Outline:

A Christian Response to Our Postmodern World

We have entered a new millenium. It is surprising at how little talk there is of a new age or a new revolution. Perhaps the reason is the new age is already upon us. The revolution has been around long enough that it is not new but continuing and progressing. We have been hearing signs of such a phenomenon. Sometimes Christians here of those strange New Age religions. We have heard in the news about the odd cult of people who during the passage of the comet Hale Bopp took their lives thinking that through their death they would somehow connect with aliens in outer space who would save them from some coming destruction. Such radical actions and beliefs would seem to many Christians to be on the extreme. What is troubling is how many everyday people on the street now see similar beliefs as normal. Students in confirmation class come wearing crystals around their necks and with yin-yang symbols on their book bags. The consolation is that for the most part, young people do not truly understand what the symbols they use stand for. Here is the trouble. The world is changing. Mindsets and beliefs are altering. But for the most part people, Christians included, are not equipped to deal with these changes. These beliefs and mindsets, which we call postmodernism, may be new, but they are typical and wide sweeping. Christians tend to either pretend it will go away, withdraw into a shell of protected belief and tradition, or to assimilate the new. The one tool the church needs in this changing time is being neglected: critical analysis and understanding of what is changing, why it is changing, how it will affect the Christian faith, and how we can best communicate the Gospel to fulfill the command to go and make disciples in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. True, our church body, the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, has been blessed with strong catechesis and understanding of the Christian faith. We must know what the faith is and be faithful to it, for through faithful proclamation of God’s Word, our faithful God is at work creating life and forgiving sin. But to truly communicate this faith to the world, we must understand the world. Our world is changing. As St. Paul himself became all things to all people so that he might save some.

Are those changes we see around us truly such a big deal? Are we making a mountain out of a molehill? As a pastor I see signs of these changes all over. One merely has to go out into the world. We see as common place what was once rare. Teenage girls are becoming mothers. Recently I had an opportunity to observe in children’s store the interaction between a very young teenage mother and a middle-aged mother. They were talking; one mother to the other, sharing stories, sharing advice, as equals of social class. This would not have been twenty or thirty years ago. Last year I was in parish in a small rural area in the heartland of the United States. This is not what one would call a progressive community. It is traditional. Slow to change, these people tend to cling to a very rural traditional way of life and be among the last to change. Even there things have changed and radically. In the spring of 1998 at a local prom, a stir was raised because two young men came to the dance as one another’s dates. That this area is still traditional was reflected by the fact some in the community protested the school allowing such new behavior. The greater shock and indication of how deep change is flowing through American society was in the community’s response. There was an incredible outflow of support from the community for these young men. Even those who were unwilling to say their choice was right, were very willing to say they had a right to their choice and to the public expression of their affection. Even though such behavior might not be right for the average person in the heartland, it was considered right for these two young men. Society is loosing its awareness of the reality of objective truth. Instead truth has become subjective; a matter of what works for the individual and a matter of what makes a person happy.

Life and its socially acceptable structures have changed and continue to change. Every pastor knows this. What pastor does not deal on a regular basis with young couples coming for marriage who are already living as if they were married? Who among our lay evangelists have not heard the response, "that works for you, but my belief is different and it works for me"? Sometimes a pastor just wants to wring his hands and shake his head as if he were at a loss for understanding it all. Sometimes it feels like one just cannot get through to the other person and you have to give up. Christians have God’s answers for life. But what does it mean when you try to share these insights and treasures with others only to be dismissed, misunderstood, considered narrow minded even intolerant, and irrelevant? Does it mean we give up? It means we need to get on the stick. We need the skills of the ancient Apologists. We need to relearn these skills and to train our church leadership from the top down in critical analysis. We need to engage our laity to develop a consciousness what is happening in the world around them. We must understand what is happening and why so we can communicate the gospel to the world. Too many Christians, including pastors and teachers, do not understand the sweeping changes. Clergy and churches are in jeopardy of being swept up by the changes and assimilating them without critical examination.

To understand where we are going we must understand where we have been. It is ironic that what is perhaps one of the greatest indications to herald the last major change in mindsets would come through a Lutheran publisher. In 1543, On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres was published written by Nicolaus Copernicus. He dared suggest the earth was not at the center of the universe. The church resisted branding him heretic, but eventually would be proven wrong. Not too long before this Christopher Columbus had dared to suggest he would sail the ocean to India. The church rebelled saying it was impossible. Again, the church was proven wrong. It was a new age. The dawn of science and discovery had burst forth upon the world. Its legacy continues to today.

Before this age appeared everyone knew and believed that God was out there and we were His creatures. Such belief was a fundamental part of society itself. Truth was determined by God and it was for human beings to obey and follow his guidelines. As the new world of America was discovered a new world of humanism was being born. Instead of God’s truth, man became the judge and measure of all things. Reason became the supreme arbiter. In the end nothing would be sacred. All things would stand or fall by this impartial judge. God’s Word was examined. This supreme truth and revelation became the story of people and their quest for God and meaning. Miracles became myths, a genre to express spiritual truth to a physical world. Christ’s divinity and resurrection became symbols and mythological speculation about the meaning of life. Truth was out there, but it would be discovered by experience and scientific exploration not by revelation.

People were encouraged in these days. Life changed dramatically from 1500 to 1980. In the 1500’s houses had thatched roofs. Often times the animals the family owned would live in the thatch. So the straw would often be full of dogs, cats, mice, rats, and bugs. There was nothing to stop things from dropping into the house, and so the custom was to put four posts over the bed and hang a sheet over them. Today we have four poster beds with canopies, which we now enjoy, in our luxurious bed and breakfast inns.

Mankind was transforming life with its new insights learned from experience and experiment. The industrial revolution was born. Technological development escalated at an exponential rate. Humanity went from horse back to the moon, from yearly baths to daily showers, from abacus to computer. Machines in amazing wonder were invented. The medical field experienced incredible strides. Many diseases were once treated by blood letting. Now open-heart surgery is common and person is home in two or three days. Even today the possibilities seem endless.

Quality of life dramatically improved from the application of these new scientific principals. So it is not strange that society endorsed not only the products but also the mindsets that produced these new wonderful products. Nor should it surprise us that the new world was terribly optimistic. Nothing seemed beyond our reach. Any problem could be solved with enough time and research. Even the problem of evil in our world could be solved it was thought with appropriate nurture and education.

Perhaps the grandest experiment of them all in this "modern" period, what that of socialism and communism in the Soviet Union. Nothing seemed impossible for the human mind, not even the construction from the ground up of a society completely formed by rational postulates and humanistic goals. All reference to truth, values, advice, or commandments from any source other than the human being were excluded. God was out. Human reason expressed in the structures of socialism and communism was the sole guiding force.

Christianity responded in various ways to this new shift in mindsets of the modern period. In some circles the Christian church was swept up by the optimism of the times and adopted uncritically many of the tenets of modernism. The greatest example of this was the development and adoption of the Higher – Critical Method of interpreting the Scriptures. Scripture was no longer seen as God’s Word, but as a human expression of a search for God. The Scripture was still seen as containing truth, even as containing God’s Word. But it was thought to be corrupted. St. Paul was seen as a sexist. Certain passages could be dismissed and women ordained in good conscience. Now we hear that the Scriptures contain writing by men who were homophobic. So now the homosexual lifestyle can be entertained in good conscience. The Scripture was considered to be purified of its less noble elements.

In Lutheran circles this was also evident in the manner in which the various Lutheran bodies approached the Confessions in this time period. Many were willing to see the Lutheran Confessions as giving voice to the faith of a particular people in a particular time, but veered from acknowledging the Confessions as normative for faith in all times.

Other church bodies responded defensively. Fundamentalism was born. Anything smacking of human reason was distrusted and considered taboo. Hence, the great creations of the early church, the ecumenical creeds, were tossed out as sounding too much like reason and philosophy. Talk of the Triune God was avoided in fundamentalist circles, because it also sounded too much like an emphasis on reason and philosophy.

Some church bodies remained faithful to the Word and to the mission. They continued to confess the truth of the faithful God and to share that truth with the world around them. Our own church body faced this challenge in the early 1970’s and passed through it with a strong confession. We have learned to proclaim the Gospel and the authority of God’s Word to a world that based authority on the human understanding. We defended the truth of God’s revelation. We did not surrender the mystery to human understanding. God’s Word remained God’s Word. God remained God, the one who would save us, even from the arrogance of our human reason.

Now we have a new bird. You might say the baby birds born during the modern era are now trying to leave their nest. We have seen already hard evidence that the modern optimism in human ability and reason crashed when it tried to fly. In 1989 we saw the collapse of the great experiment that was the Soviet Union. But even before this we had seen signs of the collapse of modern optimism. World War I shocked people with the ability of enlightened humanity to slaughter itself. But this was countered with the optimism that we could surely learn from our mistakes. The League of Nations was supposed to usher in a new era of peace and prosperity as we tamed our savage emotions with the noble reason. Then World War II came upon us with death and destruction never before imagined. Science and technology gave us amazingly powerful tools with which to slaughter one another. It became evident the human race was more than willing to do so. Jewish people were slaughtered by the millions. Hatred and distrust became hallmarks of the time. Reasoned discussion accomplished nothing. War, the brute application of force became the only answer. Might made right. The rulers of the world were the powerful.

America was powerful. The industrial giant emerged as the great superpower of the world soon to be followed by the Soviet Union. The world stood between two great forces, two opposed systems of ideology, each strong and powerful. The cold war itself was a grand experiment. Which would prove to be right? It was assumed the one that survived would be in the right. Now Americans believe we have vindicated the American way of life. That which is right is that which has worked.

The industrial revolution in the form of capitalism made major changes in America that spread out into the world. The standards of living continued to rise and along with them so did people’s expectations. People became richer. Once the computer was only for those who had great need of such a tool, now it is a common toy in the home. Even between the time of my own generation and the children in my own extended family I see a transformation from the possibility with hard work to have a nice home and a nice life, to expecting it. When I grew up a car was a great luxury. Now they are handed out to teenagers like I was once handed milk money. We are a rich nation used to the trappings of materialistic life. We take it for granted.

All of these factors flowing from the modern age are coming together to create a new current, what has been termed postmodernism. The great failures of the modern age coupled with its successes are merging together to form a new way of life and a new way of looking at life. The availability of choice and the reality of cynicism are creating a new age.

We have more choices today in practically everything than every before. We can purchase three kinds of gasoline from any number of gas stations. We can walk inside and chose from 30 or more different soft drinks. We can flavor our coffee with an assortment of different creamers. We can pay with cash, check, or credit card. Whole assortments of musical styles wait for us on the radio when we get back into our car. The entire world seems to shout to us, "it is your personal choice".

People of my generation can remember at time of doing without and limited choice. We witnessed the birth of the shopping mall. We were the first to purchase that second car. The generation now graduating from high school and entering college has never known anything but abundant choice and life filled with many possessions. These are our future leaders, the shakers and movers of society in ten to twenty years and they believe everything is a matter of personal choice, including what to believe about God.

The younger generations are cynical of anything that would purport to give them advice or structure on how to live. Instead people make decisions about life based on what makes them happy. This is the age of pleasure, indulgence, materialism, self-expression, individual autonomy, and freedom. This is the age of rejection of authority, definition, truth, and moral absolutes. It is the age no longer of freedom for religion but freedom from religion. Older generations might hope this is a passing fad, but it is catching on and beginning to make a powerful impact in our society. How much has it caught on? We have an indication in the events that took place at the first part of this year. We have a President who admittedly make a mistake in his personal life, who lied to the American public, then admitted that he lied to the American public. That is not itself the key indication, but the reaction of the American populace is. By and far the typical American did not care. It was his personal life. It did not matter so much if it was right or wrong. Americans judged the issue as to whether it effected our happiness. Did his behavior have any negative impact on our economic prosperity? NO. So for the vast majority of Americans it did not matter that he lied to them. It was his personal private affair. Those who sought to make the point that moral leadership is just as important because moral absolutes do exist were branded as extremists and intolerant. Instead of the postmodern being on the fringe, it has become mainstream. It is the truth and the belief in absolutes that is considered to be on the fringe. Christianity is beings swept to the side along with the belief in truth and moral absolutes.

The modern period may have relied upon human reason but it believed in a right and a wrong and in a truth that could be discovered. But it failed. So now truth is rejected all together. Couple this with a materially prosperous world and you find the only criterion for what is good in life becomes what is pleasurable. There are no moral absolutes in contemporary society. All that is left is what works for the individual to make that person happy.

What happens when one person’s happiness conflicts with another’s? Recently we saw on the news that one of Alaska’s native tribes is once more engaging in hunting of whales despite international prohibition. Their right as individuals to do what they need to do to be happy was maintained. But this ran smack into another tenant of postmodernism: humanity is not superior, but just one more animal upon this earth. Humanity is increasingly being presented as just part of the world. No longer viewed as created in God’s image, we understand ourselves as evolved from the world who is our mother. Now we hear that animals have the same rights as human beings. So we find when the native Americans of Alaska take to the waters to exercise their happiness, other people take to the waters to defend the rights of the animals. In the middle is no common ground, no truth, no absolute to judge who is right and who is wrong. The only alternative is the use of force. Protestors’ boats run interference. The natives demand the government to use force to protect their rights. The use of force and the exertion of one’s individual will is the only alternative left when there are no absolutes to judge by. It is a harbinger of things to come.

When a society tosses out the idea of right and wrong which would apply to all people and endorses that people have a right to seek their own individual happiness, people will conflict. Some want loud music, others want quiet streets. Then people of like interests band together to exert political and other forms of power to exert their will and get what they desire. So we have action leagues, political action groups. On a larger scale we have ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.

We are moving to a new age when nothing is right nor is anything wrong. Nothing is normal or stable. There are multitudes of choices to pick from. If anyone dares to presume to say this is the way or this is right, they are obviously wrong. The only wrong is to say that one is right. The only universal evil is intolerance. The only universal crime is to say that you should not live such and such a way because it is wrong.

Christians can understand what is happening. While postmodernism is new in that the world is being shaped by this different mindset, it has been seen before. It is the same argument Satan used on Eve to destroy her faith in God. He convinced Eve God did not speak the truth. He convinced Eve that she could be more than God said, that life was open ended and she could chose to become something more. He convinced her God’s Word was a lie and she believed him. She wanted to be like God.

God’s first commandment is that He is God and no other, not some other mythological deity, not nature, and not ourselves. He reveals Himself. He does exist. Humanity is His creation, not some chance product of a random universe. Take God out of the picture, replace ourselves or insert nothing and life is cursed. As Eve discovered, death was the result.

Christians who understand from Scripture the truth of original sin and read the ten commandments should not be surprised that humanity will create for itself a world view that justifies its self-deification, its quest for pleasure, its lack of sexual restraint, its indulgence in material goods, its abuse of other people, and its denial of God and His commands. The Christian message is not desired in contemporary society, because it goes counter to sinful indulgence. Christianity would dare say life is more than our toys. But the postmodern age does not believe. Instead postmodernism submerges itself further into television and computer games.

Christianity is being challenged and the challenges will grow deeper and more pervasive. In an increasing sphere of influence, there is a loss of respect for the concept that a universal truth or way for life applies to all. Life is becoming just what works for the individual. There is no sin, just what is not effective. Christianity is becoming one more alternative, no worse or better than other alternatives, unless it should dare say it is the best or only way. Then the Christian message is viewed as oppressive and intolerant. Ironically the Christian religion whose most beloved passed seems to be "God so loved the world&ldots;" is now seen as unloving. Love in the postmodern age is to allow people to indulge themselves. The motto of this age is live and let live. Christians understand to do so is to live and let die.

We have a new age and with it new challenges. The Christian church could respond in three ways. Indeed, these three responses are already showing their faces. Up till now these responses have mostly been knee jerk or instinctual. It is time to begin to give serious thought to this new age and how we shall faithfully respond to it.

We could hide. We could try to bury our head in the sand and hope we are blowing it all out of proportion. We could go on the defensive, become isolationists. We could try to continue to function as if this were stilling the modern age. We could argue for the truth only to be dismissed by the progressives of the world around us as being old fashioned, irrelevant, a relic of a bygone age. We could close in upon ourselves and just take care of ourselves, be mystified that we cannot understand nor communicate with the world around us, and watch people die without the Christian hope.

Or we could become so afraid of being passed by and becoming obsolete, that we try to keep the church contemporary and progressive. The modern age church played the game of the time period with its Higher – Criticism, liberal theology, and the ecumenical movement, which removed the truth as an obstacle to reunion. Who knows what compromise with the postmodern era will contain? We already see the signs of this reaction. Churches are equating God’s love with tolerance of sin. Churches are endorsing homosexuality as a viable lifestyle. We also see signs of compromise in the wholesale eagerness to abandon tradition. Many congregations trying to stay in touch with their communities are all too eager to abandon centuries of liturgical tradition for the new contemporary style of worship. We must admit that Scripture does not command nor forbid a particular worship style. But what does it say about the direction of things to come, when it is off with the old and on with the new with eager abandon without discernment? What does it say of the direction of things to come when God’s Word and Sacraments are no longer enough to bring people to rebirth and growth in Christ and instead the key motivating factors have to be emotion, entertainment, and hype. Tradition is valuable only in so far as it helps communicate and preserve the truth. When there is no truth to preserve, tradition can only become an obstacle to a pluralistic world. Will the Christian church finally give in to pluralism?

In 325 ad. Constantine called the great council of Nicea. The church was running into a new era. Christianity was legalized and favored. It was becoming part of the world culture, a culture that was intensely pagan. In the Eastern part of the empire that culture was a speculative culture. They liked to ask why does it happen this way. They liked to explain things. And so they tried to explain God. Many sought to compromise those explanations with the pagan culture around them. Many sought to give Christianity a philosophical bent. Philosophical theologians like Arius desired rational explanations. Fundamentalists sought to avoid the use of secular and philosophical terms altogether. It was chaos. The Church survived, grew, and prospered because under God’s grace it met together, explored the options, compared them to the truth of God’s revelation, and communicated itself in an understandable way to its culture. The doctrine of the Trinity was finalized: one God in three persons, not three gods, not one person, but three distinct person but only one God. This was not rational. Nor was it pluralistic. But it was faithful to God’s Word, it was the truth, it communicated to the world, brought order out of chaos, and it was normative.

Our task is no less great. This is the third option: to open our eyes, to relearn the skills to critically analyze and understand our world, and to communicate to it in such a way that we do not compromise the truth of God nor abandon the world to meaninglessness and confusion. Understanding and confronting the new age of postmodernism should not be an elective course in our seminaries nor a sideline pursuit of our church, no more than apologetics and polemics was a sideline pursuit of the early church. To fully communicate the Gospel in an understandable way every pastor, every teacher, every official, indeed every Christian needs to understand where we are and where we are going. We need to start exercising some mental muscle.

The reason churches, pastors, and laity are being mislead by the tenants of postmodernism is not that they are not people of faith, nor is it that they desire to be less faithful to God than previous generations. The problem is ignorance of the mindsets that are developing, the lack of skills to critically examine it and understand it, and our own sinful propensity to give into what makes us happy. Contemporary worship is often fun even if it is not always particularly edifying.

There are a great many sources out there for developing this skill and awareness. I would encourage the seminary to make understanding the world of postmodernism an integral part of the education of pastors. For pastors and laity I would encourage a reading of Gene Edward Vieth’s book Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture.

This whole issue is this. This time is a time of incredible opportunity for us if we will but remember Paul’s injunction to make the best possible use of the time. This people of this generation increasingly have no aspirations, no values, go goals, and no hope. People increasingly view themselves as advanced animals. They just live and exist, make the most of their short lives, and then quietly die. All there is to life seems to be pleasure. It is easy to indulge ourselves in this fantasy in our rich materialistic world. People increasingly view themselves as a process. We go to college so we can get a job and make lots of money. We spend our money on fun and entertainment. Then we go back to work to make more money. When life gets rough we seek escapism: abortion, divorce, alcohol, drugs. We escape into virtual worlds of video games and sit motionless absorbing images of a make believe world on television.

What an opportunity we have for witness and outreach. What an opportunity we have to make a real difference in people’s lives. Far from being irrelevant, the church has something to offer no one else has: ultimate meaning and hope. For Christ told us that He came that we might have life and have it abundantly. People are retreating into their own little worlds where fun is all there is, where ultimately life becomes the experience of sickness, frailty, and death. Life in the postmodern age is destined to end without meaning and to be full of emptiness for there is nothing beyond transitory human existence for the postmodern mindset. There is no God. IF there is some afterlife it is increasingly seen as a product of the natural way of the universe, much like reincarnation or the re-absorption of the divine spark into the one unity of God as found in the Eastern religions. God would speak into such emptiness. Into a world that is convinced that we cannot find God, He would surprise us by finding us. Nicea confessed God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Likewise it is the task of the postmodern church to confess to the world that we have a Father who so much desires to be with us in our lives, that He sent His Son. His Son came to free us from everything that would destroy us from sinful indulgence and lust, to minds blinded by sin, to lack of knowledge of God, and open rebellion against what is right and wrong. We dare not water down the significance of Christ’s action by merely making Him an example or indication of God’s love, but rather demonstrating the seriousness of sin, declare the meaningful solution of Christ’s death and resurrection. We have the opportunity to share with people that there is so much more to life than fun, entertainment, and what happens to work for the individual. Rather there is life from God and with God that if full of beauty, joy, hope, and love.

This has been but a brief sketch of the currents that are flowing together to produce the current of the contemporary scene. Instead of an in-depth study, this has been an attempt to demonstrate and expose the idea that the postmodern age is becoming the mainstream. The church has no choice but to deal with this new age in a proactive and conscientious way. The only other alternatives are to be swept to the side as irrelevant or to be swept up and carried away into the currents of the new. Then we loose that which is distinctively hopeful and Christian to a pluralistic new religion that though calling itself Christian. Such Christianity will be devoid of the one who said "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me."

Rev. David D. Reedy 2002

Prince of Peace Lutheran Church

Dayton Tennessee

423.775.4253

Prince of Peace is a LCMS congregation located in Rhea County Tennessee, serving the entire county of some 32,000 people.