Cultural Connectivity

My co-worker asked me what the term, "postmodern" meant. What a question. I have asked it myself. Postmodernism in itself is difficult to nail down, but I'll attempt to do so here, and also to offer an opinion about how to tackle what problems it presents to the believing Christians and the churches they belong to.

I've heard about a hundred times it seems, the recollection of how the "colorful" communist, Madelyn Murray O'Hair began the forcing of religion and references to it out of schools and government life, and helped to usher in instead, insidious influences to fill the gap.

While all of that may have been true, she really was only one highly visible proponent in a movement that contained many people, equally as willing as she was to move that pesky view of God and His perfect moral character out of the way of people's lives and the choices that they wish to make. The Religious Humanist (humanism being the stated religion) movement has been around for a very long time, and even published a manifesto in 1933, publicly denigrating religion and rejecting any notion of a god. Two additional manifestos, I believe, have been published since then.

Mrs. O'Hair's mission as I see it was not the beginning of the problem, but the result of it. Her appearance was part of what I consider to be a still-blossoming worldview that has encroached upon religiously held worldviews. A kind of syncretistic osmosis over time. However, as nearly as I can see it those years, around the early 1960s, when Mrs. O'Hair was having her heyday, were when the postmodern mindset was birthed, simply by nature of its visibility.

Like any baby, postmodernism had begin by taking small steps in order to make its way into society. This mindset permeated not just universities, and other centers for higher learning, but at the most basic academic levels. Even more, it has condemned Christianity subtly and not so subtly through the mass media. These things combined are an enormous amount of influence.

The tenth "affirmation" of the Humanist Manifesto of 1933 reads: "It follows that there will be no uniquely religious emotions and attitudes of the kind hitherto associated with belief in the supernatural." It is the twelfth affirmation from that document however, that has become most closely associated with what is now called the postmodern "social gospel; "Believing that religion must work increasingly for joy in living, religious humanists aim to foster the creative in man and to encourage achievements that add to the satisfactions of life."

Religious Humanism is a highly intolerant movement. It sees any kind of religion as a threat to the means it sees as its own end, but most especially, it is against the Christian faith. That is perhaps because the teachings of Jesus are so diametrically opposed to the tenants of humanism. What has that to do with what the postmodern mindset is? A lot.

The type of moral relativism contained within Religious Humanism has very much permeated the general mind of a very religiously naive and often Biblically uneducated public. Even those children who should have a spiritual "leg up" on Bible learning and a concrete foundation (Jesus) in their faith have been blind-sided by either the spiritual apathy of their parents, or their public or private education or a combination of these things.

The parents have been influenced by the peer-pressure driven mindset that humanism pushes, because to do otherwise would make them "intolerant." Disagreeing with anyone else's religious or non-religiously held beliefs would be judgmental, offensive and awful. We can't have that. I'm not talking about getting in someone's face, I'm simply talking about reasonable disagreement.

Because postmodernism has grown up to take it's first steps, and learned to walk in that environment, most postmoderns will not disagree with someone else, much like the two folks I wrote about in yesterday's post. In the postmodern mindset, everybody can believe in different things, and everybody is "right" and nobody is wrong. How does that play out for the Christian, knowing that all those who have rejected Jesus Christ will suffer for it? It doesn't make sharing one's faith any easier.

For one thing, most postmoderns have adopted the notion that God loves unconditionally. I believe that God does have an unconditional love for the sinner, but He cannot tolerate sin. That is basic to Christianity. He sent His Son to be a substitutionary sacrifice for man because He loved the world. He did that because the world could not solve its sin problem for itself. Only He could do that, and He wouldn't haven had to, if it were possible for one to rid one's self of one's sins.

The postmodern mindset cannot accept the intolerance of a God that would reject anyone because they might believe something other than what His Word explicitly says. Never mind that. Many postmoderns don't believe the Bible is God's Word. They are very selective in their reading of it. To most postmoderns, repentance is largely a non-word, much like sin. Both can be, and have been marginalized in their thinking.

For Christians, it seems like you can see things going on that have developed over the years in reaction to what the culture is doing. They either oppose culture, saying that our culture is all wrong, or they assimilate, or meld into the mores and customs of the society that they are in. The former is problematic because one's church can have a tendency to look harsh or as if they couldn't care less about the unsaved that they should be trying to reach. The latter has caused in my view the appearance of seeker friendly churches, or churches that have reoriented themselves to place their emphasis on relevance and felt needs, as opposed to that dry stale old offensive Word of God. "Get 'em into the pews, and we'll worry about talking to them about God later."

I've known different seminary graduates in my life, and one ditch I know that they can fall into is that they spend most of their time training the life of their minds, exiting seminary and having to learn all over again to communicate with those on the layman's level, and also to struggle with the value of personal experience. Parishioners on the other hand, struggle with the value of Bible study. Both of these things are necessary though. Crucial really.

A seminary grad that exits that institution with a knowledge that his education has really just begun will likely be a much more successful pastor than the one who simply equates his knowledge with spirituality and a sort of papal authority. We are all flawed, and I think that we need holy discernment more than we need either judgment or resignation in regards to the cultural context.

The responsibility lies chiefly with the pastor-teacher to stand up for the Word, and with the flock too, but the church needs to be oriented properly if it is going to reach the lost, postmodern or otherwise. The church needs to be for believers. I'm not saying that the pastor shouldn't give an altar invitation if he is so led, but it is important for him to steadily teach, feeding the flock to keep them growing, and it's just as important for the flock to study on its own.

It is the job of the flock, to reach out to the lost in the context of their interacting lives, and get them saved where they are. That's right, get them saved, and then bring them into the church for the most part. That is the goal. That is the job.

We were created in the image of God. Our image suffered serious distortion in the fall of mankind in the Garden, because now, everyone who is created in God's image is now a sinner. God is perfect and we are a funhouse-mirrored version of what we are supposed to be like as reflections of Him. In each person, there are lovely things and there are gruesome and ugly things, and if we are going to relate to those of the lost with a postmodern or any other mindset, we need to engage these people and to borrow a phrase from Pollyanna, "look for the good in them."

Postmodernism tends to be guided by relativism and emotion, with a focus on relationship. Lots of postmodern churches are very involved in the social gospel, and in social activism, and in being very service oriented. Nothing wrong with serving. We are supposed to serve, but as in anything, our motivation needs to be as correct as our goals do. Give a man a fish, or teach him to fish. Same old thing.

Modernism is strong on reason and the steadfastness and consistency of God's Word, so much so over the years that even though it has produced some really brilliant scholars and theologians, it often has the appearance and reality of being emotionally bankrupt. Put that up against the trend toward relativism and tolerance among postmoderns for competing worldviews, and you begin to see a dividing line. While modernists view that as tacit deconstructionism, with a bent toward universalism, postmodernists see it as being lovingly inclusive.

But do we have a lifetime to "live out" our example to the unbelieving in hopes that they will be reached? Surely, the more we grow in holiness, the more appealing to others we should become. But even the most righteous guy you know will tell you that he is pond scum when it gets right down to it, and it can be so easy to blow our witness. We can't depend on how we look in our flawed state of righteousness to speak to other's hearts. Do kind things for unsaved people because we love them, sure, but talk to them about the Lord. Use the Law of God to speak to their conscience. They need to know that they need a Savior, just as the large numbers of modernists walking around in our culture who also don't know the Jesus of the Bible do. We can't win them if we only adopt postmodern techniques either.

It seems to me that we need to do as Paul did and learn to become all things to all people in order to win the ones we can to Jesus. That's what Jesus did. In the Gospel of John Chapter 3, He talked with Nicodemus, "a ruler of the Jews." Nicodemus lived in a very isolated, very exclusive culture. Jesus used logic with him, spoke to his heart and his intellect and his pride by saying, "You must be born again," and asking him, "Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things?"

In the different context of a woman who lived in a society excluded from their Jewish relatives, Jesus spoke with the Samaritan woman at the well, whose life reflected one of dissolute isolation. "Go, call your husband and come here." She had to tell Him that she had no husband, and when He exposed it, her sin of having inappropriate relationships with men. This woman was feeling very isolated by a society she wanted acceptance from, and I'm betting that it was manifested in the way she sought relationships with men. Jesus knew everything about her, and spoke with her honestly, and you notice, without judgment, even though He is the just Judge of all the world. He was showing us how to do it, because it's our job to do.

You hear a lot of talk these days about spiritual warfare. Alright. Fine. We can do that. But on this "battleground" of our lives, we need to be like spiritual marines and "improvise, adapt and overcome." We must discern. We should be thinking creatively in order to find ways to connect with people and use the Law in the discussion to speak to their consciences. I'm not talking about accusing people, because that finger will point right back at ourselves. I am talking about raising questions and using the Word to make people think. This works cross-culturally, without compromising the Gospel.