Tuesday, August 26, 2014

A Few Thoughts on Postmodern Culture, Truth, the Church and Spiritual Formation




As a pastor, I often think about how the community of faith (Church) should react to the culture. When it comes to North American culture, in the famous words of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”(We haven’t been for years). If the emphasis of the modern worldview was a confidence in the ability of human reason to overcome every obstacle, then postmodernism is the antithesis. Author Heath White writes, “Premoderns placed their trust in authority. Moderns lost their confidence in authority and placed it in human reason instead. Postmoderns kept the modern distrust of authority but lost their trust in reason and have found nothing to replace it. This is the crux of all postmodern thought.”[1] A few “ism’s” that inform and flow out of postmodernism are nihilism, relativism, constructivism, and pragmatism. In most of these views the postmodern doesn’t reject truth holistically but the idea that there is a universal truth for all people and all time is deeply suspect. And even if there was a truth that did hold true in all cultures it could not necessarily be known in postmodern thinking.
           
A postmodern view of history is an important characteristic that connects to the concept of what was or is true. The perspective of the person experiencing history or writing about history informs what historical story is told. Any given historical event can have nearly limitless perspectives to discover. The birth of North America is a very different historical story taken from a Native American, Western European or African perspective. A true historical account is difficult, if not impossible to reach from a postmodern perspective.       
 The postmodern mind sees truth statements from a power-over stance. White writes, “From a postmodern perspective, those who try to tell us about our human nature are pushing one more power agenda.”[2] Moral absolutes are uncertain, as they are perceived to have a dominant and controlling agenda.

Postmodernism informs how language is used and understood. Determining concrete meanings of words that represent very real things is challenging. Words become variant in meaning, often metaphorically used. For the postmodern a discussion about the Bible being inerrant, infallible or God breathed takes on a different meaning than in traditional modern theological circles. The mere idea of a traditional modern theological circle would be doubtful in postmodernism.

Another author, Fredrick Schweitzer looks at postmodern culture through the lens of life cycles, heavily informed by the work of Erickson. He breaks down several core cycles (childhood, youth, post-adolescence, adulthood and old age) in a person’s life looking at how postmodern culture has influenced development and specifically the role of the church/religious training. The challenge to the church in regards to the postmodern life cycle is paramount. Schweitzer writes, “The traditional churches especially seem to be faced with enormous difficulties of staying in touch with the lives of those living in postmodernity…the real difficulty lies in how postmodern individuals may become convinced that staying affiliated with a religious institution is still worthwhile.”[3]
           
Postmodern life cycles have a tremendous impact on how spiritual formation is engaged and what spiritual formation is. The instability of childhood, plurality of adolescence, disaffiliation of postadolescence, ambiguity of what adulthood is, and the realization of old age, are important considerations in the formation process. A one-size fits all approach to spiritual formation simply won’t work and will exacerbate the already disenfranchised (in their perception) postmodern hoards.

Core Christian themes relating to authority, language, truth (both particular and universal) are all under scrutiny in a postmodern culture. The Bible as the source of revelation informing human history, present reality and eschatological hopes needs to be re-engaged for the postmodern mind. It is not just the process of spiritual formation, but also the very content of the process and the goals that need to be evaluated in our western postmodern age. From a traditional catechism model to modern scope and sequence, children’s ministries, and the girth of small group models, the church needs to radically adapt for impactful spiritual formation to occur.

The spiritual formation practices of the past 50 years in both protestant and catholic context are not sufficient to engage the postmodern. When Jesus Christ entered human history in flesh he did so in a particular culture. He spoke the language of that culture, was schooled in the thinking of that day, dressed in the garb of the day and understood the cultural values. Jesus was a Jewish rabbi who called disciples to follow him in a culturally familiar (though profound and outside-the -box) manner. The stories that Jesus told, called parables, built upon a tradition of parables from other Rabbis. The questions lobbed at Jesus were not just to trap Jesus, but also common debates in Jewish culture. Jesus operated in a Jewish context but also in recognition of the broader Hellenistic culture that ruled over Israel. He understood the broader context and story that was unfolding in the variant Jewish sects and the ideas about what the Messiah would do.

Postmodern culture is the culture that we reside in, much like Jesus residing in ancient Jewish culture. An understanding of the culture is not an add-on to the spiritual formation process and being church; it is the very heart of it. If we don’t understand the cultural philosophical context we are in, the efforts to engage formation will become destructive to the church body. As the church moves into the next century and postmodernism fades into a new cultural context, the church will need to adapt. It did this when the church was persecuted, it did it when Rome became “Christian”, when it fell, when Aristotelian thinking took hold, and in every subsequent cultural shift. That is the beauty and power of the Christian story: to adapt in every context and yet maintain The Story.

Jason Esposito
Lead Pastor
CrossWay Church
www.crosswaygt.org




[1] Heath White, Post-Modernism 101 (Grand Rapids: Brazo Press, 2006), 41.
[2] Heath White, Post-Modernism 101, 60.
[3] Fredrick Schweitzer, The Postmodern Life Cycle (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2004), 17.