Going From Expressive Individualism to Performative Individualism
The sociologist Robert Bellah in his important work, Habits of the Heart, describes our modern world as being marked by Expressive Individualism: a belief that our identity is formed by self-expression, by discovering our deepest desires and carrying them out as an expression of our authentic selves. It’s one of the more important books for pastors and spiritual leaders to digest and helps make sense of why many (Christians including) pursue a sense of self and identity in conflict with how historical Christianity does.
But I think Expressive Individualism, which is still a helpful framework, has evolved into what could be called Performative Individualism. What was previously discerned as self-expression in our culture has now subtly turned into very demanding cultural expectations. I wasn’t the first to notice these developments. Researchers are finding that today, young adults “are perceiving that their social context is increasingly demanding, that others judge them more harshly, and that they are increasingly inclined to display perfection as a means of securing approval.” In other words, our culture supports individual expressions of a self-curated identity, but at the same time we experience from our culture a conflicting message: If our self-expression doesn’t meet certain socially constructed expectations, we will be ignored, isolated, dismissed, or canceled. We want to be ourselves, but we also want to be loved. Our culture rarely allows us both.
If our culture teaches us the most important things about you are what can be performed before others, Christ teaches us the most important things about you are hidden and practiced in secret. “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them,” Jesus says (Matthew 6:1).
We have likely been catechized and shaped by a performative society more than we know. Our social systems and institutions reward performative lives and so we’ve had to go along in order to get ahead. As Yuval Levin puts it, “We have moved, roughly speaking, from thinking of institutions as molds that shape people’s character and habits toward seeing them as platforms that allow people to be themselves and to display themselves before a wider world.” Instead of being a place to be formed, institutions have become a place to perform. This has been a subtle lesson that we’ve digested without much awareness that this is how we now live.
But Jesus comes from outside the systems and institutions of this world and works out a way in Matthew 6 and other portions of the Gospels, along with other New Testament writers, to recover and grow out of frailty and into spiritual vibrancy. Jesus teaches us to aim our lives towards the “the Father who sees in secret” (Matthew 6:4). There is a principle of hiddenness to our spirituality that feels foreign to us. We impulsively only work to live publicly and performatively. The way of Christ seems fruitless to modern people. How are we to make a difference? How are we to be loved? But Jesus and other New Testament writers work out this principle of hiddenness that shows us that there is actually a spiritual potency to it. We might call it a fruitful dormancy.
Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. It might be a good season to practice a spiritual discipline of secrecy, keeping certain things for the Father to see rather than for the world.
America seems to be freezing over with ice, so here are few photographs of Central Park in the snow.
