Kryptos Discusses The American Dream

The American Dream as Symbol and Christian Aspiration

A discussion today about the American dream, and I trust it will be a very fruitful discussion. We have Kruptos with us, who I think to this day is the only Anon that I have actually interviewed for a podcast.

I think this is his third time on the Conversations That Matter podcast. You can check out his writings at substack .com. Forward slash at Kruptos, K-R-U-P-T-O-S. He read an article of mine, one of my sub stacks, that was entitled Regaining the American Dream for Zoomers.

He has some critiques or something to add to the discussion that I think you'll find helpful, and we may joust a little bit back and forth as to whether or not the American dream is a good or a bad symbol for Americans to aspire to.

With that, thank you for coming on the podcast once again, Kruptos, and I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say about my article.

Yeah, and thanks for having me on, John. I think this is a really good vector, this idea of the American dream to discuss the relationship that especially American Christians have with the country of America in this regard and its own myths and aspirations and the stories that it tells and the essence.

One common thing that I hear fairly frequently is people will talk about being faithful Christians, and then they will talk about being politically conservative, and when they talk about it, they talk about these things as if they're the same thing.

And that sets off an alarm bell for me. And then when you were talking about the American dream, it set off a sense of, okay, is the American dream the same thing as the Christian dream? And it's not necessarily to say that the American dream is a bad thing, but the question is, is this what you would say is the Christian dream?

And then is the aspiration, like, if you put the two of them side by side, does in fact the one undermine or undercut the other? So I guess the way that I would understand the American dream is that this idea that either one can be born in America or come to America, one can make a new life for themselves, and one can sort of work hard, apply yourself, and you can prosper.

It's the idea of anyone can become president, this notion of it. But also I think there's a financial aspect to it that you too can come to America and you can make it big, that everyone has this idea that across the population that we all have the same opportunity to make it big.

And we're aspiring in that regard to, in a sense, make it big, have the big paycheck, the big job, the big business. And my sense of it is the way that people commonly understand it is that it has primarily and predominantly a financial component to it, that the idea is that the American dream is that every person has a shot to be successful and that every American should be aspiring to be financially successful.

And that's kind of like, so then when you look at that in contrast to the Christian and you say, well, if that's the American dream, and I think that's a fairly accurate understanding of what most people predominantly mean by it, is that I have the freedom to become a self-made well-off man.

But is that really the Christian dream? You know, in a sense that not to say that God wants you to be poor and miserable, right? But there's a recognition that the Christian dream is really the pursuit of, you know, seek first righteousness, you know, his righteousness and all these other things will be added to you.

It's a sense of that all of these other aspirations that, you know, others have, you set them aside to pursue a right relationship with God, to pursue intimacy with God. And then you kind of let the chips fall where they may.

So if you end up being a man of modest means, but you are close to God and right with him, then you're good, you know, and you don't need more than that because that's really the Christian dream in that regard.

And that's, I think, kind of where it set off alarm bells for me. And I think that there is, it underscores, I think, maybe a larger question of that, that is often not deeply examined of the rule, especially in the South, where people are like, you know, sort of most passionately Christian, but these same people who are also most passionately Christian are also the same people who are most passionately American.

And I think for many people, the two things are exactly the same, but from a theological perspective, they're not. And I think when you make them the same, it sets you up to put you in a place that can be theologically and spiritually problematic.

I guess that's kind of, and that was where I came from in sort of, in the sense of like, it was a really fine piece. And I think a lot of what you said about society and young people being able to have a prosperous life was spot on the mark.

But my only thought was, is, okay, just from a, you know, stepping back at it as Christians, is this what we want to be pursuing? And, you know, so I think there were almost in some sense, two separate questions and your piece while well-written just set off, or just made me think of that in that regard.

And so that was where then I kind of pushed back a little bit and you said, Hey, did you want to come and talk about it? And I said, sure,.

Let's do that. Cause I think it's a good question to talk about. Yeah. I think everything you articulated there is well said, and I think we're going to land in a very similar place. The American dream is a symbol.

I think I use that term in the piece that this is a symbol, which has remained somewhat constant in the post-war period. It hearkens back, I think, to a pre-war time and it started emerging as a term during the great depression.

So it, it was a time when I think people felt that their independence was slipping away and the government was getting bigger and they had financial issues. Many people. Prosperity was diminishing. Right.

Right. And so I think they reached, Americans reached for something both on the left and the right that they understood as being the good life in America, that this is what makes us unique. And of course, the frontier is a huge part of this in our story and people being able to carve out independence and land and self-sufficiency and really all of this.

You can be Lord of your own estate. Towards an end though. The end being, I think, not just acquiring these things, but doing so to nurture a family, to build a nation. And for Americans in the early years to honor God.

And you see this both in Jamestown and in Plymouth. There's, if you read the charter for Jamestown, it's very explicit with the part of the purpose of even coming to the new world is to share the gospel, is to, to be uniquely and specifically Christian in this new land inhabited by non-Christians.

So this is, I think the dilemma, this white picket fence, independent, kind of leave it to beaver image where dad goes out, makes a living and keeps the family running in a safe place where there's very thick voluntary associations in the local community to help the family along to participate in.

This kind of symbol has been in our water for a long time. And I argue, or I observe, I should say that it was Obama that his first term where, where this actually starts diminishing and he still upholds the American dream.

He still appeals to that. Trump is still appealing to it, but there is this sense that there it's vacuous. There's, there's an element of fraud behind this, that we've we keep being told that we're going to achieve something, but for a big portion of the population, they will never achieve it because it's baked into the character of America that they will not achieve it.

The game is rigged. So you can't actually achieve. And I think that particular situation reveals something. It reveals that people look to the American dream for both good and bad motives, or I should say, maybe more accurately, they think of the American dream as an end in and of itself and as a means to an end.

Fair enough. Right. So when I look at it, I'm looking at it more as a means to an end. This is not the reason for which we exist. It is a goal, but the, but behind the goal is something else behind it is, is a certain assumption that used to guide us that has fallen away with secularism that without it now the, the child eats the mother.

So the, the, the goal is to live this decent and quiet life, which I think scripture does talk about in quite a few places, right? We, we have a few references in first Timothy to even the reason for praying for leaders.

So we can leave this, this decent and quiet life that we have to provide for our own first Timothy five, eight. And if you don't, you're worse than an unbeliever. So there's this element of responsible living, independence, peace, and then behind all of that, the backdrop of Providence.

And as we've lost Providence, I think the American dream has been twisted. And many do think of it this way as simply the big boat and the nice vacation. And if you want to be extremely successful, so this is beyond just providing for your family, but you just want all the luxuries and pleasures of the world.

You should be able to pursue those things. And that's what being an American is. And so there is a tension, I would say in America, even over what the American.

Dream means. Yeah. And I think, I think the way you say that is good, John, like the, this, this idea, because I think in that regard, most of us agree when you're working like, you know, church and state or church and the crown together, that the role of the crown in, in sort of the quote unquote, ideal Christian, I don't think because Christianity is not really in the sense, historically a utopian faith.

Like we're not trying to build a utopia here on earth. We recognize that that belongs to God and will be revealed in the end times, but in a world of sin, you know, sort of what's the best we can do is that the crown in that regard can provide a context politically, you know, and, and via the use of force, you know, force and violence that the, you know, cause the crown holds the, the, the sword.

So the state then becomes the vehicle of creating the context where people have the situation, you know, we might call it the freedom, whatever, but creates the social situation, the political situation where the church is able to then do its part to shepherd people to aspire to, to, to be closer to God in that regard.

Right. And so I could see that from a process perspective, that from a state to say that the, if, if you define the American dream as establishing a political context that allows then Christians to flower in their faith.

Yeah. Okay. I can, I can agree with that. But as you say the two that, that like you raised this question of the secularity of Satan, I think it, it, it, it brings in the door, this question of like, what is the relationship of the American Christian to the American state to the nation?

And in some sense, what should it be? Right. So my, my sense of it is, and you're very right, that there were groups who came, the early settlers came precisely, well not entirely, but they came in for a significant part of it is to have the freedom to worship in the way that they, you know, their consciences said that they should be worshiping God in that regard in, in, in Christian faith.

But we also have to remember that as the settlers are coming, they're doing so against a backdrop of European events and thinking. And one of those events, of course, is the 30 years war and the peace of Westphalia.

Right. So following the reformation, there was, there was bloody, bloody wars. And for those that don't know, I mean, I think the, some estimates say that perhaps half of the population of what we now know as Germany died during those, those conflicts.

And so people were getting the point where they were exhausted because of religious fights. And so the peace of Westphalia set in motion, this idea of the separation of, of like church and state, you know, at first it said that every ruler will be able to choose his own religion and everybody's going to accept that.

We're not going to try to impose a unified faith across Europe. Whatever every, any ruler determines is the, is how Christianity is going to be expressed in his lands. That's the way that Christianity is going to be expressed in his lands.

And what that does is it kind of pushes the Christian faith into a realm of this sort of the, this, this image like the, uh, uh, rusty Reno used of the strong and the weak gods or Karl Popper's open society.

And so in some sense across Europe, you now had the beginnings of this idea of the open society. John Locke then sort of steps up a little later too, and Locke was very influential on the American founders.

And he basically said, you know, what we, what we're going to do, or what I'm, what I do more or less is that I retain all of the forms and the morality of Christianity, all the verbiage and everything.

But when push comes to shove, I don't take it all that seriously. Right. So when you get the American founding, you have this backdrop of, of religious dissidents, you know, or they were, you know, escaping Europe so they could practice their faith the way that they saw fit, um, sort of in this post, you know, piece of Westphalia world, but layered over that, you had a political class who was very Lockean, you know, they had the, the, the early beginnings of the Unitarian crisis.

Many of them were deists. Um, but many of them were Christians in this kind of Lockean sense, in a sense where we maintain all the language, we go to church on Sunday, we maintain all the language of salvation, but for the most of our life, we just don't take it really, really seriously.

Like we're not going to go to, we're not going to have religious wars here in America kind of thing. And so this becomes kind of the, my sense of it is this has become sort of the Christian founding of the U .S. has this quality of sort of a piece of Westphalia in a sense that we're going to maintain all the Christian forms, but we're not going to take them all that seriously.

So in today's context, though, when you have a group of people, especially, you know, the, those that make up, you know, the, the, what we would call the Christian right and so forth, very passionate about their faith, they then in turn project their passionate faith back onto the founding and say that all of this language that's in the founding, that the founders in some sense, we're going to say it, but we're not going to take it seriously.

They're going to say, well, they understood it the same way that we do. And they're just saying Christian in the same way that we are not to say that, you know, smart people don't necessarily do that.

You know, those that are educated that know the history don't really say that, but a lot of the common folk will understand that in a sense of like, these men are basically Christian in the same way that we are Christian and they weren't necessarily.

And so what happens as you project that back onto the American state, there's then a confusion between sort of the goals of the American state are then identical to the goals of the Christian community and the Christian church.

And I think that this confusion then creates a lot of problems because then being American and passionately American is the same thing as being passionately Christian. And for many people that like, I've been told that, that this is the same thing.

And that creates a problem because then what happens is, is America the nation subordinate to Christianity or is your Christian faith subordinate to the American political project, the quote unquote American dream, you know, and that's, I guess the question I come in a sense of like, how do we sort out, or should the Christian community, because if you do the theology and you read the new Testament, what's happening in the disciples and the work that is being done there, that we could go through the passages and do all the theology and we could be here for hours.

But the essential nature of it is that what Jesus and the early apostles were doing was saying, you know, we are the body of Christ. We are the people of God. We are, they were working to establish a new relationship or a new, a new nation.

So it was moving from the nation of Israel in which the covenant promises were given. And now the dividing wall of hostility is broken down. The nations can come in and discipleship and faith in Christ.

And then, you know, you have the communion where the body of Christ. And so we share in the body of Christ. So being the body of Christ forms us into this unique, distinct people. And it goes so far as like, if you, if you take Hebrew seriously, that it goes so far as to say that we are like brothers and sisters with the same father.

So in a sense, faith in Christ makes you almost like an ethnic family that we share the same. So we are in a sense, a new nation, like the people of Israel used to be, but we're, we have a different constitution, but we are nonetheless a distinct nation, a distinct people with our own interests, goals, aspirations that are distinct from any particular nation state that we might live in.

And so this is, for me, I think that for Christians, we need to be very, very clear about the distinction between me as a Christian, a part of the Christian community, what our aspirations are, and then what are the aspirations that the American state is giving us?

So, you know, to what degree is the American dream, in a sense, a piece of American mythology that works for the American state that may not be in harmony with the aspiration and goals of the Christian community?

You know what I mean? Yeah, it's a fair question. That's a big thing, right?

I think there's overlap, and that's not to say that we can conflate the state or the nation with the Church. These are separate entities, obviously, but I do think that the instructions that are given in both Testaments, but even post-Church, that's why I mentioned First Timothy, are compatible with, I would say, the American dream as a means to an end.

And so we'd have to probably talk more about the founding era and the impact of Christianity, because I think I believe that it was more impactful than perhaps you believe. I look at what they were doing on the national, or I should say the general level, as not the same as what they were doing on the state and local level.

And so I think oftentimes,.

This is not a denial that there were not deeply passionate Christians, even among the founders that way. I know that. I guess my thing is that, yeah, like people...

I think the piece of Westphalia is more or less, wars are caused by religious convictions. We need to somehow dilute or box in these religious convictions so that we don't have wars.

Over our Christian faith.

And they could have chosen to make the United States as a corporate entity uniquely Christian or have a denominational head like they did in England, but they did not do that. I'd say they assumed a Christian understanding on that level.

But then on the state level, nine out of the 13 states at the time had official religions and qualifications for office. So there was very much, I think, a Christian understanding that was assumed in the water, and that's been fading since that time.

But I think in some ways, if you look at the American constitution, though, this idea of what we now call the separation of church and state or not establishing a fish, that there is a sense of a Westphalian peace quality to the way that the broader American state was put together, recognizing that you had Puritans, Presbyterians, Catholics, and so forth.

You had all of these various groups who in Europe, not that long ago, were engaged in bloody wars with each other. So there is a sense, I think, that you carry forward some of that. And unfortunately then, not to say that having state religions hasn't spared Europe from secularization, but I think some of that attitude carried forward into the founding.

In that regard. This was happening in Europe, though, because war stinks. And Pierre Viret, I was reading when he talked, he has a book called, I think it's called The State, but or The Law, maybe it's called The Law.

But it's Pierre Viret, who is this French reformer. And I was surprised he talks about, I think it's a Catholic region of France, because it wasn't just these countries, there's obviously different regions controlled by different factions and churches.

And he talks about how we should cooperate with them and sort of like let them be Catholic, like let that area, the Roman Catholic Church, have it. And it startled me a little because I thought, is that really the reformed understanding?

But I think war stinks. And so people kind of just, as a matter of practicality, say, you know what, let's not kill each other over this. Treat the minorities that agree with me in your community nice, and we'll treat the ones in our community that agree with you nice.

And just kind of tip your hat to the fact that we're in charge. And so getting back to the American dream, though, because that's what this is about. Yeah, I think the American dream developed organically until the 20th century, when it was coined as a term used as a symbol politically by both parties as a way to appeal to a commonly shared view of the good life.

And then, and this is the word I didn't think, well, I thought you would already have brought it up, but you haven't yet. So it was then used as a kind of technology, right? As a kind of indoctrination.

Like a propaganda piece. To sell you things during Christmas that you can't afford and tell you what keeping up with the Joneses looks like and the good life looks like. So I look at all of that as perversions, that these are things that are built on a good instinct for a independent, responsible, peaceful life.

That's a good thing. And a man in regards to Zoomers should be able to leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and live in a separate place. That is all kind of basic level Christian understanding of what the good life should look like.

And in America, because we had such a big frontier and because we, a number of other factors, I think for a while, it was like the place to go, if that's what you were looking for. If you come from an oppressive area, even today, you're amazed at the possibilities in America, that you can own your own place, that you can, in theory at least, unless imminent domain comes in.

But in most situations, you can actually have a piece of property, you call your own and you can be responsible. And that's where you learn to be responsible. And so Jefferson thought, if you're responsible on the local level, you'll become responsible at a greater level.

And the natural aristocracy will rise to the top, which that has its own hangups. But I agree fundamentally with all these sentiments that, yes, this is the way it should work. I love the agrarians. I love independence.

I love competence being rewarded. I love self-government. All of these things are really good. And I think they dovetail well with the Christian people in a national sense. But as we change in our character, yes, these symbols become hollowed out and they can actually become enemies when they take the place of the reason those symbols exist in the first place, which I think has happened for a lot of Zoomers.

They think that you can get on crypto, gamble. Well, it's not really gambling, but it functions similar to that. You can bet on a crypto, get rich, and then that's the high aspiration for your life. Then you can afford all the luxury items.

I don't know if you saw the clip the other day. It was like Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes and Clavicle and some of these guys who are more edgy, but they're all in this club. They have all these girls that looks like they've paid to be with them who they're not even paying any attention to in this luxury setting and look at their nice clothes and look at just all the money they have and the limousine they can afford.

There are Zoomers who look at that and think, that's what I want. I want to be Andrew Tate. I want to have his sports cars. We'll conflate that with the historical American dream. Maybe to them, that's what it is.

I don't view it that way. I think it's the ability, trying to defend and maintain the ability for young people to leave and cleave, have peace, independence, and learn responsibility in that setting. That's what I would like to see.

It's one of the reasons I said the debt problem threatens this. We have to clamp down on this because if people get into a lot of debt, they will not learn responsibility and they will be hopeless. You would probably not.

Disagree with anything I said. I look at it, I guess, and this is really the thing of mine. In that regard, I don't really disagree with anything you're saying. I tend to come at it from the position of the theological purist in that regard and to say, okay, that's wonderful.

All of these things are healthy from a practical perspective. I think it was Caldwell made this argument. Maybe it wasn't Caldwell. Somebody was talking about the process. I've heard a lot about the process of the secularization of society.

He was talking about how somebody comes into a church and you were to say, if you live your life this way and you do these things and you adopt these basic habits of life, not to say that you'll be guaranteed, but the chances are far better than not that the outcomes of your life will be better.

You look at it instrumentally. The point that he then makes is that the problem is that all of these things are hard. Unless you have a genuine, passionate religious faith, in a sense that these are part of your faith aspirations, the logic of why should I do all of these hard things evaporates.

And I guess my concern with laying out and putting forward to people this question of the American dream is that, as you say, all of the things that you talk about are very instrumental things. These are all good things that you should be doing in your life.

But you're almost to sense from a religious perspective, a Christian perspective, a step ahead of the game, that there's a foundation of faith and belief and a series of aspirations that should be prior to that, that then say, well, if you're looking to work out your faith in a way that is healthy and well-rounded, these are the kinds of things you should be doing.

And these are part of that life. One of them is don't live in your parents' house. You should want to get married. You should want to have kids. You should want to be looking to build your church. You should want to be doing something responsible so that way you can provide for yourself and contribute to society.

But you're doing them because of your faith commitments, not because the state tells you or the mythos of the state tells you this is what you as a citizen should be aspiring to, in a sense, instrumentally.

That for you, that while you might be doing the same things as somebody who's not a Christian, you're doing them for a different set of reasons and aspirations. That on one level may look the same, but when you pop the hood, you realize that, like, why is it that all you Christians seem to have your lives together?

Well, let me talk to you about that. It's because getting your life together is hard, and prior to getting your life together is hard, there's a series of religious commitments that drive and underpin that, and that, you know, getting my life together is an expression of, you know, Jesus doing his work in my life in that regard.

And I guess that's for me is the problem is that if we're trying to pitch to people the American dream, so to speak, are we forgetting to say, hey, your primary aspirations are not really, you know, the, you know, while yes, these are all good things, these are not.

Really your primary aspirations. Well, let me, let me, let me ask you a question. First, I think it's Psalm, I think it's Psalm 127 says, unless those, unless the Lord builds the house, those who labor, labor in vain.

So I'm agreeing with you, the Lord has to build a house. Yeah, what does that mean? Well, I think it's, it's the providence of God, I think, you know, because it, because it follows up with unless, you know, the Lord, I think it's, actually, I have it written here.

Hold on, let me, unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain, right? So I think the whole point is that you can put in all these efforts. The Lord is the one who brings the increase.

You can plant your crops. The Lord is the one that has to grow these things. And the Christian life is one of dependence all the time. It's one of sowing, and then expecting that the Lord will provide and then reaping, and then giving him thanks when the harvest comes in.

That's a Christian life. That is not the life of the pagan, who, especially in our secular pagan context, where they attribute everything to themselves, and they don't look to the Lord. And so I think that's fundamentally flawed.

But you can't, at a policy level, you can encourage good motivations, I suppose. You can't test for them. You can't police them. If you are going to make a good arrangement for Christians, then the rain falls on the wicked and the righteous.

It's going to also be a good arrangement for the wicked, if they would put in the same kinds of efforts and practice the wisdom principles of Proverbs and that kind of thing. So the question I have is, what do you say to the alien and the stranger?

Go ahead. Can you hear me?

Well, I was just going to say to you, there's a subtle difference sometimes that I think often gets elided. There is an ocean of difference between doing the work of God and doing our own work in God's name.

And there's a lot of times where I think we claim God's work. So this is, I think, this is one passage that I like. This, I think, it was Henry Blackaby was the one that first got me in touch with. But John 5, where he says, Jesus gave, very truly, I tell you, the son can do nothing by himself.

He can only do what he sees the father doing, because whatever the father does, the son does also. And I think the scriptures, when you look at, as you say, unless the Lord does the work or watches the city, the watchman watch in vain.

But there is this sense that we are not the primary actors. God is the primary actor and God is always at work. So you see this in passages like in Acts. So what's God's will for my life is, when you see with Philip, it's like, go take a walk.

And then go stand by that chariot. And then when you stand by the chariot, you hear somebody reading Isaiah, you get up in the chariot. Next thing you know, he becomes the foundation likely of the Ethiopian church.

And so there is this sense that we are joining God's work and not the other way. And I think there's something, in our technological society, our bias is towards action and doing things and then putting God's name on them without asking too deeply the question of, is this really what God wants us to be doing?

Or is this really what God is doing? And are we really actually joining in God's work?

Since we only have a few minutes here, let me jump in and just posit something to you to see if we agree with this. I think it very well may be that God, well, I'll just tell you my personal bias here.

This is just John's opinion. I do think God is judging the West. I think he's judging the United States specifically. I believe that actually. I wouldn't disagree with that. Yeah. And we don't have time to flesh out why I think this and why you think this, but I do think that is happening.

And I am very open to the idea that we have to necessarily as a people, if we are going to ever come back to God and the principles and all the blessings that come from coming back to God, we will have to go through the fire.

We will have to go through the captivity. We will not to make everything a parallel with Israel, but I think there's some principles in the stories that were given in the old Testament that we're supposed to glean from.

And the universe is archetypal and that, you know, like, like the tower of Siloam, right. You know, it fell on these people where they, you know, Jesus asked, were they any more wicked than anyone else?

But no, but you know, it's a good reminder that you need to get right with God today. And so we see, we see judgment breaking in all around that the, the, the final day is breaking in all around us, just as God's saving work in Christ is also breaking in all around us.

Right. So we live in this sort of crossover reality right now, but an era between.

Two worlds. And so I'm, I'm understanding, I understand completely God may be judging and this may even be a means towards repentance, or it may be a final kind of judgment for our people. There could be a lot of directions this goes from a cosmic standpoint.

The question for me, living in this world that is so complicated, where I don't always see where the rat mace is going, I know God does, is I have to trust God, number one. And I would say that to Zoomers, if you are having a hard time leaving and cleaving, because you can't find a wife or you can't leave home, you are, and you're doing everything right from your perspective, right?

This is a trial to be embraced as a testing and as a, a gift. That's what Paul says in Philippians about trials. It's a gift from the Lord to, to help you in your life. There is a lesson to be pulled here.

So there, don't forget the providential way of looking at this at the same time. I think he does expect us to pursue the things that he has designed for us to pursue. And I have kids in this world. So.

I'm going to, I mean, I worry about the same things that, you know, like, will my children be able to buy a house? Like I, I get that, right. I want, yeah, I want them. It's a natural thing to.

Want them to have what I had, what my parents had and to safeguard that for their children. That's how civilization works. So my prayer constantly is Lord, I pray, even as you judge us, be merciful. Remember my children, remember my church, remember the people that I love, help me to navigate this in a prudent way.