Friday, December 12, 2003

unbelieving believers and believing unbelievers?

Charles Colson’s editorial in Christianity Today, has caused much reaction and discussion. I don’t pretend to be able to add anything to this great discussion. I’m just jotting down my response. I guess this is for me, because I can’t imagine being able to add anything on the level that others have.
Mr. Colson’s take on post-modernism, is very much like that of most Christians I know. I found it interesting that I read an armload of books this summer and then at the end of the summer I was in a meeting where the speaker got up with the same armload and bemoaned their content. The irony was that much of the content was methodological and spoke of the inability to separate methods from beliefs. I think it was Mark Oestriecher who said that evangelicals have bought into modernism so fully that many can no longer separate modernity from Christianity. So basically they think that THE definition of pomo is the belief that there is no absolute Truth. So when they see pomo Christians impacting their culture, and the neat little definition of a worldview doesn’t fit, it is only natural to think that the culture has changed, rather than realize that you’ve too narrowly defined a worldview.
In fact, for modern Christians to think that post modern believers share non-believers’ relativistic worldview is allow for a believer to be relativistic. This is an oxymoron. A Christian either believes Jesus or he is not a Christian. I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father but by me. So if that is THE absolute Truth, what else could matter about post modernity and its impact on the believer? By the same token, this modern Christian, having used a single issue as definition of pomo, must be defining modernism as the belief in absolute Truth. This is to say that unbelieving moderns believe in absolute Truth, because that defines their culture and worldview. So should I conclude that pomo believers aren’t believers and modern unbelievers are. Is the only criterion that one must believe that there IS absolute Truth? No one said that moderns had to agree on what WAS the absolute Truth. I know I’m writing all crazy here, but I think this illustrates what Oestricher said about the inability to separate modernity from Christianity. The irony is that the very thing they are worried about concerning post modernity is a fallacy that they’ve held themselves - that modernity implies salvation because it allows for the belief that there is one Truth. The unbeliever is under the umbrella of the world view? This is crazy – and I think it at least partially accounts for a lack of concern for the soul of the unbeliever. A people have been so defined by the culture that they see similarity with themselves as assurance that their neighbors aren’t so bad after all. What remains true is that modern or post modern, the lost are lost.
I’m just trying to poke holes in the superficial understanding of an emerging culture, because we’ve been thrown out with the bathwater so many times. My superficial narrow definition is that one has removed itself from the culture and formed a protective counter culture bubble as a defense from the outside world. The other seeks to move into, engage and challenge the culture in ways that will lead them to the Truth. I'm encouraged that this is beginning to happen as Colson's article notices a decline in his defining factors of post modern culture.

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