My thanks to Pat Miller for this concise, creative excerpt. In it he tries to answer the question "What is Postmodernism?" in a fresh way.
"If reality itself is a mini-narrative constructed from personal experience and belief, then meaning cannot exist on a large scale. Grandiose, all-encompassing meaning requires equally grand mega-narratives. The greatest religious, philosophical, and political thinkers drafted the mega-narratives within which we live today. Yet culture often clashes with these ideas and asks “yes, but…” Loving Jesus is great, but why shouldn’t everyone go to heaven? Consumerism is dandy, but what if there’s more to life than just buying things? Communism is swell, but what if I don't want to start a war?
With inexhaustible “yes, but…” questions, postmodernism aims to snuff and overburden the gatekeepers of knowledge, steal their keys, make copies and pass them out to everyone free of charge. Eventually, postmodernism bought the most breathtaking Xerox machine ever imagined, and made copies of every word written. Then it built a library for every person, and said “This is the house of your truth, take this lighter and scanner, burn that with which you disagree, and copy that which you love. Then, know in your heart that this is truth of equal value to the truth next door, and truth universes away.”
In this way meaning lost it’s structure and it’s house. If each library is created equal, then it’s truth must be equal. Its truth is separate from all other truth, and it’s meaning is different from all other meanings. Its voice is loud, but no louder than anyone elses. In miserable failure, the old gatekeepers wept at the foot of the gates of wisdom. This is the postmodern epic of reality."
Showing posts with label Postmodernism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Postmodernism. Show all posts
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization
This article, Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization, appeared in Adbusters. It is a critical look at one evening in hipsterdom. No idea what a hipster is? Take a look. His point in the article is that "cool" is made up of a patchwork of styles from taken from counter-cultures... with the coolest being the most counter-cultural. This could only happen in a postmodern culture, which is completely comfortable lifting a manner of speaking, of dressing, of living from it's native context regardless of its original meaning. The underlying belief here is that those symbols have no meaning, thus, taking them from their original context is not a problem.
An excerpt from the article:
"It’s an odd dance of self-identity – adamantly denying your existence while wearing clearly defined symbols that proclaims it... We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new."
If you are really interested in diving in to postmodernism and its influences on culture check out Jerram Barr's lecture: Postmodernism and Style.
Also, here is a blogger who wrote a post about this article. The Style of Subversion by Mark Van Steenwyk. He offers some interesting criticisms of the tyranny of cool.
An excerpt from the article:
"It’s an odd dance of self-identity – adamantly denying your existence while wearing clearly defined symbols that proclaims it... We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new."
If you are really interested in diving in to postmodernism and its influences on culture check out Jerram Barr's lecture: Postmodernism and Style.
Also, here is a blogger who wrote a post about this article. The Style of Subversion by Mark Van Steenwyk. He offers some interesting criticisms of the tyranny of cool.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 11)
For those who've kept up this far and want to hear a little bit more about postmodern Christianity and one of its present day incarnations, the Emergent Church, I recommend lectures from two people.
1. Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill in Seattle, gave a talk about the Emergent church at the convergent conference. In the Q&A he said that he had been planning on giving an entirely different talk coming into the conference, but after a talk with some of the people in the seminary he switched to this one. He also said that this was a talk he had been waiting several years to give because he felt he could not give it with the proper tone (without getting angry and saying things that he'll regret) until now. Whatever your stance on the Emergent church Driscoll's words have to be heard. He is an insider in both the worlds of Evangelical Christianity and the Emergent church, and he has a very interesting story, which he relates in this talk. Listen.
2. Darrin Patrick, pastor of The Journey in St. Louis, gave a series of lectures on the Emergent church at Covenant Seminary this fall which act as a companion to the Driscoll talk. Patrick gives a comprehensive analysis of the history of the Emergent church as well as his thoughts on its strengths and weaknesses. To listen to the lectures click here then search for "Emergent" under the topic category.
1. Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill in Seattle, gave a talk about the Emergent church at the convergent conference. In the Q&A he said that he had been planning on giving an entirely different talk coming into the conference, but after a talk with some of the people in the seminary he switched to this one. He also said that this was a talk he had been waiting several years to give because he felt he could not give it with the proper tone (without getting angry and saying things that he'll regret) until now. Whatever your stance on the Emergent church Driscoll's words have to be heard. He is an insider in both the worlds of Evangelical Christianity and the Emergent church, and he has a very interesting story, which he relates in this talk. Listen.
2. Darrin Patrick, pastor of The Journey in St. Louis, gave a series of lectures on the Emergent church at Covenant Seminary this fall which act as a companion to the Driscoll talk. Patrick gives a comprehensive analysis of the history of the Emergent church as well as his thoughts on its strengths and weaknesses. To listen to the lectures click here then search for "Emergent" under the topic category.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 10)
In the last post we looked at the Bible’s challenge to those who would hold both timeless truth and ministry methods in closed hands, allowing neither to change in the name of relevancy. This post is about the Bible’s challenge to the approach which opens both hands and allows both the way the message is communicated AND the content of the Christian message to change. It is done in the name of relevancy – running from the error of the two closed hands, isolation of the church, but it doing so it commits the opposite error.
The first question to ask when both hands are opened is: who gets to determine what truths stay and what truths go? The answer is the culture. When both hands are opened relevancy is raised to the highest priority and the gospel is effectively anchored to the culture. If this happens, then the culture calls the tune of the gospel a wolf has entered wearing sheep’s clothing.
The danger is this: the gospel is now a thing that must be adapted to fit the hearers, and the ever-shifting culture sits over the Bible as judge and becomes the final authority in determining what truths remain and which must be discarded. Is there something in the Bible that the culture doesn’t understand, approve of, find helpful or progressive? It can go. Does the idea of a just and holy God who has wrath toward sin offend the culture’s sensibilities? Then portray a Jesus who is nothing but love and who shares the culture’s understanding of tolerance and acceptance and moral relativity. Does what the Bible has to say about controversial issues such as gender, sexuality, and marriage seem archaic and backward? Then preach about other things and omit the God’s words on that part of the human condition. Has the culture learned a distrust of absolute truth and authority? Then reduce the Bible to “a member of the congregation” whose voice must be heard just the same as any other voice in the congregation.
It’s not hard to spot the things that would be the first to go. Postmodernism is not unique in this, every culture humans have ever created has no shortage of areas where the Bible’s truths will rub against the grain of its preferences. But why should those preferences be given the power to determine what things the Bible teaches are retained? We can look at other cultures across the history of the world and do not find it difficult to spot things we judge to be blind spots or backward thinking. We modern people look down on the gladiatorial contests of the Romans or the propriety of Elizabethan England, and feel that we have advanced beyond such things. There are as many examples of this as there are cultures in the history of the world. If we would deny any culture in history has ever had a perfect understanding of truth, why give our own that credit? Why entrust the gospel to our postmodern sensibilities? Human culture is fickle and fallen and will fail if given such a precious task as the final stewardship of the gospel. Because of this if the hand which should grip the timeless truths of the gospel is opened and the culture is given the authority over it then the seeds of error have been sown into the church.
This truth is that we become more like what we orbit around. Opening both hands sets Christianity on a course to be conformed to the culture. In that case it will cease to be Christianity at all, but will just become “paganism in Christian language.” Yes, Christianity is, in a sense, changeable, but it is also possible to change the gospel until the gospel is lost. The approach of closing both hands errs in that it produces a church that isolates itself from the world so the world doesn’t get to see the gospel. Opening both hands ends in the exact same destination; it only takes a different path to get there. This sets Christianity on a course of assimilation. The values of the culture so influence and infiltrate the church that Christianity begins to preach only those things the culture already approves. Either way the world still doesn’t get to see the gospel
The ironic thing is that it is the very impulse of compassion, to give the world a message it can understand, which tempts the church to open the second hand. But the charge before the church is not only to be understandable. The second half must not be lost: to preach the gospel. It is not compassion which enters the hurt, broken places of this world, but fails to call them to the only place there is healing. It is not love that gives the world a message it understands, but that message does not help it to understand what God has done for it in Christ. Nor is it faithfulness to be unclear where the Bible is clear, and to seek not to wound where the gospel calls us to make wounds in love. In failing to do so the church might not anger men, but it will betray God.
The first question to ask when both hands are opened is: who gets to determine what truths stay and what truths go? The answer is the culture. When both hands are opened relevancy is raised to the highest priority and the gospel is effectively anchored to the culture. If this happens, then the culture calls the tune of the gospel a wolf has entered wearing sheep’s clothing.
The danger is this: the gospel is now a thing that must be adapted to fit the hearers, and the ever-shifting culture sits over the Bible as judge and becomes the final authority in determining what truths remain and which must be discarded. Is there something in the Bible that the culture doesn’t understand, approve of, find helpful or progressive? It can go. Does the idea of a just and holy God who has wrath toward sin offend the culture’s sensibilities? Then portray a Jesus who is nothing but love and who shares the culture’s understanding of tolerance and acceptance and moral relativity. Does what the Bible has to say about controversial issues such as gender, sexuality, and marriage seem archaic and backward? Then preach about other things and omit the God’s words on that part of the human condition. Has the culture learned a distrust of absolute truth and authority? Then reduce the Bible to “a member of the congregation” whose voice must be heard just the same as any other voice in the congregation.
It’s not hard to spot the things that would be the first to go. Postmodernism is not unique in this, every culture humans have ever created has no shortage of areas where the Bible’s truths will rub against the grain of its preferences. But why should those preferences be given the power to determine what things the Bible teaches are retained? We can look at other cultures across the history of the world and do not find it difficult to spot things we judge to be blind spots or backward thinking. We modern people look down on the gladiatorial contests of the Romans or the propriety of Elizabethan England, and feel that we have advanced beyond such things. There are as many examples of this as there are cultures in the history of the world. If we would deny any culture in history has ever had a perfect understanding of truth, why give our own that credit? Why entrust the gospel to our postmodern sensibilities? Human culture is fickle and fallen and will fail if given such a precious task as the final stewardship of the gospel. Because of this if the hand which should grip the timeless truths of the gospel is opened and the culture is given the authority over it then the seeds of error have been sown into the church.
This truth is that we become more like what we orbit around. Opening both hands sets Christianity on a course to be conformed to the culture. In that case it will cease to be Christianity at all, but will just become “paganism in Christian language.” Yes, Christianity is, in a sense, changeable, but it is also possible to change the gospel until the gospel is lost. The approach of closing both hands errs in that it produces a church that isolates itself from the world so the world doesn’t get to see the gospel. Opening both hands ends in the exact same destination; it only takes a different path to get there. This sets Christianity on a course of assimilation. The values of the culture so influence and infiltrate the church that Christianity begins to preach only those things the culture already approves. Either way the world still doesn’t get to see the gospel
The ironic thing is that it is the very impulse of compassion, to give the world a message it can understand, which tempts the church to open the second hand. But the charge before the church is not only to be understandable. The second half must not be lost: to preach the gospel. It is not compassion which enters the hurt, broken places of this world, but fails to call them to the only place there is healing. It is not love that gives the world a message it understands, but that message does not help it to understand what God has done for it in Christ. Nor is it faithfulness to be unclear where the Bible is clear, and to seek not to wound where the gospel calls us to make wounds in love. In failing to do so the church might not anger men, but it will betray God.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 9)
Postmodernism #9
In the last post I talked about the central question in talking about postmodern Christianity is how to discern the line between what is changeable and unchangeable in Christianity.
To borrow an analogy from Mark Driscoll, a model that might help guide us in discerning that line is to think about it in terms of what parts of Christianity do you hold in an open hand and what parts do you hold in a closed fist. In one hand you have timeless truths of Christianity (Who created man, what is the fall, who is Jesus, what happened on the cross, to name a few examples) and in the other hand you have the way that you communicate those truths.
There are three options:
1. Two closed fists. Neither the timeless truths nor the methods of communication change.
2. Two open hands. Both sides are flexible. Both the truths themselves and the ministry of them are things subject to change with the changing winds of culture, time, geography, demography, etc.
3. One open hand, one closed fist. Here the timeless truths go in the closed fist and the timely ministry methods go in the open hand.
I am convinced that the third option is the calling of the Bible. It is also the most difficult, as John Stott said, “…it is comparatively easy to be faithful if we do not care about being contemporary, and it is easy to be contemporary if we do not bother to be faithful. It is the search for a combination of truth and relevance that is exacting.” This is our challenge: to faithfully preach an unchanging gospel to a changing culture. The first two options only lead to different errors, and the Bible has sharp critiques for both of them. I want to address the Biblical challenge to the first and second option, beginning with number one.
To those who live with two closed hands the challenge of the Bible is to open the hand of timely methods and truly endeavor to speak the gospel to our generation in forms it will understand. Jesus did not live with two closed hands. He held onto the timeless truths more truly than anyone ever has, but he lived with the other hand open. The most obvious evidence of this is the incarnation. As Jerram Barrs said in his class Apologetics and Outreach, “Jesus did not shout from heaven.” Christ became a man and entered into our fallen, broken world. He entered into a culture and spoke its language, learned its values and customs. He came and dwelled among the people he was sent to. He knew the hearts of his hearers and spoke to the unique stories of every individual he came in contact with. We see the same philosophy of incarnation in the ministry of Paul, who wrote “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22) Paul was an educated Jew and when he was among educated Jews his knowledge of their culture shone. His sermons are filled with quotations of the scriptures they had spent hours memorizing and praying over. His appeal to Christ was founded in the prophecies and promises they knew and he showed how the hope for a Messiah which their culture was built around was fulfilled in Jesus. In different audiences his messages change. The gospel he preaches does not change, but the way he preaches does. In Acts 17 we see him in Athens speaking to educated Pagans after a long day of walking in the marketplace in Athens and looking at their objects of worship. You can’t find a quotation of scripture in the sermon he gives to them. But he does quote the poets they loved. He references their local folklore. He shows his familiarity with their philosophical debates. He builds a bridge to Christ from the things that they hold dear. Paul was not selling out by preaching in this way; he was being a good missionary.
Why is it that if we send a missionary overseas and he or she adopts the culture of the mission field in order to communicate, we applaud, but we are not willing to do so at home? What is the difference between missionaries overseas and those at home? There is no difference. We must send missionaries into postmodern culture and teach them to be good missionaries in the same way that Jesus and Paul were. The alternative is irrelevancy. The world will not stop changing, and because of that it is silly to expect to continue to be able to communicate if we live with two closed hands. It is not enough to be “not of” the world, for Christ also called the Church to be in the world. Christ has not left us freedom to close ranks and close the second hand and withdraw from the world. We are to be salt and light. The Church must send missionaries into our postmodern culture. Wherever those missionaries go they must learn the unique landscape of the culture they are in, learn its sins and what parts of the truth it retains, and preach the gospel in the areas where it is under attack. They must, as Christ and Paul did, seek to remove every unnecessary barrier to the gospel. There are enough barriers to the gospel when preaching in a fallen world already without us adding our own.
It is a matter of compassion. There are real people out there in that changing world who are carried along in the current of the culture like sheep without a shepherd. These are people God made and loves and cares for. They desperately need the gospel and the Church must find them and enter their world. The Church must know them and tell them the truth in a language they understand.
Adoniram Judson was a missionary in Burma and faithfully worked for long, hard years to translate the Bible into Burmese. He experienced a higher cost for that faithfulness than most of us will ever be asked to pay. When the work was done people began to come to him from all over Burma and the neighboring countries because they had heard that there was a man who “had the words of God.” If we want our culture to come to the Church seeking the words of God then we also must be translators.
The Church must become a people with one hand firmly grasping the timeless truths of the gospel and the other hand reaching out to take hold of a culture which so desperately needs those truths.
In the last post I talked about the central question in talking about postmodern Christianity is how to discern the line between what is changeable and unchangeable in Christianity.
To borrow an analogy from Mark Driscoll, a model that might help guide us in discerning that line is to think about it in terms of what parts of Christianity do you hold in an open hand and what parts do you hold in a closed fist. In one hand you have timeless truths of Christianity (Who created man, what is the fall, who is Jesus, what happened on the cross, to name a few examples) and in the other hand you have the way that you communicate those truths.
There are three options:
1. Two closed fists. Neither the timeless truths nor the methods of communication change.
2. Two open hands. Both sides are flexible. Both the truths themselves and the ministry of them are things subject to change with the changing winds of culture, time, geography, demography, etc.
3. One open hand, one closed fist. Here the timeless truths go in the closed fist and the timely ministry methods go in the open hand.
I am convinced that the third option is the calling of the Bible. It is also the most difficult, as John Stott said, “…it is comparatively easy to be faithful if we do not care about being contemporary, and it is easy to be contemporary if we do not bother to be faithful. It is the search for a combination of truth and relevance that is exacting.” This is our challenge: to faithfully preach an unchanging gospel to a changing culture. The first two options only lead to different errors, and the Bible has sharp critiques for both of them. I want to address the Biblical challenge to the first and second option, beginning with number one.
To those who live with two closed hands the challenge of the Bible is to open the hand of timely methods and truly endeavor to speak the gospel to our generation in forms it will understand. Jesus did not live with two closed hands. He held onto the timeless truths more truly than anyone ever has, but he lived with the other hand open. The most obvious evidence of this is the incarnation. As Jerram Barrs said in his class Apologetics and Outreach, “Jesus did not shout from heaven.” Christ became a man and entered into our fallen, broken world. He entered into a culture and spoke its language, learned its values and customs. He came and dwelled among the people he was sent to. He knew the hearts of his hearers and spoke to the unique stories of every individual he came in contact with. We see the same philosophy of incarnation in the ministry of Paul, who wrote “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22) Paul was an educated Jew and when he was among educated Jews his knowledge of their culture shone. His sermons are filled with quotations of the scriptures they had spent hours memorizing and praying over. His appeal to Christ was founded in the prophecies and promises they knew and he showed how the hope for a Messiah which their culture was built around was fulfilled in Jesus. In different audiences his messages change. The gospel he preaches does not change, but the way he preaches does. In Acts 17 we see him in Athens speaking to educated Pagans after a long day of walking in the marketplace in Athens and looking at their objects of worship. You can’t find a quotation of scripture in the sermon he gives to them. But he does quote the poets they loved. He references their local folklore. He shows his familiarity with their philosophical debates. He builds a bridge to Christ from the things that they hold dear. Paul was not selling out by preaching in this way; he was being a good missionary.
Why is it that if we send a missionary overseas and he or she adopts the culture of the mission field in order to communicate, we applaud, but we are not willing to do so at home? What is the difference between missionaries overseas and those at home? There is no difference. We must send missionaries into postmodern culture and teach them to be good missionaries in the same way that Jesus and Paul were. The alternative is irrelevancy. The world will not stop changing, and because of that it is silly to expect to continue to be able to communicate if we live with two closed hands. It is not enough to be “not of” the world, for Christ also called the Church to be in the world. Christ has not left us freedom to close ranks and close the second hand and withdraw from the world. We are to be salt and light. The Church must send missionaries into our postmodern culture. Wherever those missionaries go they must learn the unique landscape of the culture they are in, learn its sins and what parts of the truth it retains, and preach the gospel in the areas where it is under attack. They must, as Christ and Paul did, seek to remove every unnecessary barrier to the gospel. There are enough barriers to the gospel when preaching in a fallen world already without us adding our own.
It is a matter of compassion. There are real people out there in that changing world who are carried along in the current of the culture like sheep without a shepherd. These are people God made and loves and cares for. They desperately need the gospel and the Church must find them and enter their world. The Church must know them and tell them the truth in a language they understand.
Adoniram Judson was a missionary in Burma and faithfully worked for long, hard years to translate the Bible into Burmese. He experienced a higher cost for that faithfulness than most of us will ever be asked to pay. When the work was done people began to come to him from all over Burma and the neighboring countries because they had heard that there was a man who “had the words of God.” If we want our culture to come to the Church seeking the words of God then we also must be translators.
The Church must become a people with one hand firmly grasping the timeless truths of the gospel and the other hand reaching out to take hold of a culture which so desperately needs those truths.
Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 9)
In the last post I talked about the central question in talking about postmodern Christianity is how to discern the line between what is changeable and unchangeable in Christianity.
To borrow an analogy from Mark Driscoll, a model that might help guide us in discerning that line is to think about it in terms of what parts of Christianity do you hold in an open hand and what parts do you hold in a closed fist. In one hand you have timeless truths of Christianity (Who created man, what is the fall, who is Jesus, what happened on the cross, to name a few examples) and in the other hand you have the way that you communicate those truths.
There are three options:
1. Two closed fists. Neither the timeless truths nor the methods of communication change.
2. Two open hands. Both sides are flexible. Both the truths themselves and the ministry of them are things subject to change with the changing winds of culture, time, geography, demography, etc.
3. One open hand, one closed fist. Here the timeless truths go in the closed fist and the timely ministry methods go in the open hand.
I am convinced that the third option is the calling of the Bible. It is also the most difficult, as John Stott said, “…it is comparatively easy to be faithful if we do not care about being contemporary, and it is easy to be contemporary if we do not bother to be faithful. It is the search for a combination of truth and relevance that is exacting.” This is our challenge: to faithfully preach an unchanging gospel to a changing culture. The first two options only lead to different errors, and the Bible has sharp critiques for both of them. I want to address the Biblical challenge to the first and second option, beginning with number one.
To those who live with two closed hands the challenge of the Bible is to open the hand of timely methods and truly endeavor to speak the gospel to our generation in forms it will understand. Jesus did not live with two closed hands. He held onto the timeless truths more truly than anyone ever has, but he lived with the other hand open. The most obvious evidence of this is the incarnation. As Jerram Barrs said in his class Apologetics and Outreach, “Jesus did not shout from heaven.” Christ became a man and entered into our fallen, broken world. He entered into a culture and spoke its language, learned its values and customs. He came and dwelled among the people he was sent to. He knew the hearts of his hearers and spoke to the unique stories of every individual he came in contact with. We see the same philosophy of incarnation in the ministry of Paul, who wrote “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22) Paul was an educated Jew and when he was among educated Jews his knowledge of their culture shone. His sermons are filled with quotations of the scriptures they had spent hours memorizing and praying over. His appeal to Christ was founded in the prophecies and promises they knew and he showed how the hope for a Messiah which their culture was built around was fulfilled in Jesus. In different audiences his messages change. The gospel he preaches does not change, but the way he preaches does. In Acts 17 we see him in Athens speaking to educated Pagans after a long day of walking in the marketplace in Athens and looking at their objects of worship. You can’t find a quotation of scripture in the sermon he gives to them. But he does quote the poets they loved. He references their local folklore. He shows his familiarity with their philosophical debates. He builds a bridge to Christ from the things that they hold dear. Paul was not selling out by preaching in this way; he was being a good missionary.
Why is it that if we send a missionary overseas and he or she adopts the culture of the mission field in order to communicate, we applaud, but we are not willing to do so at home? What is the difference between missionaries overseas and those at home? There is no difference. We must send missionaries into postmodern culture and teach them to be good missionaries in the same way that Jesus and Paul were. The alternative is irrelevancy. The world will not stop changing, and because of that it is silly to expect to continue to be able to communicate if we live with two closed hands. It is not enough to be “not of” the world, for Christ also called the Church to be in the world. Christ has not left us freedom to close ranks and close the second hand and withdraw from the world. We are to be salt and light. The Church must send missionaries into our postmodern culture. Wherever those missionaries go they must learn the unique landscape of the culture they are in, learn its sins and what parts of the truth it retains, and preach the gospel in the areas where it is under attack. They must, as Christ and Paul did, seek to remove every unnecessary barrier to the gospel. There are enough barriers to the gospel when preaching in a fallen world already without us adding our own.
It is a matter of compassion. There are real people out there in that changing world who are carried along in the current of the culture like sheep without a shepherd. These are people God made and loves and cares for. They desperately need the gospel and the Church must find them and enter their world. The Church must know them and tell them the truth in a language they understand.
Adoniram Judson was a missionary in Burma and faithfully worked for long, hard years to translate the Bible into Burmese. He experienced a higher cost for that faithfulness than most of us will ever be asked to pay. When the work was done people began to come to him from all over Burma and the neighboring countries because they had heard that there was a man who “had the words of God.” If we want our culture to come to the Church seeking the words of God then we also must be translators.
The Church must become a people with one hand firmly grasping the timeless truths of the gospel and the other hand reaching out to take hold of a culture which so desperately needs those truths.
To borrow an analogy from Mark Driscoll, a model that might help guide us in discerning that line is to think about it in terms of what parts of Christianity do you hold in an open hand and what parts do you hold in a closed fist. In one hand you have timeless truths of Christianity (Who created man, what is the fall, who is Jesus, what happened on the cross, to name a few examples) and in the other hand you have the way that you communicate those truths.
There are three options:
1. Two closed fists. Neither the timeless truths nor the methods of communication change.
2. Two open hands. Both sides are flexible. Both the truths themselves and the ministry of them are things subject to change with the changing winds of culture, time, geography, demography, etc.
3. One open hand, one closed fist. Here the timeless truths go in the closed fist and the timely ministry methods go in the open hand.
I am convinced that the third option is the calling of the Bible. It is also the most difficult, as John Stott said, “…it is comparatively easy to be faithful if we do not care about being contemporary, and it is easy to be contemporary if we do not bother to be faithful. It is the search for a combination of truth and relevance that is exacting.” This is our challenge: to faithfully preach an unchanging gospel to a changing culture. The first two options only lead to different errors, and the Bible has sharp critiques for both of them. I want to address the Biblical challenge to the first and second option, beginning with number one.
To those who live with two closed hands the challenge of the Bible is to open the hand of timely methods and truly endeavor to speak the gospel to our generation in forms it will understand. Jesus did not live with two closed hands. He held onto the timeless truths more truly than anyone ever has, but he lived with the other hand open. The most obvious evidence of this is the incarnation. As Jerram Barrs said in his class Apologetics and Outreach, “Jesus did not shout from heaven.” Christ became a man and entered into our fallen, broken world. He entered into a culture and spoke its language, learned its values and customs. He came and dwelled among the people he was sent to. He knew the hearts of his hearers and spoke to the unique stories of every individual he came in contact with. We see the same philosophy of incarnation in the ministry of Paul, who wrote “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22) Paul was an educated Jew and when he was among educated Jews his knowledge of their culture shone. His sermons are filled with quotations of the scriptures they had spent hours memorizing and praying over. His appeal to Christ was founded in the prophecies and promises they knew and he showed how the hope for a Messiah which their culture was built around was fulfilled in Jesus. In different audiences his messages change. The gospel he preaches does not change, but the way he preaches does. In Acts 17 we see him in Athens speaking to educated Pagans after a long day of walking in the marketplace in Athens and looking at their objects of worship. You can’t find a quotation of scripture in the sermon he gives to them. But he does quote the poets they loved. He references their local folklore. He shows his familiarity with their philosophical debates. He builds a bridge to Christ from the things that they hold dear. Paul was not selling out by preaching in this way; he was being a good missionary.
Why is it that if we send a missionary overseas and he or she adopts the culture of the mission field in order to communicate, we applaud, but we are not willing to do so at home? What is the difference between missionaries overseas and those at home? There is no difference. We must send missionaries into postmodern culture and teach them to be good missionaries in the same way that Jesus and Paul were. The alternative is irrelevancy. The world will not stop changing, and because of that it is silly to expect to continue to be able to communicate if we live with two closed hands. It is not enough to be “not of” the world, for Christ also called the Church to be in the world. Christ has not left us freedom to close ranks and close the second hand and withdraw from the world. We are to be salt and light. The Church must send missionaries into our postmodern culture. Wherever those missionaries go they must learn the unique landscape of the culture they are in, learn its sins and what parts of the truth it retains, and preach the gospel in the areas where it is under attack. They must, as Christ and Paul did, seek to remove every unnecessary barrier to the gospel. There are enough barriers to the gospel when preaching in a fallen world already without us adding our own.
It is a matter of compassion. There are real people out there in that changing world who are carried along in the current of the culture like sheep without a shepherd. These are people God made and loves and cares for. They desperately need the gospel and the Church must find them and enter their world. The Church must know them and tell them the truth in a language they understand.
Adoniram Judson was a missionary in Burma and faithfully worked for long, hard years to translate the Bible into Burmese. He experienced a higher cost for that faithfulness than most of us will ever be asked to pay. When the work was done people began to come to him from all over Burma and the neighboring countries because they had heard that there was a man who “had the words of God.” If we want our culture to come to the Church seeking the words of God then we also must be translators.
The Church must become a people with one hand firmly grasping the timeless truths of the gospel and the other hand reaching out to take hold of a culture which so desperately needs those truths.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 8)
We have talked so far about what postmodernism is, what it is good and true about it as well as what is false in it, and how Christianity must respond to those places in the culture that clash with the truth. Is the discussion ended? No. To think that discussion is over when we have raised the problems and then dispensed answers like pills to be swallowed is to misunderstand the issue. Why? There are postmodern Christians.
No, I have not just written an oxymoron. I have not combined things that don’t mix, like oil and water. So far we have been talking about postmodernism as something that is “out there,” but the discussion is not ended. It is not something just “out there,” but it is something that is also within us. It is the story we have been soaked in and it has soaked into us.
The interaction between Christianity and culture is not such that the gospel pushes out the cultural values in the territory it enters like an invading army pushes out a rebel army in a war. We do not become blank slates and then become Christians; we are still products of our own culture. Instead the gospel redeems and renews whatever it touches, and the task for Christians is for the good in culture to be renewed and that which is false to be redeemed.
Because that is the way Christianity interacts with culture there will be postmodern Christians – people thoroughly influenced by postmodernism, yet deeply committed to Christianity. People influenced by postmodernism will begin to ask unique questions about their faith and understand it in different ways. Parts of Christianity will rub against the grain of postmodern sensibilities; while there will be deep agreement in other areas. There will be a temptation to shave off the rough edges in those places where there is friction.
This is where the challenge comes in. Christianity must be relevant to every culture it is in. By that I mean it must find a way to speak the truth of the gospel in a way that is winsome and understandable to every culture it enters. In other words, there are ways in which Christianity is changeable. However, the gospel is a constellation of truths which are timeless, which means that there are also ways in which Christianity is unchangeable. It is certainly true that you can change Christianity until it is no longer Christianity and adapt the gospel until the gospel is lost.
The central question postmodern Christians must find a Biblical answer to is this: Where is the line drawn by which we can know what is changeable about Christianity and what is unchangeable? The dangers of irrelevancy and the loss of the gospel lurk on either side.
So our discussion of postmodernism and Christianity must shift to the issues that are arising as people are trying to answer this question...
No, I have not just written an oxymoron. I have not combined things that don’t mix, like oil and water. So far we have been talking about postmodernism as something that is “out there,” but the discussion is not ended. It is not something just “out there,” but it is something that is also within us. It is the story we have been soaked in and it has soaked into us.
The interaction between Christianity and culture is not such that the gospel pushes out the cultural values in the territory it enters like an invading army pushes out a rebel army in a war. We do not become blank slates and then become Christians; we are still products of our own culture. Instead the gospel redeems and renews whatever it touches, and the task for Christians is for the good in culture to be renewed and that which is false to be redeemed.
Because that is the way Christianity interacts with culture there will be postmodern Christians – people thoroughly influenced by postmodernism, yet deeply committed to Christianity. People influenced by postmodernism will begin to ask unique questions about their faith and understand it in different ways. Parts of Christianity will rub against the grain of postmodern sensibilities; while there will be deep agreement in other areas. There will be a temptation to shave off the rough edges in those places where there is friction.
This is where the challenge comes in. Christianity must be relevant to every culture it is in. By that I mean it must find a way to speak the truth of the gospel in a way that is winsome and understandable to every culture it enters. In other words, there are ways in which Christianity is changeable. However, the gospel is a constellation of truths which are timeless, which means that there are also ways in which Christianity is unchangeable. It is certainly true that you can change Christianity until it is no longer Christianity and adapt the gospel until the gospel is lost.
The central question postmodern Christians must find a Biblical answer to is this: Where is the line drawn by which we can know what is changeable about Christianity and what is unchangeable? The dangers of irrelevancy and the loss of the gospel lurk on either side.
So our discussion of postmodernism and Christianity must shift to the issues that are arising as people are trying to answer this question...
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 7)
As I said, our culture’s conclusions on morality flow naturally from its conclusions about authority and truth. If there is nothing above us, morality is up for grabs. Morality is a matter of personal choice. Our culture has adopted this view of morality on such a deep level it has even affected the meanings of words. Tolerance has come to mean “accepting me as I am and condoning my choices.” Tolerance no longer leaves room for disagreement; if you think someone’s choices are wrong you are being intolerant. It is implied now that right means “right for me.” The idea of “right” no longer carries exclusivity with it. You and I can both be “right” even if we are talking about mutually exclusive things. The word judgment has become synonymous with condemnation, something which our culture hates. There is no longer a sense that judgment means “determining right from wrong,” but now the word only has a negative meaning. When the subtle shifts in the meaning of the words are complete half the battle is lost.
Look at what is taboo and politically incorrect in our culture: asserting that one way is true over another. This should be an alarming thing! This means that I can do whatever seems right to me no matter how destructive it is and the thing that ruffles more feathers is someone else saying to me “you are wrong and you need to change”. Such a statement is seen as arrogant, narrow-minded, and offensive, especially when it is a Christian speaking. The frightening thing about this should be that when the Bible speaks of people lost in the deepest wickedness the phrase that comes up over and over is “and each one did what seemed right in his own eyes.” The Bible doesn’t reserve this statement for utopias of harmony and love, but for a culture which is poised to devour itself. The Bible says that human soul is such that unrestrained freedom in the area of morality always ends in immorality which, in turn, always ends in destruction, but our culture has raised this phrase up above us and waved it above us like a banner.
Our culture needs truth in the area of morality; it needs God-given standards of right and wrong. God did not throw darts at a board labeled “human behavior” to decide on what sin was. Right and wrong are not arbitrary. Righteousness leads to flourishing. Sin destroys whatever it touches. God’s commandments are good, and we were made for them. Only in holiness do we find our joy. The role of the Christian in a culture such as ours is to hold out truth in the area of morals in the way we speak and in the way we act.
We must not fall into the traps of our culture in the way it uses language. Our culture says that it is not possible to judge without condemnation or label anything “wrong” without ugliness. However, Christians should be both more loving in their interactions with people they disagree with as well as better able to judge rightly what is true and false in their lives. We ought to live in such a way that makes the Biblical world view in the area of morality attractive to those who do not share it. What a wonderful thing if those on the outside could look at Christians and say “I do not share their morals, but they have treated me with such kindness and respect that I feel a great affection for them nonetheless.” Woefully, when people speak of Christian morality it is often the opposite of that statement.
It is a difficult thing to be both more loving and a truer judge, not compromising on the call to hold both grace and truth out to our world. Yet, that is exactly what we see in the life of Jesus, and that is exactly the calling which is before us. If the Christian capitulates to the cultures views on morality in order to reduce the tension of disagreement he unfaithful to the gospel. Our role is nil, and society is the worse for it. Instead, if the Christian lives as Jesus did there will be flourishing, as we show what it means to live under the Lordship of Christ in a fallen, morally confused world.
Look at what is taboo and politically incorrect in our culture: asserting that one way is true over another. This should be an alarming thing! This means that I can do whatever seems right to me no matter how destructive it is and the thing that ruffles more feathers is someone else saying to me “you are wrong and you need to change”. Such a statement is seen as arrogant, narrow-minded, and offensive, especially when it is a Christian speaking. The frightening thing about this should be that when the Bible speaks of people lost in the deepest wickedness the phrase that comes up over and over is “and each one did what seemed right in his own eyes.” The Bible doesn’t reserve this statement for utopias of harmony and love, but for a culture which is poised to devour itself. The Bible says that human soul is such that unrestrained freedom in the area of morality always ends in immorality which, in turn, always ends in destruction, but our culture has raised this phrase up above us and waved it above us like a banner.
Our culture needs truth in the area of morality; it needs God-given standards of right and wrong. God did not throw darts at a board labeled “human behavior” to decide on what sin was. Right and wrong are not arbitrary. Righteousness leads to flourishing. Sin destroys whatever it touches. God’s commandments are good, and we were made for them. Only in holiness do we find our joy. The role of the Christian in a culture such as ours is to hold out truth in the area of morals in the way we speak and in the way we act.
We must not fall into the traps of our culture in the way it uses language. Our culture says that it is not possible to judge without condemnation or label anything “wrong” without ugliness. However, Christians should be both more loving in their interactions with people they disagree with as well as better able to judge rightly what is true and false in their lives. We ought to live in such a way that makes the Biblical world view in the area of morality attractive to those who do not share it. What a wonderful thing if those on the outside could look at Christians and say “I do not share their morals, but they have treated me with such kindness and respect that I feel a great affection for them nonetheless.” Woefully, when people speak of Christian morality it is often the opposite of that statement.
It is a difficult thing to be both more loving and a truer judge, not compromising on the call to hold both grace and truth out to our world. Yet, that is exactly what we see in the life of Jesus, and that is exactly the calling which is before us. If the Christian capitulates to the cultures views on morality in order to reduce the tension of disagreement he unfaithful to the gospel. Our role is nil, and society is the worse for it. Instead, if the Christian lives as Jesus did there will be flourishing, as we show what it means to live under the Lordship of Christ in a fallen, morally confused world.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 6)
There is a problem with truth. The problem is that we are subjective and finite beings, which our postmodern culture rightly recognizes. By “subjective” I mean that it is difficult to think clearly and without bias. Everything we know is shaped by who we are (where we were raised, our parent’s values, our education, our will and emotions, etc.). For example, I would say my closest friends know me very well, but there is a sense in which each of them sees me through a veil made of their own expectations, wishes, preconceptions, and experiences, leading them to come away with slightly different pictures of me. By “finite” I mean that our ability to know is limited in quantity and quality. We are not omniscient, nor do we have the ability to be so. As Paul said, we “see through a mirror darkly”. For example, take the question of “Can we know God?” There are must be disclaimers given when saying “yes” to that question. God is infinite and we are not, so always what we know of God will only be a small piece, and there will simply be some things which will be beyond us. Even the largest and clearest treatises on God will still have a last page, and there will always be places between the first and last page where the answer simply points toward a mystery that cannot be fully ironed out into words.
There are two things to do with the problem of our subjectivity and our finiteness.
1. Despair of knowledge
2. Humility of knowledge.
Postmodernism has largely taken the first option. It takes our subjectivity and finiteness as a given and then draws the conclusion that certain knowledge is impossible. It builds a bridge of uncertainty that ends in the abyss of the death of absolute truth. Then postmodernism bids people to cross that bridge, painting this as the only logical path to take given our human limitations.
But this is one place that the Christian cannot follow our culture, for the Christian the problem of truth must lead to a humility of knowledge. By this I mean that the Christian must acknowledge the difficulties inherent in the process of knowing anything, but not mistake difficulty for impossibility. Despite our subjectivity and finiteness we are still able to have confidence in what we know. I believe that this is the position of the Bible on the subject of truth, and it is the logical position given the nature of God.
What do I mean by that? Though we are subjective, God is not. Though we often see in shades of grey, God sees in black and white, discerning truth from falsehood and judging between the two. Where we see “as through a mirror darkly,” there is a God in the universe who sees all things clearly, and, as Francis Schaeffer said, “He has spoken”. This is the foundation for our own knowledge. We do not live in a universe where truth is spinning head over heels in a maelstrom of uncertainty. There is solid ground. What is needed in light of this reality is not to give up on truth in despair, but to put our feet on that solid ground. Because you cannot see the sun for the clouds does not mean the sun does not shine above them. God’s truth still reigns in the universe he made, though our vision of it is clouded by sin.
As for our finiteness, to cite Schaeffer again, we can know things truly without having to know them fully. Yes, we are finite beings and total knowledge is beyond us, but total knowledge is not asked of us, nor should that make us despair of knowing anything at all with certainty. Think of the example from above: my friends do not have to know every facet of my soul to be able to say true things about me. It’s said that extremes prove the point, so to take an extreme example: think again about the question of whether we can know God truly or not. It is one thing to say our finiteness does not lead us to despair in areas like math and science, but is that still true if we talk about knowing God, an infinite being who is utterly beyond even our best thoughts of him? God seems to think that it is possible for us to know him, even though we are finite. The Bible itself is an example of God speaking to his people, telling them true things about himself. The Bible proclaims that knowledge of God is not only possible, but it is exactly what God desires of us, so he has communicated to us in language that we can understand so that we might know him and worship him in truth.
In this light despair becomes an even lesser option. Because God exists there is hope that truth exists, and because he is such a God that he desires that we know him truly there is hope that we might understand and believe those truths. The Christian must hold out these truths to a postmodern culture without arrogance or presumption, but in humility. The Christian realizes that sin even affects our ability to know and see what is true, but this does not lead us to back away from God’s truth. We must say what God has said, and we must say it as he said it, in a way that is understandable, relevant, and winsome to our generation.
There are two things to do with the problem of our subjectivity and our finiteness.
1. Despair of knowledge
2. Humility of knowledge.
Postmodernism has largely taken the first option. It takes our subjectivity and finiteness as a given and then draws the conclusion that certain knowledge is impossible. It builds a bridge of uncertainty that ends in the abyss of the death of absolute truth. Then postmodernism bids people to cross that bridge, painting this as the only logical path to take given our human limitations.
But this is one place that the Christian cannot follow our culture, for the Christian the problem of truth must lead to a humility of knowledge. By this I mean that the Christian must acknowledge the difficulties inherent in the process of knowing anything, but not mistake difficulty for impossibility. Despite our subjectivity and finiteness we are still able to have confidence in what we know. I believe that this is the position of the Bible on the subject of truth, and it is the logical position given the nature of God.
What do I mean by that? Though we are subjective, God is not. Though we often see in shades of grey, God sees in black and white, discerning truth from falsehood and judging between the two. Where we see “as through a mirror darkly,” there is a God in the universe who sees all things clearly, and, as Francis Schaeffer said, “He has spoken”. This is the foundation for our own knowledge. We do not live in a universe where truth is spinning head over heels in a maelstrom of uncertainty. There is solid ground. What is needed in light of this reality is not to give up on truth in despair, but to put our feet on that solid ground. Because you cannot see the sun for the clouds does not mean the sun does not shine above them. God’s truth still reigns in the universe he made, though our vision of it is clouded by sin.
As for our finiteness, to cite Schaeffer again, we can know things truly without having to know them fully. Yes, we are finite beings and total knowledge is beyond us, but total knowledge is not asked of us, nor should that make us despair of knowing anything at all with certainty. Think of the example from above: my friends do not have to know every facet of my soul to be able to say true things about me. It’s said that extremes prove the point, so to take an extreme example: think again about the question of whether we can know God truly or not. It is one thing to say our finiteness does not lead us to despair in areas like math and science, but is that still true if we talk about knowing God, an infinite being who is utterly beyond even our best thoughts of him? God seems to think that it is possible for us to know him, even though we are finite. The Bible itself is an example of God speaking to his people, telling them true things about himself. The Bible proclaims that knowledge of God is not only possible, but it is exactly what God desires of us, so he has communicated to us in language that we can understand so that we might know him and worship him in truth.
In this light despair becomes an even lesser option. Because God exists there is hope that truth exists, and because he is such a God that he desires that we know him truly there is hope that we might understand and believe those truths. The Christian must hold out these truths to a postmodern culture without arrogance or presumption, but in humility. The Christian realizes that sin even affects our ability to know and see what is true, but this does not lead us to back away from God’s truth. We must say what God has said, and we must say it as he said it, in a way that is understandable, relevant, and winsome to our generation.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 5)
Martin Luther said, “We can preach the gospel with the loudest voice and in the clearest manner, but if we are not preaching the gospel at the point where it is currently under attack, we are not preaching at all.” This means that the places where truth is under attack in our culture must be challenged. So the question is how can we respond to those areas where our postmodern culture is saying something different than the gospel?
The church should not be only a voice of condemnation toward the culture, for to divorce the gospel from the love inherent in its message is to corrupt the gospel. But likewise, the church should not be simply condoning the culture’s misconceptions about reality as if it were not possible to come to wrong conclusions or the need to believe the truth was not an urgent one. Of course it is urgent. It is life and death, and the church must find a way to hold out the truth to whatever culture it is in. There must be a response, or else, as Luther said, we have not preached the gospel at all.
What is the response in the three areas of Authority, Truth, and Morality? I want to try and devote a little bit more space to each one of these separately, starting with authority.
Authority:
I saw a t-shirt in Wal-Mart the other day that said, “Your rules don’t apply to me.” It was meant to be glib, but if you think about that phrase as representative of the voice of our culture toward all authority it becomes a very sad phrase. I saw a fresh view of this while reading a biography of Jonathon Edwards, a preacher who lived at the height of Puritan New England. Life for Edwards was an ordered chain of authority that extended into every area of life, marriage and the family, the church, the government, etc. Children were raised to value submission to this authority structure; it was the air they breathed. Sermons were preached about the value of obeying the “fathers” meaning not only the Heavenly Father, but also earthly fathers which God had placed in positions of authority. Today we breathe a different air. As I read the biography I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if you transplanted a preacher from that time to our time and put him on TV (perhaps Oprah…). He would probably be viewed as narrow-minded, oppressive, and offensive. Best case: he would not have a rapt audience for long. Worst case: the audience would start throwing chairs (maybe not on Oprah). Either way, the values of that time would rub abrasively against the grain of the hearts of his hearers.
We have shaken our shoulders free of such an ironclad authority structure, and it is anathema to us. Our feelings of earthly authorities are mirror images of our feelings for heavenly authority. In such an environment the idea of a God who rules is an offense. We find a God who is willing to serve us more palatable than a God before whom we must bow. This is a starting point for the conversation between Christianity and our culture. You cannot tell someone to obey the Bible if they do not see the Bible as an authority in their lives. Each individual must see God’s claim on them before they will bow to Him.
The Christian response to this message of the culture must be to tell the truth about the human situation. There is an authority above us, and our happiness is not found in bucking it, but in bowing to it. We did not create ourselves, nor are we products of an accident, but we were made by a Something larger than ourselves who knows our names. Every individual on this planet has the common origin of a Creator which we must relate to as creations. Not only is God the creator, however, but he is the savior. Christianity says that God gave himself for our redemption, a word which means “to buy back.” The story goes like this: we were made, we fell, and Christ's blood bought us back. We are doubly His, as 1 Corinthians says, “You are not your own, for you were bought at a price.”
We would think of ourselves as above every authority where our own lives are concerned, but this is not the reality of the human situation. Our place is to live under the Lordship of Christ, the one who has made us and redeemed us. I do not say this to diminish humanity or say we are nothing. We are not nothing. We are made in God’s image and he had endowed us with dignity, but it is the dignity of occupying our rightful place, one of bowing before God. It is the glory of humanity to occupy that place and our happiness lies in doing so faithfully.
If Christianity is going to be faithful in holding out the gospel to this generation then it must live and speak in such a way that shows that authority is not a dirty word. This will be a place of tension and of contrast with the culture and there will be great pressure to deemphasize the gospel at this point, but if we do that then we "have not preached the gospel at all." Rather, the Christian must declare that there is a God and that to him belongs all authority, as well as demonstrate in a winsome way what a life lived under the Lordship of Christ really looks like.
The church should not be only a voice of condemnation toward the culture, for to divorce the gospel from the love inherent in its message is to corrupt the gospel. But likewise, the church should not be simply condoning the culture’s misconceptions about reality as if it were not possible to come to wrong conclusions or the need to believe the truth was not an urgent one. Of course it is urgent. It is life and death, and the church must find a way to hold out the truth to whatever culture it is in. There must be a response, or else, as Luther said, we have not preached the gospel at all.
What is the response in the three areas of Authority, Truth, and Morality? I want to try and devote a little bit more space to each one of these separately, starting with authority.
Authority:
I saw a t-shirt in Wal-Mart the other day that said, “Your rules don’t apply to me.” It was meant to be glib, but if you think about that phrase as representative of the voice of our culture toward all authority it becomes a very sad phrase. I saw a fresh view of this while reading a biography of Jonathon Edwards, a preacher who lived at the height of Puritan New England. Life for Edwards was an ordered chain of authority that extended into every area of life, marriage and the family, the church, the government, etc. Children were raised to value submission to this authority structure; it was the air they breathed. Sermons were preached about the value of obeying the “fathers” meaning not only the Heavenly Father, but also earthly fathers which God had placed in positions of authority. Today we breathe a different air. As I read the biography I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if you transplanted a preacher from that time to our time and put him on TV (perhaps Oprah…). He would probably be viewed as narrow-minded, oppressive, and offensive. Best case: he would not have a rapt audience for long. Worst case: the audience would start throwing chairs (maybe not on Oprah). Either way, the values of that time would rub abrasively against the grain of the hearts of his hearers.
We have shaken our shoulders free of such an ironclad authority structure, and it is anathema to us. Our feelings of earthly authorities are mirror images of our feelings for heavenly authority. In such an environment the idea of a God who rules is an offense. We find a God who is willing to serve us more palatable than a God before whom we must bow. This is a starting point for the conversation between Christianity and our culture. You cannot tell someone to obey the Bible if they do not see the Bible as an authority in their lives. Each individual must see God’s claim on them before they will bow to Him.
The Christian response to this message of the culture must be to tell the truth about the human situation. There is an authority above us, and our happiness is not found in bucking it, but in bowing to it. We did not create ourselves, nor are we products of an accident, but we were made by a Something larger than ourselves who knows our names. Every individual on this planet has the common origin of a Creator which we must relate to as creations. Not only is God the creator, however, but he is the savior. Christianity says that God gave himself for our redemption, a word which means “to buy back.” The story goes like this: we were made, we fell, and Christ's blood bought us back. We are doubly His, as 1 Corinthians says, “You are not your own, for you were bought at a price.”
We would think of ourselves as above every authority where our own lives are concerned, but this is not the reality of the human situation. Our place is to live under the Lordship of Christ, the one who has made us and redeemed us. I do not say this to diminish humanity or say we are nothing. We are not nothing. We are made in God’s image and he had endowed us with dignity, but it is the dignity of occupying our rightful place, one of bowing before God. It is the glory of humanity to occupy that place and our happiness lies in doing so faithfully.
If Christianity is going to be faithful in holding out the gospel to this generation then it must live and speak in such a way that shows that authority is not a dirty word. This will be a place of tension and of contrast with the culture and there will be great pressure to deemphasize the gospel at this point, but if we do that then we "have not preached the gospel at all." Rather, the Christian must declare that there is a God and that to him belongs all authority, as well as demonstrate in a winsome way what a life lived under the Lordship of Christ really looks like.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 4)
Postmodernism is no different. As we are each individually mixed bags, so are the cultures we create. Modernism set up human reason as the ultimate source of final answers to reality. It placed reason on the altar in place of God, putting its hope for redemption on the broken, scarred shoulders of Humanity. Postmodernism appropriately tore down that idol. It diminished humanity’s confidence in its power to come to the answers it needs by its own strength, insisting that our reason is clouded and our strength is limited. Postmodernism rightly said that clear, objective thinking is difficult because our knowledge is influenced by subjective factors and often prejudiced.
Postmodernism allows for greater diversity, as it respects the contributions each culture has to make. The postmodern mindset would not give rise to something like colonialism, for example. Colonialism was born out of the mindset that said one culture could be greater than another and the best thing for the lesser culture was to convert to the greater. Postmodernism seeks more to give voice to every culture, recognizing that there are things of value in every perspective and fearing the arrogance of a single culture believing that it contains all truth.
Postmodernism is realistic. It recognizes that things in this world are broken and bent and corrupted. It challenges modernisms unrealistic optimism, which said that Progress would soon carry humanity forward and our troubles would slowly erase themselves as we outgrew them. This is not so. At its worst postmodernism can embrace this sad fact too much and dip into despair, but at its best it simply takes a more realistic view of human selfishness and brokenness and rightly insists that humanity is far too hurt to simply heal itself.
It also challenges the idea that humanity’s needs are supplied by only the material, and says that there is an inescapable need for the spiritual. We are not only complex machines; man is a spiritual being. We are not objects. God has “set eternity within our hearts” and because of this we have spiritual needs. Modernism pulled the ceiling down low of the head of mankind, saying that it could find all the answers it needs without turning to the mystical and spiritual. This is false. Postmodernism tore holes in that low ceiling and said that humanity must look upwards to something outside itself.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 3)
Q: How do I know postmodernism when I see it? What are its distinctives?
I don’t think the full answer to that question fits on a one-page blog, but something can still be said. Here is description of a few things in the postmodern family tree:
Authority:
Jerram Barrs said, “The most widely held view on anything in the
Authority is a dirty word in a postmodern culture. It is a coin that has a diminishing value. The individual has a transcendent power; he is an authority to himself. The idea that the individual is bounded by things greater than himself is an idea that, at best, our generation does not understand, and, at worst, infuriates a postmodern culture.
I was watching a Mizzou football game recently (
Truth:
Modernism understood truth as black and white; something which, ultimately, could be clearly understood. It believed in the power of reason to have access to those truths… not that it would always be easy, but it was possible. Or to put it in an image: imagine there are two ropes, one that represents truth and the other that represents our ability to know. Modernism tied those two ropes together. Postmodernism, however, has tried to untie that knot and throw the two ropes as far away from each other as it can.
Postmodernism says that we are too shaped by subjective factors (where we grew up, what our parents taught us, our own biases and tastes and agendas) to be able to see things clearly. It is like smearing mud on a window and then expecting to be able to see out through it. We cannot escape this subjectivity ever; it is part of the human condition. Thus there is always, in everything we try to know, interference involved in the process to the degree that postmodernism says we cannot know anything with certainty.
Morality:
What postmodernism has concluded about morality flows out of its conclusions about authority and truth. If there is nothing above us, then morality is up for grabs. If we cannot understand things with certainty even if there was an authority above us, then we must run on our best moral guesses, and one person’s guess does not have authority over anyone else’s. Morality is a matter of personal choice. Morally, each person is an island.
I remember a conversation with a friend in which he said that he would correct his children’s choices about their lives while they lived in his house, but he would never dream of doing that with another person. It was a horrifying thought to him to think that he could look at another person’s life and say what in it was good and what was bad. It was the most unloving thing you could do.
Judgment and condemnation are dirty words in a postmodern culture. The great evil is not falsehood, but judgment. The great good is not truth, but harmony.
This is by no means a complete rendering of postmodernism. I chose these three things because they are three places where our culture contrasts sharply with Christianity. I don’t want to paint the picture of postmodernism as being all bad, however. There is both good and bad in every one of us and so it follows that the cultures we create are streaked with both light and dark also. In the next post I hope to point out some of these strengths of postmodernism as well as talk about how Christianity must respond to those places where postmodernism runs false.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Postmodernism & Christianity (Part 2)
About four years ago I was sitting in a Bible study on postmodernism, wondering why I was there. The leader of the Bible study was trying to help us understand what postmodernism was and how it affected our culture. I wrote a note on a piece of paper and passed it to the guy sitting next to me (I was very mature at the time…). Of course the leader saw it and called on the guy sitting next to me to read the note out loud so everyone else could hear what I had to say. The note said something like this: “I think we all agree that postmodernism does not exist. Why are we here?” The ironic things about that comment are: 1. I was very wrong and it took a couple years to really understand what we were talking about that night and 2. It was a very postmodern thing to write.
My problem was this: I didn’t understand what postmodernism meant and I didn’t understand how deeply affected by it our culture (and therefore myself too, as I am a product of my culture) is. My guess is there were some people who read the last post and had a similar reaction to the one I had that night four years ago, so this post is an attempt to begin to shed some light on the issue. (Disclaimer: the emphasis here is on the word begin…like a Reader’s Digest version of postmodernism.)
Q: What is culture?
There are many ways to define culture, but for our purposes it can be defined as a people’s view of reality. People of a similar culture will have similar answers to questions like: What is right and wrong? What is taboo and what is praiseworthy? What is the good life? What is the meaning of life? What offends me about the world? The questions cover every inch of life, not just the big picture ones I listed here. Culture affects everything from your view of God to what you will eat on Mondays
Think of questions like: Why do people in the south dress up for football games? Why are iPods so popular? Why do people who hunt watch more Nascar than people who drink lattes? Why will you lose your license for going 15 over in
Q: So what is postmodernism?
Culture changes; it is not fixed. There are movements in culture. Imagine you are sitting in a stadium and 70,000 people are chanting something, then one loud section of fans starts chanting something else and that new chant spreads until the whole stadium has now taken it up. Culture is like that, except instead of a chant the thing that is spreading is a worldview
Sometimes a worldview is so thoroughly spread through a culture it has definable boundaries; it gets a name, an “ism”. You can say things about it like “Modernism is such and such a way” or “Those people are Modernists and so they probably believe such and such a thing”.
Sometimes the new chant that arises is a reaction to the one that it is replacing. Modernism becomes postmodernism. For example: where modernism sought certainty in a black and white world, postmodernism is more comfortable with mystery and paints a picture of a grey world, in which black and white certainties are not so easy to find. Where modernism was largely overly optimistic, postmodernisms answers are streaked with pessimism.
Q: How do I know postmodernism when I see it? What are its distinctives?
Stay tuned…
Friday, October 26, 2007
Postmodernism and Christianity
I read a book recently called "by demonstration: God" by Wade Bradshaw. In it, Bradshaw writes about the way our culture has become increasingly postmodern as reflected in the students who come to L'abri. A little background might be helpful here as to what L'abri is. Suffice it to say that it is a study center where students can come from every corner of the world and stay from a day to the whole of a three month term, studying whatever they choose and seeking the answers to their questions in the truth of Christianity. Because of this, at any given time there is a random sampling of the questions the culture is asking represented in the students who come to L'abri. L’abri, therefore, often has its finger on the pulse of the ever-changing landscape of our culture, making Bradshaw’s insights carry a lot of weight as he talks about his many years at L’abri and how postmodernism has affected the students.
Let me give an example from the book. Bradshaw has seen a shift in what students want to talk about in conversations; where once conversations would center around “ideas” now they are much more likely to center on “experience”. There is a distrust of knowledge that is seen as abstract, theoretical, or heady. Students are not interested in ideas that do not seem directly connected to their actual experience of life. On the other hand, knowledge which is personal, experiential, or rises out of their own or others’ stories finds fertile ground and eager ears. For example, the question “What do you think about how Christianity should interact with the culture it is in?” (…the question I want to begin to raise in this post) might lead to dead, awkward silence around the lunch table. Whereas, the question, “Who is a hero of yours and why are they heroic?” might lead to a conversation that runs for hours and the lunch table has to be set for dinner before everyone is done talking.
One of the themes of the book is that idea that as the culture of the students coming to L’abri changes, so too must L’abri change to continue to hold out the truth of Christianity to the culture it finds itself in. Think of it this way: if a missionary was sent overseas to a country with a radically different culture than his own, wouldn’t his first task be to learn about that culture he finds himself in? What is its language? What does it love? What are its taboos? How does it think? What does it fear and hate? What do its people want most deeply and what do they treasure most highly? What pieces of the truth does it retains, and what pieces has it abandoned? That is the challenge that Bradshaw writes about: how to hold out the ancient, beautiful truths of Christianity to a generation that is quite different than the one before it?
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