Not long ago I put out an article commenting on both the brilliance and banality of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent Davos speech. For those whose schedules won’t let them to go back and read it, I basically summarized it as equal parts rhetorically brilliant and epistemologically oblivious.
What do I mean by epistemologically oblivious? By epistemological, I’m referring to that branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. In other words, what distinguishes justified belief from opinion. In other words, how we know what we know. And by oblivious, I mean oblivious — like the young lady at the roundabout yesterday who apparently views “right of way” as more of a nice idea than a legal right. In the same breath as Carney attempts to tell Canadians what Canada is and what it should be, he reaffirms his commitment to pluralism — whose only rule is that you’re not ever allowed to define what something is or what it should be.
But our problem today isn’t just that different people have different answers to the question “How can we know anything?” It’s that most don’t even bother asking the question in the first place. Which means that podcasters, pundits, and politicians can freely spend their days in “nothing except telling or hearing something new,” knowing the majority of their audience will just passively receive it.
At the end of the day, what makes Poilievre’s vision for Canada any better than Carney’s? What makes Bill Gates’ vision for the West any better than Trump’s? Or Elon Musk’s? Or Peppa Pig’s?
Without addressing the epistemological questions, all you have is zeal without knowledge. All you have are a bunch of people hawking their best guesses on how to fix things, with no real reason why we should listen to them beyond how smart they sound, how funny they are, or how many followers they have.
Rehydrating wisdom
One thing that everyone who doesn’t work for the government seems to be able to agree on is that Canada is in a very bad place. Birth rates are declining, 5% of all deaths are due to euthanasia, no one can afford a home, and our most productive province is seriously considering whether to catch the last train for the coast.
When it comes to solutions, answers vary. Perhaps we just need more data, or new trading partners, or lower taxes, or less immigration, or more AI, or more vending bikes stocked with ketamine freeze-pops. Again, the question remains — why one solution over another? Why not all of them at once? Or some of them? Or none of them?
Sooner or later, we’re going to have to admit there is no cure for our nation-wide epistemology problem apart from recovering a fundamental basis for knowledge. There’s no point in arguing about what we should or shouldn’t do if there’s no fixed point to start from — just like there’s no point in trying to hang a picture on the wall if there’s no nail to hang it on.
I mentioned pluralism earlier, but pluralism is really just one of the fruits of secularism, whose goal has always been to delete any point of contact with fundamental knowledge. Or more accurately, to render obscene even the prospect of fundamental knowledge.
Our forebears were not as blind. The authors of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms also seemed be aware of the need for fundamental knowledge. Whatever their intent, they at least identify Canada as a country founded on principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law. How can we know anything? How can we identify a truth from a lie? Because there is a supreme God. There is a singular point of authority. There is a fixed point of morality.
What Canada needs — what will determine whether she recovers her legacy of justice and freedom or becomes a Bolshevik safe space — is to come back into the light.
A Light Shining Ever Brighter
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Genesis 1:1-3
Light is crucial to knowledge. Without it, we stay ignorant.
And yet even within the category of light there are distinctions. Microscopes have a small light underneath the stage to help illuminate specimens. High beams on our vehicles allow us to trace the curvature of a rural road at night. Refrigerator lights tell us exactly what the options are when we pillage its contents at 2AM. But although these lights may be helpful, they are not fundamental. They are secondary; they are imitative; they are, ultimately, a symbol of a much weightier light.
Enter the sun.
The sun provides light, heat, and energy. It affects weather, ocean currents, and photosynthesis, while its massive gravity holds the solar system together. It enables vitamin D production, regulates circadian rhythms, and influences the Earth’s climate and auroras. Without the sun we wouldn’t just be inconvenienced. We’d be dead. Not to mention the immediate peril the Milky Way galaxy would be in.
I bring up this analogy to illustrate why the Canadian recovery conversation needs to go back further than traditional values, democracy, founding fathers, or European ancestry. For whatever light these are, they are lesser lights. They are echoes of some older, brighter truth.
The problem in Canada isn’t that things have gotten a little dim and we need to slightly increase the wattage. The problem in Canada is that the kind of fruit we’re exhibiting suggests a degree of darkness that might best be described as “stygian.” It’s the kind of darkness you find in crypts, catacombs, and certain Hollywood diaries. It’s the kind of darkness only God can interrupt, much like he did at the beginning of creation.
In Genesis, we see the “state of nature” apart from God, which isn’t innocence so much as chaos. When God speaks, he reveals himself as the fundamental point of order — the point at which darkness becomes light, where formlessness becomes form, where inscrutability becomes accessible, and where dust becomes man. In God alone is darkness dispelled, which is why Solomon begins Proverbs where he does, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the holy one is understanding.”
One of the shabby triumphs of secularism is that people have come to hold the separation of church and state as some kind of sacred dogma — as if a pure state of governance can exist only insofar as it is isolated from divine knowledge. But that was never its intent. Francis Schaeffer notes, “The way the concept is used today is totally reversed from the original intent … To have suggested the state separate from religion and religious influence would have amazed the Founding Fathers.”
To say the safest state of man is isolation from the fundamental point of wisdom is like saying the safest state of a bungee jumper is isolation from his anchor point. No doubt this is what pagan’s want to be true. It’s easier to force the lock than find the key. It’s easier to affirm man, as an individual or collected into various states or tribes, as the measure of all things. It’s easier to rule than submit — even if it means your empire is just a mountain of burning tires.
These are, of course, all lies. For only in God’s light do see light.
To argue for some bank of wisdom or knowledge outside of God that will somehow fix Canada is the height of naivete. Any “ism” that doesn’t end with the supremacy of God in Christ will just become another darkening ideology. The sooner we mature in our ability to tune out godless pedagogues, the sooner we can hope for recovery.
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. Colossians 2: 8-10