Wednesday, March 02, 2005
The Trend Carefully Analyzed
When I began my now 1 -- 2 -- 3 -- 4 -- 5 part series examining trends in the church and in particular the self-help and emerging movements, little did I know that the later of those movements had been very thoroughly and carefully analyzed by Catez at Allthings2all.
I did not, by the way, set out to do a series. I just noticed a topic eveyone was discussing one day and ran with it. Catez has been far more systematic and thorough in her approach and it is well worth your consideration.
Her first post The Post Modern Explained she attempts to define the term "postmodern."
I did not, by the way, set out to do a series. I just noticed a topic eveyone was discussing one day and ran with it. Catez has been far more systematic and thorough in her approach and it is well worth your consideration.
Her first post The Post Modern Explained she attempts to define the term "postmodern."
Most people understand post-modernism to mean a type of relativism - truth is relative to each person or each different cultural group. In post-modernism my truth does not have to agree with your truth - but both are valid.In her second post, Post-Modernism and the Jim Jones Potential, she examines the cultic possibilities of the post moderism movement.
The problem with creating our own tribe based on eclectic ideas which suit us is that we will naturally tend to dispense with norms we don't like. So Manson, Jones, Koresh, and others dispensed with honouring life. Post-modernism did not provide an answer to the selfish motivations of the human heart. Instead, it pandered to self-indulgence and selfish selectivity.Though far more scholarly, I love how what she says here echoes something I said yesterday
Movements, by the very fact that they are labelled movements, scare me in this regard. People become involved in the movement, instead of in the reason the movement was founded. For example, as Blogs For Terri mentioned today, the Philadephia Inquirer did a piece over the weekend on the Terri Schiavo reaction. I was interviewed for the piece, but did not make the article. The reporter was looking for people that thought Terri a 'symbol.' I told her I did not think there was anything symbolic about it -- this was just a woman whose husband was attempting to starve her to death. The reporter was more interested in the 'movement' around Terri than in Terri. That's the kind of thing that scares me.Finally, Catez' third post, Post Modernism and Christianity, gets down to the nut of it.
Thus, I have no problem when someone like the journey points out similarlites between the Emerging Church movement and the 'Jesus' people of the late 60's, stating that they think good things are happening in the EC movement -- no doubt. But when they lament the death of the Jesus poeple movement, and hope the EC movement does not do the same, I have a problem. Movements need to die. We need to harvest the best from them and let them die, before they become a thing unto themselves.
Post-modernism would have us all in our separate relative ghettoes thinking we are novel. Jesus Christ unites us in a new citizenship not of this world. He is the Spirit and Truth for every culture in every age, and his blueprint for the Christian church remains the same.Well done Catez! I'll quit now -- you have done all the heavy lifting.
