The Sin of Self-Sovereignty

An interview with Eugene Peterson:

RADIX: [In EAT THIS BOOK (Eerdmans, 2006), you write that] "the text that seems to be most in favor on the American landscape today is the Sovereign Self." Do you think there are reasons why that's a special problem in this particular culture in a way that it wasn't in the past?

PETERSON: Well, the basic ingredients go back to Eden. But I think American culture with our combination of individualism and consumerism has taken it pretty far. We've got the money, most of us do, to do whatever we want to. With our post-Enlightenment individualism and consumerism, combined with the total erosion of community, which we're all experiencing, I think America has almost perfected the self-sovereignty sin.

RADIX: Do you notice a difference when you travel in other countries?

PETERSON: I don't do that much traveling, but when I talk to friends who are in Third World countries, it's very different. The little bit of travel I do is usually in Scotland and Ireland, and Christians are such a minority people there, they don't have that same sense of self-sovereignty--they're more marginal to the culture. So I think it's an American problem, although some of the Asians might be catching up with us--the Hong Kong, Korean, Japanese Asians.

RADIX: Toward the end of the book, you say that when the Hebrews were at home in the Canaanite culture, they knew how to say "no" to the culture when they needed to. So I'm wondering, at what points do you think we American Christians need to be saying "no" to our culture? Are there any points that are especially important?

PETERSON: Well, yes. I think the identification of the culture with the church, with the evangelical church, makes us prone to an idolatry of nation. That's so pervasive it's almost impossible to carry on a conversation about it. America's founders left Europe because of nationalized churches. Now we've got one of our own, and we aren't even aware of it. So the nationalism combined with the pervasive consumerism are big problems for the American church.

We go church-shopping; we demand services of the church. The scary thing about this for me is that the vocabulary stays the same. We use all the right words, and we still keep all our doctrines in the evangelical church, but the context has changed so radically that they no longer mean anything. I don't know how the Devil works, but if I were the Devil, I don't think I could have devised a better way of destroying the congregation than talking about "big"--you know, the bigger, the bigger, the bigger, the more glamorous. And that destroys congregations. Congregations aren't glamorous; they're comprised of sinners.

But we've got these poster pictures, glamour shots of what churches ought to be. It can destroy pastors of small churches--they feel always inadequate, always inferior. And it destroys the people in the big churches, because they're no longer dealing with community; they're just part of a crowd. In the vaunted small-group movement--which certainly has some good things going for it (probably earlier on, more than now)--people say, "Well, we take care of community by having small groups." Well, those aren't communities--those are people you like. And, you know, a community has to have people you don't like in it.

RADIX: Yes, actually, my small group is made up of people I like.

PETERSON: They all are. If you don't like them, you just drop out. Good things happen in these groups, but it's not community. Congregation is God's way to give us community.