"Did I offend you? Good." : The Perversity of Inverse Wishful Thinking.

Recently my evangelical Christian brother, and often theological sparring partner, asked a stimulating question; Is substitutionary atonement the most offensive idea in Christianity?

Substitutionary atonement is pretty much the theologically nerdy way of describing the idea that Jesus died for our sins. In substitutionary atonement Jesus death serves as a human sacrifice on our behalf.  It is understood by its adherents as a necessary adoption of the punishment incurred by our sinfulness in order for us to be at one (or atoned) with God. Within the theology of substitutionary atonement you can understand our sinfulness as the commission of bad acts by each of us individually or a corporate human responsibility for Adam and Eve’s garden folly or even an inherited corrupted nature that we can do nothing about. 

What intrigued me about my brothers question however was that he didn’t find substitutionary atonement offensive. He didn’t mean to ask his question in a way that was critical of Christianity or this idea in particular. He likes the idea of substitutionary atonement. In fact he meant to pin to subsititutionary atonement the mark of “offensiveness” as a badge of honour. That is interesting. What assumptions are behind this idea that offensiveness is somehow a virtue?

This inverse use of offensiveness is not unique to either my brother or his theology although it is evangelical Christianity where I have encountered this useage most commonly. When I googled “the offensiveness of the cross” and “offensiveness of the gospel” (both autocomplete entries on my google account) I received results that were only pro-cross and pro-gospel. Offensiveness was always a good thing; a measure of the truth of the message. Nobody after all likes to hear the truth.

This way of thinking has a danger. Even if nobody likes to hear the truth this doesn’t mean that the truth is whatever nobody likes to hear. The truth may be that I am not a great writer. I don’t want to hear that. I also however don’t want to hear that my head is a bum - which it is not. If we take offensiveness as a virtue too far we enter the ridiculous; “Methinks he doth protest too much” makes any opposition to our position evidence for it.

I have personally encountered Christian evangelists who take this stance. Their argument for their faith largely consists of highlighting how unlikeable the prospect of having to submit ones life to judgement by God is. It assails our pride. It is offensive. Therefore by implication all opposition to this idea is basically self-serving while believing in this idea, because it is not self-serving must be because it is true. Scary logic.

But these evangelists are sometimes mirrored by their opponents.  Who hasn’t heard the characterization of belief in God as a crutch to lean on. The implication is that an atheist universe is just too hard to bear for the religious. Again by implication all opposition to this atheism is basically self-serving whereas atheism, because it is not self-serving, means it is true.  The burden of atheism is cast as its virtue – it is correct precisely because it is unpalatable.

I call these arguments the inverse wishful thinking arguments. Arguments from wishful thinking argue for what is on the basis of what would be nice. Inverse wishful arguments reverse this illogic but are no better. They are however extreme and maybe even strawman versions of the sort of thing my brother was doing with his question. I don’t mean to insinuate that he was suggesting the offensiveness of substitutionary atonement was a proof of it, merely some kind of “badge of honour” unrelated to its correctness.

But I wondered as I read my brothers question, “Shouldn’t what we find offensiveness be a default guide to the wrongness of an idea? Not an exclusive or perfect guide but a nudge in the other direction? A negative quality, rather than a positive? In the absence of anything else to go on shouldn’t offensiveness tip us away from an option rather than make it attractive?”.

That assumption of mine seemed so culturally at odds with my brother’s question. And when I googled those phrases, “the offensiveness of the cross” or the gospel, I asked myself, “How is it that offensiveness is celebrated in every one of these evangelical Christian blogs and articles? Shouldn’t it be atheists making this claim?”

I guess I am saying that while arguments from wishful thinking are not really arguments at all they still seem better non-arguments than their inverse. It seems less perverse to fall into the trap of wishful thinking than the trap of making offensiveness into something good. Further if we are talking about God and God’s plan then maybe this permits us some entertainment that the ideal is a map for reality. If God is perfection then what would be nice maybe ought to be closer to what is true than what offends us as yucky or dumb. Even if not, doesn’t it seem sensible to err in that direction?

We seem to be generally attracted to making life hard for ourselves. Not only offensiveness  but also difficulty is swallowed dutifully as if it was a foul tasting medicine. One option over another can be discredited by alleging it is “the easy way out” or the “soft option”.  Yet surely, excluding all other factors, the easiest route is the best one to take. We don't exit rooms by the windows.

Psychologically inverse wishful thinking comes across as self-hating. Supposedly this is the me generation. This is the age of entitlement, just ending, according to some. I’m not so sure that’s true or at least we keep our self-flagellation tools close at hand. Otherwise why would inoffensive sound like an insult? Why do we extol the hard road? Yes, I see it as silly but I do it too.

Perhaps it's that the desire for the difficult and unpleasant is perennially justified. We do regularly let ourselves and others down. We feel bad about it. Thus a world that would be mean and disappointing to us would balance things somewhat. Which I guess makes inverse wishful thinking just normal wishful thinking after all.