One of the distinguished speakers, an intelligent man by any measure, said, “Do not be afraid to plunder the Egyptians.” It is an understandable sentiment, and perhaps there is a wisdom in it. Yet the metaphor bears its own warning, if not judgment, for we all remember what Israel first did with all that Egyptian gold.

I recently attended a Christian conference devoted to the question of how to live faithfully in a post-Christian negative age. To my alarm, I found that many Christians, in their awakening to the ruins of Christianity, have turned for guidance to the very critical theory texts that I know Islamists in Cairo had already exhausted by the early 2000s. Their attraction is understandable: these works often provide the only penetrating critique of the vast machinery of lies and deceit in which modern life is enclosed, especially within liberal societies. Yet they are, in truth, oppressive and soul-crushing, more domineering than many of the modern idols they denounce. They are the very theological articulations of the radically atheistic and negative world itself. Nothing good can come of them.