Deconstruction & The Disenchanted Self
Reality and the Wizard of Oz
In Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari’s “brief history of tomorrow,” Harari likens the journey of the soul in the disenchanted 21st century to the anticlimax at the end of The Wizard of Oz.
Dorothy wants to get home. The Tin Man wants a heart. The Lion wants courage. The Scarecrow wants a brain. They hope that when they get to Oz, the wizard will give them everything they long for, but, Harari reminds us that
“At the end of their journey, they discover the great wizard is a charlatan, and he can’t give them any of these things. But they discover something far more important: Everything they wish for is already within themselves. There is no need of any godlike wizard in order to obtain sensitivity, wisdom, or bravery. You just need to follow the yellow brick road and open yourself to whatever experiences come your way.”
There it is.
It doesn’t matter if the great wizard is a crook or a fantasy, you get what you need on the way. You might believe in God. You might even orient your entire life around the rumor of his power. But it doesn’t matter. God no longer has to be real to give human life meaning and purpose. He is an accessory to the journey of self-development in the 21st century, an optional add-on. In the end, if you become who you were meant to be, you discover all you ever needed was the journey.
Or so the story goes.
Disenchantment Has Two Faces
Harari is using Dorothy’s story as a parable of modern disenchantment. Though for most of human history people have conceived of reality as consisting of the visible and invisible, the material and the immaterial, today we conceive of reality as consisting of only the material. Today, disenchanted naturalism is the official dogma of the secular West.
The coin of that disenchantment has two faces—the immanent frame and the buffered self. They are the basic building blocks of the modern self, the foundation stones from which all the rest rises.
Let’s start with the immanent frame.
What Is The Immanent Frame?
Philosopher Charles Taylor coined the term “immanent frame” in order to describe the way we “frame” reality as only the visible realm, only the material. The idea behind the immanent frame is that nature is all that there is and we are part of nature.
Until the past few centuries, humanity understood itself and the cosmos in a “transcendent frame.” Reality consisted of the visible and the invisible and those two realms were porous and permeable to one another. The supernatural realm could influence the natural world and vice-versa.
Here is scholar, John Walton:
“The dichotomy between natural and supernatural is a relatively recent one. Deity pervaded the ancient world… In the ancient world, God did everything, there was no category for things that God did and things that came about independent of God. Those are categories we have developed.”
Before the modern era, the sun was a god. Temples were outposts of the dominion of the gods, the throne rooms from which they governed their realms. Kings were descended from divinity. The sea teemed with monsters held at bay by the power of the deities of the empires of humanity. The world and human society were organized into a cosmic hierarchy from top to bottom.
But today we know all that was just myths. Those stories were just that: stories. Our ancestors told themselves these stories to make sense of a dangerous, chaotic world. We know the sun is just a chain of nuclear explosions. Temples are sites of personal therapeutic value, not a place of intersection with the supernatural realm. Kings are not immortals who straddle the planes. They are mortals like us and are beholden to render us justice or we can depose them. The universe is not a series of interlocking mystical spheres moving in concert; it is just matter.
Francis Schaeffer put it this way: “[Today], there is an almost complete commitment to the concept of the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system…” Schaeffer is saying that today you do not need to resort to explanations of divine activity to account for everything in the universe, and, actually, the sequence of cause and effect is closed. Everything has a natural cause and produces a natural effect. Divinities need not apply. What science cannot account for, does not exist.
Besides, not only are we not beholden to the antiquated notion of God anymore. We have surpassed his most basic feats. Modernity has outstripped God. He has become vestigial, like an appendix. The appendix is there, we all have one, but we aren’t sure why. There are some theories about what purpose it may have played at a certain point in human development, but no one knows for sure. You can keep your appendix your whole life. Most people do and that is fine. But if something goes wrong with it, you had better get it removed so you can go on living a happy, healthy life.
What Is the Buffered Self?
If the immanent frame is the disenchantment of the cosmos, the buffered self is the disenchantment of the self.
High-security computing has given us a perfect analogy for the buffered self: the air gap. Let’s say you have a computer that you don’t want anyone to tamper with, like the ones that run, say, nuclear power plants. If they are connected to the internet, they are vulnerable to all sorts of hacking, so they are built to be entirely self-contained. There are no wires coming into or out of them—they are surrounded by an air gap, a physical space around them that buffers them from outside influence.
We moderns conceive of ourselves as similarly buffered. We believe we are surrounded by an air gap. We know that no supernatural forces can jump into our essence. We know our inner worlds are not porous. There is a thick boundary between ourselves and the universe. We are disconnected at the level of our essences and so we are invulnerable.
Like the immanent frame, the buffered self is a relatively new development.
Until recently in the West, it was thought that just as the earth could be affected and permeated by the invisible realm, so too people were permeable to the spiritual world and to one another. The king’s sin could affect the kingdom’s crops. Your neighbor’s infidelity could bring disease to the community. The bone of a saint could heal disease. Demonic forces could enter a person and control their behavior. Cosmic forces could breach the boundary between the world and you and enter and influence your very self. Instead of the buffered self, it was the age of the porous self.
But now we call all that superstition. There is a separation between myself and my neighbor, and between myself and the world. The self is conceived of as an interior mind, no longer vulnerable to the transcendent. The “you” that is you arises from a complex interaction of your neurons, your neurotransmitter, your gut flora, your unconscious urges, your memories, etc. But like a high-security computer, you are entirely self-contained. The maladies you experience are not due to evil curses, but body chemistry. You might carry a rabbit’s foot for luck, but deep down, you know the only thing the charm affects is your own sense of insecurity.
The modern self is an isolated self. Even if you are packed together with other people, like molecules of gas in a cloud, you are not fundamentally linked. You remain isolated, buffered, untouchable at the level of your essence. We moderns are alone in the universe, alone in a crowd, alone even inside our own selves.
If Disenchantment Is True, You’ll Need Deconstruction
If reality is disenchanted, then deconstruction will play an important role in your journey of self-development.
Just as Dorothy needed to realize the wizard couldn’t save her or her friends, so we need to dismantle our childish notions that God will swoop in and make everything right, reveal the true meaning of our lives, take away our pain and sadness, wipe away our tears and rejoice over us with singing. These are flimsy shields children use to buffer themselves from the harsh reality that there is no one behind the opaque curtain of the visible world. Just as the modern world has come of age and surrendered its myths to the facts science has revealed, so each of us must be brave enough to follow suit and set aside such illusions.
But sometimes they are stubborn things, these myths and mores we inherited in childhood. They cling to our consciences echo in our taboos. They work themselves into the soil of our imaginations and even secular seeds that grow from that soil are troubled by dreams of transcendence. Extricating yourself from your cosmic entanglements is sometimes easier said than done. Some who would walk the yellow brick road of modern self-discovery find that, as William James said, even “the most violent revolutions in an individual’s beliefs leave most of his old order standing.”
So you need to set about the sweaty, painful work breaking down the remains of the enchanted world inside you. Sometimes you discover that you need to render the house of belief you once inhabited to rubble in order to really walk away from it.
Enter, deconstruction. The word we’ve given to the process of attempting to walk away from, make peace with, reconfigure, forswear, dismantle, critique, poke fun at, or immolate our former religion.
Deconstruction and the Immanent Frame
The transition from the transcendent frame to the immanent frame marks an inversion in the place of humanity in the cosmos.
Where once we occupied a middling spot in the hierarchy of being, at the top of which were the gods, now we are alone at the top of the pile of sentient beings. We live in the gods’ palace and reserve for ourselves the freedom and power that they once enjoyed. For most of human history, we were beholden to higher powers but now we are the higher powers.
Therefore, there can be no demands placed on us by anything higher than ourselves. If there is nothing above us, we are freer than anyone in the history of the world. If there are no gods to whom we owe our allegiance, then we can reinvent ourselves. If ultimate reality doesn’t descend from on high, we are free to build it from the ground up. And we are free to tear it down and rebuild if our reality isn’t working for us.
We do not need to ask permission to deconstruct. There is no one to ask. Rather, if you, like Dorothy, put all your hope that the wizard will come and give you everything you needed, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. The point of life isn’t to hew closer and closer to God’s reality as you grow. That is just the old lie that the man behind the curtain will make it all better resurfacing again.
You are on your own. You have to go on the journey of deconstruction no matter how scary it is. And it is the journey that matters.
Deconstruction and the Buffered Self
If your self is buffered, then, like a diner at a buffet, you can scoop whatever you want onto your soul’s plate, but your selections aren’t you. They are accessories to yourself. The world is full of things you can use as instruments for your own re-creation. They are objects, ideas, beliefs, loves, and allegiances that you are free to use as instruments of your own quest for self-actualization.
We are the masters of the meanings of things for ourselves. I can hold my beliefs in one hand and tip my hand over, letting them spill out and scatter. Then I can go pick up other beliefs, a different future, a different past. To modern people, this is the most natural thing. Of course we can deconstruct. We are buffered.
In the buffered self, people are like magnets that have picked up a coating of iron filings. You can shave the iron filings off and the core is unscathed and is free to attach itself to something new. If “you” are just a collection of things you have chosen to define yourself (or been saddled with by others who have defined you in their own ways), then deconstruction is the logical conclusion if the things around you aren’t working for you.
For unbuffered people in the pre-modern era, stepping away from their community, their dogma, their place, and their allegiances was existentially dangerous. It was these very things that kept their porous selves safe. The luxury of deconstruction is only possible if your soul is already buffered and invulnerable. Only then can you be secure enough to reinvent yourself. You can set about the serious work of deconstruction confident that if you pull your own ideological walls down around your head, you won’t be leaving yourself open to possession, supernatural maladies, or, like Odysseus, the curse of the gods that turns your victorious journey into a crucible of suffering.
Christianity and Supernatural Reality
Let’s shift gears for a minute.
Let’s pause the description of modern disenchantment in order to sketch a potted theology of the supernatural and see if it gets us any closer to responding to modern deconstruction.
Christians have traditionally understood reality to consist of two realms: the visible and the invisible. These two realms are not disconnected but constantly interpenetrate and overlap one another. The Bible is full of moments of the inbreaking of the invisible realm into the visible one.
Think of Moses walking up the mountain after his sheep when suddenly he sees the burning bush and God says to him, “Take off your sandals, for the ground you are standing on is holy.” One moment he is in what we would call the “natural” realm, the next he is standing on holy ground.
Or think of another supernatural experience on a mountain. When Jesus took James, John, and Peter up the mount of transfiguration, suddenly they could perceive his glory and light shone all around them. Moses and Elijah appeared and they heard the voice of God. This was a moment of the invisible realm breaking into the visible world, but they didn’t have to take a portal to another dimension for it to happen. They just walked up a normal, natural mountain and had a supernatural experience. As Francis Schaeffer used to say of the transfiguration, “If the apostles had been wearing watches that day, they would not have stopped.”
So the first thing to say as we build a theology of the supernatural is that it is always here and now. It is not a separate reality. It is as real as the far side of the moon and as near as your fingertips. It is everywhere. It is just invisible. One reality, two realms.
Christianity and Harry Potter
This means that, if Christianity is true, our world is far closer to Harry Potter’s world than, say, Jane Austen’s. That might be a bracing thought for some people. Though most Christians in the 21st century are “functional materialists” (having our supernatural cake and eating naturalism too), we ought to be thorough supernaturalists. We call Harry Potter “fantasy” and Pride and Prejudice “realistic fiction,” but that is just our materialism talking.
After all, if you are a “Bible-believing” Christian, you not only believe that God exists, but you also believe that there are invisible predators that roam the earth and devour people (1 Peter 5:7-9), that actual transfiguration is possible (Exodus 7:8-13 and Genesis 19:26), that animals can talk (Numbers 22:21-39), and the dragons, giants, and demigods are real. You believe that people can summon the spirits of the dead and talk to them (1 Samuel 28). You believe that some people can receive special powers of strength or creativity. You believe that your thoughts and desires can influence real events that are distant from you in both time and space, otherwise, why pray? You believe that turning communion into a drunken revel can produce sickness or even death. You believe immortality is possible, in fact, although you sometimes make the mistake of talking about death as if it were the end of your life, you believe yourself to be immortal.
Try the exercise for yourself. Think about your favorite fantasy book and make a list of the things that are magical or fantastic about it. Next, see how many of them you can find in the Bible. It can be an eye-opening experience.
Our reality can’t be contained within the boundaries of the immanent frame. Reality is more magical than materialism could imagine or allow for.
Deconstruction and the Transcendent Frame
If the disenchantment of the universe is the cornerstone of the modern self, so the Christian self is built on the conviction that God is real and we are his creations. God stands behind all of reality, including the realities of the self, and has the power to impose his meanings on the world and the self.
Rather than being trapped inside the immanent frame, we are woven into a chain of cause and effect that extends far beyond the visible realm and back again and that weaving has a host of implications for deconstruction.
The first thing it means is that we do not belong to ourselves. Again, let’s let John Calvin do the heavy lifting on this one:
“We are not our own: let not our reason nor our will, therefore, sway our plans and deeds. We are not our own: let us therefore not set it as our goal to seek what is expedient for us according to the flesh. We are not our own: in so far as we can, let us therefore forget ourselves and all that is ours. Conversely, we are God’s: let us therefore live for him and die for him. We are God’s: let his wisdom and will therefore rule all our actions. We are God’s: let all parts of our life strive toward him as our only goal.”
Calvin is taking the reality of God’s existence to its logical conclusion. If God made us, we are his. If we are his, that means certain things for the way we live. There is a givenness to things. The universe is created in a certain way and with certain boundaries and we are creatures made to fit into our proper places in God’s universe. There is the possibility of harmony between creation, the divine, and the human person. But that harmony is only found in bowing to God as God in both the internal and external world.
This is a far cry from the modern dogma of hard deconstruction. It means that we are not infinitely pliable and plastic. It means that the task of the soul is not to continuously recreate itself, but to conform to the givens of God’s reality. It also means that as we go against God’s reality, we experience pain, loss, and chaos.
If that is true, it brings a sobriety to our deconstruction. Yes, we will need to deconstruct our present schemas, beliefs, and mental models from time to time because we are so prone to getting things wrong, but in our deconstruction we should remember that it is dark and cold to walk away from reality. Though deconstruction has a way of building its own momentum, it should never be wanton. To the sledgehammer of deconstruction, all of one’s inherited beliefs can start to look like a wall to be hammered down. We need to learn when to swing the hammer and when to put it down. And it should always serve the end of entering more fully into God’s reality. If deconstruction isn’t followed by reconstruction, something has gone wrong.
Deconstruction and the Porous Self
The human person is not buffered and blank, but is made in the image of its maker. We already bear God’s imprint. He is the foundation on which the houses of our identities are raised. There is still plenty of discovery and growth, but it is growth along the channels marked out by the realities of God’s image—which are woven into the very fabric of our bodies and minds.
The task of the self, then, is not to shake off every external constraint like so many iron filings from the magnet of your soul, but to open to, align with, and be in relationship with God. In Paul’s words, because God is real, the task of the self is to “grow up into Christ.” This contrasts with the modern ideal of the buffered self since growing as a self means integrating more fully with another self, namely, God.
Far from being buffered and isolated inside the immanent frame, the human person is meant to rely on God moment by moment throughout all of life. In Christian theology, the three-personed God has even made his home inside your very self. As Jesus taught his disciples, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” (John 14:23)
If a being as immense and transcendent as God can have a relationship with you that can be described as “making a home inside you,” your self is not really buffered at all. Rather, as the ancients believed, it is porous. It is open to the invisible realm and created to exist in harmony with the invisible realm and its Maker, God.
Back to the Wizard of Oz
Harari was both right and wrong when he likened life to Dorothy’s journey down the yellow brick road.
Along with Dorothy, we get what we need along the way—and encounter many surprises, but the revelation of God’s non-existence isn’t one of them. Unlike Harari’s analogy, however, God’s reality is the thing that gives the journey meaning, not the journey itself.
God isn’t a wizard cowering behind a curtain, but he does move through a strange dance with his creations. Unlike the Wizard of Oz, the rumor of his power is true, but he wields it mysteriously. Like Dorothy and her friends, he wants us to take our journeys toward him, asking him for the gifts we need. But throughout the journey, he remains God, free to give and take as he gently midwifes us into his reality. He is both immanent and transcendent. He is everywhere, yet gives us space to know him and deny him. He is powerful but allows us to impose our needs and loves and lives on him.
Harari is right about one thing: If there is no God, we have to become our own end. What else is there? We are only left with Harari’s silver lining. Even if the wizard at the end of the journey is a sham, well, we still found what we came for inside ourselves. But God is not a fraud and you are not the prize at the end of the journey. There is transformation, but it is a byproduct of God’s reality, not the point of reality itself. God is the point of reality.
That isn’t bad news for those who are deconstructing. It is good news. And it can redirect the energies of deconstruction toward a bigger goal than destroying the house of one’s beliefs. If God is real and he wants to live inside you, he will help you build a home that is real enough for both of you.
Read more from Andy on The Darking Psalter (commentary, translations, and poetry about the Psalms) and Three Things (a monthly digest of worthy resources to help people connect with culture, neighbor, and God.)