Modernity cannot adequately deal
with one basic question: “Tell me who I am?”
Postmodernism leaves preachers
with two burdens: Reach the listener, a fellow human being, with the message of
Christ, and at the same time uphold the Word of God, faithfully and with
integrity.
“The world sees a Christianity
that is angrily defensive. Everyone knows what we are against: relativism,
abortion and homosexuality, but few know what we are for, besides traditional
values. Largely lost to the world’s eyes is a Christian spirit of mercy and
love, not to mention and appreciation for the mystical character of God.”
Filiatreau.
Hallmarks of postmodern people:
· They’re reacting to modernity and all its
tenets.
·
They
reject objective truth.
·
They’re
sceptical and suspicious of authority.
·
They’re
like missing persons in search of a self and identity.
·
They’ve
blurred morality and are into whatever’s expedient.
·
They
continue to search for the transcendent.
·
They’re
living in a media world unlike any other.
·
They’ll
engage in the knowing smirk.
·
They’re on
a quest for community.
· They live in a very material world.
“The native people of the
Americas insist that 1992 marks the anniversary of 500 years not of glorious
discovery but of cruelty, lies, oppression, genocide and the wanton rape of
what was truly a paradise.” Middleton and Walsh.
The people who had no voice, the
indigenous Americans viewed the same event with a completely different
interpretation. The truth according to postmodernity has a way of being told so
that it benefits those in power. As a result, there’s now a reversal.
Of interesting note is that there
are already views being put forward that the Jewish holocaust of WWII either
did not take place or was embellished way beyond the recognised figures. What’s
most fascinating is that so many actual survivors still exist, along with
extensive documentation in film and artefacts. How can anyone refuse to believe
the seemingly irrefutable evidence? This is a symptom of postmodern scepticism,
the age of the conspiracy theory. “Do not believe what they tell you.” (Whoever
they happen to be..)
In relation to preaching,
postmodern people will tend to perceive the preacher as voicing a personal
viewpoint. When it comes to religious authority, many people used to view
Christianity as having monopolised choice seats on the bus of Western society,
while other world religions, particularly Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, had
been bullied into sitting at the rear. But this is no longer the case. Today
Christians are experiencing a backlash. “Christianity has the floor long
enough,” many postmodern people are saying. The more Christians argue that the
nation’s heritage of belief rests in Jesus, the more resentment they create.
As the world has developed into a
global village, suspicion toward authority has deepened. Joseph Campbell’s
argued in his book
The Power of Myth that all religious faith evolved from myth
and storytelling within cultures, and therefore all beliefs are inherently the
same, none any better or worse than others. Instead of despising minor
discrepancies and celebrating their distinctiveness, people everywhere are
called to recognise the commonality of belief and be free to enjoy their faith
in the various cultural expressions evidenced in the world today.
The same suspicion of authority
also translates into a detest for institutions.
Postmodernity grew out of the
deconstruction movement, which put forth that meaning in language was not
objectively understood and that interpretation was highly subjective. The
identity crisis flows not only from others’ changing perception of a person but
also from the uncertainty of one’s own self-perception.
Postmodernity is a consumer's age, where people will relish options. Plurality
demands these options in which all choices share equal footing. Because there’s
no centre, no clear target, there exists a need for a variety of possibilities
on the parameter of life. We have the freedom to become whoever we wish, yet
without a certainty of knowing who we really are. Adrift at sea, every person
will seek out something, some reference point to give life some meaning.
Postmodern morality:
· We no longer know how to discern good from bad.
Our new moral measuring stick may as well be “Do unto others what is expedient,” because where we, as a society,
once excluded moral self-confidence, we now seem more muddled in self-doubt.
Good and right are merely social constructions; each individual is left to
create a formulation of what morally acceptable. It’s as if twenty-first-century society
protests, “Who’s to say what’s morally right for me?”
·
Love
yourself: Everyone ‘does what is right in his or her own eyes.’
·
Do unto
others as you wish: Morality, like religion, is a matter of desire. I have a
right to my desires. No one has the right to criticise my desires and my
choices.
A
carryover effect of postmodern ambiguity is a blurring of all lines and
distinctions, including gender.
· Do unto others… oh whatever: Moral
indifference. Postmoderns think some aspects of morality have become such
nonissues, they’re considered hardly worth discussing.
Eg. any challenge to certain moral issues like sexual infidelity may elicit a
response along the lines of “it’s just sex… what’s the big deal?” Postmodern
people are more likely to be spontaneous in their decision making, often
ignoring the consequences of their choices. This is why people may prove
reluctant to make long-term commitments. They want to keep their options open
in case something better should come along or if the situation changes.
The search for transcendence:
· The quest for wholeness: Postmodernity embraces
a wider perspective of reality, taking into account the spiritual and intuitive
aspects of human existence. As a result the New Age movement’s grown, along
with it an embrace of the supernatural often expressed in an anti-intellectual
manner with crystals, palm readings, star signs, psychics and the like. That
means preachers today must tap into the cravings for reconnectedness of the
spiritual and physical existences. Preachers must help listeners re-grasp the
spiritual that is all around us and restore a sense of wholeness.
·
It’s not
nice to fool mother nature:
Jurassic Park
stands as a contemporary Frankenstein. Nature, in her wisdom has chosen to
eliminate dinosaurs. It is only the arrogance of the scientists who dare attempt
to undo what nature has done. The postmodern view is to appreciate wisdom as
well as the beauty of nature.
·
Our mother
who art in nature, hallowed be thy name: Many postmoderns worship nature as a
sacred goddess.
· Livin’ large, baby: In the search for the
transcendent, people will be encouraged to experience as much of life as
possible. Only the brave push the boundaries. The avenues to more life could
well take the form of experimentation with drug uses, a counterculture
existence, extreme sports, or sexual encounters of all kinds.
The closest many postmodern people will ever come to a transcendent,
supernatural experience is through sexual encounters or recreational drugs.
“There is no fear in love” (1John 4:18). Will churches in postmodern times respond
in fear or with compassion as people search in all the wrong places? Will
preachers have a voice to be heard in their pursuit of something greater than
themselves?
The media mad world:
· The world has moved from a print culture to a
media culture. Media now dominates the way in which people think and discuss
ideals publicly.
· Movies like Blade Runner raises a moral
dilemma: Who is to say that an artificial being is any less real than a human
being? Many people would suggest the same concerning the world one creates on a
TV or movie screen or in a “virtual reality” computer-operated game. Who is to
say that this “reality” is any less real, since what people call reality is
merely a social construct anyway? The world of TV screen and cyberspace no longer
replicates reality, but creates its own.
Facing the knowing smirk:
· Postmodern culture has learned not to take
itself too seriously. For instance, the song “Love and Marriage” written by
Frank Sinatra in the 50s is now the theme song for
Married with Children and has become an anthem to marriages gone
wrong, a mocking parody that suggests love and marriage are damaged goods.
·
The ironic
vs the Heroic: Postmodernity is the age not of the heroic but of the ironic.
It’s an age when the antihero rules with such icons as Kurt Cobain, Madonna
etc. Since life has no objective meaning, this is perceived as one cosmic joke
with no punch line.
· Retro: When the future dries up: In relation to
fashion and music, “retro” is bringing back in style a taste from the past.
They thrive on the reinventing of former conventions. For example the hit
movies of the 90s,
The Avengers, Mission
Impossible etc are all based on TV shows of the 50s-70s.
History is viewed as nothing more than a style.
Questing for community:
· The Enlightenment, Reformation etc had
brought to the rise of the individual.
Postmodernity hasn’t jettisoned the value of the individual; however, a deep
longing for community has begun to surface.
·
As people
search for what’s transcendent, most will encounter the meaning in and through
relationships.
·
As a group
immersed into computers and technological gadgetry, the effect is an increased
desire to be more attached to nature but in a similar fashion, a craving for
meaningful relationships.
·
The
breakdown of the nuclear family brings about a desire for acceptance and
belonging which stems from the loneliness and alienation of splintered family
attachments.
·
Subcultures
represent pockets of people finding acceptance and security through the
formation of communities, a place to belong. The postmodernist ideology has
undermined the very principle of a unified national culture and has driven
individuals to find their identities in subcultures.
· Postmodernity comes with a generation that has
grown up in broken homes, being lied to by politicians and deceived by church
and community leaders. The church makes bold claims but rarely delivers on its
own message of love, reconciliation and compassion. For today’s listeners,
nothing is more distasteful than empty ritual divorced from everyday living.
Living in the material world:
· The postmodern dilemma: Technological advances
will not get us home, so we are left to our own devices to find a way.
“Gone are the optimism and confident expectation that everything will get better,
and that disease and human failings will be overcome. In its place we have a
disillusion with all that is modern and a search for another framework of life.
There is a loss of certainty, and in its place there is a scepticism and
cynicism about life, each other and the future.”
“So the only world is today – now. Time is just a series of ‘now’ events that
have no order or meaning. They are essentially chaotic.”
·
Who says
money can’t buy happiness? Those of us living in modern times seem to want it both
ways: If life is about “livin’ large,” the best way to go about it is with
money and freedom from any responsibilities of employment. The great dream of
travelling the world, fine cars, fancy restaurants, basically “livin’ large,” is
dangled like a carrot before millions of willing participants each day.
· Johnston observes that “as bible communicators,
your task is not a simple one – it’s to bring God’s truth to bear upon a people
who are searching for, yet uncertain of, truth and falsehood; of people open,
but sceptical, and livin’ large while running on empty.”
Rules for engagement:
· Inevitably every preacher will be required to
proclaim godly truths that are counterculture, principles that run against the
grain of general society. That is the nature of following Christ.
·
Effective
preaching is not necessarily the preaching that gets results, but it should be
understood in terms of brining the listener to a clear appreciation of the
biblical message.
·
“People
are not blank slates on which we write our messages. People are a pulsating
bundle of attitudes, values, prejudices, experience, feelings, thoughts,
sensations and aspirations. They are active, not passive, even when they are
listening.”
·
In the
postmodern context, where authority is suspect and people mistrust those in
power, what makes the difference as to whether one listens or tunes out is the
perceived attitude of the preacher. “Does the speaker care about me? Or “Can I
trust what I am about to hear?” If people perceive the preacher as lording it
over them or as somehow speaking down to them from an exalted position, this
will be an obstacle to the message.
·
Dealing
with the biblical concept of sin may be one of the greatest challenges to
twenty-first-century preaching. In the current cultural climate, sin and guilt
are no longer an issue or have been recalibrated beyond any spiritual
recognition. The problem has moved and is now becoming “How can I feel good
about myself?” This shift from sin to self-image reflects a move, not just in
society but in the church. We have replaced a fundamentally theological
perspective with a psychological approach to life and the world. Sadly, much of
what passes as biblical preaching is nothing more than pop psychology wrapped
in poor exegesis.
·
Connecting
through a human need as a need as the starting point of one’s sermon is only
the first half of the process.
·
Life
experiences provide a means of establishing both interest and relevance. The
sphere that represents the life of the speaker must touch the sphere that
represents the life of the listener.
·
To
connect, a preacher needs to involve listeners in the learning. They need to
show more of their own process in going through the Word to uncover these
gleaned truths, so that the listeners discover the truths for themselves as
opposed to having ideas dropped in their lab.
· It’s about creating an atmosphere of trust,
vulnerability and commonality from which people might hear what God’s Spirit
would say to them.
Challenging listeners:
· The Mormons have a two-year missionary internship
which requires door-to-door confrontations, which is one of the least effective
means of outreach. Why continue? Because statistics show that after these
missionaries have suffered daily abuse for their beliefs over a two-year
period, there’s every likelihood the candidates will remain Mormons for life.
The more opposition people encounter, the more entrenched they can become in
their own belief systems.
·
Since
postmodern people live by sound bites of information on a large number of
subjects, they’ll expect that you be widely informed as well. Today’s preaching
needs to demonstrate a scope of understanding and interact critically in the
areas of sociology, psychology, current events and pop culture.
·
Be more
apologetic: Biblical preaching that grapples with doubts, unpacks Christian
assumptions, and contemplates the unbelief of the sceptic. On the surface,
postmodernity questions everything, but in reality, all belief or disbelief
rests upon something. The preacher’s task is to understand the common ground of
belief and unbelief in order to engage the postmodern listener effectively.
Sometimes a non-Christian may say to a Christian, “The problem with you Christians
is you judge everything.” However, the non-Christian failed to appreciate that he/she
too makes judgments and discern right from wrong. Everyone possess concepts of
right and wrong, but some lacks the insight into their own moral framework. So being
apologetic also involves unpacking ideas and exposing the framework of people’s
thinking.
· Encourage accountability: Much of today’s
preaching can lack purpose. People hear a message without being directed to act
in any measurable, practical or tangible way. Preaching should move the
listeners beyond a sense of feeling uncomfortable or guilty to a point of
decisive action.
Bibliography:
Johnston, Graham. Preaching to a Postmodern World: A Guide to
Reaching Twenty-first Century Listeners. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2001.
Filiatreau, Mark. “‘Good News’ or
‘Old News’.” Regeneration Quarterly
Winter (1995): 1.
Middleton,
Richard J. and Brian J. Walsh. Truth Is
Stranger than It Used to Be. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1995.
Cook, David. Blind Alley Beliefs. Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1996.
Mackay, Hugh. Why Don’t People Listen? Sydney: Pan
Macmillan, 1994.
