1 Peter 2:11-12
Suffering from Happiness:
The war for our Soul!
Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us
Postmodernism:
Postmodernism is a complicated term, or set of ideas, one that has only emerged as an area of academic study since the mid-1980s. Postmodernism is hard to define, because it is a concept that appears in a wide variety of disciplines or areas of study, including art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and technology. It’s hard to locate it temporally or historically, because it’s not clear exactly when postmodernism begins.
Perhaps the easiest way to start thinking about postmodernism is by thinking about modernism, the movement from which postmodernism seems to grow or emerge. Modernism has two facets, or two modes of definition, both of which are relevant to understanding postmodernism.
The first facet or definition of modernism comes from the aesthetic movement broadly labeled "modernism." This movement is roughly coterminous with twentieth century Western ideas about art (though traces of it in emergent forms can be found in the nineteenth century as well). Modernism, as you probably know, is the movement in visual arts, music, literature, and drama which rejected the old Victorian standards of how art should be made, consumed, and what it should mean. In the period of "high modernism," from around 1910 to 1930, the major figures of modernism literature helped radically to redefine what poetry and fiction could be and do: figures like Woolf, Joyce, Eliot, Pound, Stevens, Proust, Mallarme, Kafka, and Rilke are considered the founders of twentieth-century modernism.
From a literary perspective, the main characteristics of modernism include:
1. an emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing (and in visual arts as well); an emphasis on HOW seeing (or reading or perception itself) takes place, rather than on WHAT is perceived. An example of this would be stream-of-consciousness writing.
2. a movement away from the apparent objectivity provided by omniscient third-person narrators, fixed narrative points of view, and clear-cut moral positions. Faulkner’s multiply-narrated stories are an example of this aspect of modernism.
3. a blurring of distinctions between genres, so that poetry seems more documentary (as in T.S. Eliot or ee cummings) and prose seems more poetic (as in Woolf or Joyce).
4. an emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives, and random-seeming collages of different materials.
5. a tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness, about the production of the work of art, so that each piece calls attention to its own status as a production, as something constructed and consumed in particular ways.
6. a rejection of elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of minimalist designs (as in the poetry of William Carlos Williams) and a rejection, in large part, of formal aesthetic theories, in favor of spontaneity and discovery in creation.
7. A rejection of the distinction between "high" and "low" or popular culture, both in choice of materials used to produce art and in methods of displaying, distributing, and consuming art.
Postmodernism, like modernism, follows most of these same ideas, rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing pastiche, parody, bricolage, irony, and playfulness. Postmodern art (and thought) favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject.
But--while postmodernism seems very much like modernism in these ways, it differs from modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends. Modernism, for example, tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history (think of The Wasteland, for instance, or of Woolf’s To the Lighthouse), but presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss. Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most of modern life; art will do what other human institutions fail to do. Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn’t lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let’s not pretend that art can make meaning then, let’s just play with nonsense.
Another way of looking at the relation between modernism and postmodernism helps to clarify some of these distinctions. According to Frederic Jameson, modernism and postmodernism are cultural formations which accompany particular stages of capitalism. Jameson outlines three primary phases of capitalism which dictate particular cultural practices (including what kind of art and literature is produced). The first is market capitalism, which occurred in the eighteenth through the late nineteenth centuries in Western Europe, England, and the United States (and all their spheres of influence). This first phase is associated with particular technological developments, namely, the steam-driven motor, and with a particular kind of aesthetics, namely, realism. The second phase occurred from the late nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century (about WWII); this phase, monopoly capitalism, is associated with electric and internal combustion motors, and with modernism. The third, the phase we’re in now, is multinational or consumer capitalism (with the emphasis placed on marketing, selling, and consuming commodities, not on producing them), associated with nuclear and electronic technologies, and correlated with postmodernism.
Like Jameson’s characterization of postmodernism in terms of modes of production and technologies, the second facet, or definition, of postmodernism comes more from history and sociology than from literature or art history. This approach defines postmodernism as the name of an entire social formation, or set of social/historical attitudes; more precisely, this approach contrasts "postmodernity" with "modernity," rather than "postmodernism" with "modernism."
What’s the difference? "Modernism" generally refers to the broad aesthetic movements of the twentieth century; "modernity" refers to a set of philosophical, political, and ethical ideas which provide the basis for the aesthetic aspect of modernism. "Modernity" is older than "modernism;" the label "modern," first articulated in nineteenth-century sociology, was meant to distinguish the present era from the previous one, which was labeled "antiquity." Scholars are always debating when exactly the "modern" period began, and how to distinguish between what is modern and what is not modern; it seems like the modern period starts earlier and earlier every time historians look at it. But generally, the "modern" era is associated with the European Enlightenment, which begins roughly in the middle of the eighteenth century. (Other historians trace elements of enlightenment thought back to the Renaissance or earlier, and one could argue that Enlightenment thinking begins with the eighteenth century. I usually date "modern" from 1750, if only because I got my Ph.D. from a program at Stanford called "Modern Thought and Literature," and that program focused on works written after 1750).
The basic ideas of the Enlightenment are roughly the same as the basic ideas of humanism. Jane Flax’s article gives a good summary of these ideas or premises (on p. 41). I’ll add a few things to her list.
1. There is a stable, coherent, knowable self. This self is conscious, rational, autonomous, and universal--no physical conditions or differences substantially affect how this self operates.
2. This self knows itself and the world through reason, or rationality, posited as the highest form of mental functioning, and the only objective form.
3. The mode of knowing produced by the objective rational self is "science," which can provide universal truths about the world, regardless of the individual status of the knower.
4. The knowledge produced by science is "truth," and is eternal.
5. The knowledge/truth produced by science (by the rational objective knowing self) will always lead toward progress and perfection. All human institutions and practices can be analyzed by science (reason/objectivity) and improved.
6. Reason is the ultimate judge of what is true, and therefore of what is right, and what is good (what is legal and what is ethical). Freedom consists of obedience to the laws that conform to the knowledge discovered by reason.
7. In a world governed by reason, the true will always be the same as the good and the right (and the beautiful); there can be no conflict between what is true and what is right (etc.).
8. Science thus stands as the paradigm for any and all socially useful forms of knowledge. Science is neutral and objective; scientists, those who produce scientific knowledge through their unbiased rational capacities, must be free to follow the laws of reason, and not be motivated by other concerns (such as money or power).
9. Language, or the mode of expression used in producing and disseminating knowledge, must be rational also. To be rational, language must be transparent; it must function only to represent the real/perceivable world which the rational mind observes. There must be a firm and objective connection between the objects of perception and the words used to name them (between signifier and signified).
These are some of the fundamental premises of humanism, or of modernism. They serve--as you can probably tell--to justify and explain virtually all of our social structures and institutions, including democracy, law, science, ethics, and aesthetics.
Modernity is fundamentally about order: about rationality and rationalization, creating order out of chaos. The assumption is that creating more rationality is conducive to creating more order, and that the more ordered a society is, the better it will function (the more rationally it will function). Because modernity is about the pursuit of ever-increasing levels of order, modern societies constantly are on guard against anything and everything labeled as "disorder," which might disrupt order. Thus modern societies rely on continually establishing a binary opposition between "order" and "disorder," so that they can assert the superiority of "order." But to do this, they have to have things that represent "disorder"--modern societies thus continually have to create/construct "disorder." In western culture, this disorder becomes "the other"--defined in relation to other binary oppositions. Thus anything non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, non-hygienic, non-rational, (etc.) becomes part of "disorder," and has to be eliminated from the ordered, rational modern society.
The ways that modern societies go about creating categories labeled as "order" or "disorder" have to do with the effort to achieve stability. Francois Lyotard (the theorist whose works Sarup describes in his article on postmodernism) equates that stability with the idea of "totality," or a totalized system (think here of Derrida’s idea of "totality" as the wholeness or completeness of a system). Totality, and stability, and order, Lyotard argues, are maintained in modern societies through the means of "grand narratives" or "master narratives," which are stories a culture tells itself about its practices and beliefs. A "grand narrative" in American culture might be the story that democracy is the most enlightened (rational) form of government, and that democracy can and will lead to universal human happiness. Every belief system or ideology has its grand narratives, according to Lyotard; for Marxism, for instance, the "grand narrative" is the idea that capitalism will collapse in on itself and a utopian socialist world will evolve. You might think of grand narratives as a kind of meta-theory, or meta-ideology, that is, an ideology that explains an ideology (as with Marxism); a story that is told to explain the belief systems that exist.
Lyotard argues that all aspects of modern societies, including science as the primary form of knowledge, depend on these grand narratives. Postmodernism then is the critique of grand narratives, the awareness that such narratives serve to mask the contradictions and instabilities that are inherent in any social organization or practice. In other words, every attempt to create "order" always demands the creation of an equal amount of "disorder," but a "grand narrative" masks the constructedness of these categories by explaining that "disorder" REALLY IS chaotic and bad, and that "order" REALLY IS rational and good. Postmodernism, in rejecting grand narratives, favors "mini-narratives," stories that explain small practices, local events, rather than large-scale universal or global concepts. Postmodern "mini-narratives" are always situational, provisional, contingent, and temporary, making no claim to universality, truth, reason, or stability.
Another aspect of Enlightenment thought--the final of my 9 points--is the idea that language is transparent, that words serve only as representations of thoughts or things, and don’t have any function beyond that. Modern societies depend on the idea that signifiers always point to signifieds, and that reality resides in signifieds. In postmodernism, however, there are only signifiers. The idea of any stable or permanent reality disappears, and with it the idea of signifieds that signifiers point to. Rather, for postmodern societies, there are only surfaces, without depth; only signifiers, with no signifieds.
Another way of saying this, according to Jean Baudrillard, is that in postmodern society there are no originals, only copies--or what he calls "simulacra." You might think, for example, about painting or sculpture, where there is an original work (by Van Gogh, for instance), and there might also be thousands of copies, but the original is the one with the highest value (particularly monetary value). Contrast that with cds or music recordings, where there is no "original," as in painting--no recording that is hung on a wall, or kept in a vault; rather, there are only copies, by the millions, that are all the same, and all sold for (approximately) the same amount of money. Another version of Baudrillard’s "simulacrum" would be the concept of virtual reality, a reality created by simulation, for which there is no original. This is particularly evident in computer games/simulations--think of Sim City, Sim Ant, etc.
Finally, postmodernism is concerned with questions of the organization of knowledge. In modern societies, knowledge was equated with science, and was contrasted to narrative; science was good knowledge, and narrative was bad, primitive, irrational (and thus associated with women, children, primitives, and insane people). Knowledge, however, was good for its own sake; one gained knowledge, via education, in order to be knowledgeable in general, to become an educated person. This is the ideal of the liberal arts education. In a postmodern society, however, knowledge becomes functional--you learn things, not to know them, but to use that knowledge. As Sarup points out (p. 138), educational policy today puts emphasis on skills and training, rather than on a vague humanist ideal of education in general. This is particularly acute for English majors. "What will you DO with your degree?"
Not only is knowledge in postmodern societies characterized by its utility, but knowledge is also distributed, stored, and arranged differently in postmodern societies than in modern ones. Specifically, the advent of electronic computer technologies has revolutionized the modes of knowledge production, distribution, and consumption in our society (indeed, some might argue that postmodernism is best described by, and correlated with, the emergence of computer technology, starting in the 1960s, as the dominant force in all aspects of social life). In postmodern societies, anything which is not able to be translated into a form recognizable and storable by a computer--i.e. anything that’s not digitizable--will cease to be knowledge. In this paradigm, the opposite of "knowledge" is not "ignorance," as it is the modern/humanist paradigm, but rather "noise." Anything that doesn’t qualify as a kind of knowledge is "noise," is something that is not recognizable as anything within this system.
Lyotard says (and this is what Sarup spends a lot of time explaining) that the important question for postmodern societies is who decides what knowledge is (and what "noise" is), and who knows what needs to be decided. Such decisions about knowledge don’t involve the old modern/humanist qualifications: for example, to assess knowledge as truth (its technical quality), or as goodness or justice (its ethical quality) or as beauty (its aesthetic quality). Rather, Lyotard argues, knowledge follows the paradigm of a language game, as laid out by Wittgenstein. I won’t go into the details of Wittgenstein’s ideas of language games; Sarup gives a pretty good explanation of this concept in his article, for those who are interested.
There are lots of questions to be asked about postmodernism, and one of the most important is about the politics involved--or, more simply, is this movement toward fragmentation, provisionality, performance, and instability something good or something bad? There are various answers to that; in our contemporary society, however, the desire to return to the pre-postmodern era (modern/humanist/Enlightenment thinking) tends to get associated with conservative political, religious, and philosophical groups. In fact, one of the consequences of postmodernism seems to be the rise of religious fundamentalism, as a form of resistance to the questioning of the "grand narratives" of religious truth. This is perhaps most obvious (to us in the US, anyway) in muslim fundamentalism in the Middle East, which ban postmodern books--like Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses --because they deconstruct such grand narratives.
This association between the rejection of postmodernism and conservatism or fundamentalism may explain in part why the postmodern avowal of fragmentation and multiplicity tends to attract liberals and radicals. This is why, in part, feminist theorists have found postmodernism so attractive, as Sarup, Flax, and Butler all point out.
On another level, however, postmodernism seems to offer some alternatives to joining the global culture of consumption, where commodities and forms of knowledge are offered by forces far beyond any individual’s control. These alternatives focus on thinking of any and all action (or social struggle) as necessarily local, limited, and partial--but nonetheless effective. By discarding "grand narratives" (like the liberation of the entire working class) and focusing on specific local goals (such as improved day care centers for working mothers in your own community), postmodernist politics offers a way to theorize local situations as fluid and unpredictable, though influenced by global trends. Hence the motto for postmodern politics might well be "think globally, act locally"--and don’t worry about any grand scheme or master plan.
Contrast of Modern and Postmodern Thinking
Modern Postmodern
Reasoning From foundation upwards Multiple factors of multiple levels of reasoning. Web-oriented.
Science Universal Optimism Realism of Limitations
Part/Whole Parts comprise the whole The whole is more than the parts
God Acts by violating "natural" laws" or by "immanence" in everything that is Top-Down causation
Language Referential Meaning in social context through usage
Department of Anthropology College of Arts and Sciences The University of Alabama
Postmodern Biblical faith
Emphasis Means or implies: But Jesus said:
Personal relationships - with the group or community. Please people rather than God. - with God. "I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.” John 14:20-21
Tolerance - for what God warned us to shun. Forbidden things are now okay. “What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man.” Mk 7:20-23
["Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good." Romans 12:9]
Truth - subjective, always changing, defined by the group -- with little or no Biblical insight. Denial of absolute and objective truth. “I am the way, the truth, and the life...." John 14:6
["Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Do not be carried about with various and strange doctrines." Heb 13:8-9]
Pluralism All religions (1) lead to the same place, (2) are valid paths to salvation. “No one comes to the Father except through Me." John 14:6
“No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him." John 6:44
Authority Reject traditional authorities. Follow subjective feelings and group consensus. "I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me." John 6:38
"Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.” Luke22:42
Faith and view of the future Based on feelings, imagination, mysticism and group consensus. Based on God’s Word:
“I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me...." John 17:20-21
["All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work." 2 Tim 3:16-17]
Spirituality Seeking spiritual power, favors, knowledge or wholeness - or oneness with a higher consciousness or an unknowable universal force or spirit. "...we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him..." I John 5:20
"Take heed that you not be deceived. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am He,’ and, ‘The time has drawn near.’ Therefore do not go after them." Luke 21:8
Pluralism and multi-culturalism All religions are equal and okay. Dismiss people who disagree as bigots or extremists. “You shall have no other gods before Me." Exodus 20:3
“You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are all around you (for the Lord your God is a jealous God among you), lest the anger of the Lord your God be aroused against you." Deut 6:14-15
“...if you by any means forget the Lord your God, and follow other gods, and serve them and worship them, I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish." Deut. 8:19
Continual
Change Demands continual inner adaptation to cultural transformation "...do not be conformed to this world...." Romans 12:2
"Pilate, wanting to gratify the crowd, released Barabbas to them; and he delivered Jesus, after he had scourged Him, to be crucified." Mark 15:15
"If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you." John 15:19
An archly ironic view continues to permeate pop culture despite claims that irony was dead after 9/11.
By ROBERT W. BUTLER
The Kansas City Star
Sunday, February 9, 2003
"Pulp Fiction" is p.m. So are "Memento," "Far From Heaven," the "Austin Powers" films and the Marx Brothers.
Video games are p.m., as is David Letterman. Not to mention celebrity boxing matches, Anna Nicole Smith, "Joe Millionaire" and Bernie Mac whenever he leans forward in his easy chair and addresses us as "America."
Any movie written by Charlie Kaufman - "Being John Malkovich," "Adaptation" and "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" - will have p.m. stamped all over it.
We’re talking about postmodernism, an attitude toward the arts that’s been around for the better part of a century and that has finally insinuated itself into the warp and weft of American culture.
Just what it is, though, is hard to define.
"Nobody knows what they’re talking about when it comes to postmodernism," said Thom Poe, chairman of the communications department at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. "It can mean almost anything you construct it to mean."
Perhaps the essence of postmodernism - at least as it applies to the dramatic arts - can be summed up in the phrase, "It’s only a movie."
When we watch a film, we know it isn’t real. It’s populated with actors and often shot on fake sets. Nevertheless, we pretend it’s real to enjoy the pleasures and diversions the story offers.
A postmodernist film - like the current "Adaptation," a comedy about a man struggling to write the very movie we’re seeing - doesn’t even pretend to be real. It’s aware that it’s only a movie and in fact celebrates its unreality.
This isn’t anything new. Jeanine Basinger, professor of film at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., notes that when silent film comics such as Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin broke from the action around them and stared directly into the camera, they were creating a postmodernist moment.
"In ’The Road to Morocco,’ " Basinger said in a recent phone conversation, "Bob Hope and Bing Crosby get tied up in gunny sacks and thrown into the desert. In the next shot they’re walking across the dunes and one of them says, ’Do you think the audience will wonder how we got out of those sacks?’
"That’s postmodernism. Of course, the makers of those movies didn’t use that phrase, which is something critics and scholars came up with in recent years to describe what they were seeing."
winking at a jaded audience
The increasing influence of postmodernism on pop culture is born of our overfamiliarity with the tricks of conventional storytelling, according to Poe.
"We now have generations growing from infancy bombarded by TV and film that employ narrative conventions," he said. "What used to be necessary storytelling devices" - a recognizable chronology, character development, emotional identification with characters and situations - "are becoming clichés. Fans of postmodernism think of themselves as too educated and too smart to fall for those clichés. Postmodernism is ironic; it’s always winking at the audience and making them part of the game, enlisting them as co-conspirators."
In fact, we live in the Age of Irony, according to Syracuse University professor Robert Thompson, a pop culture specialist.
"For some time now we’ve been getting entertainment that is a tongue-in-cheek examination of itself," Thompson said recently. "You’d have months when not one sincere word would come out of David Letterman’s mouth. You got the famous ending of the Bob Newhart show where he wakes up in bed with his wife from an earlier sitcom. By the time we get to the ’90s, postmodernism has not only moved from the academic world to pop entertainment, now it’s the principle mode of communication for a big part of the audience - educated young people."
Originally, at least, postmodernism was fiercely political. Among its proponents was the Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht, who in the 1930s and ’40s developed what he called "epic theater" in which the audience was expected to think about issues rather than identify emotionally with the characters.
In a sense, live theater is already postmodernist, because the audience is completely aware that these are actors pretending to inhabit a room in which one wall is invisible so that we can watch them. Films are far better at creating the illusion of reality, which is what makes them even more dangerous.
"Most postmodernists," Poe said, "believe there’s an ideological danger in this total willing suspension of disbelief when we watch a movie. They think that by ignoring the fact that this is simply a story being told by somebody, we’re being hoodwinked. They think that most entertainment sells us false views of reality and detracts from our ability to think critically."
One bit of fallout from postmodernism, Poe asserts, is that many young people are mistrustful.
"They’re cynical about everything," he said. "Their inclination is to believe nothing - not national myths, not religion, certainly not the stories they see on TV and at the movies. I think this attitude leads to more intelligent, less gullible citizens - but also citizens who are much less willing to get involved."
Irony still survives
Thompson said he was amused by editorialists who after the events of Sept. 11 made hyperbolic predictions that irony was dead, that Americans would turn to entertainments that were more sentimental and filled with positive values.
"Those commentators so totally underestimated the ability of American culture to dissolve anything in its path," Thompson said. "Besides, take away irony cold turkey and you’d have everybody under the age of 30 incapable of communicating."
One big attraction of postmodernism is its playfulness. Rather than becoming aggravated by the told-in-reverse chronology of the film "Memento," postmodern audiences find pleasure in experiencing this cinematic puzzle.
The downside is that postmodernism can seem terribly cool and uninvolving.
"It creates an intellectualized film-going experience," Poe said. "The problem is that it’s more fun to think about some of these films than to actually experience them."
Thompson describes postmodernism as "all smoke and mirrors. It never lights on a topic. It refuses to be taken seriously."
Postmodernism is not so much about things, as about how we perceive things.
" ’Adaptation’ is a good thing for American movies," Thompson continued. "It makes us question the nature of storytelling. For every corny movie like ’Titanic’ that you have to let wash over you, it’s nice to have another movie that brings attention to the process itself."
Even so, the appeal of postmodernism is limited, Thompson says: "A movie like ’Adaptation’ is like a trip to your grandmother’s house. It’s really satisfying to visit now and then, but you don’t want to move into your grandma’s house."
Poe puts it this way: "Most people pay their seven bucks for the right to identify with the characters on the screen. Popcorn tends to go better with feeling than with thinking."
And Basinger doesn’t see the old narrative conventions vanishing any time soon.
"People go to a movie that they can respond to," she said. "They find it, they tell each other about it, they go see it. As long as that process is still going on, the traditional movie has a future."
General Introduction to the Postmodern
POSTMODERNISM POSES SERIOUS CHALLENGES to anyone trying to explain its major precepts in a straightforward fashion.
Postmodern
Driven by technology, postmodern thinking, and universal use of English, there is a transnational culture that is emerging around the world.
YOUNG
63% of the world’s population are under the age of 34. Cultural change happens easiest and typically first among the young.
INDEPENDENT AND SKEPTICAL
The Emerging Culture is highly educated and well informed. People want personal empowerment, not external control. Institutions are viewed as out of touch and to be feared, having to do with bureaucracy, power plays, and indoctrination.
TOLERANT AND MULTI-FACETED
In today’s urban, multicultural world, people are familiar with multiple belief systems and lifestyles and are committed to a pluralistic society that has room for all. With such diversity in view, people are wary of those who claim to have a corner on the truth. Truth is what you make it.
DEFINED BY POP CULTURE
The media of pop culture-music, film, television, magazines, and the web-serve to both reflect and define the culture as it emerges.
TECHNO-DRIVEN/FAST-PACED/VISUAL
People can surf the web, maintain contacts worldwide, move at the speed of thought, and communicate through imagery and video.
GLOBALLY MINDED/MOBILE/ENGLISH SPEAKING
Supranational organizations like the UN and EU are becoming more important. People of the Emerging Culture see themselves as "citizens of the world."
ADAPTABLE AND OPEN
People in today’s world face constant change, and a survivor mentality is the rule of the day. People don’t think they have it all together and are willing to be real about themselves.
COMMUNAL
It’s all about relationships. "It’s better to get along than get ahead." With family structures breaking down, friendships have elevated importance.
SPIRITUALLY SEEKING
There is great interest in spirituality. It needs to be personal and experiential-people are looking for ways to do life, not a belief system
1 Peter 2:11-12
Suffering from happiness:
The war for our soul!
These two verses serve both as a transition to a new subject matter and as introduction to the fundamental posture of the church in that culture. Unless the Christian move into a lonely desert or a high-walled compound, life will continue for them at the same address. This means matters of employment, entertainment, education of children, dress, food, recreation and political responsibility must be addressed by the church.
Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us
There are just two simple points to this passage – one negative and one positive.
I. Remember your position in this world and before God.
A. Defining Words:
1. Dear Friends – Beloved – accentuates two aspects:
a. Passive – loved by God, recipients
b. Obligation – not only what has happened, but what must occur
2. Urge - To strongly advise (someone) to do something or to ask that (something) be done knowing it can be done. – Notice it says “I Urge”
3. Aliens – To visit, but not long enough to rent a house
4. Strangers – Someone who dwells along side, but has no legal standing.
There are just two simple points to this passage – one negative and one positive.
B. Before God – Linked with all the words used up until this point –
Elect, Foreknew (loved), New Birth, Purified, born again, living stone, spiritual house, holy priesthood, chosen, royal priesthood, holy nation, people belonging to God
C. In this world – Linked with all the words used up until this point – Strangers, scattered, receiving trials, stumbling block
II. Abstain from certain actions because those actions “war against your soul.”
A. Defining Words:
1. Abstain - to hold back, to refrain think of a dam
2. Desires - craving, longing for what is forbidden think of a child with a toy
3. War - to make continual warfare (battle)
B. There is a war for your soul.
1. This war does have an influence on my life. See Romans 7:15-20
a. We know what is right and good - but we don’t do it. 7:15
b. Instead, those things we reject, we actually practice. 7:19
c. We feel enslaved to the corrupt part of our nature. 7:14
d. It cannot be us - it is SIN. 7:20
2. The exhortation is strong, because this does unbelievable harm to us.
III. Do certain actions because those actions “glorify God.”
A. Defining Words:
1. Live – Manner of life or behavior
2. See – To watch over for a long time; to study
3. Visit us – To come for the purpose of blessings
B. Notice the Bible does not say anything about living separate from the world.
C. Notice also, the Bible does not say anything about a political/social change, as a movement. But change will happen when the church acts in a way to give God glory. Christian’s should be the vanguard of social change.
D. Matthew 5:16 – Be real
IV. So what!
A. Our citizenship is in heaven; we are aliens in this world.
B. Sinful desires war against our souls.
C. We will be accused of doing wrong.
D. Our lives will influence others.
