postmodernism

I've not blogged much recently and there's a very good reason for that, blogging is a great distraction from doing real work. I always seem to think that I'll just put something down quickly and an hour later I'm still composing (what I think is) the most exquisite post ever. Unfortunately I've got lots of work to do and deadlines looming large over me so I've been trying to avoid actually writing anything that might take up too much time.

I think I might have time for a little thinking about postmodernism though, and it'll help me with my work cause I've got to include my thoughts on it in my thesis (because a lot of people who write about emerging church mention it as a contributing factor).

I'd rather not mention it at all but I feel I should because too much talk of postmodernism is misleading. In fact, I think a lot of the talk about postmodernism by christian leaders and authors is wasted and they'd be better off talking about culture in other terms.

I don't think I understand what postmodernism is, that's not because I've not understood the 'what is postmdernism' chapters in all those christian books that promise to have the answer to what the church of the future will look like, but because I've not read or engaged with Lyotard, Foucalt or Derrida. I have no idea what they actually said, only the popular interpretation that is doing the rounds in christian circles - use pictures cause postmodern generations are media-saturated, short attention span, samplers of culture; don't say you have the truth, they/we think there is no truth; no to authority; no to science; no to religion, (but yes to spirituality); lets deconstruct everything and revel in the inconsistencies and fragments. So please excuse me if I've mis-represented postmodernism at all, I think that probably is the case, but that's the understanding of postmodernism as presented to many christians.

I'm not going to say those things are wrong, but they don't give a full picture of society as I see it. For example, take that short attention span and love of pictures and images that postmoderns are supposed to have, if that was true then we'd all be watching 10 minute silent films and nothing more! Nobody would be reading all those harry potter books that are so popular, nobody would be writing or reading blogs. And what about that rejection of modern enlightenment thought - universities are still churning out scientists and doctors, people still choose to study and practice engineering and computing. The science machine is still rumbling on, pushing development in all areas - can we really afford to ignore that?

I recently took part in a seminar where we were discussing different personality types. I looked at different figures in church history and saw how people had met God in different ways. My co-host did something about personality typing based on the myers briggs indicators and that really made me think about who we are as a people. We are diverse, we think differently.

Myers briggs just gives categories of personality that people can identify with, but people in different categories will react differently to things - some like to see the big picture (relate well to metanarratives? not very postmodern!) and others like to get lost in the details (I can see that in postmodernism as I understand it). Some think in logical structured ways, others like to explore a problem from many different angles. Some people need structure, others like imagery. Some need facts, others need experience.

My own wee theory about postmodernism is not that it doesn't exist, but that what we see as a postmodern change in society is actually all those people who repond to imagery, story and experience standing up and saying - actually, my needs are important too. To understand and connect with people, we need both sides of the story, we need emotion as well as knowledge, we need to understand that other people know different, contradictory 'truths' to us and be gentle in our assertions of truth.

The Church can't continue to blame postmodernism for all its problems. Even people who need facts and knowledge need to have them presented in an engaging way. Even people who like listening to sermons need to have good sermons to listen to - don't blame people's short attention span if they can't listen to you ramble on, if they're not listening it's probably more likely that you're being boring!

Having said that, I realise that I'm being really boring so I'll sign off now and do something more important, I've got a thesis to finish for tomorrow!

Simplicity

Richard has got me thinking about all sorts of things. He's that kind of guy, with a brain that never stops, and that kind of perpetual motion of the thinking muscles can be rather infectious. One thing he's got me thinking about is how to portray a simple gospel message, including all the main points of the Christian message but that's simple enough for anyone to understand. So, I thought I'd have a go:

God exists. That's something that I'm pretty sure of now, sure enough to spend several years of my life dedicated to finding out more about Him, but I wasn't always so sure. First it took a tentative acceptance that God might exist, then it became faith that God did exist. There are 'proofs' of God's existence, but honestly, they're not that convincing. What really convinced me that God exists is the change he has made in me, we have a relationship, me and God, and it's not all one way. You can't have a relationship with a fictional being, God is not an imaginary friend, imaginary friends don't change how you are or how you feel.

I'm getting ahead of myself here, this is the end of the story, and you need to hear the beginning. If you trust me that God exists, then trust me when I tell you that God created us. In fact he created everything, but especially he created us, and he made us for a purpose, to love - to love Him and to love one another, and because He created us, He loves us - like a mother seeing her child's face for the first time, that kind of love.

It could have been a blissful state, creator and createe living together in mutual love, God caring for us and us responding to God, trusting him and talking to him regularly. So why aren't things like that? There's a little word that Christians use that sums up what when wrong and that word is 'sin'. Sin has two meanings, it means the overall breakdown of that God/mankind relationship and it also means the things that we do that are the result of that broken state. Most people know the second meaning of the word - they know that murder is a sin and theft is a sin but they don't know that even if you can't put your finger on any one nasty thing like that that you've done sin is still a part of your life. It's still a part of my life too because even though I'm a christian and I believe in God, that doesn't make me perfect, there's still a long way to go to fully restore my relationship with God. I've got a lot of bad habits to break and a lot of rebellious thoughts to bring under God's control.

I don't know when we lost our love for God, when we became hard-hearted, I don't know when we turned our love for God into love for money, power or sex but I know that happened and we see the results of it all around us. God would not be a loving God if he wasn't angered by our behaviour to one another and distraught by our rejection of him but God never lost his love for us, never gave up on us, he thinks we are worth saving.

You see there's a bigger problem than we realise about separating ourselves from God and we didn't know it until God told us about it. God is the source of our life and we don't know how dependant on Him we really are, our own resources are finite, every second we spend away from God, we are dying. Of course, we're all physically dying, but we're also dying spiritually, we need some kind of help otherwise that void between ourselves and God will only get wider and we will cut ourselves off completely from the source of all life and all hope. If there is any such thing as hell, surely that is it - to be completely removed from God. Because I'm a christian, I do believe death is not the end for us, the life we live is going to continue but that does require God's intervention and to live a full life after death requires us to assent to being refilled with God's life here and now.

So far I've described a problem and its solution, but I haven't explained how that solution came about, what it was that God did that made it possible for us to turn back to him.

It happened through one man - Jesus. This man was special, people could see it in him, he was different, he cared. He had an air of authority but wasn't aloof, his teaching was refreshing and something about him drew people to him. He did things that only God could do and said things only God should say and a few of his closest followers guessed the truth, this man who was just like them was God himself. They must have shaken their heads to try to get this ridiculous thought out - how could a man be God? how could God become just an ordinary man?

People noticed that Jesus was different, special and that he had something they didn't, something they wanted. What he had was a never-ending supply of spirit, and therefore a never-ending supply of life. There was no abyss between Jesus and God, he was born with all the disadvantages that we are, with all the temptations to sin, in the same frail body and with the same weak mind yet he was all-consumed by his relationship with God, he was completely reliant on God's spirit - his own spirit - within him. Directed by that spirit he always chose the way of love for others, not love for himself.

That obedience to God's direction even led him to not fight when men came to take him away, when he was sentenced to death, and when he was beaten and nailed to the tortuous cross. God died. We are so distant from God that we didn't recognise him when he turned up and we killed him. It was our sin that put Jesus on the cross -and I say our because I mean mine too, it wasn't just a handful of people years ago that killed Jesus, he died because of your broken relationship with God, and because of mine.

That could have been the end of the story and if it had been, we would all have been lost but Jesus death was not the end. Resurrection means coming back from death, but it's more than just the reanimation of a body, it's the beginning of a new and different and fuller life and that's what Jesus began. Jesus resurrection is a mystery, I can't explain the mechanics of it, I can't understand how Jesus could be resurrected from death and although I know Jesus was special, I don't understand why he could be resurrected and we couldn't - except that it's sometihng to do with his purity, his closeness to God and his supply of inexhaustible life. That is we couldn't until Jesus had first been raised because Jesus did something for us when he died, not just for himself. He offered us a gift of the same kind of life and purity and closeness to God that allowed him to break through death's grip. It was our sin that killed him and he is able to forgive us for that, to restore the relationship that we need with God that gives us life.

Learning to live with God in our lives is slow progress, we have learnt many rebellious traits that will take a long time to unlearn, we have taught ourselves that it is better to look after number one than to care for others and we need to relearn the value of love. When we look again to God, he accepts us, forgives us and fills us again with his life and we begin to die to sin, dying the death of Jesus so that we can share in his eternal life.


I know that's not short, but I hope it is simple. You might not think it is simple and I will accept that I have probably waffled around some of the ideas in here, trying to express inadequately what someone great could have probably said in two sentences. No matter how much I think about and try to understand, I know that what I have given falls short of the real good news of God several times over. It can never be more than a story that points to the real truth that is only found completely in Jesus, and I'm pretty sure that some minor points won't quite be right but I've tried to keep my story in line with the stories of Jesus found in the bible. You may know other stories, and yours may disagree with mine in some places. I don't mind that as long as you are convinced that your stories are in line with the bible too. Keep telling your story, keep telling your good news and hopefully all our flawed stories will lead people to Jesus where they can find the real truth and real life and real hope.

Theology stuff

I'm not actually a natural theologian, there are lots of theological questions that interest me, but I find it more interesting to think around a question on my own than reading what other theologians have thought about that question in the past. It's not that I think there's no value in that, on the contrary, it's just that I like to think for myself.

That means that many of the things I post here will be orthodox, sound and in line with the theology I've grown up with and learnt about, other things may be slightly off the wall - and I reserve the right to think mad things because I always see these things as interesting theories and thoughts that might spur me on to further discoveries about God, but not necessarily things that I would stake my life on. I know that might get me branded as a heretic, but according to this checklist I'm one already so I don't think I have too much to fear on that score.

Change of direction

It's not long now until I've got to hand my thesis in. I'm not really convinced this blog has helped much with that process, it seems I've mainly been using it to get things off my chest that are really side issues and I don't want to talk about in the main body of the essay.

I've also been thinking that on my main blog at silkworm.org.uk I've not really posted much that's been all that theological - and when I have I've not had much response to it. So I think I'll keep this blog as a place I can work out all my theological angst without boring anyone who's not actually as interested in theology as me. And if there are people who are dead keen on theology, then they can read this without bothering too much about my hobbies and the films I've watched.

Paradoxical Worship?

In my reseach for this thesis I have read many things. Some of those things seem to contradict one another, but I'm not entirely sure they do because I can see the validity in both and my experience affirms both sides, so in order to get my thoughts on the matter straight, I thought I'd write about it here.

They tell me that we're living in the turn of an era, that process of doing a giant cutltural u-turn that some have called post-modernism. I think perhaps too much has been made of reflecting on postmodernism by people (and I include myself in this) that don't really understand it. But that's a point for another time, not for now.

One one hand, worship theorists say that postmodern people communicate well by imagery and subtlety, learn as if through osmosis from a variety of sources and have a short attention span. Therefore, we need to make worship that communicates well with that pomo society even if we don't really get it ourselves, we need to stop making worship that appeals to us churchy folk and make a sacrifice to make worship with pictures and soundbites instead of words and meaty sermons.

On the other side is those who say that the seeker service, which was worship designed to make church outsiders comfortable didn't actually attract that many outsiders and mainly appealed to churchy folk instead. Basically, it didn't work. Or if it did, it doesn't anymore. Therefore we shouldn't be making worship that we don't respond to, when we put our all into worship in a meaningful way and don't try to make worship accessible then people from outside will see our commitment to an alternative way of life - and that will attract them to find out more.

It's funny that both methods seem to advocate the same things - turning down the lights and bringing on the candles, dj's and art. I think that with both methods there are real problems, those problems only get ironed out when the two models come together.

Problem with the first method: Have you ever seen older people trying to be young and cool? It just doesn't work. The problem with the first method is when you get people trying really hard to be something they're not, that doesn't help people to worship, it's just laughable.

Problem with the second: The church has been just doing things its own way for a long time and it's never really attracted all that many interested parties in. No matter how authentic your spiritual experience, it's going to be hard to convince people that you're not a little weird!


You've really got to have a bit of both. If you make your church exclusively for outsiders then only the most tenacious insiders will stay and not feel neglected - church doesn't just exist for outsiders, christians need to grow spiritually too. If your church exists exclusively for its members then it will seem cliquey and its subcultures will be strange; traditions will develop and not be called into question and the church will calcify and growth will be stunted.