Out of the Chute

To Nino and the mysterious other individual who apparently stumbled onto my blog and took the time to encourage me to get into it...my thanks.

I must say, these are exciting times for me:

• Celeste and I are blessed with a beautiful 15-month-old girl, Piper, and we're expecting our second child, due in late March.
• Several things seem to be pointing me toward some sort of job change or even a career change in the near future. (Even if I stay with my current employer, the way things are currently going, it looks like my job will absolutely change in the next 6-12 months.) This is a good thing!
• And on top of that, I'm in a sort of self-discovery mode right now, participating in a small group study of the book 'Wild at Heart', recently taking a test to help me identify my strengths, and trying to better ground myself in my faith.

Relating particularly to the self-discovery activities, one of my current interests is the concept of postmodern Christianity. I was first introduced to the idea as 'Emergent' Christianity, which is (from what I can tell) a particular group of Christians who are attempting to examine their faith to determine how much of it is truly Biblical, and how much of it has been influenced or even distorted by the 'modern' culture of the last several hundred years.

One of the leading voices in this group is Brian McLaren, and I've begun reading a book he wrote called 'A New Kind of Christian' in the last week or so, plus I've been reading some additional information from his website. Along the way I was surprised by two things:

First, I was surprised to realize that postmodernism is related to (though not necessarily the same as) the belief that there is no absolute truth. (This shows my ignorance I suppose.) If you don't know me, I'm a believer in absolute truth - a 'right' and 'wrong' that is bigger than what serves my own interests in a given moment. So my knee-jerk reaction was to think that this 'postmodern/emergent' stuff is not going to be for me.

Second, after having the thoughts above, I read the first few of chapters of 'A New Kind of Christian' and so far I'm even more surprised to find that I haven't read anything about postmodernism that particularly bothers me. The concept so far strikes me as an ideology that questions everything, and doesn't take things at face value without really looking closely at it. McLaren comments in several places that 'younger' people have to some extent been exposed to postmodern thought their whole lives, and I suspect that's true of me.

One caveat: McLaren himself strikes me as a bit on the 'elite academic' side of the world, tending to position his arguments as if to say that his thoughts are really obvious, then adding in phrases indicating that he could maybe, possibly be wrong, but pretty clearly indicating that anyone who disagrees with him just doesn't understand. This is a bit annoying, but so far I think I've been able to separate my perception of his writing style from the details about postmodernism.

Now, don't anyone go reading this and decide that I'm a postmodern 'heretic' ... at least not yet. I'm still getting my arms around the issues, and I know I'm only on the threshold of what is involved in postmodernism. But I think it will be fascinating to see where this path leads. I wonder if anyone reading this will have a 'knee-jerk' reaction to postmodernism?

(How's that for a deep thought, right out of the chute?)

Brian

P.S. Have you talked with God today?