Thoughtwise: into the mind of post-modern Britain
Relax! get the pdf file here, print it out and read it over a coffee.
When Paul arrived in Athens it was clear that he would need to re-think the way he explained the gospel to people – compare the speech he made in Acts 17:22-34 with his presentation to an “expert in Jewish customs”, King Agrippa, in Acts 26. It is clear from the scriptures that the gospel never changes but the way we express the gospel must adapt to the culture we are sent to.
If you struggle with this – try this simple exercise: In what language did Jesus speak [1] ? In what language were the gospels written [2] ? The first attempts to explain Jesus to the world had to be translated - each gospel shows clear signs of cultural targeting [3] .
But culture is never static and our western European one is changing very rapidly most of the time. This is unsettling and challenging to Christians, especially those who like things to stay the same!
What has shaped the intellectual climate in Europe and North America today and what forces have a major effect on the local weather patterns?
Modernism
Enlightenment – “The Age of Reason” - There was a burst of artistic, philosophical and scientific activity in the 1700s and that made Europeans feel very self-confident. Thinking people rejected tradition, superstition and irrationality in favour of a new confidence in the power of reason. Humanists taught that man was able to decide for himself what is right and wrong, good and bad: the modern world was born.
The height of the enlightenment project was modernism – the word was invented by art critics looking to describe the new artistic movements of their generation (Kipling was a Victorian poet, T.S. Elliot was a modernist poet) but the term soon came to be applied to a rigorously scientific and technological world-view.
In modernism reason is central, so you cannot have revelation (superstition is bad) and intuition is distrusted (it is irrational): progress is made by discovering more facts and reasoning about what those facts mean. Modernism had no time for religious myths and stories and so religion was consigned to the dust bin. Modernism is alive and kicking; Richard Dawkins is an arch modernist:
Christians responded to modernism by augmenting their proclamation of the word with apologetics – showing that Bible stories were rooted in history; believable and not just myths. Throughout the last century, lots of Christians learned to answer the questions posed by the modern mind [4] .
More than this, churches also responded by becoming more like modern organisations; more business-like and better at marketing themselves in the language of modernism. There is still a drive for churches to imitate the successful organisations we see in the secular world – all of them driven by a belief in rationality and a can-do mentality; this response to modernism has become an important part of the church’s approach to mission [5] .
Post-modernsim
In 1979, a French philosopher, Jean-François, Lyotard published a book called The Post-modern Condition. His thesis was simple: anyone with any sense can see that the modernist view of the world is flawed. Reason can only work on knowledge – and what you know depends on your point of view: no two people can possibly perceive the same thing in the same way. Everything you know has been personally assembled by you from your own unique perception of what is going on around you. So where the modernist project had put reason in the centre – Lyotard and his associates put perception at the centre.
In the post-modern project reason is no more significant that intuition, tradition or any other was of working out what is going on. You alone are in the driving seat.
Let’s summarise it like this: to the modernist, objective is good and subjective bad: to the post-modernist, objective is impossible (because we can never really know anything for sure) and subjective is … good? Not really; but it is all we have got, so it will have to do.
Onto the streets
Now all this is very academic, isn’t it? Academics work in ivory towers and play all day with philosophical ideas – nothing to do with us! But at night, when all is quiet, the ideas jump off the desks, abseil down into the street and mess with everyone’s heads: including ours. So let’s take a bus ride through the post-modern mind.
This shift from reason to perception changes everything. This is how:
First, post-moderns encourage people to doubt all the explanations you have ever heard of anything – scientific theories such as laws of motion, evolutionary theory, everything. Lyotard called these metanarratives [6] and he pointed out that people just don’t go for these big theories any more. That, of course, includes the Christian explanation of the world that you find in the Bible
Result: post-modernism strengthens people’s resistance to taking a look at the word of God.
Second, the ‘truth’ is unlikely to be found in one place or one system of ideas. Have you noticed how sceptical people are about science these days? Time was that a man in a white coat was trusted by the public; today we are more sceptical. And if scientists can’t be trusted to get at the truth, who else can? Certainly not preachers, priests or pastors!
Result: people feel affirmed in their common practice of assembling their own ‘truth’ from the ideas available to them. Their ‘god’ is more like Mr Potato Head than the real thing.
Thirdly, post-modernism puts the individual in the driving seat. Have you noticed how difficult it is for political parties to get members these days? In a post-modern culture these political ready-meals are not very appetizing. Most people I know have ideas about personal morality that put them on the political right and at the same time hold ideas about social justice that put them well to the left of the political spectrum – and that’s just the Christians!
Result: People are reluctant to commit to the one-size-fits-all systems like Christianity or Socialism and prefer to commit their time and energy to single issues that they are personally important to them.
The modernist empire strikes back
Now, modernists are very scathing about post-modernists: Biologist Richard Dawkins believes that post-modernists generally are intellectual charlatans who deliberately obscure weak or nonsensical ideas with ostentatious and difficult to understand verbiage. This observation rings true when you read this from the Stamford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
That post-modernism is indefinable is a truism. However, it can be described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning. [7]
Then there was The Sokal Affair: Alan Sokal is a very naughty Physicist who wrote a learned article for a post-modernist journal. He deliberately constructed thousands of words of complete drivel in which he dismissed the laws of physics as mere ‘social conventions’ and the post-modernist editor solemnly published it. When Sokal revealed what had happened there was uproar, and the modernists laughed their heads off! Sokal said later:
Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor.)
To put it another way, a lot of post-modernist material is pure bilge!
But this is the important thing; modernism and the post-modern way of thinking are both potent forces in our culture today. They do not exist peacefully side-by-side; they are fighting for the heart of our society even as we speak. You will encounter both styles of thought in your everyday life.
The attractions of post-modernism
I suspect that post-modernism is not so much a philosophy as a coping mechanism.
Since the late 1970’s we have become an information rich culture and a very wealthy one. People travel more widely than ever and the world comes into their homes through satellite, cable and the internet. The old structures – like the political parties and the churches - that gave people hope of a better life and a sense of community are now decrepit. The post-modern mind set is a way of coping with information overload (how can I possibly know what is true?), broadening cultural horizons (so many religions, there must be an element of truth in all of them), and the collapse of old certainties (the Prime Minister knows no more than anyone else about how to run the country).
Serious philosophy or coping mechanism, the post-modern mind set is (for the time being!) very helpful to lots of people.
Responding to Post-modernism
We started with Paul in Athens, let’s take a moment to reflect on his way of approaching patterns of thought that opposed the gospel: he is writing to a church firmly in the grip of pagan thought.
II Corinthians 10:1-6
From a Christian perspective it is not too difficult to see the weaknesses built into post-modernism:
- The rejection of metanarrative means that the Bible is ruled out: it cannot give us an explanation of anything. God is apparently silenced.
- When you decide that there is no possibility of knowing the truth, we are incapable of knowing God and how we ought to live. God seems to be un-knowable.
- When you put me and my feelings in the driving seat then I must make up my own set of rules as I go along, there is no room for God’s word to have a say unless I choose to let him. God is de-throned and I am enthroned: nothing new there then!
But we ought to ask another question; what is good about post-modernism? Does this mind set challenge us Christians to put some things right? I believe it does – here are some ideas:
Under the influence of modernism evangelism became quite cerebral – an appeal to the mind – post-modernism reminds us that there is more to the human being than reason – our hearts must become engaged too [8] . Most of us knew that already – post-modernism reminds us, that’s all.
Evangelicals can also seem quite modernist in their thinking about God – systematic theology can become a ruthlessly logical way of proving that we are right and every one else is wrong. A small dose of scepticism about human reason - and the limits of language – can help restore our sense of wonderment at this God who reveals himself to us. Theology is not always verbal geometry with a ‘right’ answer to every problem – it is OK sometimes to have to grope for words and leave loose ends! Most of us knew that already – post-modernism reminds us, that’s all.
Evangelicals can be (unintentionally) quite arrogant about their ‘rightness’. When it comes to truth we need the humility to listen to others and weigh up carefully their different perceptions of what the word of God says. Most of us knew that already – post-modernism reminds us, that’s all.
And then there is management and marketing – I believe that churches benefit greatly when we learn from the business world and present ourselves well. Nothing wrong with that; but the presence of post-modern ways of thinking mean that a lot of the people we are trying to reach are actually suspicious of slick organisations. What people are thirsty for is genuine community and love - Most of us suspected that already – post-modernism confirms it, that’s all.
Meeting post-modernism: head-on or oblique?
For some, meeting the challenges presented by post-moderns is going to mean finding points of contact between Christian and post-modern thought. Some churches and individuals are seeking to do just that, especially those from what now called Emergent Churches [9] .
Other believers take a more head-on approach, and are suspicious of any points of contact lest they become points of infection!
Wherever you and your church happens to be on this spectrum, it is important to stress that we must meet Post-modernism with the Gospel, not with Modernism. Our goal is not to convert people back to an older dead system! What happens when the gospel meets the post-modern?
First, God is not silenced. It is undoubtedly helpful to show people that the Bible is reliable. But it is even better to get people to read it (or listen to it) for themselves. The Bible is a very powerful and convincing metanarrative all by itself and you do not need to be ashamed of this.
One of the interesting things about Post-modernism is that it is possible to believe in the biblical picture of Jesus without having a lot of confidence in the bible. In modernism, we had to prove the Bible before people could believe in Jesus and as a result we often only presented the Bible. In post-modernism, the person can overcome the metanarrative and so we can ease back on presenting/defending Scripture and concentrate on presenting Jesus. Do you see the difference, and the interesting opportunities this gives us?
Second, God is know-able. I came to faith from a broken family background through meeting, not one person, but a whole community of them! My two Christian friends introduced me to their friends and eventually to their Church – they didn’t throw me in at the deep end in some religious meeting, we did normal and everyday things together. I understood from the start that these people were building something that was falling apart in society as a whole – community. If you really believe that the church is the body of Christ then you will believe in it’s power to make Christ known – even to people who do not think that is possible.
Third, God is in control.
The gospel writers changed their presentation to suit the culture, so did Paul and so must we. God is a communicator and he can break through any barrier as long as his people are thoughtful, humble and, above all, obedient.
[1] Aramaic – an dearly form of Arabic
[2] Greek – the lingua franca of the Roman world
[3] Compare Matthews ‘Sermon on the Mount’ (Mt 5 to 7) aimed at Jewish people with Luke’s version of the same material (Luke 6) aimed at Gentiles. The Old Testament quotations are missing in the latter.
[4] For example, the Christian critique of Evolution attempts to take on modernists on their own turf, science against science.
[5] Willow Creek is an example of this – a church which thrives on modern management and marketing and seeks to export this model ‘round the world
[6] les grands récits – the big explanations or stories
[7] Here is a better definition from the open University website: Post-modernity… is a cultural condition (‘the state we find ourselves in’), of living in an increasingly technologically orientated society, with lower levels of trust in authority and ‘truth’ than previously, where the meaning of things is unstable and open to interpretation.
[8] Think of Jesus’ reaction to Lazarus’ death, not a lengthy theological talk but tears.
[9] People like Mike Frost, and Rob Bell, Brian McClaren, David Fitch and many others .