Will 'Get What You Want' Leave A Cultural Gap?

Hi guys, lets talk a little about culture. Fragmented hyper-modern culture.

I heard the following story on NPR this morning about the loss of a cultural commonality using the contrast between Seinfeld in 1994 and American Idol in 2009. I thought it was a fascinating idea of increasingly fragmented, hyper-individualism. What do you think?

Will 'Get What You Want' Leave A Cultural Gap?
by Laura Sydell
December 29, 2009

Get what you want, when you want it. That's the phrase that has dominated the entertainment industry over the past decade. New technologies have given us access to countless channels for music, television and film — and we can sample them whenever we find it convenient. But as the options multiply, are we losing our sense of a common culture? …

… "In history, as far as we can tell, there have never been cultures or societies in which there weren't a very large set of shared ideas — norms, values, stories" and so on, says Nass. "We've just never seen that before."

As the monoculture fragments, social-media platforms and other wired and unwired communities are creating new kinds of connections — connections that are building bridges between people in ways that watching Seinfeld never could. But Nass says they're not likely to be the kinds of connections that will hold a nation together.

5 min. Audio version

Immanuel

God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man (C.S. Lewis)

The mystery of Christ, that He sunk Himself into our flesh, is beyond all human understanding (Martin Luther)

Infinite, and yet an infant. Eternal, and yet born of a woman. Almighty, and yet hanging on a woman’s breast. Supporting a universe, and yet needing to be carried in a mother’s arms. King of angels, and yet the reputed son of Joseph. Heir of all things, and yet the carpenter’s despised son. (Spurgeon)

Isaiah 7:14 (Amplified Bible)
14Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign: Behold, the young woman who is unmarried and a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel [God with us]

John 1:14 (New International Version)
14The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only,[a] who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.



Thoughts? Comments? I am more and more awed and impressed by the miracle and significance of the incarnation of God in Christ. Merry Christmas to all!

Thomas Aquinas and Christian realism

I found this Scot McKnight’s web site:

Jesuscreed

“Why study Thomas Aquinas? By almost everyone's admission Aquinas was the most important philosopher for almost 2,000 years between Aristotle and Descartes. But Peter Kreeft of Boston College has another answer: 'My personal answer is that I believe Aquinas was simply the wisest and most intelligent philosopher in history. And I want to show you why.'

In 14 CD's just released (2009), Peter Kreeft introduces listeners to the philosophy and theology of Thomas Aquinas
Peter Kreeft introduces listeners to the philosophy and theology of Thomas Aquinas

The CD's and accompanying Course Guide appears in a prestigeous series called "The Modern Scholar: Great Professors Teaching you!" by Recorded Books. Your local library likely has this series so its free to the public.

Some of Kreeft's lecture topics are: "Aquinas's Importance and a Short Biography," "Philosophy and Theology, Reason and Faith", "Can You Prove God's Existence?", "The Case Against Aquinas's God and Proofs" "Aquinas's Cosmology: Creation, providence and Free Will," "Aquinas's Metaphysics" and other enticing subjects.”

………………………………..

(Joseph) My personal favorite ‘believing’ philosophers of the twentieth century are French Catholics who drank deeply from the wells of St. Thomas and Aristotle: Jacques Maritain who authored Intregal Humanism in 1936 and Emmanuel Mounier, the author of the Personalist Manifesto in 1938. Both Maritain and Mounier had a huge influence in the Catholic student movements of the 1950s in the Caribbean and South America.

What do you know about Thomism? How might it provide a philosophical framework for believers in a postmodern age? I have invited Ray Ciervo to comment on this. He is more familiar with Thomism than most of us.

Are you saved? - an Orthodox Christian answer

Voice for Sanity

Interesting perspective on the 'meltdown' of pentecostal-charismatic Christianity ...

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/november/33.42.html

'A Voice for Sanity'

This article gets the fire going in my bones ... we are presently in the early stages of a huge housecleaning of religous nonsense and 'Christian' narcisism ... was it Stokley Carmichael who said "burn baby burn" ?

StrengthsFinders 2.0

While we are pondering what to say about God’s presence and anxiety (see below), let me mention a new tool for discovering the strengths of our personalities.

Deb and I are part of a couples group that include two former church planters, one current church planter/pastor, a prison chaplain and a retired pastor who is the regional overseer for the Dutch Reformed Church (eclectic group!). The group also includes a model, a former airline stewardess, a children’s book author, a psychoanalyst, a jazz pianist and a PhD student (that last would be me--it is a fun group).

The interesting thing about this group is that it was not started by the men but by our wives, with Dr. Sam’s wife Jane taking the lead. This means that rather than being task or agenda oriented, the group is much more relational with a focus on community.

Anyway, someone recently suggested that we take a personality profile test and mentioned “Strengthsfinders 2.0” by Tom Rath.

There is a web site associated with the book, and each new book contains a sealed access code which allows you to go to the web site and take a strengths profile to find what your five top “themes” are out of a total of 34 themes. Such things as Achiever, Activator, Adaptability, Analytical, Arranger, Belief, Command, Communication, Connectedness, Consistency, Context, Deliberative, Developer, Discipline, Empathy, Focus, Futuristic, Harmony, Ideation, Includer, Individualization, Input, Intellection, Learner, Maximizer, Positivity, Relator, Responsibility, Restorative, Self-Assurance, Significance, Strategic, etc.

It took me about 30 minutes to take the profile and I was amazed how accurately it nailed my personality.

Here is the home page:

strengthsfinder.com

Anyone who knows us care to take a wild guess at which characteristics were in my top five, or Debbie’s top five?

On becoming a God-defined, non-anxious presence

Robert Grant shared this phrase with us during his recent visit here. The phrase is not original with Robert; I believe it comes from his work with coaching/mentoring and leadership development, but perhaps he can speak to that more specifically. In any event, I have found it packed with layers of meaning. What would I be like if I were becoming increasingly a God-defined, non-anxious presence? What would the life and work of the church look like? How do I move from my "current reality" towards the kind of future reality that is God-defined, non-anxious, and fully present, to God and to the people I happen to be with?

So please weigh in on this. What does "God-defined" do for you, or where does it take you? Any connections to make between anxiety levels and what is defining you? We're not hunting for some kind of "right answer," but want to see what kinds of conversations this phrase kicks up for us.

Deep Church IV: Worship

Belcher writes that, when it comes to their understanding and practice of worship:

"... the emerging and traditional churches have the same Achilles heel--a faulty view of tradition. Both are committed to the same low-church view of church tradition ["no book but the Bible, no creed but Christ"]. This has locked them into a model of worship that is dated and severely influenced by the Enlightenment. They are handcuffed by a style of worship contextualized during the Reformation that no longer connects with postmodern people. The goal is not to simply contextualize or become more like the surrounding culture, but to first adopt church tradition that would give them the resources to connect with the culture without becoming syncretistic.

"Even though the emerging church's views allows them to adopt some ancient practices, this is done in a way that is cut off from the Great Tradition that birthed them. It is as if the emerging churches want the fruit but not the roots from which it came. So in their attempt to be culturally relevant (which they are doing very well), their traditions are not strong enough, I fear, to resist being absorbed by the surrounding culture" (p. 133).

Remember that, in the above quote, Belcher is critiquing both traditional and emerging worship. What do you think of his analysis, and, more broadly... what do you think about the "art and science" of worship?

Deep Church III: Belonging and Believing

Traditionalist churches tend to emphasize believing before belonging, and use doctrinal agreement as a gatekeeper to identify who's "in" and who is "not yet in" (also known in some circles as "out"). Emerging churches tend to emphasize "belonging before believing," partly for missional reasons (postmodern folk need to experience the reality of a community before they can embrace membership in it) and partly because they feel that this approach tracks more closely with what we see in the NT. Belcher describes an interesting situation in his own church. In the following quote, he refers to Joe, an openly gay man who has been attending Belcher's church regularly for two or three years:

So simply declaring that belonging precedes belief is not always helpful. What should I say to Joe tomorrow when he asks about membership? Can he officially join the church even if he can't subscribe to our four basic requirements for membership? What about the Lord's Supper? If he can't become a member because of his lifestyle, should he be able to participate in the Lord's Supper? How do I communicate our views? I want him to be increasingly drawn to the Well [i.e., to Jesus himself]. But I want to follow my conscience on biblical matters. I struggle with what to say. [Belcher, p. 97]

Belcher never makes clear how his subsequent conversations with Joe went. How would you have responded--or how have you in fact responded--to folks like Joe (not necessarily around the issue of homosexuality, but more broadly with a 'community member' whose life is either significantly heterodox or heteroprax [wrong belief and/or wrong living])?

Deep Church II

One of Belcher's proposals for a way forward out of the impasse between "traditionalists" and "emerging church" is to restore the three great ecumenical creeds (Apostles', Nicene and Athanasian) to the center of what "orthodoxy" means and looks like. He does not intend these to be walls keeping people out, but rather doors and windows into full participation in the people of God. In the debate between "believing before belonging" (more of the traditionalist posture) and "belonging before believing" (emerging), Belcher isn't settling for either pole, but rather attempts to clarify what is to be believed in order to belong, without determining the order in which they are to happen. How do you see this proposal possibly being fruitful... or misguided?