Tag: Postmodernism

Categories
Teaching

If Pigs could fly

What if I came up with a theory that said pigs could fly? Ok, someone else has already come up with that one, but work with me here. Imagine that I was the first person who came up with this theory and then imagine that somehow, this theory propagated into nearly every K-12 school in America. All teachers were then forced to teach students that pigs could fly and many students themselves began believing the theory was true.

From the outset, my theory that this theory could take root in every school and flourish sounds absurd. But, isn’t this was has happened or is burgeoning to happen with CRT and the public school system? The thing we miss when talking about the spread of CRT in our schools and society-at-large is the T part of CRT. CRT is just that, a Theory. Theories aren’t necessarily true. That’s why they are theories. Theories must be tested tried and true, proven over time before they should gain widespread acceptance. History itself has proven that CRT, laced with Marxism and racism, has not brought about worldwide good. Many wars have been fought and many lives have been lost due to ideas inherent in CRT.

CRT can be found in a philosophy of education called reconstructionism. Reconstructionism contains tinges of other educational philosophies such as progressivism and constructivism. These latter two philosophies pave the way for reconstructionism to take root in our postmodern times. Social utilitarianism becomes a dominant theme within this philosophy. Within postmodernism, constructs lose their meaning. Language itself is deconstructed and old words take on new meanings.

Postmodernism actually leads us to a destination where meaning has no value at all. Taking my theory to its logical postmodern conclusion, we could say the students that believe my theory end up believing they themselves are pigs and they themselves can fly. The results of believing in and living by such a theory would be disastrous, both for the students and for our society. Thousands upon thousands of students would venture to climb tall buildings and leap off, thinking they were Superman, only to plummet to their death.

Theories have consequences. CRT is dividing students and adults alike on racial lines and the consequences of believing such a theory could be just as disastrous as the consequences produced by my proposed theory that all pigs can fly. America doesn’t need another war fought upon racial lines. Our nation’s history has produced enough bloodshed.

Modernism, with its reliance on science, took man’s need away for a meta-narrator (God). Postmodernism, with its reliance on the subjective, took man’s need away for a metanarrative. However, the results from both periods have not been good. We live in what academics call between the 2nd and 3rd world cultures. In the 2nd world culture, sacred and social order is valued, whereas in the 3rd world culture, sacred and social order is abandoned. The 3rd world culture is a culture of “deathworks” and is the reason we see socio-political historical norms and precedents being pushed to the side.

We need our schools to be places once again where teachers can teach facts and not feelings. We need to get back to valuing both form and meaning. Context matters! So does history. So does grammar. So does the 3 R’s. I could go on, but I’ll stop there. I’ve seen enough pigs jump to their death.

Categories
Leadership

“Coach, are we talking about a Coach?”

With this week being NBA Finals week and my favorite team, the LA Lakers inching closer to a Championship, I thought I would talk a little basketball. Nearly twenty years ago, Allen Iverson of the Philadelphia 76ers was recorded by the media at a press conference as saying his now-famous “Practice” speech. I can still remember where I was when I heard this news for the first time. Things didn’t go viral back then, but this press conference was as close to going viral as one could get. It was played on ESPN every hour on the hour. You could just say that it was the press conference ‘heard round the world.’

What made the press conference so iconic was that it involved an All Star, an unmistakable voice, and a long-held belief and value being questioned at its core. When Allen Iverson (AI) said, “Practice, are we talking about practice?”, it came across to every listening ear that this star point guard thought of himself as above practice. AI is known as “The Truth” and the truth is Iverson didn’t become the all-star he is without practice. Iverson knows this is true and would tell you to this day that he regrets the press conference. AI has gone on record saying that everyone finds his quote funny, but himself. There were a lot of things coming together at one time that caused AI to blow up and go on a rant that echoes throughout time. To his credit, AI got to an NBA Finals. Unfortunately, he never won a ring. My Lakers beat him!

This all brings me to an NBA player today that plays the same position as AI and has a similar size, skillset, and game. Like AI, this player has made some questionable comments in the past, but none so questionable as the comments he made this past week. Brooklyn Nets Point Guard Kyrie Irving has gone on record saying “I don’t really see us having a head coach.” That comment would be fine if it were true, but the truth is Brooklyn just hired a new coach by the name of Steve Nash days before Kyrie made his comments.

To make matters worse, Kyrie’s all-star teammate Kevin Durant chimed in saying that Nash’s coaching was going to be a “collaborative effort.” In other words, the players and the coach will coach the team. In speaking of Kyrie and himself, Durant continues, “I think a lot of people may question our leadership, overall or just us two.”

Collaboration and leadership are great things, that is when they are properly understood. In next generation ministry, collaboration and leadership are vital. Coaches and players should always collaborate, but never to the point where the players become the coach. If and when this happens, why even hire a coach? I do question Kyrie and Durant’s leadership style. I see Kyrie and Durant as great players, but not as great leaders. The reason is because underneath all of the player quotes run a philosophy or a belief system called postmodernism.

Postmodernism isn’t all bad. There remains a mixture of truth within this system. For example, the coach who doesn’t listen to anything his players say shouldn’t be coaching at all. But postmodernism also produces a belief system that ultimately can’t be trusted. For example, Kyrie Irving is also on record saying that he believes the world is flat. Just because you believe something doesn’t mean that it is true, yet postmodernism would say that what’s true for you is true for you and what’s true for me is true for me. At that point, the standard of truth becomes subjective and not based on something objective, such as the Word of God.

Leadership matters. And so does authority. Postmodernism undermines authority. For this reason, I don’t see how Nash, Irving, and Durant will be able to co-exist long enough to produce an NBA Championship. You need more than great players to pull a championship off. You need a great culture and you need great leaders at every level. Bottom-up leadership is a great thing, but not at the expense of disallowing those up-top of the ability to lead. In this way, postmodernism operates upside-down as it doesn’t make any more sense than the sense it takes to believe the world is flat.

In life, the Holy Spirit is our coach. The Bible says that he is our comforter and counselor. We all need a teacher, a coach. What we don’t need to do is to say that coaches are a necessary evil. Coaches are in place to help players get to the next level, to their next stage of development. This type of philosophy works at the professional level as much as it does the middle school level. Once a player thinks he has arrived, his growth is stunted. Who better to coach Kyrie than a two-time NBA MVP? Last time I checked, Kyrie hasn’t won one of those awards.

Categories
Revitalization

Exposing Postmodernism

Is the Christian to fear the culture he or she lives in? Abortion, LGBTQ, Atheism, and a host of other worldviews flood today’s marketplace as a substitute to replace the nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage worldview. In the case that you have been asleep for the past thirty years, the transition from religious to secular has already taken place.

As modernity has shifted to postmodernity and the nation has shifted from Christian to post-Christian, I encounter many believers who stand between the times and are confused as to what to do. Really, these believers should not have been caught off-guard, but that’s another article I do not have time to write. What is important is that we do help the Christians who have repented of their ignorance and are genuinely seeking guidance in how they are to live for Christ now. To the believer who desires to keep his ostrich head stuck in the sand, I cannot help you out at this time.

Has secularism won the day? Has postmodernism painted a picture as a point of no return – as a worldview that has finally defeated Christianity? Has religious pluralism gone as far in tolerance to now eclipse intolerant Christianity? NO, NO, NO!

From a worldly perspective and a judgment based off of the numbers, the secularist would say YES. But as Christ-followers, we know and understand a kingdom perspective that reveals time from beginning to end. At the end of the day, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Jesus as Lord (Philippians 2:10-11). But that fact still doesn’t answer how we confront postmodernism today.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we must not only confront postmodernism, we must expose it. It seems almost impossible from the start. I mean, how do you share meaning with someone who doesn’t believe that meaning exists. How can you help someone who does not believe in absolute truth and defines their own right and wrong? How do you take the self-absorbed and self-centered individual to a place where he or she admits there is a God and they are accountable to Him? Obviously, postmodernism does not make sense and is not rational (why modernity has passed), but this of course, is exactly why the postmodern embraces his worldview. We all remember tv shows in the 90’s like Seinfield which were popular because they were shows about nothing. Exposing the emptiness in postmodernism is not enough. The emptiness is what attracts the postmodern to his or her view and to watch his or her show (its ok to watch Seinfield, but to the ignorant, that show is now 25 years old). Postmodernism did not occur overnight. It was a process and it is not going away anytime soon.

But, ahhhhhh, maybe we are on to something (Read my last sentence carefully). Postmodernism will not last forever. It will eventually run its course and there will be a new worldview to overtake it as much as it has overtaken modernity. For the postmodern, culture becomes his enemy. Why? Because he or she can never escape it. Even if you dwindle all future cultures to a culture of the self, you still have a culture. Culture reveals a Creator. Though the naturalist would deny this Creator, the naturalist cannot escape the creation or the culture that he is in. Though he has placed himself above God, his sin (he will not use this word, perhaps “crime” or “disease” in this therapeutic culture) keeps creeping up. With moral standards all but gone, he cannot but think a lot about himself and a lot of himself. Though he denies moral reality, the image of God within him keeps telling him he was created as a moral agent. It is at this point that creation becomes the gospel’s ally. Fallen postmodern man in denial of moral reality has not found a way to live comfortably and still yearns spiritually for something more. In short, he cannot save himself or find the means to salvation within himself.

Here are some helpful quotes from David Wells in Losing Our Virtue:

“We are, as a result, caught. We are condemned forever to the jarring uncertainties that come from being morally and spiritually out of step with who we are by creation. The more we sin, the greater the contradiction with what we are in the image of God; . . . It is this frustration, I believe, that gives Christian faith its best access to a postmodern culture that has given up on serious thought, rational argument, and historical defenses.” – p. 192

“In understanding God, we understand something of ourselves, and in understanding ourselves, we understand something of God.” – p. 193

“Our postmodern spiritual disjunctions, our inward contradictions, on which we place such a morally neutered assessment, can be the very hand that leads us to God, because they lead us back into moral reality.” – p. 193

“We cannot elude our own moral nature or its corruption. We know ourselves to be moral agents, but there is always a residue of moral unease when the day is done. Our experience is thus shot through with ambiguity. Spates of pleasure-seeking are followed by seasons of regret; well-meaning actions, by those that are malicious, vindictive, or craven; hope in our ability to take hold of life in good ways, by despair that we have not succeeded in doing so. We party on Saturday and repent on Sunday. This tangle of contradictions we are unable to untangle because of both the power of sin and the intent of God. It is this inability that points us back, even in our advanced postmodernity, to the Cross, because there simply is no other place of resolution.

If, then, we, in this generation have lost our ability to name sin – and we have – we have nevertheless not lost our sin. We may call it by other names, we may not recognize it at all, and we always misinterpret it. Our moral radar is defunct. And yet, moral reality keeps intruding into our experience; the threads of moral existence are ever present. It is thus that creation is the great ally of the Gospel, while culture and fallen self are its great enemies. This is the awful contradiction that cuts through all of life, and it offers the most telling entrée for the Gospel into the postmodern soul.” – p. 196

Forgive me if I sound harsh to the ostrich, but David wrote this in 1998, a century ago (you know what I mean, “last century”). Wake up ostrich, one-hundred years is no different than nineteen if your head is in the sand.

Categories
Next Generation Ministry

Is there any Hope in ministering to postmoderns?

bible-pic

“In your teaching show integrity, seriousness, and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned” -Titus 2:7b–8a

We live in a postmodern post-Christian context where the world tells us that nothing matters, absolute truth does not exist, and what’s good for you may not be good for me.  In other words, everything is relative and everything is tolerated (except Christianity) in this politically-correct pluralistic utopian-like society.  The word “whatever” sums up this worldview because what’s true for you may not be true for me.  In Bible times, the equivalent of this “whatever” lifestyle can be found in Judges 17:6b, “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (ESV).  The HCSB states, “everyone did whatever he wanted.”

How do we minister, and specifically evangelize a generation that increasingly adopts the postmodern mindset? I have taken much time in prayer, in the Word, in seeking God, in research, and in study during my leisure time to attempt to arrive with a plausible answer to this crucial question.  I do not have enough space in this blog entry to write all the answers I have found or have been revealed to me.  Most experts will tell you that sharing your story within sharing The Story (Creation, Fall, Rescue, Restoration) is foundational.  I would agree with this assessment as the biblical worldview seen through the lens of Scripture presents a perfect balance that makes sense out of all of life.

However, I want to share with you my personal thoughts and feelings on the subject of ministering in a postmodern world. We know that images capture the attention of the next generation more than words. Young people often live their lives vicariously through the media.  The next generation often make sense of their world through their music, movies, and games.  How many times have you heard a teenager quote a movie, sing his or her favorite lyrics, or talk non-stop about their favorite video game?  Thanks to technology and social media, the next generation could almost be considered to have multiple personalities in the form of a real-life self and a virtual-self.  In essence, these two people should be the same, but oftentimes they are worlds apart.  This makes ministering to the next generation twice as hard.

But it’s no time to give up!  In working with the next generation, there is a lack of seriousness (see the verse above).  We next generation ministry leaders often contribute and sometimes unintentionally add to the lack of seriousness in the next generation that we minister to.  In this world of random, where kids say things out of the blue that have no bearing on anything whatsoever, we leaders often respond with the same postmodern lingo or say nothing and let our students carry on adlib.  The result is neither party gaining anything of substance.  In postmodern lingo, one word has many meanings. This is one reason in which secular songs are so popular because a song or even a word in a song takes on so many different meanings to different people.

In contrast, the Word is full of substance.  The Word is spirit and life (John 6:63). The Word is truth (John 17:17) and The Word is a means to how one worships (John 4:24).  When we next generation leaders pray the Word, speak the Word, sing the Word, or most importantly live the Word, the next generation takes notice.  The next generation sees Christ (John 13:34–35) and in turn sees hope (Col 1:27).  Hope is what the next generation desires and is what is highly sought after by postmoderns.  We have to tell the emerging generations that there is hope, but more importantly, we must show them who Hope is.

The postmodern movement is not all bad.  There are actually some good elements within postmodernism that have nudged ministry leaders to reform the church today!  However, there are extremes on both sides of the movement and any philosophy or worldview left to itself and without Christ is hopeless and can easily deceive (Col 2:8).

Next generation leader, let’s teach with seriousness, but more importantly, let’s live serious lives.  You can still be cool and hip.  You can still relate and have fun.  But when it comes to the Word of God, let’s make sure the next generation understands God’s Word and life itself is no game.