In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In the two readings we just heard, beloved in the Lord, there are two stories of men meeting Christ our Lord. Everybody with me on that? Two stories. The first chapter of Galatians, where Paul describes his encounter with Christ; and then this passage the deacon just read, from chapter eight of Luke, where the Gadarene demoniac encounters Christ our Lord. Both of those stories are found in the sequence, the normal sequence—we’d be reading Galatians this time of year anyway; we’d be reading Luke this time anyway—but the two of them come together, and always have come together, I mean for centuries, on this particular Sunday.

Three points I want to make this morning. Point number one: we have two accounts of conversion, metanoia. Two accounts. If we compare these two men before their meeting with Christ, they may seem very dissimilar. The one is described as a wild man, howling among the tombs, his mind deranged by a legion—6,000, by the way, in a legion—by a legion of demons, breaking the chains by which his neighbors sought to control him, day and night in endless torment to himself, a castaway from the conventions of society, alien to the covenant, a man devoid of hope in this world and the next. The second man, in contrast, the product of an ancient and literary culture, an accomplished scholar, a refined person, widely respected, justly self-confident, and a pillar of the community. How could these men be less dissimilar?

One observes, however, a point of irony, that the second man—the cultivated scholar—was the more dangerous of the two. The maniac howling in the hills was certainly frightful and a massive nuisance, but the sacred text does not say he actually hurt anybody. It was the second man who had blood on his hands. He it was who came to Damascus for the purpose of throwing innocent people into prison. That is the contrast.

Point two: let’s talk about the knowledge of God and the emergence of conscience. Now, both these men confessed God’s personal revelation in Jesus of Nazareth. The demoniac comes before Jesus, confessing that he is the Son of the Most High God, and in this morning’s reading from Galatians, Paul said, “When God revealed his Son in me,” these are both revelations of God in his Messiah. In this revelation, both men received the light of the Gospel, the glory of God shining on the face of the Messiah. And then each man calmly takes stock of his own life. He takes stock of his own life. That is the expected response of someone who has seen the glory of God on the face of the Messiah. Thus we are told this morning that Paul promptly went off to Arabia for two years of serious introspection. The demoniac is described as seated, clothed, and in his right mind.

That expression, “in his right mind,” is sophronounta. Hear the word, the root, soph, in there, as in sophia, wisdom? Sophronounta. It’s interesting. This word is chosen by a physician, because it was a physician who wrote this text: Luke, the beloved physician. Keep in mind that this word was chosen by someone in the medical profession, sophranounta, a man trained to think in the categories of the clinic. This is a doctor’s diagnosis. We call it “of sound mind,” and we still have that medical and legal term to this day: “of sound mind.”

Meeting the Messiah makes each man a moral thinker, illumined by the clarity of the Gospel, now gifted with what one of those men called a synnaidismos, translated into Latin as conscientia. Synnaidismos: it’s one of the most important words in Christian moral theology, synnaidismos, conscientia, conscience. The Christian means something very different by “conscience”; he doesn’t mean what the Stoic means by “conscience.” He certainly does not mean what the secularist means by “conscience.” Fortunately we don’t have to worry about that too much any more because post-modernism has pretty much debunked the term. But what it means here is that most men here are now personal moral agents, which brings me to point three.

Let’s talk about this: the gift and the task—the Gabe und Aufgabe, the gift and the task—of personal moral agency. I see you’re all paying very close attention. You’re going to need to, actually, for the next few minutes. The mature human being is a moral agent. We don’t expect moral agency of little children; we don’t expect that. We know that that’s a sign of maturity. It appears to me that preaching the Gospel in this particular age is burdened with a double problem, and I’m not sure I’ve seen very many Christians reflect on this, how much the moral landscape has changed over the last 50 years. In fact, nowadays I’m surprised that the Church is addressing questions that nobody is asking, that are of no interest to anybody.

What I’m talking about is this. The current social conflict between modernity and post-modernity. In fact, it took me by surprise. I’ve only started to become aware of it since coming here to All Saints, not that it has anything to do with All Saints, but it has to do with the way the world has changed since I’ve come here, and the people of All Saints trying to come to grips with this. As this concept is expressed in the moral order, it is the battle between moral individualism, a distinct product of modernity, and what we’ll call social subjectivity, which is the product of post-modernity.

Now, this expression, “social subjectivity,” I am stealing—I absconded with it through the night—from a writer named Stephen Hicks, who wrote a very useful and instructive book entitled Explaining Postmodernism. It was a useful book for somebody like myself. I don’t even otherwise have a grasp of what we’re talking about. It is sort of like nailing Jell-o to the wall. [Laughter] You can’t fix it. So I recommend that book, Explaining Postmodernism, written by a classical liberal—I mean, a liberal of the old liberal school, the sort of liberal who likes to have clarity in his mind, who’s not locked into dogmas, who’s not locked into… I mean “dogmas” in a secular sense. He’s not locked into lock-step thinking. I mean, the classical liberal who thinks about things critically.

For many years, Christian psychology and Christian ethics was obliged to deal with the heresy of moral individualism. We’re still dealing with that in Touchstone. In fact, in many ways, Touchstone magazine was founded to deal with the heresy of moral individualism. I long for the days where that was the heresy we were fighting: moral individualism! Now it is beginning to seem that was a relatively easy task. When Christian ethics was contending with moral individualism, at least it was the case that both sides appealed to the use of reason. Those were the good old days, when even heresies made at least some sense!

At the present time, however, reason no longer sits serenely or securely on the throne where the Enlightenment placed her. If modernism rejected the claim to faith, post-modernism rejects the claims of reason. Reason is now regarded as merely a weapon of oppression, an invention that allows men to dominate women, and the privileged classes to make sure that other people stay in their place. That’s “reason,” as it’s currently regarded. That’s why there’s such an enormous fear, a colossal fear, of free speech. They put a label on it and call it “hate speech,” because nobody wants hate speech, but any kind of speech that makes me feel uncomfortable is hate speech. No, the whole process of thinking is you’re supposed to experience some discomfort!

Reason is now regarded, then, in a very negative light. An appeal to reason is no longer taken seriously in the public square, least of all on the college campus. The post-modernist will even deny that reason is a cognitive faculty. It never occurred to anybody in the history of philosophy to deny that reason was the process of thought. In the public square today, the major institution on the side of reason is, ironically, the Church! But, you see, the wholesale abandonment of reason necessarily destroys the thesis that the human being is a true moral agent. Personal moral agency is commonly replaced what Stephen Hicks calls social subjectivity, in which individuals are only representatives of group identities, where a group dictates what you think and how you think—a political party, a movement.

Early this year we had what was called a women’s march. I tried to watch that on television, but I have neither a lofty mind nor a strong stomach. The women’s march. That’s just a— You’re in a group. The only thing that dictates whether you march or not is your biology. Every year, in our larger cities, we’re all treated to what’s known as the gay pride parade, where people are identified solely by their sexual disposition. These are examples of social subjectivity, so the personal moral agency is replaced by a group identity. And ethics—ethical expectations are determined by groupthink.

The place where I see that the most is what I would call the adolescent culture of the high school. The high school campus these days is a really bad place to learn anything. Children should be sent to high school only after they’ve been thoroughly inoculated in independent thinking. Over the last several decades—remember, I’ve been hearing confessions for over half a century—in the last several decades, I’ve heard sins that I’ve never heard before because the Church does not recognize them as sins. What they are are simply violations of a social code on a high school campus. I’ve had high school students confess sins that aren’t even sins; they’re just violations of some standard that’s common among their peers. Groupthink is something commonly associated with a high school culture, where the behavior of teenagers is dictated not by their older and wiser parents but by the pooled ignorance of their peers.

Recently, one has the impression, in fact, that all of society has turned into one massive high school campus, where people are permanently adolescents. In fact, they even dress that way. I see men in their 40s walking around in short pants with baseball caps turned backwards and baggy sweaters. If we were to dictate that, we’d be sent to jail for cruelty! If we were obliged prisoners in prison to dress that way, there would be moral outrage across the country, but grown men actually walking through airports dress that way. I think, if that’s what you look like [outside], I don’t even want to know what’s going on inside your head. [Laughter]

You see, personal moral agency is the gift of God, because it’s an expression of ourselves as made in the image of God. It’s a gift of God, but it is also a task. What do I mean by that, a gift that’s a task. I’ve been out of circulation for a long time. Can anyone tell me, does the 4-H Club still exist? Oh, I’m so glad! [Laughter] The 4-H Club—I’m disposed to ask for a show of hands if anybody knows what that is. Dennis, you have to remember the 4-H Club. Very good. Wonderful. You see, what do I mean by something that’s both a gift and a task? Let me ask one of the wiser of our teenagers. Suppose your parents give you a bunny. What do they expect you to do? [Take care of it.] Right. It’s a gift that’s a task. They may even love you even more than that. They may give you a duck! [Laughter] Which is a bit more of a task. I suppose you could—if your parents would give you a pony… That’s what I mean by gift and task. You see, God gives us moral responsibility as a gift, but it’s a responsibility; it’s a task.

The best gifts in life are also assignments. I’m thinking of the gift of the artist. I’m thinking, for example, of the bookbinder. Given the gift that’s special to bookbinding. Since I spent several years of my youth binding books, I know—I’m familiar with the skills that are required. I was never a great bookbinder, but if someone is given the talent—it’s a talent—there’s a responsibility there: a responsibility, the quest for perfection, the gift of the musician, the gift of the teacher, the gift of the health worker—it’s a responsibility. You see, the major gifts that we receive are also assignments, and this is preeminently true of personal moral agency.

One of the things that the Lord threw in my path during the years right before I came to All Saints was an opportunity to teach English Composition 101, probably the hardest job I ever had except teaching Introduction to Logic. But one of the things I remember always insisting on when I teach kids to write, write essays, was to avoid, in principle, the passive voice. Avoid the passive voice, because it weakens one’s prose. A prose writer or a speaker should use the passive voice only in particular circumstances and for a certain literary or rhetorical effect. If you use the passive voice, always know why you’re using it.

But the problem is more serious than that. One of the things I’m convinced of is that people who are intrinsically irresponsible tend to use the passive voice. Someone wrote to me this past week, having made a terrible decision. Here was the sentence I received: “A decision has been made,” not “I decided.” As soon as that was said, one thing I was positive of was it was a bad decision. In fact, it was a catastrophic decision. The sustained use of the passive voice is not only a very weak rhetorical style; it is also a very bad psychological sign. All too often it expresses a lack of personal responsibility, a depersonalizing of conscience, the loss of the moral eye, l’oeil moral, the moral eye.

Perhaps there are many reasons today for the widespread destruction of personal conscience, but among the most serious and the most distressing is the cultural dominance of social subjectivism, the collective thinking that dictates without recourse to thought. Personal thinking is commonly regarded as suspect. This process of depersonalization was prophesied in the last century by certain perceptive writers, writers of dystopia. I just mention this in passing, that the dystopian literature of the past century is profoundly different from the dystopian literature being produced today. The contemporary dystopian literature, like The Hunger Games, for example, or The [Handmaid’s] Tale, things of this sort: extremely different, very, very different from the dystopian literature, the great dystopian literature of the 20th century.

Just to mention authors that I read back in the 20th century, very important to me in this respect, read Myles Connolly, Mr. Blue; C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength; Aldous Huxley, Brave New World; George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four; Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451; H.G. Wells, The Time Machine. You see, modernism produced utopia; post-modernism is producing dystopia, expressed in collective thinking and sensitivity training.

A great blessing of knowing God in his Son is the gift and responsibility of a personal conscience and the capacity for reflective moral thought. It is not without interest that both men and today’s readings—the Gadarene demoniac and the persecutor of the Church—both of whom become missionaries, by the way; did you notice that? both become missionaries—they are first restored to calm self-reflection. As far as we know, Jesus’ new friend at Gadara did not write down his memoirs. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Wouldn’t that be wonderful, if we should discover a jar in the Judean desert someplace with the memoirs of the Gadarene demoniac? [Laughter] Wouldn’t that be magnificent? In fact, that sounds like material for a short story, or at least a Touchstone article.

As far as we know, he did not write down his memoirs, but I submit that the opening chapters of Galatians is one of the most significant autobiographical accounts history has bequeathed to us. It is a personal description of a man taking radical account of his mind. Just look at those verses we had this morning: Paul taking account of his mind when God reveals himself, his Son in him. Paul was the first Christian to craft a personal account of the transition from darkness to the light of the Gospel. It’s one of the most important things about the significance of Paul and the formation of Christian thought. He’s the first one ever, autobiographically to reflect on that experience.

In seeking a model on how to describe it, he found his exemplar in the Prophet Jeremiah, several centuries earlier. When you were listening this morning to that account of Galatians, it would be something like playing a trumpet into a piano, and watching what strings vibrate. Everybody should do that once in a while: blow a trumpet into a piano and watch what strings vibrate.

This morning when that trumpet was sounded, one should have heard strings coming from Jeremiah. The strings of Jeremiah: Paul is clearly identifying with Jeremiah. The literary and psychological appropriation of Paul laid the initial foundation that gave structure to the Christian moral conscience for the past 2,000 years. We are the heirs of that foundation. Paul has shaped our own minds and made us assess the structure of our own conscience in the sight of God.