting a universe inside of which one is never alone and never without resource (body life of the Church, indwelling grace and guidance of the Holy Spirit, legacy of the Kerygma and community of the saints who stand as our forbearers, etc.).
• Through a modern psychological and empirical lens, the effects of the burden of self-construction set upon the shoulders of the Modern Self are routinely addressed in psychopathological terms and taxonomies without a concerted exploration of the ontic sources of those pathologies.
• This dilemma is guaranteed, not only to the individual Modern Self, but to the host of cultural authorities (academic institutions, boards of review in penal and forensic psychiatric institutions, secular NGOs, governmental agencies and/or ministries, senate committees, etc.) whose policy and assessments establish the cultural and legal norms by which our contemporary society functions.
  • The dilemma cited above is guaranteed because the worldview that gives rise to the very pathologies assessed by the industries and institutions who create such taxonomies (e.g., The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V-TR⁶)), is the same worldview by which such authorities must make their assessment. This establishes an infinite churn inside of which assessment and taxonomy occur ad nauseum with no transcendent principle by which to guide thought and action (and, thus, society itself) into integrated order.
• The effects of the dilemmas inherent in the will-to-self-definition are occasionally noted and commentated upon by theorists from within the secularized academy along the following lines:
  • "Instead of having vibrant, authoritative communities and moral traditions to guide us, we are faced with a multiplicity of scientific theories, a cacophony of voices, one more dogmatic and self-righteous than the next. Each promises a universal truth, a magical technology, and some type of certain deliverance from the vicissitudes and illnesses of twentieth-century living. A societywide consensus, a shared sense of right and good and true, simply does not exist in our time. It has been shattered by historical forces, military events, and intellectual trends." (Cushman, P. 1995, p.9 in Constructing the Self Constructing America: A cultural history of psychotherapy).
• And again:
  • "This is the tragedy of the twentieth century. Our dedication to the philosophical frame of reference of the physical sciences has helped us develop the power to manipulate the physical world in undreamed of ways. But that same frame of reference has within it a built-in paradox: By conceiving of a world that is based on doubt and irrevocably separates "inner" from "outer," body from mind, science from superstition…, the physical science framework makes it nearly impossible to use traditional ideas, philosophical thinking, and a sense of moral authority—and thus to take a moral stand. We have no way of developing shared moral understanding that would help us cooperate in using our newfound power for the betterment of humankind. The very framework that has made it possible for us to develop our power has made it difficult for us to determine how to use it wisely." (Ibid, italics added)
• Johnson and Sandage (1999) address the matter against the backdrop of Modernity's epistemological demands:
  • "…Modernism has certain absolute features, which have been radicalized in peculiarly modern form. It is a tradition that rejects tradition, it places ultimate value on valuing nothing ultimately, it proclaims authoritatively that there are no authorities. This naiveté resulted in its practitioners understanding modern [psychotherapy] (dogmatically) as the only form of [psychotherapy], instead of viewing it as simply the most successful in the twentieth century at laying claim to such a position of hegemony." (p.12)
• Dallas Willard draws attention to the central role of epistemology as it relates to the worldview adhered to by the Modern Self:
  • "…[empiricism] cannot guide us in the interpretation of knowledge and reality, for it fundamentally misconstrues them. Its primary function was to replace religious orthodoxy with a secular, epistemological orthodoxy, as cultural authority was passing from religious to merely intellectual institutions in modern Western society. As an orthodoxy, it is, of course, repressive and, among other things, makes impossible knowledge of the human self. One can judge for oneself the cost of this by candidly observing the intellectual and moral chaos that rules modern society—not least, intellectual society itself. Of course, empiricism is not itself an empirical theory, and in the nature of the case could never be. It stands self-refuted." (2006, p.140, italics added)
• Charles Taylor draws attention to the circuitous and structurally guaranteed dilemma for the Modern Self and its empiricist secularist worldview along these lines:
  • "…the modes of life which [the contemporary-secular] outlook encourages tend to a kind of shallowness. Because no non-anthropocentric good, indeed nothing outside subjective goods, can be allowed to trump self-realization, the very language of morals and politics tends to sink to the relatively colourless subjective talk of 'values'." (1989, p.507)
  • And again: "A total and fully consistent subjectivism would tend towards emptiness: nothing would count as a fulfillment in a world in which literally nothing was important but self-fulfillment" (Ibid, italics added)

Footnotes

1. There are, of course, a multiplicity of worldviews represented in nuanced forms across the open landscape of individuals and cultures. For the purposes of this document within the broader aims of Explore, attention is here drawn to the essential bifurcation that exists broadly between secular and religious worldviews as it relates to definitions of the self. Here, the burden of self-definition in the secular case is contrasted with the invitation to self-reception in the religious case. Cf: Taylor, C. (1989). The sources of the self: the making of the modern identity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.; Taylor, C. (2007). A secular age. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.; Gay, C.M. (1998). The way of the (modern) world: or, why it's tempting to live as if God doesn't exist. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co.
2. Matt 11:15; Mark 4:23; Luke 14:35
3. Willard, D. Christian Scholar's Review, 1999, Vol. XXVIII, #4, 605-614. (italics added).
4. Lewis, C. S. (1987) "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment," Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy: Vol. 13, No. 1, Article 11, p.151.
5. Matt 7:3-5.
6. American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.).