Your Future Self Will Thank You

by Drew Dyck

  For Abe, I’m sure moral compromise played a role. Christian morality didn’t exactly jibe with his new lifestyle, which included relationships with the opposite sex that fell outside the biblical model. It would have been difficult for him to hold a Christian worldview while engaging in a pattern of behavior that opposed it.

  Yet the moral compromise explanation didn’t tell the whole story. He had other reasons for leaving, and they weren’t just smoke screens. The more we talked, the more I believed that they were at the root of why he left. He balked at Christian entanglement with conservative politics. He pointed out what he saw as a lack of compassion for the poor among Christians. And he wasn’t moved by the apologetics of yesteryear. Ultimately I saw that his parents’ attempts to call him back to God were futile because he inhabited a different universe, one populated with ideas and sensibilities that were completely alien to them. I’d soon begin to discover the laws of this new universe and find out just how many other young adults had followed Abe through the wormhole.

  2- Reality Remix

  Have you noticed a change in the way today’s young people speak? No, I’m not referring to the ubiquitous and improper use of the word “like” or the annoying addition of texting acronyms such as “OMG,” “BFF,” and “LOL” to the popular lexicon. I’m talking about a way of speaking that suggests a subtle yet profound change in the way the younger generation actually processes reality.

  Maybe you have heard young people talk about a different “truth” for each person, an idea that would have seemed absurd even fifty years ago. “True for you, but not for me,” is a common refrain. Or maybe you’ve sensed the high premium the emerging generation places on individual experience.

  The language used in regard to romantic relationships is especially telling. Recently I was watching a TV show popular with young adults. One of the characters was counseling a friend in a troubled marriage and urged him to get a divorce. The breakthrough came when he grabbed his beleaguered friend by the shoulders and said, “You know that you haven’t loved her (his wife) for a long time.” This was supposed to be a good friend, delivering good advice.

  The scene’s implication was clear: staying in a relationship after feelings of love have fled is wrong. How you feel in a particular moment trumps any previously made commitments, including wedding vows. This way of thinking seems to permeate all aspects of morality: “Do whatever works for you,” could be the mantra of many of today’s young people.

  Such statements may leave you scratching your head. Isn’t truth by its very nature exclusive? And why is experience the end-all when it comes to morality? What if your experience leads you astray?

  If you’ve noticed this type of language, you’ve detected the influence of a paradigm commonly called postmodernism.

  THE END OF REASON

  With our bellies filled with falafel, Abe and I moved the few short feet from the kitchen to the living room. In reality, the presence of different rooms was an illusion, the work of imagination and clever furniture arrangement; the small apartment had no dividing walls. We put on some tea and plopped into my secondhand IKEA chairs. I leaned across the coffee table. I needed to understand how Abe dismissed the central claims of the Christian faith, claims that were so compelling to me.

  The writing of C. S. Lewis had been a formative influence in my own journey. One of Lewis’s most popular arguments is often referred to as the “liar, lunatic, or Lord” or “trilemma” argument. It is a response to the view that Jesus was merely a great moral teacher, but not the divine Son of God. Nonsense, says Lewis. If Jesus was not telling the truth about His identity, He was not a great moral teacher. To Lewis, there were only three possibilities about a man who claimed to be God. Either he was lying, crazy, or he was telling the truth. “You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God,” Lewis writes. “But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”1

  How could Abe sidestep such a potent argument? What had he decided about Christ? In order to find out I began a line of questioning designed to steer him toward Lewis’ trilemma trap.

  “What do you think of Christ’s ethics?” I asked him.

  “Flawless,” Abe conceded.

  Now I have him cornered, I thought.

  “Okay, then how do you deal with His claim to be God? How can someone with flawless ethics lie about his identity?”

  Abe is educated, and he knows the Bible. I expected a sophisticated explanation for this apparent contradiction. Maybe he would attack the historicity of the gospels or challenge my traditional interpretation of them. I was ready for such objections. I wasn’t ready for what he said.

  “I don’t really believe in all that rationality,” he said. “Reason and logic come from the Western philosophical tradition. I don’t think that’s the only way to find truth.”

  His response silenced me. How could I reason with someone who didn’t believe in reason? My interactions with Abe sent me on a quest to understand his worldview.

  SHIFTING GROUND

  In the preface to his book, Live to Tell: Evangelism for a Postmodern Age, Brad Kallenberg recounts his decade-long stint as a college campus evangelist. When he started in the late 1970s, conversion rates were high. Kallenberg recalls that about 10 percent of gospel presentations resulted in conversion. But by 1985 the percentage rate had slipped to about 6 or 7 percent—this despite the fact that Kallenberg and fellow evangelists were working twice as hard to make the gospel intelligible to increasingly biblically illiterate students.

  Disheartened by the dwindling numbers they switched tactics, investing money in huge on-campus advertising campaigns to generate a “warm market” of students. Despite such efforts, numbers continued to fall. Shortly after Kallenberg’s departure from the ministry in 1989, the percentage of conversions fell to an abysmal 2 percent.

  All along Kallenberg and the other campus evangelists were sharing the same message. The results, however, were changing dramatically. So what was happening? For Kallenberg the mystery cleared when he enrolled in graduate school and began studying philosophy. A major shift had taken place in the field, he discovered, that was now beginning to affect the culture. Suddenly Kallenberg understood why it felt like the “ground was shifting under (his) feet.” The old ways of thinking were crumbling and Christian faith was regarded differently in the new milieu. Kallenberg discovered that he had been feeling the impact of postmodernism. And those were just the first tremors. The earthquake was still coming. By the 1990s, it had shaken Western culture to its core, changing the ideological landscape for an entire generation.

  BREAKING IT DOWN

  Postmodernism is a word you hear a lot these days, but ask what it means and you’ll likely get a blank stare—or a different definition each time you ask. There’s good reason for the ambiguity. Postmodernism is not easy to define. And just when you think you have it pinned, it changes shape, taking on different meanings in various fields such as art, architecture, and philosophy.

  Yet, as a worldview, postmodernism does have identifiable characteristics. The most succinct definition probably comes from the French philosopher Jean Lyotard, who famously defined postmodernism as “incredulity toward metanarratives.” What does that mean? Basically that those big stories—the kind of overarching narratives by which we define reality—are regarded with suspicion. In a postmodern world, no one story is large enough to contain the whole of reality, much less define it for all people.

  This suspicion of metanarratives has at least two important implications. First, it results in a radical redefinition of truth, reason, and reality. With no standard narrative to serve as a guide, reality, is determined by individual experience. And since there are an endless variety of stories, nothing can be absolutely true for everyone. According to philosopher J. P. Moreland, “On a postmodernist view, there is no such thing as objective truth, reality, value
, reason and so forth.” As I read this definition, Abe’s words echoed in my ears. “I don’t believe in all that rationality… I don’t think that’s the only way to find truth.”

  The postmodernist view holds that there is a different “truth” for each person. And experience—not rationality—is the key to finding that truth. It’s easy to overstate this particular feature of postmodern thought. It’s not that all postmodern thinkers completely negate truth (although some do). Rather they tend to find rationality and logic odd players in the spiritual arena. In their private lives, they may be thoroughgoing modernists. After all, most postmodernists aren’t shy about reaping the fruits of modernity: they ride airplanes, use cell phones, and embrace science. But often a different set of rules applies to their spiritual and moral lives. Many of these otherwise intelligent, educated people will consult psychics and espouse reincarnation. It’s not spirituality or even supernatural claims with which they have a problem. Broad proclamations of truth are not frowned upon just because they stretch credulity; they’re condemned because they’re seen as arrogant and dangerous. Rick Richardson, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s national field director for evangelism, observes of the postmodern crowd: “When people ask questions about homosexuality, for instance, we’re tempted to think they’re asking questions about right and wrong. But they’re not. They’re asking about dominance and oppression.”2

  At one point in our conversation Abe made an important clarification. It wasn’t that he was specifically opposed to Christianity, he said. He was against any form of moral absolutism. To Abe, any belief held too strongly was dangerous. People who were too sure of their beliefs were apt to force them on others. His distaste for moral absolutes placed him firmly in the postmodern camp.

  A second feature of postmodern thought comes from a movement in philosophy and literary criticism called “deconstructionism.” It’s natural to assume that deconstruction would mean the opposite of construction, to tear something down. And in fact, that’s exactly how the word is usually used. Originally, however, this coinage of the enigmatic French philosopher Jacques Derrida referred primarily to a way of interpreting literary texts. To deconstruct a literary text is to expose its contradictions and oppositions, to demonstrate that it can ultimately have no fixed meaning. For Derrida, language’s constructed and self-referential nature makes its correspondence with the outside world tenuous at best, hence his famous dictum: “There is nothing outside the text.”

  The reason I explain such an arcane term is because Derrida’s thinking did not stay confined to the ivory towers of academia. Upon Derrida’s death in 2004, Washington Post reporter Patricia Sullivan wrote, “‘Deconstruction’ has become one of the few terms that, like ‘existential’ a generation or two earlier, has escaped from dense philosophical and literary papers to pepper modern culture, from movie reviews to government policy pronouncements.”3 Those who took up Derrida’s mantle in the culture were not content merely to apply his theories to literary texts. Deconstruction quickly became an approach to all areas of life. As a result it has engendered a radical skepticism about the credibility of truth claims and raised suspicion toward traditional beliefs.

  A third precept of postmodernism is more positive: concern for the marginalized. That’s one beef postmodern thinkers have with metanarratives, or big stories—they tend to neglect the “little people.” Talk to postmodern thinkers about the wisdom of the Greeks, and they’ll remind you that the Greeks held slaves and subjugated women. Bring up the founding fathers of the United States and they’ll talk about the cruel conquest of the natives. Christian faith comes under fire too. For many postmodern thinkers the historical horrors of the Crusades and Inquisition cast a pall over the Gospel message. Andy Crouch writes, “Many streams of postmodern thought are animated by the desire to do justice to the claims of those whom the dominant culture has excluded.”4 As Abe talked about Christians who were indifferent to the poor and disenfranchised, he was giving voice to one of the central tenets of postmodern thought.

  Postmodernism has been the subject of countless Christian conferences and books. Some see it as an enemy of the church. Others regard it as a savior. I fall somewhere in the middle. Postmodernism is not the bogeyman, but it’s no angel either. Certain aspects of postmodernism do align with Christian beliefs. One can hardly open the Bible without seeing God’s concern for the poor and lowly. Christ championed the cause of marginalized people and even linked His identity to the lowly (Matthew 25:45). Catholic theologians remind us of God’s “preferential option for the poor.” The book of James stipulates that pure religion is attending to the needs of widows and orphans (1:27). Yet other dimensions of postmodernism—such as moral relativism and a low view of truth—are clearly irreconcilable with a biblical worldview.

  Our concern here, however, is not to come to a conclusive opinion about postmodernism. We simply want to understand its impact on the culture and learn how to speak meaningfully to those under its sway. Fortunately, as we’ll see in the next chapter, there are many creative ways to do just that.

  * * *

  We hope you enjoyed this excerpt from Generation Ex-Christian. For more from Moody Publishers in this genre and others, visit www.moodypublishers.com.

  AMBITION

  WHEN I ENTERED SEMINARY, I was humbled by many of my classmates. While we all suffered through “suicide Greek” (an intense six-week summer course that only a gifted linguist with a penchant for self-flagellation would enjoy), I learned that some students sacrificed far more than others to pursue a call into pastoral ministry.

  Scott left his position as a Navy pilot with a stable salary and excellent benefits. David left his management job with an automaker and relocated his family. He attended classes all day and studied while working as a night security guard. I have no idea when he slept.

  Gregory, an engineer from China, brought his wife and two young girls from Hong Kong to Chicago—he’d never seen snow before, let alone twelve inches of it covering his car. In six months Gregory taught himself enough English to successfully translate the New Testament from Greek into English, and then into Cantonese for his congregation in Chicago’s Chinatown.

  These pastors represent the power of godly ambition. Their desire to serve God and people was the engine that drove them to make enormous sacrifices.

  But seminary revealed the dark side of ambition as well. On my first day in a small class, when asked to introduce ourselves and say why we had entered seminary, the first student said, “I’m here because I’m going to be the next Bill Hybels.” (Hybels is a popular megachurch pastor.) Really, I thought. Someone should tell him that Bill Hybels isn’t dead. I don’t think we need another one yet.

  The next said, “My grandfather was a pastor, my father was a pastor, and I’m supposed to be a pastor, too.” Someone call a counselor. This one has daddy issues.

  The third student revealed his three-year plan to become senior pastor and then transform his congregation into a megachurch. “My denomination wants me to have an MDiv degree,” he said, “but once they see I can grow a big church, I don’t think they’ll make me finish the program.” An ego the size of Donald Trump’s. Good grief, I thought.

  As the introductions continued around the room, a frightening realization entered my mind: What if my motivations for being here are just as questionable? Seminary had introduced me to remarkable women and men with godly devotion and drive, but it also showed me the shadow side of pastoral ambition. It can drive us to make great sacrifices in service to God and others, or it can be a veneer that hides far less noble motivations. What appears to be love or devotion externally may actually be fueled by profound insecurity or even, in rare cases, pathological mental illness.

  Even those with a healthy motivation sometimes need our ambition engines tuned up, a realignment toward Christ and away from self-centered desires. Discerning when we require an overhaul is the dilemma. There is no “check engine” light on the dashboard of our soul
. But Scripture does offer wisdom in recognizing when our ambitions are misfiring.

  Old Testament figures like Moses and Jeremiah were reluctant leaders. They did not want power or influence and at times actively resisted God’s call into leadership. There is something noble about a reluctant leader, a sense that we can trust them with power because they don’t want it. Perhaps that is why we create so many fictional heroes with this quality. Batman, Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen—they all become leaders out of circumstance and necessity rather than desire for acclaim. It is the opposite of what we so often see in others and suspect about ourselves.

  Moses and Jeremiah were this way. God put a “fire in their bones” that they could not extinguish. They were compelled to lead and speak, seemingly against their will. They remind us that the call to leadership is a result of God’s grace; it doesn’t come from our desire for acclaim. But is humble reluctance what we should expect in every godly leader?

  Not according to the New Testament. Peter says that elders ought to lead willingly and not under compulsion (1 Peter 5:2), and Paul affirms those who aspire to leadership (1 Tim. 3:1). We should remember, however, that while being a church leader in the first century may have offered a person more honor within the Christian community, it also often carried the likelihood of greater persecution by those outside of it. In other words, leadership carried a cost.