Who Are We Shouting to Again?

I think the only thing that could have surprised me more would have been the Great Doxology. When American Idol, the ubiquitously touted icon of reality television and American pop culture decides to have their top 8 contestants sing, in front of 70 million American viewers and a remarkably famous crowd of celebrities wearing their appropriately sober "fundraising for a worthy cause" expressions, a worship song to end the evening's solemnities, it seems to deserve some comment...

To keep the post as brief as possible, I will offer only two thoughts on this genuinely strange and confusing event - one negative and one positive.

1. To look at it negatively, the "Shout to the Lord" performance was an embarrassing travesty. When evangelical worship songs are SO inoffensive to American culture at large that a group of pop icons can sing them on national television without anyone noticing that something particularly religious was going on, then you really have to start wondering if the evangelical church is doing its job. The focus of the evening was certainly not "the wonder and majesty of God" or that "nothing compares to the promise we have in [Jesus Christ]", and the fact that the contradiction in messages - the utter oppositeness of focus between the song and the evening - didn't turn any heads or raise any flags points to a kind of terrifying numbness and/or obliviousness in the culture. I wanted to shout "hey people, you can't sing that... or even clap when other people sing that! It's making exclusive claims on your life! It's demanding that your sole object of adoration be the Lord and His glory! Believe me, I've been listening to you and you don't want that!"
At the large church I attended in Southern California, we used to sing this song after communion, and we would all move to the center and hold hands and sway back and forth as the lights dimmed and the song swelled during the key change. I used to remark back then that the song had more of a "we are the world" function than anything else... it inspired a happy sense of unity and good-feeling about our identity as a "blessed" family. It is saying something pretty sad about the state of our "worship" when there is no significant difference - no additional claim made or devotion asked of participants - between "sacred" services and secular charity events.

2. To look at the event positively, however, we could say that the striking feature of the song's utter awkwardness WAS its obvious alien-ness to the situation. It is impossible that very many of the people present (or even singing) could believe in the message of "Shout to the Lord". The sense of out-of-place-ness was fueled by the very strength of the claims made in the song - of the genuine devotion expressed in the words and passionately meant by the author - and I am reminded that anyone that really COULD sing that song, even on that night and on that stage, and really mean it, is a friend and fellow servant of the Lord, and has a great deal in common with me.
The Christian view of the world, with its radically extroverted priorities and its utter denial of self, is diametrically opposed both to mainstream culture and to popular monotheism. Any religion that allows the autonomous individual to remain at the center is little more than a fertility cult or a safe neo-paganism - an easy way to pacify the starving spirit of humankind without making it give itself up in sacrifice. Such "religion" is a travesty.

But maybe there is something to the fact that America is fine with hearing worship songs on national television... maybe, on the positive side of things, it is quite refreshing to know that, despite the message liberal hollywood is trying to force down our throats (that America is really post-sexual, post-feminist, post-theist, post-moral, post-modern), the majority of Americans, when they really get to vote about it democratically, would rather hear worship songs than "we are the world" after all...

Give Lacan A Cookie

I've been reading Lacan as a part of a survey course, and I was quite amused to run into this critique of "evolutionism". I've thought something like this before, but it's interesting to hear it coming out of the mouth of a radically skeptical psychoanalyst:

"It is paradoxically only from a creationist point of view that one can envisage the elimination of the always recurring notion of creative intention as supported by a person. In evolutionist thought, although God goes unnamed throughout, he is literally omnipresent. An evolution that insists on deducing from continuous process the ascending movement which reaches the summit of consciousness and thought necessarily implies that that consciousness and that thought were there from the beginning. It is only from the point of view of an absolute beginning, which marks the origin of the signifying chain as a distinct order and which isolates in their own specific dimension the memorable and the remembered, that we do not find Being [l'etre] always implied in being [l'etant], the implication that is at the core of evolutionist thought." - Jaques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis

In other words, evolution implies a movement from "worse" to "better" - a system of valuation with a definite, preexisting goal. Such an austere philosopher as Lacan can hardly bear this kind of mushy, rhetorical nonsense. Far from letting his philosophical brethren have their cake and eat it too, he is only too eager to remind them that the choice must remain clear - either there is Meaning or there isn't. Either something came from nothing at some point (and of course he thinks it did, even if the only thing that came into being was the false perception of order due to an arbitrary and ultimately illusory function of our psyche), or there has never been anything at all. "Nothing exists" cries Lacan. "It's all a sham - a chain of chaotic representations that make 'objects' out of random fields of energy."

We can only thank him for making the stakes clear, and remember our dear friend Puddleglum, whose words, as timely now as they were when Lewis wrote them, always seem to make the choice clear:

"Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand for the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper... we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say." - C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair

Selah...

Suprised by Skepticism: Our Amazing Capacity for Misery

I am always shocked when I come face to face with a real, well-spoken, committed atheist, like Mr. Adam Gopnik over at the New Yorker.

I guess that after living for so long in a small community of Christian friends, I just begin to suppose that everyone lives and thinks the way that I do! I find it hard to believe that there are people out there that have read the works of Christians like G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis and have not been moved by their articulate faith and convicting common sense... I find it hard to believe that someone could come face to face with such robust representations of the truth and find the strength to be skeptical, and I have to thank the boys over at lex orandi for reminding me that such people do, in fact, exist!

Of course my experiences with half-hearted agnostics have been far more plentiful than my encounters with such atheiests. The average American seems to have a kind of vague hostility toward serious religion that is based more upon the fear that we might try to take their toys (and tiny pleasures) away from them than on anything else. But every once in a while I meet an atheist that is really committed to being miserable when faced with the alternative, and it slaps me back into an awareness of just how serious our spiritual battle is... and how lightly I have tended to take the plight of the earnest doubter.

There are people out there that have looked at the best evidence and simply refuse to believe that it points to God! It is not so much that the arguments of these "serious" atheists are any more compelling than those of the half-hearted agnostics - both stances ultimately boil down to a kind of preference in the end - but rather that these arguments are very articulate in their slight of hand... they lead a person that is not listening very closely (or doesn't want to listen very closely) into believing that religious people are just "up tight" dreamers who obsinately fight for the truth of a metaphysical reality that works just as well as a personal fantasy. The mystical, they argue, can make people just as happy when they "know" it to be false as when they believe it to be true... so why argue about it?

The hole in this argument is, of course, obvious to any religious person when it is stated in this way! People like C.S. Lewis who, in finding the Faith, have found what they had been searching for their entire lives do not experience their conversion as a kind of compromising wish-fulfilment... the encounter is greater than any other experience before it, and it reveals all of their little hopes and dreams to be mere echoes of their adoration for the true love of their souls. The new convert, likewise, is not fooled into believing that his religious experience is important primarily because it is a fantasy that makes him happy. Such arguments may be plausible to skeptics in their dark caves of isolated thought, but one of the really surprising things about our daily encounters with the average "man on the street" is that the Faith really does ring true to created ears. As many times as I forget this when I flinch at sharing my faith, most people (including myself) are able to put up with very difficult doctrines when they finally come into contact with the solid reality of Christ - and they would never buy the idea that the objective truth of God's existence is an unimportant factor in their belief! To the great consternation and confusion of ardent atheists, our faith is such that we feel it must be obstinately asserted, because the tangible reality of our claim is exactly what matters about it!

So why do these "serious" atheists persist in downplaying our experience, and why do so many people seem to scoff and excuse their way out of dealing with real religious conversion? It is, I fear, not so great a mystery! Each of us have an astounding capacity for enduring misery in the name of maintaining control of our own world. If the skeptical atheist is right about anything, it is this very tendency in human nature to ignore reasonable solutions in favor of clinging to a personal hope. We have all been victims of this kind of pride to some extent or another, and lest we start to point fingers we should be reminded of exactly how widespread this kind of sickness actually is!

How many of us have given up happiness at one point or another in order to settle for a world that we can control? How many have ended a healthy, helpful relationship by trading a friend's offer of forgiveness for the personal control of staying angry? How many have endured addiction and poverty of all kinds rather than submitting to the kind of help that would make us call these things wrong, admit our defeat, and give them up for a better life? We are proud creatures! And as complicated, educated, refined and articulate as our excuses become, we cannot avoid the ultimate reality that our choices are often motivated by this very tendency to reject what is good in favor of what we feel we can control.

So are we right when we say that there is a God? Mr. Gopnik will tell us that we simply like this story because it makes us feel safe, and he will go on to recast every Christian experience in this light. A free mind can choose to compare the wonderful fantasy of C.S. Lewis and the robust faith that he holds and decide that the fantasy is the real part and the faith is just an awkwardly tacked-on fabrication. He can read the wild stories of G.K. Chesterton and smirk in the belief that it was natural human enthusiasm that inspired this joy in spite of his forgivable religious delusion. But what he cannot honestly claim is that this conclusion is any more accurate or less subjective than that of his religious opponents... and in the end it is he, and not the religious person, that the burden of proof falls upon.

An atheist like Gopnik refuses to accept the witness of millions of Christians throughout history, who have all claimed to experience a level of communion with the supernatural. While Christians are able to acknowledge all of the skeptic's experiences of earthly happiness and joy as valid, Gopnik's principles will not allow him to acknowledge the Christian's claims as even possible. Such a dilemma forces the atheist into a tight spot... he must either hold to his personal belief and choose to ignore or explain away experience, or he must give up his personal belief and entertain the idea that the world may not be completely explained and under control - that he may be subject to a being that he cannot overpower and that he may never come to fully understand!

May God have mercy on the souls of us who are faced with this dilemma! We are all capable of extreme denial in such cases, when our pride is on the line. We are all vulnerable to the kind of skepticism that would rather be master of our own small, dead world than except the reality of that which we cannot master. As much as we would like to believe it impossible, there are many, many people (even people who call themselves Christians) that will willingly take hell over Heaven when they realize what it really means for Heaven to require the death of self. If sin is a sickness, it is a sickness that we can learn to love as we love our own being.

The devil originally dwelt in the presence of God, and the demons still know that Christ is king... but all of these beings found it in themselves to choose to turn from this knowledge for a chance at their own kingdom. Whatever ignorance there is in such a decision, we cannot downplay the role that real choice plays.

C.S. Lewis himself writes, at the end of his Narnia chronicles, of such severe skepticism when the dwarves are faced with heavenly realities at the end of time. Like our own Mr. Gopnik, these dwarves sit in the middle of Aslan's country and obstinately deny that they have left the little tent on their own world. Where there is light and beauty they see darkness. Where there is luscious landscape they see canvas walls. All the beauty is, to them, merely tricks of their imagination, and all of the joyful calls of those around them are merely jealous mocking or deluded fantasy. Their presuppositions will not let them see the promised land or the goodness of Aslan, so they are bound forever by their own delusion to sit on the ground and miserably assert that they are great and wise to see through all of the silly talk of "Aslan's country". They are confident that they know all there is to know about the world, and they content themselves with the thought that even if they are not very happy, they are at least very right!

May God save us all from such delusion!

The Danger of Demonizing: Truth and the "Other Guy"

Though we would all like to think that we are "just being reasonable" in holding to our own particular beliefs, the truth is that, no matter what you believe, there will always be many, many intelligent people out there that disagree with you! If you are anything like me (or most radio talk show hosts), this poses a persistent and irritating problem - namely, how to account for these people and their aberrant beliefs. Certainly you can ignore those who disagree with you, or simply choose not to think about the fact that they do disagree, but chances are that sooner or later you will have to come to grips with the difference and decide both what you think of "the other guy" (i.e. what his "problem" is), and how you are going to deal with his disagreement. Holy Wars and Abolitionist Movements aside, I believe that most of us have already, in fact, made several of these subtle decisions in our minds and are already experiencing, to some extent, the (good or bad) consequences of our own particular choices. I do not think, however, that we have always made the right decision with regard to the treatment of our fellow contender!

As far as I can tell, we have three options regarding what we think of those who disagree with us - we can choose to believe that they are intentionally ignoring the truth because of a character flaw in themselves (i.e. their pride will not let them tolerate the idea), we can sympathetically insist on their ignorance of the truth (i.e. they simply haven't heard that one compelling argument for the idea), or we can (perhaps too humbly) assume that the other person must disagree because she or he knows more about the subject than we do (i.e. their vast scientific research must have offered compelling proofs for the validity of the idea that I am simply not aware of).

Of course, all three of these options have their own unique faults and virtues, and it would be easy to argue that most of our actual encounters with the people that hold to these opposing beliefs actually evoke a complicated mixture of two or even all three of these responses in us. Obviously, we will not always consider other people experts in every field of belief, just as we should not consider all people to be willfully ignorant of the truth! More often we will listen to disagreement with a kind of sincere curiosity, aware of the many factors that play into both our own and the other person's beliefs and assumptions. I think that this is healthy... Most of the time charity will require us to hold on to our own beliefs tentatively, knowing as we do that though we must act on what we believe to be true, we are often mistaken about the details of our understanding through our own faults and ignorances! All too often, however, I feel that we do not offer all people this "benefit of the doubt".

Where most of us tend to get into trouble is where our deep and cherished beliefs (those that we consider to be vitally important) come into question. Here we feel that we must bare down and refuse to give up ground. Here it is that zealots on both sides put their feet down and start enlisting soldiers for the Crusade... and to some extent this makes sense! If there is anything that is too important to budge on, it is certainly the fundamental basis of our thought and action (such as the existence and nature of God and/or our origin and purpose as human beings). Over such things even "rational" Atheist writers like Hitchens and Dawkins take the gloves off and prepare to relentlessly pummel the opposition without prejudice to education, vocation, or background. If a wrong idea, after all, is causing thousands of people to perish in futility, isn't it worth fighting? If a source of revelation about the nature of the world seems to present itself clearly and articulately to our understanding, aren't we somewhat justified in our adamant insistence that our opponents attend to this source? Occasionally this kind of relentless zeal even spills over into inter-denominational Christian debates, with proponents on both sides refusing to budge.

My wife and I have been bemoaning the poor treatment that many of our High Church leaders have been giving Low Church Evangelicals as of late. Of course, when we ourselves sat on the other side of the fence we bemoaned the grief that Evangelicals gave the High Church leaders with equal distaste, but thankfully the humility of my wife has always pointed us toward our own faults first! On both sides it seems that a certain "demonizing" tends to occur, where we begin to downplay the role that ignorance or differing perspective plays in an opponent's beliefs (even zealously held beliefs), and defensively begin to feel that our opponents are wicked masterminds - orchestrators of destructive and manipulative conspiracies - instead of people that are fighting for what they believe to be important. This rendering of our brothers and sisters can hardly bring about any good! Even if a person is truly wrong in their beliefs, the humility of our Christian faith certainly demands that we first react to our brothers and sisters with kindness and charity, knowing that we ourselves were rescued from a pitiable ignorance and wickedness of heart by the unmerited grace of God! Orthodox Christians especially ought to feel no personal entitlement when it comes to correct personal knowledge, begging the Lord as we do to let us not "judge our brothers" but rather to "see our own sin". In every case, charity demands that we see those with opposing views as honest seekers of the truth - fellow men and women who hold to their beliefs out of the same mixture of sincerity and ignorance that motivates our own understanding. When we do this, we frequently find that particular issues are not as simple and "straightforward" as they seem to be upon first glance! People with radically different perspectives than our own have, in fact, rather strong and compelling reasons for believing what they believe, and if these reasons seem rather less compelling than our own reasons for believing the opposite, we must nonetheless allow these reasonable persons the uniqueness of their particular backgrounds, training, and values.

This, of course, plays into the second part of our original question, which was how we ought to deal with those that disagree with us. There are, without a doubt, people who are mistaken about very important things. The existence of multiple perspectives by no means invalidates the existence of absolute truth... it only complicates our understanding of it! Like others of my own faith, I feel that we must, as witnesses of the revelation of God, stand firm in our belief, both that He exists and that our purpose is to be united to Him in His body, which is the Church. Outside of this understanding I can make no sense of the world or our purpose here. This belief does not, however, preclude my imagining the circumstances that would lead a person to believe the opposite! It is my duty as a Christian - indeed as a human being - to treat the Atheist with the same respect and kindness that led me to the Church of Christ in the first place (including a genuine sensitivity to the person's fears and hesitancies), knowing as I do that my own beliefs are shaped greatly by my encounters with other people. If wickedness is leading a person to ignore the truth, then no amount of hatred or forceful argumentation will change their mind, and they ought to be loved or even pitied rather than abused, as they are victims of their own sin and no worse than any of us in our own sin. If sincere ignorance is keeping a person from knowing the truth, then stern rebuke and "straw man" lampooning is only a great cruelty that will sooner turn that person away from the faith than draw them to it. If superior understanding is leading a person to disagree with you, then you make yourself ridiculous by refusing to listen to their perspective! In any case, it is safe to assume that every person has sincere (or at least understandable) reasons for believing what they believe... and before we "demonize" them, we ought first to see what has led them to their conclusions!

As Christians we need fear no truth. The great saints of our faith had the humility and wisdom to see that "innovations" like the doctrine of the Trinity, rather than representing a departure from the belief in one God, actually affirmed that belief and helped to deepen our understanding of the Godhead. St. Paul had the good sense to trust the vision of the Lord that He received, to turn from his zealous persecution of the Christians (inspired as it was by his admirable zeal for God!), and to accept the very doctrine that had led him to persecute the Church in the first place. As firmly as we hold to our articulations of the truth, we have lost our way if we come to the place where we cannot undergo a similar roadside conversion...

Imagination and Supermodernity

Someone once said that chance is the word we use for processes too complex for us to understand. While this quip is hardly helpful in a practical sense, in a very important way to be a Theist means to believe just this - that the universe is essentially ordered according to the nature and will of a supreme being, and that all events, no matter how seemingly chaotic, are in some sense governed by the will of the one that brought all things into being. On the micro-level, of course, this seemingly simple idea can spawn rather interesting and tricky thoughts!

I just watched The Science of Sleep last night, and I must say that I had a delightfully thoughtful viewing experience. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have a weakness for "artsy" and somewhat melancholy indi films such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (another Gondry film) and Garden State. But perhaps the most striking thing to me about this particular film was the tension raised by the very theme that I mentioned above... a theme that has become an increasingly common one in modern film (Gondry can't seem to get away from it).

At one of the key moments in "The Science of Sleep", the female antagonist (?) muses that "randomness is so difficult to achieve... things are always falling back into pattern and order". This sentiment serves as an essential tension in the film, as Gondry's characteristic interplay between imagination and reality works itself out in the story through the struggle of the main character (Stephane) - who is continually confusing the rather vivid imaginary events of his dreams with events in real life - to wade through his own imaginative commentary and arrive at a true understanding of the woman he loves. The filmmaker, of course, seems to indicate that chaos is the essential nature of reality, and that our difficulty in achieving understanding in our life is due to the fact that we, as creative beings, are always going about sorting these truly random details into structures and trying to make sense of the world. On the downside, of course, this stance must necessarily paint a bleak outlook of our chances for forming coherent "beliefs" about the world we live in. The cosmological confusion, however, is hardly the most interesting part of Gondry's project. In painting the struggle of Stephan, the movie rather brilliantly portrays the very real danger that we face as subcreative, organizing beings when we set out to make sense of the world around us.

Stephane's dreams, like many of our own, are epic amplifiers of feelings and events in his day to day existence , and are always "sorting" the elements of waking life into strange, sometimes hopeful, sometimes depressing, and often fantastic renderings. The difficulty that Gondry highlights here is the very real sense in which our life as limited human beings is a product of our own creative filtering, organization and commentary. While we may be certain of the existence of absolute order in the cosmos, we are not always objectively privy to an understanding of the true meaning or significance of the events that occur in every day life. Many details we simply ignore, and many interactions we choose to view, like Stephane, through the tinted lens of our own presuppositions.

This difficulty often gets us into trouble. Our prejudices can blind us to the good intentions of others. Our fears can keep us stubbornly trapped inside of a small construction of reality and can lead us to "villainize" and avoid true and beautiful elements that simply do not fit into the picture that we have made. We are constantly facing the danger in our lives of willingly letting our creative impulse overwhelm or confuse our perception.

So what does the film suggest as a antidote to this dilemma? What else, but an open eye and a moderation of the impulse to draw unwarranted conclusions. The universe is a remarkably complex thing, and it is fascinating to note the way in which our imagination can so brilliantly boil things down to delightfully tidy packages. It is important, however, that we remember to separate these simplifications of reality (these stories, if you will) from an ultimate understanding of the universe. No merely human story is an exhaustive retelling of reality. No ideology can capture the fullness of the God-created cosmos. When Stephane collapses in frustration at the end of the movie, he notices that his would-be-love has actually fulfilled every promise that he, in fear, did not believe she had fulfilled.

It is important that we remember, as much as possible, to trust in the wisdom of our all-powerful God, to doubt as much as possible our sinful and deceptive hearts, and to learn to keep an open mind about how the world is ultimately ordered.

Unavoidably Postmodern: The Emergent Church and Individual Authority

Recently I have been somewhat compelled to consider what I think of Emergent church movements such as this one. It is kind of a difficult subject for me, as I am often sympathetic to attempts made by earnest Christians to actually deal with the current ideological framework of their age. The evangelical church had a difficult time, for instance, when it refused to acknowledge the claims that modernism was making in the 18th and 19th centuries. Instead of actually avoiding the pitfalls of enlightenment and post-enlightenment romantic thought, it seems to me that it simply alienated itself from the culture, set itself apart as an anti-intellectual establishment (which is a true travesty), and then went on to be subtlety influenced by the modernist culture surrounding it until it ended up where it is now - studying scientific evidence and employing literal-historical hermeneutics in a frantic attempt to validate the authority of God's revelation (I hope that the absurdity of this attempt comes across). Instead of understanding modernism, the evangelical church at large simply fell prey to bad and simplistic modernism. The emergent church, in similar fashion, has come along somewhat behind the times (postmodernism already being on its way out and the church having spent most of its time railing against extreme forms of relativism that no one in the culture actually holds to). But it has nevertheless been trying to address the actual concerns that postmodernism has raised, and is working to build a coherent system of belief around an ideology that includes the essentials of Christian doctrine without offending modern sensibilities. While this attempt seems admirable to me, I am not sure that the postmodern framework has left the possibility for sound Christian doctrine intact, and thus I find it doubtful that the best solution has been reached by the current emergent attempts...

Lest you think that my generalization is unfair as directed toward the emergent church, I think that a helpful comment may be that I believe postmodernism, whatever we think of it, to be decently hard to avoid for a generation raised by postmoderns in a postmodern society. As any five minute Google study will make adequately apparent, the emergent church is at great pains NOT to let itself be subject to definition (a good old postmodern tradition), and while the churches that foster this post-definitive position may hold firmly to the idea that this reluctance to be defined is simply reflecting a helpful (dare we say accurate?) understanding about the uniqueness of individuals and the nature of reality, I cannot help but feel that this honest belief stems from a very particular (and dangerous) philosophical stance. Allow me to explain:

Postmodernism (as I understand it) holds firmly to the sovereignty of the individual. Personal choice and personal authority (and consequently personal responsibility) are essential to the operation of the world-view. Because the Moderns convinced us that reality is very complex and hard to interact with directly, postmoderns tend to mistrust generalities, creeds, traditions, or anything else that tries to simplify reality and apply itself to the world universally. To the postmodern there is no universal. Everyone is an isolated individual with a distinct and separate perspective. One person's perspective may differ from another person's, and as a result there is no authoritative understanding of the world. Even Divine revelation must be filtered through individual perspective (which can be colored by individual experience, knowledge, context, and even mood). Who hasn't played the "telephone game" and watched how what one person thinks to be a clear message can be "muddled" by the ability of other people to understand your intended meaning and communicate it to others? Postmoderns clean up this little problem by denying the possibility of access to intended meaning at all. You cannot, they would say, strictly "know" anything. You can only offer your perspective on a given experience.

As a result, Postmodernism venerates personal opinion and encourages sharing methods of interpretation within a community. Though they mistrust universals, they value dialogue and communication. Multiple perspectives allow for a more "rich" experience of an ultimately incomprehensible world. By sharing personal experiences, a community may gain a more complete (though never exhaustive) picture of this great, complex and multifaceted thing we call reality.

Notice that this does not exclude the possibility of objectivity. There may, indeed, be an absolute, objective reality. The question, however, is not whether or not this objective reality exists, but whether or not we can have any reliable knowledge about it from our own limited perspectives. Ultimately, this skepticism about knowledge leads the average person to avoid questions of objectivity altogether and to focus instead on the experience of reality within a particular sub-culture or community. The postmodern is extremely interested in understanding how groups of people form shared conceptions of reality and establish interpretational norms that make sense of their experiences. The focus, once again, is on what "works" in a certain context instead of what "is".

Honesty is the supreme (perhaps even the only) Postmodern virtue. By denying the presence of universals (which includes morality because it tries to apply one set of rules to everyone) they feel that they are simply being honest about the state of the world. To believe that one has an understanding of reality is, for the postmodern, simply lying. It is trying to force your perspective onto another person by pretending that your perspective is, in fact, authoritative. To act in a way that is inconsistent with your feelings and desires is, therefore, also believed to be dishonest. One cannot try to live by another person's perspective or pretend that they do not want the things they want. A person should simply do what he or she wants to do, and completely accept the choices and desires of others. It is the only "honest" way to go about living.

This worldview has, for apparent reasons, had a huge impact on the functioning of modern society. The power of authority and tradition has been all but removed from the art and the stories of our culture. It has become vitally important to us that every one make their own decisions, and we are very, very hesitant to make our opinions sound authoritative. The search for standards of virtue and holiness has been replaced by the admiration of creativity and ambition, and the foundationalism of the church has been replaced by the search for multi-everythingism (insert generational/cultural/etc) in a wild attempt to gain a "rich" and "authentic" community. The fact that this doesn't, perhaps, seem like a very shocking revelation only serves to strengthen my original assertion that postmodernism, whatever we think of it, is certainly not a stranger to us. Most of us were raised with this mindset and, in fact, personally value many of the tenets Postmodernism espouses. The question to me (irony intended) then, becomes not "what is Postmodernism's place in the church" but rather "where do we Postmoderns go from here?"

I would like to think that the next step involves a rebuilt understanding of authority and a de-emphasis on the individual. The problem with the modern evangelical church's acceptance of postmodern values is that those values shift the locus of God's revelation to the heart of the individual person. Even the claims of the scriptures, which have been the bastion of truth throughout the entirety of the evangelical tradition, must, under postmodern constraints, ultimately be filtered through personal interpretational methods and revealed as unique truth to the individual. The scriptures, in other words, lose their authority as universally accessible objective revelation and fall subject to the personal revelatory work of the Holy Spirit on a person by person basis.

Of course, authors like John Webster will go to great lengths to describe how the self-revelation of God is beyonds the constraints of modern criticism... but the question remains, for me, not whether it is possible for God to reveal Himself perfectly through creaturely circumstances, but rather what form that revelation takes and by what means we creatures may receive it. Webster's perfect and sanctified Holy Scriptures must be received by people in incredibly diverse and unique circumstances, and it is this necessity of communication between Creator and various unique creatures that puts the postmodern concerns into effect.

Lest you think that philosophers or doctrinally robust theologians are exempt from this problem, we need only to look at the standard of authority that these persons inevitably fall back upon when push comes to shove. Wide interpretational and doctrinal differences amongst even the most kindred of biblical scholars do not seem to phase them, or even dissuade them from thinking that their particular stances are correct. Though they are quick to proclaim that the standard of authority in their life is the self-speaking reality of the Holy Scriptures, they ultimately place the seat of authority and decision within their own hearts and minds. They will not defer to authority, tradition, or some greater body to speak the answer to them, and they even reject the idea of subjecting the individual will when it appears in Holy Scripture itself... they will, in every case, reserve their right to make the decision for themselves as to what they will believe and what sources they will accept as valid. Try as you might, you will not get them to give up this personal authority.

Save in cases of extremely reductionist forms of determinism, such a refusal to give up personal autonomy of decision seems to pose distinct problems when it comes to the idea of "paying attention to the Holy Spirit" or "obeying the Spirit's leading". Indeed, if there is any part at all that the human individual will plays in adequately receiving the self-revelation of God, then it is terrifying to think that the seat of all authority is the stubborn will of the limited, perspectivaly-challenged individual (who so often gets important things wrong...).

It seems to me that what we should be wishing for is neither this very sloppy postmodern acceptance of individual authority (which in its rejection of the above mentioned sources of authority has often and inevitably led to very terrible doctrinal confusions, limited or shallow ideas of the person of Christ, and woefully anemic conceptions of the meaning of life in Christ) nor a return to the stubborn denial of postmodern claims (which leads to brittle dogmatics, an absurd denial of individual differences, and ultimate alienation from the people that we are trying to save). The evangelical church cannot maintain right doctrine, sound teaching, and robust ecclesiology if it continues to place the seat of authority within the individual. Though a few highly educated church leaders may be able to preach sound, meaningful Christian doctrine to individual church bodies, there is (and I think that this concept has been born out in the state of the modern evangelical church at large) simply no way to preserve the purity and integrity of a "church" when we insist on placing the locus of authority within individual hearts. How are we to insist on the unity of Christ's body when every individual person reserves the right to decide what is meant by "unity" and "Christ's body"?

What we need, I believe, is a truth-speaking, self-revealing person to interact with us in our differences. What we need is something that is both one and many - both made up of unique parts and whole in its mind and heart. What we need is Christ here on earth to reason with us and lead our separate hearts into unified truth. What we need is an authority to tell us how we ought to think about the Father. What we need is a Church - a Holy, Catholic Church that is truly the body of Christ in every way... truly one and truly relevant to all individuals... truly knowing and truly known... and able to speak with authority. We need to bite the bullet and look into the idea that Divine self-revelation may be first given to the Church and not to the individual - to the whole body of persons that Christ has sanctified for His purpose and not to the feeble will of each person that attempts to articulate the mysteries of Christ... and that we are able to receive this revelation only inasmuch as we submit to the authority of the physical and spiritual body of Christ here on earth. We need to find a Church that is bold enough in the Holy Spirit to make this claim and that actually has the right to claim it...