A Resolution for Self-Extinction

By Scott Yi

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too?

Then there’s a pair of us!

Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

- Emily Dickinson

A few months ago, the New York Times did a profile on a man named Les Knight. Les Knight is the founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. The organization, created in 1991, has an incredibly threadbare website, with webpages proudly displayed in Times New Roman and looking as if the site had never been updated since its first years of existence. But despite the lack of modern design sensibilities, Voluntary Human Extinction is a philosophical worldview that has steadily gained popularity over the past few decades. The idea is one of environmental extremism, positing that in order to ensure the survival of the planet, humans should willingly refrain from procreation. If we want to reverse the damage that humanity has wrought, we need to have less kids, they argue. The movement does not advocate genocide, suicide, infanticide, or any other sort of violent solution in their zeal to save the earth. They simply want people to choose to end their family line.

And I suppose therein lies the controversy of the matter. It is a gut-punch to the evolutionary impulse within ourselves -- because we strive. We struggle. We arrive at some modicum of success. Unfortunately, we don’t achieve everything we hope for in our lives. That’s just how it is: life is hard. And yet one hope always remains. At the very least, our DNA can live on. Our name can live on, if we continue the family line. People like to say that our children are our legacy. The next generation can go on to do greater things than we ever could. Our children will make us proud. Voluntary Human Extinction raises the question: so what?

Upon closer analysis, some of the theological underpinnings of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement are quite antithetical to Scripture. It is hopelessly pessimistic and contrasts sharply against the vision of Christian eschatology, a vision in which God’s Kingdom ushers in a new blissful harmony between nature and humanity. Maybe we can’t fix the damage that we’ve done, but we know that Jesus can. That’s why creation groans, eagerly waiting to be “liberated from its bondage to decay” (Romans 8:21).

Where Theology Intersects with Voluntary Human Extinction

But as the year comes to a close, I haven’t been able to stop reflecting on this idea of voluntary human extinction, because there is something profoundly spiritual at the core of this philosophy. It is provocative for a good reason. It is asking humans to disappear from the spotlight; to stop thinking so much of ourselves; to die to ourselves; to decrease. Where have I heard that before, I wonder? And the more I think about it, the more I’ve come to believe that the modern-day followers of Jesus have not at all taken to heart these words of John the Baptist: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Rather, if I’m being honest with myself, all my experiences in ministry have always been built upon an ulterior motivation that is quite the opposite: He must increase, and I also should increase!

We talk about legacy all the time in church. We talk about church fathers, founding fathers, spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers. We talk about how this person saved that many lives, how that theologian changed the way we do this thing, how that pastor started this one thing that became this other thing that led to this ministry and that’s the reason why we’re all standing here today. Obviously it’s good to have a sense of history, and it’s good to be inspired to live a life of Christ-like sacrifice. But when the stories that inspire us are all about individual Christians who were able to achieve individual greatness in their lifetime, is it all that surprising that our everyday experience of church life is so performative and exhausting? So ostentatious and yet so unfulfilling? American Christianity has now gone through decades of the era of the megachurch, the era of the church brand, and it is within this framework and metric of success that every single minister has been nurtured and trained. And therefore the message that gets filtered down to the congregation is clear: do something great for God and you will be remembered. Dedicate all your time and effort to this church and one day everyone in this city will know our name. Be a part of something great. Our pastor has a vision, you see. You don't want to be left out of all the exciting things that are going on.

Christian Celebrity & Clout

In Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, one of the topics that greatly concerned the apostle was the issue of celebrity. Paul had noticed that the Corinthian believers were puffing themselves up based on their allegiance and proximity to certain well known leaders of the early church. Basically, it was the equivalent of New Testament name-dropping. Some boasted that they were part of Peter's circle, while others bragged that they knew Apollos, the hotshot preacher who was famous for his public sermons. Paul chastises, "When one says, 'I follow Paul,' and another, 'I follow Apollos,' are you not being merely human? ... Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth" (1 Corinthians 3:4-7). They were chasing that clout even in the first century.

Two thousand years later and we're making the same tired mistakes. The only difference is that, because of social media, the desire for fame is even more inescapably embedded within every fiber of our civilization. A clever tweet could get picked up. A funny TikTok could go viral. A carefully enhanced photo of your travels could get a lot of likes on Instagram. Andy Warhol said that everyone in the future will have 15 seconds of fame, but the reality is that the future is here, and what everyone has instead is their own podcast. Everyone is out here trying to make a name for themselves and the church is not really teaching us anything different. In our spiritual conversations we talk all the time about dying to the self. But it's literally impossible to be dying to the self when we're trying so hard to promote the self on social media.

Both outside the church and from within, we spend so much time thinking about what kind of mark we’re going to leave behind. But the New Testament authors did not write about their legacy. They wrote no passages about their own place in history, about being remembered for any of their own accomplishments (except that God would remember). What we see instead is 1 Corinthians 15:31, where Paul writes, "I die every day!" That's the spiritual advice I'm trying to take into the new year. I need to die every day. I need to wake up every morning and die to my comfort and to my neediness, to my self-centered dreams, to my pride and to my anger, and I especially need to die every day to that insidious pull toward success and recognition. Recognition and renown will stifle God's work in us faster than anything else. Jesus warned us very clearly, "Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them" (Matthew 6:1).

An Invisible Movement

What would it look like if our outreaches and our ministries and our works of compassion actually followed Jesus' words as our guiding principle? The pressure to perform would be off of us, I think. There would be less time spent on grandiose vision-casting narratives and more energy focused on actually increasing outcomes. There would be stronger alignment between serving God's Kingdom and doing the things we're passionate about that give us life. There would be a quiet revival, a silent revolution. A movement of humans who have voluntarily decided to die to themselves every day. A movement whose strength would come not from its popularity or pervasiveness, but rather from its sheer invisibility and imperceptibility. A movement of nobody in particular, of nobody important, of no one you've ever heard of. A movement exactly as God intended.

Scott Yi lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where he writes and teaches literacy to underserved populations. Scott is a former medical student, former pastor, and current cat dad.

You can read more of his articles here.