Beyond the Aspen Institute
Good-intentioned secularists figured they could logic their way out of civilizational collapse. They were wrong. Individual obedience to God—not better sharing of propositional information—is the only lever capable of navigating infinite complexity.
The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship summits. The World Economic Forum panels. The TED conferences where brilliant minds gather to share "ideas worth spreading." For decades, we've watched the same pattern: extraordinary intellects convening to diagnose civilizational problems and propose rational solutions.
If sharing propositional information was going to get us to some kind of promised land, it would have already done that by now.
The secular approach—ignoring spiritual realities and attempting to logic our way out of our meta-crisis (or omni-crisis)—has reached its natural limits. Everything about our current level of civilization seems to be breaking down simultaneously, and no amount of strategic thinking from the world's brightest minds can prevent its collapse.
This isn't because we lack intelligence. It's because intelligence itself can't solve the problem.
The Fundamental Gap: When Reality Exceeds Our Capacity to Understand
As my friend and intellectual inspiration Jordan Hall discovered through decades of building companies that enabled global conversation (MP3, DivX, and other foundational internet technologies), there's "a fundamental gap between epistemology and ontology"—between what we can know and what actually is.
Reality is infinitely complex. Our minds, no matter how brilliant, are finite. When you enter true complexity—the kind of interdependent, cascading systems that define civilizational challenges—reason alone becomes inadequate.
Hall puts it bluntly: "Intelligence can't solve the problem. Strategy can't solve the problem. And I mean this quite categorically."
This realization came after working "with some of the smartest people in the world with substantial resources" and discovering that even unlimited intellectual firepower hits an insurmountable wall when confronted with the actual complexity of reality.
The Aspen Institute gatherings represent the pinnacle of this approach: brilliant minds sharing sophisticated analysis, creating elegant frameworks, proposing evidence-based solutions. Yet the problems they're trying to solve keep getting worse.
Why the Secular Frame Can't Hold
The secular approach assumes that if we just gather enough data, develop better models, and implement smarter policies, we can engineer our way to human flourishing. This assumption contains a fatal flaw: it treats humans as sophisticated machines rather than spiritual beings operating in a reality designed by God.
Every human problem is ultimately a spiritual problem. At their root, human problems stem from spiritual disconnection—our separation from God manifests in every area of life, from personal formation to societal structures. The formation crisis destroying our children isn't solved by better curriculum—it's rooted in our separation from divine truth. The economic inequality devastating families isn't solved by policy tweaks—it's the natural result of systems designed to serve Mammon instead of God. The mental health epidemic isn't solved by more therapy—it's the inevitable outcome of lives disconnected from their divine purpose.
See: The Formation Crisis for understanding how secular education systematically undermines spiritual development, and Why America Feels Like Hell for recognizing how our entire civilization has been structured around rebellion against God.]
When you try to address spiritual problems with secular solutions, you're using the wrong tools entirely. It's like trying to perform surgery with a calculator—the instrument isn't designed for the task.
This is why decades of elite conferences, think tank reports, and policy initiatives have failed to arrest civilizational decline. They're operating from a fundamentally flawed premise about the nature of reality and the source of human problems.
The Complexity Problem: Why Individual Obedience Trumps Global Strategy
In a massively complex world, individual actions create ripple effects far beyond what any human mind can understand or predict. This isn't a limitation we can overcome with better AI or more sophisticated modeling—it's the nature of reality itself.
God knows who we are better than we do. He understands how our actions will interact with countless other variables across time to plant seeds for healthier civilization. We don't.
This is why Jordan Hall's approach has become so revolutionary: "Each of us should just build a great relationship with God and every day, just do what God tells them to do."
This isn't anti-intellectual mysticism. It's the only rational response to genuine complexity. When the system is too complex for human comprehension, the wisest strategy is to trust the Designer of the system and follow His guidance.
Individual obedience to God becomes the primary lever for civilizational change because it's the only approach that can navigate infinite complexity without requiring us to understand it first. As James 1:22 reminds us, we must be 'doers of the word, and not hearers only'—acting on God's guidance in faith, even when it defies our limited understanding.
The Heroism Required: Why This Path Demands Everything
The shift from strategic thinking to spiritual obedience requires a kind of heroism that modern culture actively discourages. As I've written about the challenges facing potential fathers today, the bar for righteous living has never been higher while the cultural support has never been lower.
See: The Heroism Required for Fatherhood for understanding why building a godly family in 2025 requires superhuman effort against systems designed to prevent it.]
Choosing obedience to God over strategic optimization means:
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Economic faith: Walking away from immediate opportunities that may be hard to let go of. Trusting that God will provide alternatives that align with your principles—believing that He knows your needs and will open doors that serve both righteousness and provision.
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Social isolation: Losing friends and professional networks when you refuse to participate in systems that profit from human degradation.
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Intellectual humility: Accepting that your understanding is limited and God's guidance might contradict your rational analysis.
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Daily surrender: Releasing control over outcomes and trusting that faithful obedience will produce results you can't foresee or measure.
Yet in this surrender, we discover the 'easy yoke' Jesus promised (Matthew 11:30), where His strength sustains us through the narrow path.
This path feels narrow because it is narrow. Christ wasn't exaggerating when He said few would find it.
The Truth Economy: Building While the Old System Burns
While secular institutions focus on preventing collapse through strategic intervention, followers of Christ are called to a different task: building alternatives that demonstrate God's design for human flourishing.
See: The Truth Economy for understanding how Christ-aligned businesses can create economic ecosystems that don't depend on corrupt global systems.]
This isn't about creating a parallel society as an escape hatch. It's about proving that righteousness produces better outcomes than rebellion—that God's way of doing business creates more value, serves people better, and builds stronger communities than Satan's alternatives.
The Truth economy represents the ultimate form of spiritual warfare: demonstrating through lived reality that divine patterns work better than human cleverness.
When individual believers focus on faithful obedience in their specific callings—whether as entrepreneurs, parents, teachers, or builders—they create centers of gravity that attract others seeking authentic alternatives to civilizational decay.
Why This Approach Actually Works
The history of Christian impact validates this approach. The early church didn't spread through strategic conferences or policy initiatives. It grew through networks of believing merchants, craftsmen, and ordinary people who integrated their faith with their daily work.
Paul the tentmaker supported his ministry through his craft. Lydia used her business to establish gathering places for new believers. These weren't grand strategic initiatives—they were individuals faithfully following God's calling in their specific circumstances.
The pattern is clear: when people build great relationships with God and consistently do what He tells them to do, the cumulative effect transforms civilization in ways no human strategy could achieve.
Modern examples confirm this pattern. William Seymour's Azusa Street Revival started with one man praying up to seven hours daily in private homes. What began in an $8/month rented building with dirt floors launched a movement that today influences over 600 million people globally.
See: William J. Seymour for the full story of how radical humility and persistent prayer launched worldwide revival.]
The key insight: Seymour wasn't trying to launch a global movement. He was simply obeying God's call to pray and serve in his specific location. The global impact emerged organically from faithful local obedience.
The End of Strategy, The Beginning of Faith
This doesn't mean Christians should abandon planning or ignore practical realities. It means recognizing that our plans must be subordinated to God's guidance, and our understanding of "practical realities" is always incomplete.
As Hall observes about his own journey: "The thing that landed for me that seemed to have the most meat on the bones was actually to take [secular conferences] as symbolic... to the degree to which we imagine that we're even vaguely capable of something as audacious as redesigning civilization re-engineering it from the bottom up, it will just look like some kind of wreckage."
But "to the degree to which we allow ourselves to move back into a proper relationship with something that is much larger than us... we're actually beginning to relearn how to engage in properly the thing that is the only way to answer" civilizational questions.
The "thing that is much larger than us" is God. The proper relationship is obedience. The only way to answer civilizational questions is through faithful individuals following divine guidance rather than human strategy.
No Sales Pitch, Just Truth
This isn't a message you can sell to people. As Hall wisely notes: "You definitely don't sell anybody on it at all. Like 0%. There is no selling."
There is only telling the truth as clearly as possible and trusting God to work in hearts that are ready to receive it.
The secular world will continue gathering at conferences, sharing 'brilliant' analyses, and proposing sophisticated solutions while civilization burns around them. That's their choice.
Our choice is simpler and harder: build a great relationship with God, listen for His guidance, and do what He tells us to do each day, trusting that He understands the ripple effects in ways we never could.
This is the only approach capable of navigating infinite complexity. It's the only strategy that will produce lasting, positive civilizational change. And it's the narrow path that will lead to life in a world increasingly choosing death.
The question isn't whether this approach will work—history proves it does. The question is whether you're willing to trade the illusion of strategic control for the reality of divine guidance.
Individual moments, conversations, and relationships that we can build are extraordinarily revolutionary in ways that we may never understand. We should be okay with that, and also trust that the work God calls us to do is never not important enough.
The Aspen Instituters will keep convening.
But your path begins with a simple prayer: "God, what do you want me to do today?"
Sources
Jordan Hall interview insights referenced throughout this piece: