Children of Modernity

The more I look at it, the more I see the cultural influences barraging Christian faith.

We are in the awkward age.  That age where we want to deny that we’re in the modern age, yet nothing particularly new has come up.  So we call ourselves postmodern.  You’ll find that many (if not all) of the tenets of the modern age have kept kicking, it’s just that now these have become rooted in our culture.  The combination of modernism, increased technology and higher standards of living has resulted in one sad fact:  Everyone is his own philosopher.

So we are in the awkward age.  We’ve had a couple generations go through the universities and the day-to-day living, and modernism is just natural for us.  We’re the children of modernity.

I’m going to point out one major thing that has leaked into Christianity from this age of thinking:

Personal Christianity.  God created you for a relationship.  God loves you so much that He would have died just for you.  We need to work out our own salvations.  All that matters is your belief that you are saved.

While all of the above do look Christian (and many are – we are released from sin upon individual conversion and we are to work out our own salvations with fear and trembling), one has to look at the subjects of these statements.  Namely, the word ‘you’ and its conjugations.  It’s all about you.

What follows is ‘experiential’ Christianity.  What we, ourselves have experienced in times of prayer and in our daily lives no longer supplements our faith; our personal experiences now trump everything else upon which our faith is based.  Nearly gone is “God is real” and enter “God is real to me.”  We are more fired up when someone talks about miracles and victories within their lives (or our lifetime) than the word of God.  Jesus, Himself, said that if one had ignored the prophets, then even someone coming back from the dead wouldn’t convince another of the reality of God (the parable discusses the desire of someone warning others from hell, but nonetheless…).

I think this act would persuade people today, and I don’t know what that says about our current thoughts on acceptable faith.

But there are other implications for a solely personal Christianity.  The next one I see is our responsibility towards others.  Almost gone are the ideas that we are to bear one another’s burdens and to sing psalms to one another.  Culturally, it is becoming more and more acceptable to become a closet Christian both in the manner of boasting of God (that is, boasting of God is a no-no), and also in the sense that it’s okay to be spiritual and not religious.  Go ahead and study and interpret the Bible on your own; you don’t have to go to church; you don’t have to listen to anyone else’s interpretations so long as your personal truth is revealed through the words of Jesus.

The fact of the matter is that we do have an impact on the salvation of other people either in encouraging care or by negligence.  God has the final say and has done the work, and as individuals we have a choice, but as outsiders we have rights and responsibilities.  If one ignores these responsibilities, then one must question the authenticity of faith.  Sometimes I wonder what the Bible writers were actually saying when they addressed a group and used plural phrases.  When it is written to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, is it talking about each of us on our own, or something greater?

The last consequence I will discuss today of such a personal Christianity is the embracing of the self.  Although it is often guised as self-improvement or self discovery, there exists a pervading idea that growing closer to God is the same as self-actualization.  Empowerment by God no longer means being indwelt by the Holy Spirit, but that God gives you the focus to more efficiently organize your own energy and talents.  Knowing yourself is now a prerequisite to knowing God, and loving yourself a precursor to loving others.

I won’t lecture each person about the fallacies of trusting that the answer is implicitly inside all of us, waiting to be awakened.  Each of us, lest by ritual denial and mental gymnastics, knows the extent of sin within.  The facts given us say that the Holy Spirit comes in and gives life to our mortal bodies; in other places, life to our lifeless bodies.  The Holy Spirit does not release life that was previously caged by our own sin, He gives a life external of ourselves.  Knowing ourselves does not mean we know God, knowing God means we know life; loving others does not flow out of self-esteem or self-love, but by the character of God, Himself.

When will we begin to seek an individualism that casts off the self?

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Sometimes I wonder if I should add a ‘rant’ category to my blog.