Modernity’s Hollowed-Out Search for the Good Life

Last year, as part of the Forming a Christian Mind project, I was invited by a group of Cambridge University students to help them tackle a couple of pressing questions. First, what does it mean to live the “good life”? Second, in the West today, would Christians answer that question altogether differently than their secular neighbors would?

On those questions, few books are as illuminating as Charles Taylor’s sprawling and brilliant Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity.

Why turn to a labyrinthine book on modern identity formation to answer those questions? Because Taylor argues we can only make sense the “good life” when we first grasp how our identities take shape. I determine whether my life is “good” based on the things that ground my identity.

Sources of the Self opens with a provocative claim. In the modern West, despite all our focus on the complexities of our inner lives, we nonetheless imagine our core identities in stark, uncomplicated terms. We perceive and present ourselves––and others––one-dimensionally. In asking “Who are we?” we reduce everything to a single label, imagining it plays a load-bearing role in constructing our identities. For some, that label is a nationality; for others, it’s a profession, a gender identity, a sexual orientation, a social class, or a social role. We see this reductionism clearly on social media: If you join a platform like X, the first thing you must do is choose what to present to the world about who you are in your bio (and in no more than 160 characters).

However, one of the driving ideas in Sources of the Self is that our identities are far more complex than our reductionistic tendencies suggest. Human identity is anything but tidy. To make this point, Taylor connects dots across vast expanses of time—from Homer to Plato, Augustine to Calvin, Descartes to Herder to Kant, and finally to us. By doing so, he creates a sketch of modern, Western identity. If you were to give that generic Western person an X bio, it would say something like this: #UniversalJustice #DoingGoodInTheWorld #Equality #Freedom #WantsToAvoidSuffering.

That cluster of values is generically Western in the sense that they aren’t shared by all cultures across all time. Ancient Spartans embraced suffering as character forming and saw pain as a useful tool. Confucian culture affirms hierarchy––rather than equality––as natural and necessary. In its pre-Christian past, Norse culture saw dying well as more important than living morally. Pagan Roman culture imagined an enslaved class as necessary to enable the flourishing of its free citizens.

By contrast, modern Western identity intuits those cultures’ values as foreign and undesirable. However, in Taylor’s argument, it doesn’t do so uniformly. Rather, the ways we prop up our own intuitions on justice, equality, beneficence, freedom, and suffering vary wildly from person to person. This, in his terms, is because we don’t share homogeneous “moral frameworks.”

In what sense, then, might two people formed in Western culture––one a Christian, the other secular––go about answering the question “What is the ‘good life’?” Sources of the Self answers that with a thought-provoking insight: In the cases of both people, Taylor claims, the concept of a “good life” is shaped by the notions of justification and sanctification. I want to focus on how those concepts give Christians a unique lens with which to view modern identity formation.

Understand Justification and Sanctification

Justification and sanctification are, of course, deeply Christian terms. And yet, Taylor argues, they also shape the lives of our secular neighbors. How so?

In Reformed theology, justification is viewed in a forensic, legal sense. We’re justified by faith alone in Christ alone. God examines our lives and declares us innocent of sin. As the Heidelberg Catechism puts it, it’s as though I had “never sinned nor been a sinner.”

Justification is a declaration from God that, in his sight, your life perfectly corresponds with the good life; in fact, it corresponds with the perfect life. This is because Jesus’s perfect life is imputed to you, transferred to you, and regarded as properly yours. God declares your life is grounded in what is objectively the highest vision of the good.

Justification is a declaration from God that, in his sight, your life perfectly corresponds with the good life; in fact, it corresponds with the perfect life.

However, justification is puzzling to consider in view of our actual, lived experience. It’s our real status in God’s eyes, yet it’s a status we hold by imputation: It’s attributed to our lives on the merits of Jesus’s life. The question for the justified person then becomes, What does Christ’s life mean for your life now?

This is where sanctification comes into play. Our lives need to be brought into harmony with Christ’s life. The faith that justifies must be transformative. Bit by bit, it changes us. In biblical terms, faith without works is dead (James 2:17).

In Reformed theology, we distinguish between sanctification as both objective and declarative on the one hand and subjective and progressive on the other. Sanctification is objective and declarative in the sense that if you’re in Christ, God declares your life holy and consecrated to a particular purpose—namely, Christlikeness.

But sanctification is also subjective and progressive in the sense that your imperfect life must become perfect; your broken life must be healed. Our progress in sanctification is brought about through a renewal of the will in regeneration, where the Holy Spirit works in us from the inside out.

Sanctification doesn’t begin externally through outward behaviors, as though you could do enough of that and eventually change your inner life. Rather, it begins with the Spirit’s regenerative work at the level of desire (which becomes a desire for God), and that inner change then begins to take effect on the rest of your life.

Through this, our good works take on a new motive: gratitude. We could say progressive sanctification is the shape of our gratitude. It’s carried out in the strength of what God has done for us in Christ in the power of God’s grace. And sanctification’s not easy: The New Testament describes it as the “mortification of sin”––the putting to death of our old nature. Our sanctification is imperfect until it’s made complete in death (see Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q&A 37).

If you’re a Christian, this understanding of justification and sanctification gives you a distinct way of living. First, your life becomes oriented toward the highest good. Second, it gives you a way of asking, Does how I live actually reflect that highest good? Third, it offers you a way of dealing with your failures in trying to reflect that highest good.

When I see that my sanctification is imperfect, I return to my justification for consolation. My sanctification is a work of gratitude for forgiveness, not a performance I hope will contribute to my forgiveness. By God’s grace, the gospel also teaches that one day, I, a justified sinner, will see God and become like the one I behold.

Inescapability of Moral Frameworks

If you’re a believer in Christ, this language of justification and sanctification is familiar—it’s fluent “Christianese.” But you may feel these concepts are categorically different from the beliefs of your secularized Western friends. This is where Taylor comes to our aid.

My sanctification is a work of gratitude for forgiveness, not a performance I hope will contribute to my forgiveness.

One of the most important claims in Sources of the Self is that all people live within moral frameworks. These frameworks are inescapable and diverse; nobody is a blank slate. While we tend to present ourselves one-dimensionally, Taylor says our normal way of answering the identity question—Who am I?—is actually narratival or story-driven.

We answer this question by trying to ascertain our highest good (in an objective sense) and whether we live in line with it (in a subjective sense). The story of whether and how we do that becomes the narrative of our lives.

Taylor describes this as a “yes/no question” that concerns the direction of our lives, toward or away from the good. To answer “Who am I?” a modern person must identify a highest good and then identify the directionality of his or her life in relation to it. Taylor writes,

The Puritan wondered whether he was saved. The question was whether he was called or not. If called, he was “justified.” But if justified, he might still be a long way from being “sanctified”: this latter was a continuous process, a road that he could be more or less advanced on.

Here’s the key point. Taylor continues, “My claim is that this isn’t peculiar to Puritan Christianity, but that all frameworks permit of, indeed, place us before an absolute question of this kind, framing the context in which we ask the relative questions about how near or far we are from the good” (45).

The modern Western sense of self is profoundly concerned with issues of justification and sanctification: What is the highest good with which my life is identified (what’s my justification?), and do I actually live in a way that corresponds to that highest good (am I sanctified?).

Secular Derivatives of Justification and Sanctification

Once we view modern life through this lens, we see what Taylor calls “secular derivatives of Christianity” everywhere. To notice them, though, we need a clear eye for their variety. Let’s examine a few moral frameworks prevalent in our culture.

Taylor identifies those whose outlooks view history as divided by a stark, polarizing antithesis. The basic feature of that individual’s identity comes from asking, Which side am I on: the side of the oppressed or the oppressor? In this framework, your sense of justification comes from being aligned with the right cause—with good rather than evil.

This sense of justification is so totalizing that personal sanctification often becomes an afterthought. Taylor writes, “The insistent and absolute question here is: which side are you on? This permits only two answers, however near or distant we may be from the triumph of the right” (45).

So in that sense, Taylor identifies some modern Western people who hold to an absolutist good-versus-bad view of the world, and who themselves are (obviously!) goodies rather than baddies because they side with the goodies. This results in a person who possesses an extremely powerful self-identification with the good cause, yet who may herself be a horrible individual. Her need for personal sanctification has been starved by the sense that she’s already on the right side of history.

We can describe this as a secularized version of the Christian heresy of antinomianism—the idea that because I’ve been justified, I don’t need to be sanctified.

Taylor gives another example: Consider a rationalistic person whose highest good is treating the self in a disengaged, objective way. That is a form of justification, locating it in clearheaded rationality, self-mastery, and self-control.

For this individual, sanctification involves answering questions like these: Am I rational enough? Am I in control of my emotions? In situations A, B, and C, was I able to be objective enough about myself? And how do I deal with all those irrational idiots out there who impede my sanctification?

In that kind of philosophy, it’s about slow, progressive sanctification. And the tools of progressive change are ruthless introspection, along with the psychoanalyst’s couch.

For another, the highest ideal might be providing for his family. His justification, his highest good, is domesticity. In his case, sanctification focuses on self-directed questions: Am I spending too much time at the office (although my being at the office feeds my children)? How is my work-life balance? Am I a good enough parent? Am I messing up my kids? Am I a good spouse?

Although more examples abound, consider lastly the artist. Her highest ideal is artistry itself. But her sanctification depends on the answer to certain questions: At what point will I have my epiphany? What if I never produce a great work of art? And what about all the barriers in the world of art to people of my social class, gender, and ethnic identity, which are obstacles to my sanctification?

Being and Becoming

Taylor argues that human identity is a matter of being as well as becoming. I am, but I also become. Modern Western people imagine the “I am” category as a kind of justification (alignment with a highest good) and the “I become” category as a kind of sanctification (examining if they practice what they preach).

Taylor also argues that we project our lives forward. For instance, we ask ourselves, Ten years from now, will I have moved toward my highest good? In that sense, Taylor says our life becomes a moral space, a quest, a tale of progress or regress to be tracked, measured, and held accountable by our selves. How does the tale of my ongoing sanctification line up with my justification?

David Zahl’s book Seculosity provides a fascinating example of this. Zahl coined the term “seculosity” to convey that becoming secular doesn’t free you from religiosity. Rather, religiosity carries over into secular life and doesn’t lighten the burden of selfhood. Zahl argues that secular culture’s highest ideal is “enoughness.” We need to know that through our performance—in careers, relationships, parenting, technology, diets, politics—we’re “enough.”

While “being enough” is the justification, the weight of the search for sanctification (the performance) often collapses the justification. We end up crippled with anxiety (Am I enough?), shame (imposter syndrome), and guilt (Have I done enough?). This is the struggle of Ken in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie—he yearns to know if he is “kenough.”

If the right-side-of-history activist represents a secular version of antinomianism, the anxious achiever seeking “enoughness” represents a secular version of legalism—law without gospel, obedience without grace. In this secular culture, we throw ourselves at sanctification, hoping to eventually conclude that we’re justified.

Out-Narrate the Secular Self

Taylor shows us we’re fundamentally dealing with hollowed-out versions of the deeply Christian notions of justification and sanctification. These aren’t arcane concepts; they’re the prototype of something the modern Western sense of self holds to in a variety of ways.

If the right-side-of-history activist represents a secular version of antinomianism, the anxious achiever seeking ‘enoughness’ represents a secular version of legalism.

I recently listened to a podcast interview with a coach who helps writers get book contracts. The interviewer asked what she says to authors who face endless rejection. The coach’s answer will strike many secular Western people as highly intuitive: “It’s really important to remember that your worth doesn’t depend on your writing being recognized. Even if all the publishers say your writing’s no good, remember that you have unconditional worth. Tell yourself that you are good.”

If you’ve spent much time around Western people, this way of dealing with a failed sense of sanctification will be recognizable. The logic is this: My actual life doesn’t match up with my highest good . . . but that’s OK; it doesn’t really matter if my life is externally a failure, because internally I affirm that I’m good.

In this case, our sense of self is a moral source: I’m just waiting for my epiphany to come, but even if it doesn’t, and I define myself as a writer, and everything I write gets rejected, I still affirm my goodness and dignity, and one day, if that epiphany comes, I’ll show you who I am.

This might sound benign for a struggling writer. But imagine the same sense of self applied to someone who inflicts horrible suffering on others yet maintains: I may have done this terrible thing, but I am in no way a bad person.

This is a counterfeit combination of justification and sanctification. It’s a forensic notion of justification—despite my failure, I’m declared righteous—but it’s a soi-disant (self-styled) righteousness. It’s self-proclaimed rather than declared by God.

How do the Christian notions of justification and sanctification shape up alongside this hollowed-out descendant? The crucial difference between the two is Jesus himself, whose life grounds one in reality and unmasks the other as mythology.

In the secular case, the “justified self” is a pure abstraction, flatly contradicted by the actual life. But it isn’t an abstraction when a Christian says, “My life is very imperfect. I’m a sinner. But God has declared that I’m righteous.” Why? Because the gospel says I’m justified by a real and perfect life—the life of Jesus. I’m not justified because I say so. I’m justified because God has said so, on the grounds that a real and superlatively better life has been credited to me.