Bigger. More. Higher. Greater. Comparatives are altar calls for the spirit. Look around yourself. What do you see? I’ll go first. I see a stack of books I hope to read, housing the brittle promise of betterment; a thrift store lamp with brass accents pushing its golden aura across my desk; a blank sheet of paper and a copper pen, set aside for a friend; unfinished drywall around and above me, splotched with spackle, each mark freezing a hand swipe in time. Is this all I have? Is this, as Charles Taylor would call it, my little immanent frame? Are we made for more than the moments we inhabit? And if we are, what happens when we ignore that truth, when we trade transcendence for immanence?
Some of these questions lie behind Rainn Wilson’s book SoulBoom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution (Hachette Books, 2023). Like many people, I didn’t know “Dwight” from NBC’s The Office was interested in spiritual things. Beet farming, sure; but spirituality, not so much. My surprise at this was enough to get me to read the book. And, as expected, it kept me smiling. There were also striking insights along the way, as he called for a renewed emphasis on the importance of human spirituality in a Western world weighed down with soul-crushing materialism. He had to be thinking of those comparatives: deeper, stronger, better. We are made for more than what we see around us.
I took much from the book and found it to be a lens through which I could see a more popular longing for spiritual vitality in our time: the sort of thing envisioned by all those claiming to be “spiritual but not religious.” His narration of his father’s passing was particularly powerful, especially as I compared it to my own father’s passing when I was eighteen. Loss leaves great holes, and we are often defined by how we cover those holes with greenery, learning from the absence, giving color to the cost. I was grateful for Wilson’s openness and transparency.
But if readers are seeking blueprints for a spiritual revolution, what Wilson provides will disappoint—not for his lack of trying or sincerity, I’m sure. I don’t doubt Wilson’s passion. Rather, it will disappoint because what he offers readers is a form of religious pluralism that’s inherently unstable and subjectivistic, and hence won’t lead to any sort of lasting revolution. Does it give Western materialism a hearty kick in the teeth? Yes, I’d say so. But, ironically, that kick isn’t strong enough. What we really need for a spiritual revolution is someone who (1) acknowledges our need to be fully known and fully loved, and (2) offers stability, identity, freedom, and destiny in the one, authoritative, true, and self-sufficient God. In fact, that’s what led to a spiritual revolution in the first century, and it’s the only hope for the 21st.
SoulBoom
What exactly does Wilson call for in the book? I won’t spoil it for those who’d like to read it, but let me offer some broad strokes. Wilson, a practicing member of the Bahá’í faith, argues that every soul is on a journey.1 And this life is preparation for the next. In contrast to consumeristic materialism, he says that he’s after, “Truth. Beauty. Serenity. Heart. Vision. Meaning. Inspiration. Soul. A shift of perspective away from the menial and toward the profound and transcendent” (p. 23). In short, we should be breaking through Charles Taylor’s immanent frame, making the transcendent more central. Only this will help us become the sort of people we want to be: humble, kind, courageous, thoughtful, peaceful, generous, creative, and so on. All of the world’s religions, according to Wilson, have basically been teaching this. He says all faiths follow “ten essential universal truths: a higher power, life after death, the power of prayer, transcendence, community, a moral compass, the force of love, increased compassion, service to the poor, and a strong sense of purpose (pp. 146–165).
Wilson then moves on to playfully suggest a new religion, which presumably addresses all the problems of past religions. He calls it “SoulBoom.” SoulBoom, of course, has all the ten universal truths just presented. But what does it add? Here are the new facets, which also represent what Wilson is bringing to the discussion. Each of these could lead to a host of problems, but I won’t delve into those just yet. SoulBoom will have . . .
- No clergy
- Diversity plus harmony
- Centrality of the divine feminine
- Cooperation between science and faith
- Profound connection to the natural world
- The centrality of justice
- A life of service
- Practical spiritual tools
- Emphasis on music and art
- Humility
If that looks like a list of all the problems a liberal-minded Hollywood actor would have with a traditional religion such as Christianity, well . . . it is. It’s not hard to read each of these tenets as a tacit rebuke of some era or strand of Christian history.
But what’s amazing to me is that Wilson (1) actually thinks this will work, (2) assumes SoulBoom won’t run into all the problems every other world religion allegedly has, and (3) believes he’s not introducing more problems with his sublist.
The Problems
Of course, all of us could identify elements of the Christian faith in Wilson’s ten universal truths, and maybe even in his SoulBoom supplements—with the exception of “No clergy” and “Centrality of the divine feminine.” That was never an issue for pluralism (and Wilson is advocating for his own brand of pluralism); in fact, that was pluralism’s strength. But the weakness of pluralism is also the weakness of SoulBoom: it’s inherently unstable and subjectivistic, and hence won’t lead to any sort of revolution. If that sounds harsh, just think a bit more about what Wilson is suggesting.
In order for SoulBoom or any sort of pluralism to work, it has to take a 30,000 feet approach to all systems of faith. From far away, all the big puzzle pieces of the world’s religions seem to fit together. That’s where Wilson gets his ten truths. (Frankly, that’s also where he gets his SoulBoom supplements.) The trouble is that when you start looking at religions more closely, it’s impossible to make them harmonize, at least not without severe distortion and dismemberment.
Let’s focus on Christianity. Jesus claimed to be the way, truth, and life (not a way towards the truth of life). He said plainly, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). He didn’t say anything that would suggest the Jews of his day were okay on their own, or that Gentiles would find their way to God eventually. He said he was the one door (John 10:9). You either enter through him, or you don’t enter. But pluralism (and SoulBoom) would have to cut this out of the Christian canon or wildly reinterpret it to make it work. That’s what pluralism has to do with every religion. It has to soften all the sharp corners and flatten the topography of doctrine so that each religion is left with some sort of natural list of nebulously “good” universal principles.
Pluralism has to soften all the sharp corners and flatten the topography of doctrine so that each religion is left with some sort of natural list of nebulously “good” universal principles.
But what really kills SoulBoom is what’s central to Christianity: God’s self-contained authority. Every belief system in the end submits to some kind of authority or else dissolves into subjectivity. Take Wilson’s SoulBoom tenet “Diversity plus harmony.” Who gets to decide what that diversity looks like? What will it include? What will it exclude? What happens when one value system conflicts with another, as when the Christian claim to exclusive faith in Christ conflicts with the Bahá’í value of inclusivity? I guess as fellow SoulBoomers—one with Christian leanings and the other with Bahá’í—we just agree to disagree.
Except that Jesus commands ultimate allegiance (Mark 16:16; John 3:16; Acts 4:12; Rom. 10:9–10), and he says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). So, now, as a Christian, I’d have a problem loving Jesus. “Hmm,” says my fellow SoulBoomer. “I guess SoulBoom trumps Jesus here?” Yeah, that’s not gonna work. And this is the sort of thing pluralism has to do all the time. It pretends to resolve conflicts when all it really does is ignore them. The effect is to irritate anyone who holds to objective truth and cater to those who don’t.
At root, SoulBoom really just does what every major world religion besides Christianity has tried to do: solve the spiritual and social evils of its day. Wilson has in mind the rise of mental health problems for youth, hateful tribalism, and a lack of humility and compassion. He wants to address these. And Christians do, too. But Christianity’s primary message is not an attempt at problem solving from earth to heaven, from the ground up. It’s a message of salvation from heaven to earth. It’s a revelation that is true whether people believe it or not. And it calls for submission, even when we have subjective issues with it. We submit, because Jesus is the self-proclaimed Lord, not just an advocate, or friend, or guru. That’s the element of authority I noted. In removing that from SoulBoom (by taking out clergy, rejecting exclusivity, refusing to adhere to only one holy text), Wilson is simultaneously dissolving SoulBoom. As Herman Bavinck once noted, plenty of people are happy to accept Jesus Christ as a prophet, as a spiritual sage or culture critic.2 But they’re far less inclined to kneel before him as priest (which requires confession of sin) or bow before him as King (which requires acceptance of his sovereign salvation). Wilson seems to want Christ as only a prophet, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Muhammed, Gandhi, and the Báb.
In short, if SoulBoom is an attempt to look at the disagreements between world religions and present a solution that waters all of them down just to take a stab at addressing evils of the day, it’s not a spiritual revolution; it’s a spiritual hustle, an attempt to garner hope in novelty. Despite how well-intended it comes across, SoulBoom aims to supplant other forms of authority and traditional religions with a new one, hoping that the inclusivity and subjectivity will help everyone welcome it. In reality, it will make most people shrug. And shrug they should. When boiled down, SoulBoom is not noticeably different from the forms of pluralism that became popular thirty or forty years ago. It’s man-centered, not God-centered. And so it’s bound to have the same problems with ultimate questions of epistemology and ethics that man-centered systems have: no common authority. Faith—if it can even be called that—dissolves into personal preference.
If Wilson wants a spiritual revolution, he doesn’t need a new religion. He needs something more, better, deeper, stronger, greater. The comparatives we house in our hearts point not to a set of progressive principles but to a divine person. A person is our highest authority—the self-sufficient and authoritative Christ, and therein lies our hope.
Christ, the Insider Truth
Wilson speaks at length about mental illness, especially among youth. And I’m thankful that he does. I’ve waged my own war against an anxiety disorder since I was a teenager. But the complex problems facing youth today stem from a deeper theological need that’s universal to humanity: the joint need to be deeply known and deeply loved. This is what I call being an “insider.” And it’s a theme that runs all throughout Scripture. Adam was made to know and be known by God and by his wife. He was also made to love and be loved by them, with God always taking priority. After the fall, humans began seeking knowledge and love apart from God. They developed what Augustine called “disordered loves.” Seeking to be known and loved primarily by anyone other than God is what made all of us sinful outsiders.
The rest of Scripture, in a sense, is the story of how outsiders in sin became insiders by grace. This happens first to an individual (Abraham), then to a nation (Israel), and then to the whole world (Gentiles). But the climax of that story is the coming of the one we might call “the Divine Insider,” Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the Insider of insiders. As the second person of the Trinity, he is fully known and fully loved by the Father and the Spirit, who are in turn fully known and fully loved by the Son. From that holy communion of knowledge and love Jesus comes to those who have rejected God’s authority, to those who have said, “I can be known and loved in my own way. God has no claim on me, and I don’t need him.” Pluralism is just another version of that response. If Jesus says he’s the only way, pluralists say, “I don’t need to be known and loved by a God like that. I have a better way, and I can make my own authority (which is actually me).”
Jesus turns religion (and SoulBoom) on its head by showcasing both the holiness and grace of God. On one hand, he says God is far holier than people think. Keeping the law (what many in the spirit of SoulBoom might call “being a good person”) isn’t just a matter of the hands, of working hard at doing “good” things; it’s also a matter of the head (thinking “good” things) and heart (longing for “good” things). Jesus tells the men around him that they haven’t kept the law against committing adultery, for example, if they have so much as thought about another woman. God requires that level of holiness. But the deeper problem in this is that the word “good” needs a definition, and the Bible has one, rooted in the revealed nature of God. Christianity, after all, is a God-centered system. And so it makes perfect sense that “God, and God alone, is man’s highest good.”3 That’s the authority issue again. God gets to define his own terms. Being “good” is being like God in every creaturely way possible. That’s why Christ was made like us in every way “except for sin” (Heb. 2:17; 4:15). He is the burning, unvarnished holiness of God in the flesh. And no amount of trying will make us as he is. Holiness isn’t a handout for those strong enough to take it; it’s a gift given to those who know they have nothing to offer in return.
Holiness isn’t a handout for those strong enough to take it; it’s a gift given to those who know they have nothing to offer in return.
On the other hand, Jesus says God is far more gracious than we could dream. He doesn’t simply call us to “be better people,” as many other religions do. He calls us to believe in him as the one sent by the Father, so that he can live inside us. The miracle of the gospel isn’t that we get good things or become better people. It’s that we get God himself. Any sense of betterment that follows from our faith is a direct work of God’s Spirit moving inside us. That is jaw-dropping, mind-bending, heart-shaping grace! Who could have imagined that we’d be made insiders with God by taking God to our insides?
Soul Fumes
Where does that leave Rainn Wilson and SoulBoom? What should we think of it? It can be tempting for confrontation-avoiding Christians to say, “Well, he’s called people away from materialism, and that’s something. So, good for him.” While calling the world away from materialism and toward the transcendent is certainly moving in the right direction, it ends up ignoring the deeper problem. The problem lies beneath those comparatives I opened with. Why are we chasing after what’s higher, deeper, greater? Why pursue transcendence instead of being content with immanence? The answer to that question might even be something Wilson agrees with: we were made for more.
But being made for more means also that we were made for more; we’re creatures in a created cosmos. And if that’s the case, what does that make God? This is where we part ways with our favorite beet farmer.
Our understanding of God shapes everything: who we are, what we think, what we pursue, what we reject. And Christians have always stood on the fundamental biblical distinction between Creator and creation. They’ve likewise stood on the truth of God’s self-sufficiency. God didn’t need to create anything. He created voluntarily, out of his good will. But there was nothing forcing divine delegation in Genesis 1. God was and always will be complete in himself, lacking nothing. In his very nature, he demands our dependence and trust.
This is something Cornelius Van Til wrote of long ago, and it’s not too hard to connect it to what’s happening in SoulBoom. Van Til wrote often in A Christian Theory of Knowledge about the self-contained Trinity, the self-sufficient Christ, and the self-attesting Scripture. Why this repetition of “self”? Because it gets to the heart of the matter—both for people generally and for Wilson in SoulBoom: we’ve always had trouble trusting that God is who he says he is. If God is the only one who is self-contained, he’s the only one with true and unbridled authority. If Christ is the self-sufficient Lord, he’s the only one with keys to paradise. And if the Bible is God’s self-attesting word, it’s the only message that can claim our allegiance. The question is, “Do we trust God?” Do we trust him as sovereign and independent? Do we trust Christ as the sole and soul savior? Do we trust that the Bible tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth? At base—all the way back in Eden and even today in the 21st century—the issue was always whether or not we would trust.
And as much as I enjoyed SoulBoom, it had the same answer that most have had in human history: “not really.” Wilson attempts to build his own religion based on a few assumptions. (1) God is not fully self-contained and authoritative. He needs us to figure out who he is so we can live better lives and achieve some sort of harmony in joint cooperation. God is not in control of making the world a better place; we are. Trust yourself. (2) Christ is not fully self-sufficient for our salvation. It’s not enough to believe in him and accept his sacrifice for us. He’s not the only door to heaven. We need to mine the riches of other religions, too. Trust yourself. (3) Scripture isn’t self-attesting and authoritative for our doctrine and ethics. We need more. You won’t know exactly what you need for your soul’s journey until you get out there and start looking and learning. Trust yourself.
The mantra “trust yourself” does nothing but bloat our confidence and dissolve our perception of real, lasting truth—truth that doesn’t ask us to shape it, but which rather shapes us to itself. Jesus said something entirely different: “Believe in me” (John 14:1) That’s only something a self-contained God and self-sufficient savior can say, in his self-attesting word. It calls us right back to the foundational choice: trust. Either believe in Jesus, or believe in something else. Those are the two directions. Behind one is the self-contained God. Behind the other is a brittle portrait of humanity, ready to fracture at the whisper of difficulty.
The great fairytale author George MacDonald wrote, “Where there is no truth, there can be no faith” (The Princess and Curdie). People cannot and will not have any faith in SoulBoom. Why? Because the person of truth (John 14:6) is not central there. Without him, there can be no faith. Without him, there can be no trust. And when we strive for anything else besides him, our hearts just let off fumes from lesser longings—ideas and desires that are not worthy of a self-contained and self-sufficient God. For such a God, the only worthy response to the question of trust is the same response a bride makes to her bridegroom on wedding day: “I do.”
SoulBoom won’t lead to a spiritual revolution, because the Lord of souls already started one, and it’s still going.