Thursday, March 6, 2008

happily behind the times...

i've recently listened to and read a number of works on the emergent church and the infiltration of postmodernity into the church.  statistics that churches calling themselves emergent are the fastest growing "movement" in christianity today speak volumes about the current state of the philosophical fabric of "the west". 

the trend towards postmodernity in america and europe (aka, "the west") is evident in just about everything.  i thought the other day about all the recent films i have seen that are as blatantly post-modern as a hammer to the forehead. the sheer amount of them is staggering. (must be part of that whole life-imitates-art-imitates-life thing.) 

perhaps you're asking yourself, "what exactly qualifies a movie as post-modern?"  well, the way i see it, the first conspicuous sign of a post-modern (pm from here) flick is that you get an overwhelming sense of the movie having no real plot.  there's no flow of events, just chaotic happenings.  there's no real climax to the film; people kind of do whatever they're doing for an hour and a half or two and then it stops.  next, everyone in the movie looks like they're on prozac for most of the duration of the film (or like they ought to be).  there is an overwhelming sense in the characters of purposelessness and loneliness.  and as the characters have no purpose, hence the absence of actual plot.  (the best, or worst rather, recent example i can think of is "friends with money".  if you were unfortunate enough to see it, you know what i mean.  if you didn't see it, i DON'T recommend it.)  the overwhelming message is "life doesn't have any meaning (and so neither does our movie)".  the literary critic fredric jameson says of pm art (film and other mediums) that it is "the transformation of misery into beauty" and that it contains a "deathly quality… in a way that would seem to have nothing to do with death ... on the level of content."  good description.  even in a pm film that has nothing to do with dying, the viewer is still left with the feeling of emptiness or death.

the whole pm system of thought (which i am not about to attempt a summary of in a blog entry) has slithered its way into the christian community as well.  hence, the birth of the "emergent" movement.  now, i'm not saying that EVERYTHING put forward under the "emergent" label should be tossed out.  the emphasis on cultural relevancy (or "contextualization"), personal relationships and actual experience of God (juxtaposed with mere ritual) are truly positive things (none of which, however require adoption of pm thought, merely acceptance of Biblical teaching).  the sad part is that the emergent movement in typical pm fashion, cuts the boat loose from the anchor of the soul, Christ.  the emergent movement promotes deconstructionism, redefinition, removal of what in the philosophical world is called a "meta-narrative" (what we'd simply call one objective truth for everyone), and a bag full of other problems.  (for a pretty good summary of the emergent movement, listen to this teaching by mark driscoll (formerly a leading member in the emergent community): click here.)

in contrast, ukraine is currently very much in the "modernism" mindset (which has its own problems, of course... materialism being one of the greatest ones.)  we've not caught up to the west in that area, thankfully.  ukraine is an odd mix of old and new.  in many ways this country is much like america in the 40's.  people are much more interactive within society (think like open markets, public transport, and neighbors borrowing things from each other like matches or sugar).  most everyone is convinced that there is an objective truth (though they certainly don't all agree what that is).  they are struggling to find an acceptable order in areas of politics, family, work, etc., rather than the trend to reject order.  there is, in general, an accepted understanding of moral absolutes, and even the existence of God.  at the same time, just about everyone and their mom has a cell phone, mp3 player (younger generation) and a dvd player at home.  the younger generation (30 and under) are starting to catch on to many of the techno-trends of the west as well as the philosophical propaganda of the west.  the moral/spiritual climate will likely change very quickly as the younger generation grows and the older generation dies off.  well, all that to say, it makes me really glad that we here in ukraine are way "behind the times".

on a completely separate note, me and lena, and the navarros and two married couples from our church were able to go up to kiev for a married couples' retreat in feb.  it was a great, refreshing time.  pray for God's strengthening of all the marriages in our church (i'm counseling with one couple currently and Jesus is definitely doing great things).  here's a pic from that retreat. 




from left to right: igor and anya dikiy, lena and tom navarro,
grisha and valya yaromenko, ben and lena morrison