God to The Postmodern: Continued

Fortunately my ideas on post-modernity were not wasted and I was able to use what I wrote for a paper for my Practices and Principles of Urban Ministry class. The project was to describe a people group's world view and christian truths that can be applied to their specific world view.

But before we come to that please take a moment to observe this article on Obama's world view.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/opinion/15brooks.html?_r=1

True, honest thinkers acknowledge evil, and this article goes so far as to call it sin, in the world. listen for example to these words,

"you wouldn’t want to get carried away by your own righteousness or be seduced by the belief that you are innocent."

It describes Obama as

" familiar with prophetic Christianity and the human tendency toward corruption"

The article calls this world view, 'Christian Realism' or 'Cold War Liberalism'. Is Obama a Christian? He certianly has half of the gospel right and does not deny the fact of the corruption of man.

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This is certainly not my best work, and simply a fleshing out of my previous post, but now for your reading pleasure if you so choose...

World View: Christ To The Post-Modern Youth Culture

Framework of a World View

Post-modernity rejects religion, science, history, facts and feeling as valid means for acquiring knowledge. The post-modern mind is over loaded with information, and still is unable to find anything meaningful or certain in life. The post-modern mind is highly individualistic. Every person believes themselves the ultimate answer for the world’s deepest questions. Few are atheistic, most are agnostic and hold loosely to some kind of philosophy of eastern religions.

The honest postmodern, though, will acknowledge that what’s true for one person cannot be true for another. With this final, thin support stripped away the postmodern is left with absolutely nothing. Life is meaningless, random; there is nothing, no answers, no truth. Brokenness is acutely felt. Alienatation from God, from self, from others is acutely felt. There is a sense of rightness without seeing rightness in the world. There is desperation. There is a craving for meaning, for unity, a craving compassion, a craving for beauty. Postmodernity permeates every culture that has any connection with modern, western culture. The target group here is perhaps most affected by postmodernity, the middle class American youth around high school age. While their parents may have been content to call themselves nominally Christian or Catholic their children reject these lifeless religions and are on their own quest, to claim something that they believe for themselves, apart from their parents beliefs. Many come out of dysfunctional family situations and carry pain from their past. Art, music, poetry of this culture is a collection of juxtapositions, in the hopes that somewhere in the jumble and overload of information truth will be found.

Concepts into a World View

1. Meaning. The postmodern deeply feels the need for purpose, for meaning, for direction. When we submit ourselves to Christ he offers us the ultimate purpose for living. We allow Him to set our direction and he gives us our value. Our new meaning in life is to live to know him more and to spread his glory on this earth.

2. Brokenness. You do not have to tell the postmodern mind that there is something wrong with the world the way it is. The postmodern is aware of the pain of history, of personal pain and pain within relationships. The postmodern knows that we do not experience life the way it should be experienced. The gospel offers hope of healing and reconciliation to the brokenness and alienation that the postmodern feels in the world.

3. Unity. The sense of brokenness and alienation comes with a yearning for unity. The postmodern senses that there must be connectedness in the world, even if they can not explain it. This craving for unity leads many young people to eastern religions that hold to karma or pantheism, which explains and unifies life experiences. There is a desire to understand the earth, themselves, others, God, the spiritual world and how they are all connected. The post modern feels the need for reconciliation between physical and spiritual. The gospel offers all of this in Christ, the perfect God-man, God’s reconciliation between the physical and the spiritual. Christians wait in hope for the day when God will unite all things in Christ, things on heaven and things on earth (Ephesians 1:10).

4. Compassion. This group is sensitive to the pains of humanity throughout history, and in current events such as war, terrorism, genocide ect. Social Justice, peace and international development are all very popular subjects among this secular people group. These people will not be persuaded to follow Christ until they see the deep motivation of a Christian to pursue acts of compassion. Christ is the best reason to be devoted to compassion for others, the bible calls us to be radically compassionate, empathetic and social justice oriented towards the people who bear his beautiful image.

5. Beauty. The blood of the 19^th century Romantic Movement still flows in the veins of postmodern youth. There is a taste for the whimsical, the artistic and the beautiful. This movement has produced more musicians, graphic design artists and photographers than the world knows what to do with. In our presentation of the gospel to the postmodern we must remember that God is the ultimate source of beauty. We wholeheartedly join the psalmist when he says “One thing have I asked of the LORD, 
 that will I seek after: 
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
 and to inquire in his temple.”