Bill Maher came this close to understanding Christianity during the most recent episode of his show Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO.
During his signature “New Rule” segment, America’s most outspoken atheist wondered why so many people are dissatisfied with President Joe Biden’s job performance despite the supposedly strong economy and why so many are depressed despite modern advancements in technology.
“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a puzzle many are struggling with: Why are Biden’s approval ratings so low when things are generally pretty good?” the comedian pondered. “Wages are rising. Unemployment is negligible. The stock market is soaring. … Yes, inflation persists for a lot of things, but you know, an actual good-size TV now costs $60. We’ve got next-day shipping, stuffed-crust pizza, legal weed, GPS, and porn on the phone. Cheer the f*** up.”
Though unintentional, it would have been difficult for Maher to articulate more eloquently what modern theologians call the “myth of progress” — the idea that utopia awaits a human race that invents its own values and prioritizes material gain above all else. This post-Christian moral vision eschews traditional prescriptions for human flourishing such as social bonds, the pursuit of virtue, and a relationship with the transcendent. As Maher aptly described, “happiness,” according to this moral vision, is measured in the availability of legal marijuana, cheap televisions, and hardcore pornography.
To say that this vision has failed to produce a healthier and happier nation is to say little. Indeed, blind allegiance to the “myth of progress” has butchered the American psyche. As Maher correctly noted, people now suffer from mental illness at unprecedented levels. Forty-two percent of teenagers report feeling “persistently sad or hopeless.” Such a statistic would shake a healthy culture to its core. It stands to reason that ours is anything but.
It is no small irony that Maher’s decadeslong preoccupation with the supposed evils of Christianity played a determinative role in convincing the public to embrace the very rudderless hedonism that makes everyone miserable. His 2008 hit documentary Religulous, which came at the zenith of the “New Atheist” movement, featured “gotcha” interviews with low-educated Christians who couldn’t articulate the intellectual foundation of the faith, cultivated and developed over the millenia, let alone its civilizational value.
Had Maher undertaken a more serious investigation of the faith, he may have stumbled upon the authentic Christian answers to the questions posed in his latest “New Rule” segment.
For instance, he may have encountered a Christian thinker who could explicate the meaning of Jesus’s encounter with the woman at the well in the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel. Having married five different men, the Samaritan woman, whose renunciation of moral law and blind pursuit of pleasure had left her empty and embittered, was ostracized and forced to journey to the well alone in the midday sun. But Jesus’s offer of “living water” in place of the ordinary water of the well acknowledged the longing in the human heart for a greater satisfaction.
Likewise, Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 6 about storing up “treasures in heaven” as opposed to treasures on earth, “where moth and decay destroy and thieves break in and steal,” speaks to the fleeting nature of material satisfaction and the inevitable disappointment that comes with a life devoted to the pursuit of sensual pleasure. The “Bread of Life” discourse in John’s Gospel further stresses the idea.
In other words, no amount of stuffed-crust pizzas, cheap televisions, and pornography are capable of satiating the longing of the heart for the transcendent. And until we learn this, we are psychologically and spiritually doomed to a life of discontent.
I’d encourage Maher to keep pulling this thread. With this latest bit, he is painfully close to the answers he seeks. And should he dismiss belief in Jesus as but a Freudian exercise in wish fulfillment, I’d suggest he seek out the great arguments for the existence of God and the historical evidence of Jesus. He should not be content with ambushing simple believers in trailer parks and amusement parks, such as he did in Religulous. Brant Pitre’s The Case for Jesus would be an ideal starting point for an honest search.
In a great many other areas, Maher deserves credit for keeping an open mind, including but not limited to the establishment’s failed COVID-19 response and the university system’s degradation at the hands of cultural progressives. We can only hope he revisits the folly of his efforts to demean Christianity in a similar fashion.
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Peter Laffin is a contributor at the Washington Examiner. His work has also appeared in RealClearPolitics, the Catholic Thing, and the National Catholic Register.