Restoring Our Sanity as Creatures

Why Canada must recover the goodness of God's design

In recent years, I’ve noticed a marked increase in terms like “insane,” “crazy,” and “ridiculous” to describe our present cultural moment.

Perhaps you’ve witnessed the same phenomenon. Some social gathering is taking place, a lull in the conversation occurs, and a well-meaning fellow (who’s a bit uncomfortable with awkward silence) decides to blurt out the latest tidbit of insanity he happened to see on Instagram that morning. The rest of the group murmurs their agreement, a chorus of grumbling ascending to the heavens like smoke from a garbage fire, and pretty soon everyone is pitching in their own anecdotes and stories. Eventually the dust settles and you all salvage what’s left of your composure, albeit a little dishevelled in spirit and far more disgruntled than you’d like to admit.

Such experiences have become commonplace. The crazy has become too ubiquitous to ignore.

The explanations of the insanity, however, are as varied as Joe Rogan’s podcast guests. Many simply want to lay the blame with “the other guys.” It’s the libs! It’s Trump’s fault! It’s immigration! It’s the boomers! This strategy is quite popular and is employed across the board by conservatives, liberals, and four-year-olds alike. The only problem with it (and it’s just a teeny-weenie one) is that it lacks all traces of depth, thoughtfulness, and explanatory power.

After all, what makes a man think he’s a woman? And what makes a whole culture believe him? What drives a country to murder its seniors instead of caring for them? What compels a culture celebrate sodomy? What makes it destroy its children? These, and a host of other questions, demand an answer—one that goes deeper than blaming any one individual, group, institution, or government.

Presently, our culture seems utterly unable to provide one. Thankfully, the word of God is not so constrained.

Exchanging the truth for a lie

In Romans 1:18–32, the apostle Paul sets forth a blistering rebuke of the Gentile world. Among the many things he notes, one of the most prominent is its moral and sexual insanity:

“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves…For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another…And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.” (Rom. 1:24, 26–27, 28)

Rebellion leads to judgment, judgment to perversion, and perversion to insanity. As G.K. Chesterton memorably put it: “Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain.”¹ Yes, and amen. Both Scripture and experience testify to this fact.

But central to the apostle’s argument is a deeper premise. He’s not simply gesturing feverishly at the irrationality of the world; he’s explaining why such is the case. The reason he gives centres around humanity’s rejection not of God generally, but of His authority as Creator in particular: “...they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” (v. 25; cf. vv. 18–20)

There is a fundamental connection between our acknowledgment of the Creator and our own sanity. A necessary link that, once cut, results in the steady descent into madness.

In other words, the recognition that God is our Maker and that we are His creatures isn’t a secondary matter. It’s not a private religious belief that can be tucked away in our hearts alongside our views of doilies or the nephilim. “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth” is something far more foundational. It’s the very precondition of order, stability, governance, and rationality itself.

Without this pillar, human societies crumble. Morality becomes subjective, truth becomes relative. And before you know it, Cletus is making a beeline for the women’s bathroom.

So much for common sense.

Unchaining ourselves from the sun

Ironically, one of the people who saw the connection between God and sanity most clearly was the atheist thinker, Friedrich Nietzsche. Tracing out the devastating implications of the “death of God” for the future of human society, he wrote:

“What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us?”²

Nietzsche himself remained hardened and recalcitrant toward the Christian faith throughout the course of his life. Nevertheless, he saw the startling, even horrifying, consequences of his worldview. Something that most atheists since him seem unwilling to do.

If God is dead, Nietzsche saw, so is meaning. If God is dead, so is truth. If God is dead, so is any transcendent basis for order, logic, rationality, purpose, morality, reason, and ethics. All that remains for the human race is to face the “infinite nothing.” To steel oneself against the cold indifference of reality and embark on a voyage of self-creation. In this terrifying new world, there is no ultimate right or wrong, up or down—there is only instinct, desire, and power.

This is the world as Nietzsche envisioned it. It is also the world we presently inhabit. A world of drag shows and abortion mills, of sexual chaos and postmodern lunacy. In short, a world in rebellion against its Maker, groping in the fog and confusion of a “debased mind.”

“And God said”

In glorious contrast to the darkness and futility of contemporary thought, the words of Scripture thunder: “And God said…And it was so.”

Here the very framework of reality is erected. Not on purely natural causes, but on the sovereign, almighty, and authoritative Word of God. God’s will, in other words, expressed through His Word, is the foundation stone of all creaturely existence (Rev. 4:11). It is the principle that gives being, order, and coherence to all of creation. As the psalmist says, “...he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm” (Ps. 33:9).

In practical terms, this means that God, and no other, is the one who sets the bounds and limits of all reality, giving form and shape, purpose and direction to all created things. He fashions each creature “according to its kind” (Gen. 1:11, 12, 21, 24). He determines the changing of times and seasons (v. 14). He sets the great lights in the expanse of the heavens and fills land and sea with all manner of living things (v. 17, 24–28). This world neither moves nor exists upon its own initiative: it leaps in happy obedience to God’s command.

“The LORD, He is God,” is the great confession of all rational beings. It’s the building block upon which the sanity of the world either stands or falls. To kick against it is to inch toward the abyss. It’s to open the door to whatever vile impulses may come spilling out of the fallen human heart. It’s to surrender every creature as a possible object of man’s perverted and capricious will.

But to rejoice in this confession—to happily own that God is our Maker—is to step into warm and sunlit places. For here our whole posture toward reality is altered: no longer do we stand over the world in proud defiance, we receive it as a gift. Nothing is ours, yet everything has been entrusted to us, given by the hand of God to be stewarded for His glory.

On this view, then, nature is not like a piece of clay to be molded as we see fit. Rather, it is, as Bavinck put it, a “revelation of God’s thoughts and virtues…an unfurling of His wisdom and reflection of His glory.”³ Hence, nothing in creation—from maleness to femaleness, from marriage to family, bodies to sex—is up for debate or redefinition. All creatures have received their form and telos from Almighty God. All must serve their intended purpose. The project of the human being isn’t to pervert these purposes, but to discover and steward them according to God’s good design.

This is the soil out of which civilization grows. The closer we live to it, the greater flourishing we experience. The further we move from it, the more we plunge ourselves into misery and confusion.

Conclusion

In the final analysis, our nation is faced with the choice of Nebuchadnezzar. We may either continue in our insanity, chewing grass like the ox and growing more and more beastly by the day, or else lift our eyes to heaven that our reason might return (Dan. 4:33–34).

I, for one, recommend the latter option. God is merciful and may yet restore to us our former majesty and splendour (v. 36). He may yet send counselors and lords to seek us out, that the kingdom be established and still more greatness be added to us (v. 36). This, of course, would be a magnificent display of His undeserved grace and kindness. But it is possible: God is that good.

And we should pray to that end.

“Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just; and those who walk in pride he is able to humble.” (Dan. 4:37)

1. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 41.

2. As quoted by Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, 167.

3. Bavinck, Christian Worldview, 109.