#207-Not Post-modernism:....When God died...Royal Tailor... uncertainty, and Cynical Apostolics (Me!). Soundtrack by Cat Stevens

Preface: If I hear you preach about post-modernism or do a conference or seminar on it. PLEASE KNOW ABOUT IT BEYOND READING ABOUT IT FROM A CHRISTIAN BOOK YOU GOT FROM THE BOOK STORE. or you will risk me, the cynical post-modern throwing a pew in your general direction... *Wink Face*

 We can preach about loving our neighbor and embracing difference. We can have a discussion about shorts and movie theaters and no one will get hurt. But the moment standards or disciplines are discussed (hair, skirts, etc....) we tense up. That is not up for negotiation. Because standards (or what may be called "holiness" so that when we go to discuss standards, it looks like we are attacking holiness, and who wants that?) are too certain to be up to be discussed. God likes standards. Why would we want to upset God?

Right, who wants to upset God? But that's not what we didn't like. We didn't like the attacks. Because we had questions. Because we were showing uncertainty about the things that you thought certain, we were somehow the bad guy? But they were questions. Simple questions. Based in the Bible. But you didn't want to look at it. Listen to it. End the conversation with just saying "I have my convictions from God and I am being true to them, and it's stated plainly in the Bible and you emergents, you just need to submit, etc..."

Cue Chesterton:

The mechanical optimist endeavors to justify the universe avowedly upon the ground that it is a rational and consecutive pattern. He points out that the fine thing about the world is that it can all be explained. That is the one point, if I may put it so, on which God, in return, is explicit to the point of violence. God says, in effect, that if there is one fine thing about the world, as far as men are concerned, it is that it cannot be explained. He insists on the inexplicableness of everything.

The truth is, when we postmoderns started asking questions and had to admit gray when we dearly wished it was black & white as you told us, we started looking at everything else. And it too became gray. And certainty gave way to uncertainty about everything. Uncertainty became my god.

 I don't talk about whether or not a certain standard is biblical anymore. I will if you want, but I have heard the same arguments far too many times and i have said the same counterarguments far too many times and no one is listening to anyone and we are just justifying what we want to be true, and won't concede anything. It's become a game of whose a better arguer without anyone actually caring for the truth, because in the discussion each person assumes the position of truth when the point of discussion is not have the mindset of "let me tell you" but rather have the mentality of "let's find out together"  Seriously, it's probably been over a year since I was in a serious discussion about them. The whole process made me apathetic. Mostly because I realized how it was impossible to tell if we were deceiving ourselves. If i was deceiving myself. Was I just Calling something true when I really just looked for the right arguments to appease my mind so it wouldn't sit in tension. I HAVE VERSES. SEE HERE! THIS SHOWS EVERYTHING! And then YOU HAVE VERSES! AND THEY SAY THE OPPOSITE!

So I became dejected. A postmodern apostolic without hope. Because no one was being sincere. Not me at least. And there was my friend who was a piano player at his church and one time he was playing during altar call and he told me while playing that "now i'm going to make everyone cry by what I play" and then sure enough he played a few minor chords and everyone at the altar started balling, sobbing. Snot down the nose. I mean there was no one singing, so these emotions were dependent on the chords of the piano player

Then after a few minutes, he said "now watch, I will get them dancing." And within two minutes the tears had stopped after he changed the chords again and tempo and people were jumping and freely  waving their handkerchiefs like they were the newspapers that announced the end of the Iraq War. I was so so dismayed. The piano player...it wasn't his fault. He was a good man. He was just honest enough that humans were more involved in experiencing the divine in a church service than we are comfortable admitting.

 Was there anyway then of finding truth?

And God Loved us all. That is what mattered to the individual. The one person would tell you they know they are right because they felt right, and i will tell you I felt the same, but yet "this God" is telling us different things in the Spirit of what is right.... What a mess.

And I just became almost a mad man over all of it.

And so did most of us. Because no one was paying attention to anything outside of wanting to tell each other about how correct they were in what they were saying. Forgetting the whole time that we are human. Humans can be wrong. A lot.

And i have been wondering...is there anyway out? A way out of our inability to know since after all, we are humans who have a lot of contradictory opinions all claiming they are right and God approves of them more than you? And while some people get heartbroken and torn over the loss of a loved one or a break-up, i get torn up over a philosophical mind crisis like this. 

Madness: it's what's for dinner.

And Suddenly I don't hate you So Much

But today's a new day....And there's an unbelievable noise. A shout. A hurray. Twirling Batons. Fist Pumps. Masculine Chest Bumps. "Yo Adrian!!!" ...AMERICA! That kind of stuff. There should be a parade today at the very least. Today, after last night, I'm doing one of these numbers.....

Because I read an essay. From an atheist: Slavoj Zizek. He's a philosopher too. He wrote an essay about Christianity. It changed my life as of last night when I read it. Easily the top 5 best descriptions of what Christianity is and who Christ was that I have ever read/heard. No joke. If you can get past the density of the article that confuses many, the reward is infinite.


Istha said  of the essay (frequent commenter on the blog): "i even feel silly talking about this idea that has been born in my mind because it is like it will be reduced to some "from now on, i will do things differently God" moment. how can an atheist even have such an awesome revelation of God in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself? it's sheer insanity! and i love insanity! and i think i want to be insane now! *yay* this isn't making sense anymore..."

I think in the article I glimpsed the escape from the cynicism that I have been wallowing in here on this blog for far too long. The cynicism that those pyromaniac internet blogers have thrived in because we have been trying to find a way to not abandon our faith but act as the symbolic violence to our movement that all is not alright within ourselves. Cynicism was/is our friend. We are trying to be the rupture...a geyser....a crack in the system...to let you know that we aren't such pretty pretty people....

Link of Essay: http://www.lacan.com/zizhegche.htm

Pleasure Machines and other comparisons of what the Holy Ghost has Become to Us

So what's the essay about? Well I won't go into detail Because I would just have to do an essay commenting on the essay to do it any kind of justice. But once I read everything, a moment came to mind, one that I thought I had forgotten about.

I think it happened in 2007 at IBC Live Recording though all of this is pretty speculative at this point. Tauren Wells (of Royal Tailor Fame) wrote a song called "Broken" and performed it with the IBC choir. And by "wrote a song" I mean he basically "dropped a bomb" on Apostolic culture telling us to get our act together and start being creative in our songwriting instead of relying on the same 3-4 "charismatic" artists year in and year out and the songs they would write. 

Here's the performance....

I was there.....it was so touching. The song is wonderful. Lyrics were simple but impacting. Except there were things amiss. Like there were a few girl's in the choir who started sobbing before the first note hit to the song simply in anticipation of the tear-jerking sing session that was about to occur. I'm sure by the end of the song the mascara had welled up into an oil spill of sin underneath their eyes and the snot underneath their nose seemed to resemble the texture of a chicken noodle soup more than anything human.

Because here....Here we were confessing that our lives were INCOMPLETE. We were Broken. And that's okay. Because it's God's strength is sufficient.  In the acknowledgement of our incompleteness, and the confusion and anxieties of life that we may or may not experience, we could as individuals close our eyes....and feel the minor chords of the piano give us goosebumps and tell God "Lord I am broken and my life is in pieces but your strength is perfect in all of my weakness." And we'll cry. And cry and make promises to God about things changing and have confirmations from the Lord that we aren't supposed to be with that significant other, and how....well....that time when you texted that picture of yourself....God knows about that too and He's ain't mad. He understands. Just cry now and make promises. Repent. Trample on his mercy again in the distant, unforeseeable future.


Because in this song, perhaps more than any I have heard written by an Apostolic, we are not assuming anything.

We are not assuming our great value to declare things...For instance, we say "Lord you are worthy..." Worthy of what? Our praise? Like Our praise is of any value? Oh we think the highest of ourselves and our truth...I would rather suggest the line should be always "we are unworthy" but to even say that denies the cross and what he displayed as what is worthy.

But here, in this song Something untypical is happening  We are not shouting how great God is (and thus how great we are because we are invited by Him), but rather we start with ourselves...and we are nothing more than broken as humans.

But theologically, and this is where Zizek's article comes in....I would argue the song still (despite it being light years superior than most Christian songs and happily look forward to seeing what Royal Tailor comes out with in Nashville), theologically  I would say the song still comes up short...

Postmodernism allows for selfishness and ego to thrive. It allows for us to be the center of the world, and we don't have to look past anything past ourselves except for when we want to be cynical about any time a group of people come together to do something great. Then we can criticize their foolishness (i speak as a confessed postmodern)....Postmodernism though is where everything came to be about "Relationship" and "Me and Jesus" and a disdain of religion in general. Cue the terrible line in a facebook info section-Religion: "Not Religion, Just Relationship."


Seriously, think about the most popular songs at conferences and conventions....:"Freedom" (though Romans 6 tells us to be slaves), "Oh How He Loves Us!" "I am a friend of God" and "The More I seek you." Think about what they are saying and the kind selfishness the songs our telling you to shout about....the songs are all about "YOU YOU YOU" (God) Loving "ME ME ME!" And the lyrics, some times approach descriptions of an erotic relationship with important you and a loving God (Sloppy wet kisses/Wanna sit at your feet, lay against you and breathe/


You narcissistic self-obsessed creeps.

And Christianity became very direct. About You and Jesus. About me and Jesus. Everything else was secondary. Sure we were sinners. Everyone was sinners. So judging is bad. You don't know about me and God. So don't say things about my relationship with God. And church becomes a giant game of hoping to hear the right message preached or hear the right song sung so that special little me can feel God get all important inside me. And if we feel God get important enough inside us during church, we will pray a little longer this week and try reading our bible this week! 


Preachers will tell you postmodernism is trying to get into our movement from "The Emergents." I posit that the worst of postmodernism has been part of our Apostolic DNA for some 15 years now...Where Christianity becomes this vainglorious thing where Special, Indispensable Me is loved by a Special God. And I speak about this in regards to my generation and younger... 

My problem with postmodernism in regards to Apostolics is that in our emancipation of willing submission to anything and everything the pastor says that was a mainstay in our movement in the 80's (no matter how biblically corrupt it is), we have made Holy Ghost and Acts 2:38 and even Holiness in a sense a tool to approve of ourselves. And thus church is a giant meeting place to feel really really good about ourselves, or if the service is sad, we then get to lay our burdens down. I think we have been to services that teeter on the edge of just becoming giant "pleasure meetings" where we praise God not to praise him, but in hopes that we will somehow in our praise create a kind of rain dance that will cause the Holy Ghost to rain down on us that will make us feel Good and squirt some tears. Do not get me wrong....I am not speaking about what our movement is as a whole. Nothing like that. I am simply saying that there are symptoms of postmodernism in each one of our churches beyond simple "questions"  that show up from time to time. And we are too scared to talk about it, because we have begun to think so highly of our Apostolic selves, that we fear that if we speak up and preach about I Corinthians 14 and how the purpose of the Holy Ghost is anything but a pleasure machine, that somehow we think we may be insulting the Holy Ghost.

Read the New Testament. Read it. How much are emotions a part of the Gospel message? I am not saying it's not in there, but it's certainly not the focus. But yet, ask yourself, what is the purpose of Church for us? To save souls? certainly. But is that all church is for? So people can go through the Acts 2:38 process? Of course not. That's part of it. So then what is church again for those already saved? 

And I fear that outside of it being a biblical command, we may be without an answer. Because it's become in our minds a giant machine to walk up to every Sunday, hit a button and have "Emotional Impact" come out of the machine dispenser and we eat it up.

I am so off right now.

And in the midst of all my cynicism that i just wrote about, let me go back to the "Broken" song at IBC.....The problem was not with the song. It was with what was going on with the song. People were saying they were broken. they were confessing. Saying how rough life is and how messy they were. And oh let me tell you, each one of them was completely broken and messy. You should see their bedrooms. You should see their drama. Their "mess-ups." And even the perfects ones, they were messy too. And they were letting us know in song.

But my question was, if the emotion wasn't there with the song. And the lyrics weren't so simplistically and beautifully written, if it wasn't about the minor chords....Would you say you are broken?

And we all tell ourselves yes. And so do i.

The HOLY GHOST HAPPY MEAL AND HEAVEN AS THE PRIZE

But here's the real dilemma of it. Where zizek really hits homes. What i think may be an answer to the obsession of self that postmodernism has catered to. In that song, in those words, everyone in that building looked to God as the Out. In spite of our weakness, he is so loving that he will make us whole. We don't like the mess. We are repulsed by it. WE don't like the pain. The confusion. We want to get out and forget about it as soon as possible. We want to live pretty. We don't like being messy monsters.

And God, in this song, during that moment at the recording. Was our escape. He is the healer. This is all true.

For a few moments we can forget everything and escape our mad world and the internal destruction of our own lives. And we can say "Wow God, you are awesome. So loving. So merciful. So Peaceful."

But it's all so limiting of who God is.

God is not what we make him out to be if that's who we want to say he is. the whole, loving, merciful, peaceful thing....

THat's only part of it. And It's all we want to focus on. And postmodernism allows us that freedom.


Because let's be honest...What is the cross for most of us? What is the Incarnation? It is the story that Jesus came down and suffered and never sinned in order that we may resurrect with him one day...and thus the Cross shows how much He loves us. And how now, we can receive salvation. 


And all that says is Jesus and the Cross...are vehicles. The transportation Machine to get us to heaven. And the HOly Ghost allows us the pleasure of knowing this in our emotions. So we thank the transportation machine (the cross, resurrection, Acts 2:38) and want to tell everyone about our Magical Salvation Bus and that God is one. And also you get to participate in God's invitation to be Holy.

The Most Violent God I Know 

But what about the other part? The Murdering Jesus? The one who kills billions in Revelation and seems to be eager to do so. The one who did not come for peace but came to divide with a sword. The Jesus who tells us to leave our own mother and father and follow him (the actual word I think is "Hate" your own mother and father). Violent, humanity killing Jesus. The one who wants you to be his slave.


And since God is One....talk about the 6 millions Jews. My relatives. Talk about the Old Testament and the screwed up stories of God ordering the slaughter of thousands (some estimates say millions) in the Name of God so the Jews can have the promised Land (The book of Joshua is a giant "HERE COMES GOD" parade and any Canaanite in the way of the procession essentially killed)...And we can blame the Fall of Man.


But God created Adam. Knowing that Adam Would Fall. 


And God created Satan. Knowing that Satan would fall.


And God Must have Put Satan in the Garden. Knowing the temptation would happen.


God created it and could have rearranged things as so, so that the Adams and Satan's didn't have to be the cause of all of this.


Humans may die because they have sinned. But babies? Babies that were put in ovens? thousands of them. Because of modernity and Hitler...And stuff like that....Babies who did nothing wrong. They were killed too. You say they get heaven? But they didn't even have a choice like we do...

Where is that Jesus in all of the postmodernism emotional "God is relationship" speak? Where is the violence on our own selves? If we are broken and we know we are broken, why are we so settled with it? With the questions....The "Woes" of humanity that should be staring us  down at every corner telling us life is furthest thing from settled.

The violence of God has left our movement.  And i'm not talking about the angry red-faced preachers who yell about people like me at conferences. That's not the violence of God, that's just men who are victims of post-modernism itself that allow leaders to have a false sense of being "super-human" and thus can speak with such passion about things that they know not about.

So where is God? The violent God? And don't say "that was the Old Testament" because we have Revelation to deal with. Jesus is not just love and mercy. He is the one saying horrible monstrous things that if we took seriously, would have us devastated four times over. 

One side of Jesus is that warm, bearded man hugging little children in a blue sash and white robe on a Sunny afternoon. We like that Jesus. That Jesus is thriving in our movement. Because all is alright with that Jesus. He is okay with me when he's so nice. But the other side of Jesus....the one who talks freely about sending people to eternal hell for a few short years of sinning. So we must choose one or the other right?

And my generation has settled on serving the Jesus who loves. Which is awesome sometimes.

But it also means when things are bad, and there is confusion, we want an out and an escape to our Heavenly Love Daddy whose strength will make everything Okay, if only for a few minutes during a song at IBC.

But what if those bad things and the confusion and the brokenness we talk about....what if that is the point?!? We should not be aiming for heaven here on earth. Heaven is for heaven and there is a reason it's not here on earth. jesus could have fixed everything here on earth by now if that was the case. And besides if that is the case, we should just be converted Jews because that's what the Jews were doing before Christ. Trying to live as heaven here on earth. Representatives, etc....

But there is something bigger here...the Jesus who is Puppy Dog and the Jesus who is Monster.

They are both one. Not that Father is the angry one and Jesus the kind mediator trying to make daddy not angry. Rather there is a oneness about it. Jesus is both Violent and Love.

We are Like Him.

In our brokenness we know we are not Saved in it's fullest sense yet. So we are incomplete. 


But we don't like admitting we are incomplete.


So tell yourself, go ahead...that you are made complete in Jesus because you have the Holy Ghost....


I do it.

When I wake up and feel God.


I know I am whole. YAY!


And now I can shut my eyes to the torn world and the dying babies and the poor homeless men that we can just consider lazy and the fat woman down the street with cancer. We can ignore it all because we, perfect we saved by the blood, are on the way to the SWEET BY AND BY!


GOD IS ON OUR SIDE!

In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot

Had God on his side

   -Bob Dylan


But then why are we here still? Here on earth? Suffering? getting sick? Watching others get sick? Watching the torment? The horror. All of it. Why are we here still? Just to live and witness about how complete we are in Christ to our neighbors? But surely then, while here God would protect us better....something....improvement for His children...


And why, if i put a gun to your temple...why on God's earth would you be shaking? Shivering? *Imagine this with me...imagine, cynical, angry me with a Gun to your Head*


Where is your Truth Now?


Why the fear? Is it that you don't want to leave your family?


Oh if they are saved, we can kill them to.


And if they are unsaved....why haven't you done more...why did you wait until the Gun was here next to your temple?


Heaven is on the other side of that Gun? And yet there you are....scared.. Petrified.....


And I can't figure out why for the life of me you would have such a reaction...


You sick narcissistic creep who is scared of the death that will result in eternal salvation.


You don't even believe it do you?


Oh postmodernism, you demon child....




Because that gun at your temple. The one that you are imagining at your head. It's the reminder.....You aren't whole. You aren't complete. It's not perfect. Perfect as you would tell yourself....


You are broken and the gun has reminded you how fragile you are. Where are your angels to protect you at such a moment? 


You aren't broken so you can learn God's mercy. Because you could learn that all the quicker if I pulled the trigger and killed you.


Then what?


I suggest...


Christianity...It's not for the escape. It's not for the salvation thereafter...sure that's part of it. But that's not all of it.


Nor is it to know that God will forgive your sins (because...we are trampling on God's mercy more than ever)...


It's not really about you...


For if I understand the Cross....


Or the moment about "My God My God Why have you forsaken me?" That line which Jesus says twice as his last words (Matthew and Mark))...We like to say, if it's God there is no way he is actually abandoned. No. He is just using that as an example for us. Or maybe we say "while God wasn't forsaken (abandoned), He just felt that way and was quoting the Psalmist to show how He felt. Of course He wasn't abandoned." 


Oh? And you are going to tell us that Jesus didn't really mean what He said? Sure he said it...but he didn't really mean it...


Because that wouldn't work well with our theology and how we understand the Incarnation, and all that.... So I guess, then you are saying....You know Jesus more than Jesus knew Himself and He really didn't mean what He said...


And Jesus didn't really mean what he said when he told us to hate our mother or father?


And Jesus didn't really mean the whole thing about going to hell if you don't provide a bed to the homeless?


And Jesus....while he does cut with a sword...He cuts with a sword and divides...So we can live in peace?


Dear God, What is going on?


Jesus can not be so perplexing....and confusing. We want Him pretty. Understandable. Coherant. The suffering is man's fault. God didn't do that. God is perfect, etc....Perfection never gets abandoned...


And the struggle...the confusion...


Jesus, I suggest (or as Zizek would suggest) is God Himself....And when He's on the cross...and says those lines that make us cringe and run away and ask questions to which the answer we get is not satisfactory "My God God..." IN that line..Jesus really means what He says about being abandoned ....and that moment...the point He went to...in His revelation to us....From Heaven to  Death...Even though He was sinless...


It doesn't make sense....but that's the point.The  Perfect Infinite God....What is His Revelation to us? In the Bible? In the entirety of His life? In Acts 2?


The most exact point He reveals Himself to Us is on the cross, when He's thirsty calling for ABBA......There is God at his fullest...All of these ideas about God being so infinitely deep and  us seeking the deeper parts of Him in prayer.....


All of  that is an escape...from the moment that is too monsterous for us to acknowledge....When Jesus Himself, not only Feels abandoned, but since I am in the business of taking Jesus at His word....(even though it doesn't make logical sense)....The monstrosity of Christ is the moment when Jesus Himself is abandoned. That's how broken He was...


And there..he showed us...Where Christianity is at....


The brokenness. 


Not waiting and looking for an escape from the confusion and brokenness of humanity....And bettering our position...


But rather all of those questions...the things that don't make sense...that person in the church who didn't get healed....all of these things....there is God.


And in the brokenness and imperfection, that is why we are here. Not complete until the End. And not seeking the end. But rather facing the struggle. The brokenness. And LIVING in this!


A sinful life tells us we are so complete that we can live as we determine and one day can go back to repentance. It tells you, that broken you is not so broken.


A life of complete separation detached from reality ignores the point that you are still here, and no matter how perfect you want to feel or concentrate on how Much God Loves You (which He does Love you)...,.there is another aspect...murdering Jesus that enslaves you too....and also that He suffered unto both these points...so that He wouldn't be the vehicle to Heaven ("Thank you Jesus for Dying for My Sins") but rather that He came not to be the vehicle to escape...but that He came to show you Himself in His fullest sense on that cross, abandoned, so that you too...can face the brokenness...and you too can have the comforter....guiding you through torment......


Postmodernity may be here for a while..I think the cross is our biggest escape from the cynicism and ego it breeds..But the questions of postmodernity...the uncertainty...in the struggle of it....i would argue the God is there more than "Out there" in a heaven that wants us forgetting our broken selves and improving upon our position (in health, wealth and revival)...Rather Salvation is in the brokenness and the confusion....and the Holy Spirit, our Light....Not an escape, but rather the light that shows us our brokenness and the confusion of the world, and that if there is in order to our lives, it's  in the suffering Jesus who reconciled the Wrath of God and the Embrace of God at once...which is none other than what is to happen in each one of us.