Summer 2008

Totomundo

[the whole world]

June-July

Vol. 1, Is. 2

Defeating Relativism through Relationships Postmodernism and new-age are hot topics for discussion. They are also what we are engaging with all around us. I was successfully reached for Christ in those contexts four years ago. As a freshman in college, I was a new-age mystic who had had no exposure to the Bible or to Christianity. Now I am a Christian attending the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary studying theology and its implications on cognitive theory. It’s safe to say that few new-age mystics go through such a transformation. How did this happen? It is universally recognized that the first step in reaching out to postmoderns is overcoming relativism and subjectivism. One way to battle relativism, and the way that I was brought out of it, is through personal relationships. Christians, of all people, have the greatest opportunity for deep and enduring personal relationships. Every single thing God created, humans and all of creation, has value merely because God chose to make it. We as humans have special value because we bear God’s image.

Furthermore, God deeply loves people, goes to great efforts to have relationships with them, including becoming a human himself in the person of Jesus, and suffering to save humans of all shapes and sizes. Nothing can take these facts away. They are metaphysical, ontological things. All human beings, born, unborn, old and frail, those with special needs, have this great worth and value. Christians, above all other religions and worldviews have overwhelming reason to treasure people. I had gone through high school steeped in superficial friendships, yet the Christians I met in college had such a real, genuine concern for other people. They were not merely charitable, they truly cared. Except for my parents, I had never before been treated as a person with innate value; a person made in God’s image. It was what I had been hungrily searching for. When it comes to relationships, postmodernity is bankrupt in comparison to Christianity. For all the Continued on page 2

The Glass Box You, as a Christian, often look back on your past sins and on the general inadequacy of your life from time to time. Reflection is a somber thing. Eventually you leave reflection and move into thankfulness, because Jesus Christ has provided forgiveness for every single past sin. You hold close to the memory of what Christ did for you. You are free, you experience his nearness and you are inspired. In order never to forget, you make these thoughts of forgiveness and grace into pictures and symbols in your mind, as though in a beautiful glass box. Different trials come your way, but taking out the glass box restores the memory of God’s love and salvation in Jesus. Once again you are moved and feel the strength to keep forging ahead. You journey many miles this way through rugged terrain and trials of ever kind, taking out the glass box at moments of

particular difficulty and feeling the power of inspiration it provides. As time passes and more difficult trials come, the box seems to be less and less able to get you through. The sweet memories of salvation are still there but their power to inspire you is beginning to fade. Eventually, you find yourself standing at the foot of a cliff. You reach for the box (partially out of habit and partially desperation) looking for hope, inspiration, and guidance, but suddenly it appears that it is only a box. And no matter how long you look at it, hold it, shake it, and ponder it, no inspiration comes and you realize that it no longer holds any power. The box has betrayed you and a deeper loneliness sets in. It was always just the idea in the Continued on page 2

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Totomundo

June-July Vol. 1 Is. 2

Defeating Relativism continued effort postmodernity exerts towards relationships and social interaction, there were few actual relationships it had brought me. In other words, it wasn’t working. Although postmodernity wishes it could relieve people of individualism, it cannot escape the rampant individualistic consumerism of American culture. Consumeristic relationships are ultimately “me” centered. Engagement with others focuses around what “I” get out of it (laughs, a fun evening, social status, other perks). Even postmodernism’s proposed solutions to individualism ultimately fail because there are no metaphysical grounds for the value of people. Removing metaphysical value from individuals removes any possibility of value for relationships because relationships are merely collections of individuals. Postmodernism also attempts to emphasize relationships through asserting the value of community directly. This fails because it is merely an assertion without any reason or support. The subjectivism of postmodernism gives freedom to valuation making it unnecessary to value community even though they suggest it. Epistemological relativism will always undermine any solid valuation of community because ethics rests upon epistemology. Treating community in a properly good way, as Christians did to me as a lost person, actually was making metaphysical claims that have direct epistemological implications against relativism.

The application of Christianity’s unique answer to the social needs of postmoderns and American culture is that we need to be actively and intentionally seeking more and more deep relationships with lost people in order to combat the relativism that is plaguing them. To start with, find three or four people where there is already the beginning of a friendship and really invest in it. If they hurt you, ignore it to emphasize their great innate worth just by being a person. Tell them why you would never retaliate in the way they are used to because they have value. Start being more aware of how you communicate with others, including at work. Be more gracious especially through email. There is a real person that will be reading it! Any frustrations (and usually there are many), even merited ones, can quickly lead to short or harsh language. If Christians had not invested deeply in me, and gotten to know me and invite me into their lives, I would have never seen the emptiness of postmodernity and its inability to accomplish its two goals: relationships and community. The very relationships and the value that they treated me with indirectly broke down relativism and subjectivism by implication. Because Christians were able to provide the community that I was eagerly searching for and needed, they had already laid a groundwork for the Gospel and made a platform from which to truly engage me with the Gospel and Biblical Christianity in a loving and meaningful fashion. - Clayton Rothwell

Louisville, KY

The Glass Box continued box with its beautiful and memorable symbols that moved you. Christ’s finished work and your salvation experience were nothing but a moving, inspirational idea, a beautiful picture that was stuffed into an ordinary box. One of the many inspirational ideas common to Christianity is the liturgy of high church. The comfort and familiarity of the calendar is your power to keep forging ahead in life. Though the words you hear and the songs you sing express true ideas about God and religion, they are only pieces of data and never anything more. It is a story and a picture that remains far removed from relying directly on Jesus in every moment in an intimate fashion.

Another common glass box is Bible stories. When these narratives are treated as inspirational stories, historical or not, and they are divorced from the daily living out of Christianity and a larger framework of a Biblical worldview, they are bound to fail you. The great and triumphant stories of Scripture have immense inspirational ability, and this in itself is not a bad thing. The problem arises when the stories are used in a way that replaces how you should be individually relating to the personal God. The last example of an inspirational idea is our salvation experience, as was mentioned in the narrative. It is an emotional and significant picture in

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Totomundo

June-July Vol. 1 Is. 2

The Glass Box continued the life of the Christian. Many times salvation and forgiveness are viewed as an events that occurred at some point in the past, offering constant reassurance, relief from guilt and punishment, and a promise of a happy ending. The problem with containing this reality in a box is that it cuts off the practical power of redemption and forgiveness in our daily lives. One can objectify Christ as an image of salvation and forgiveness, rather than relating to Christ as a person to be known and followed.

formula to recreate inspiration, the living Word is the means of God's active and intimate communication with us. The indwelling Spirit of God is what makes the Scriptures alive and dynamic to each individual believer, in every culture, in every generation, in every circumstance.

Rather than depending upon Bible stories (or even a well-honed theology) as being our source of spirituality, we are called to know and worship God himself. It is far too easy to begin depending upon The glass box is one of the most deceptive and worshipping our knowledge of God and miss out forms of false spirituality because it often has the on the intimacy of an actual relationship with Him. content of Christianity correct, but Christianity is more The very same God who walked with Abraham, led than content. First, they distance Moses, comforted David, and you from God. Rather than Jesus Christ from the “...we are called to know raised interacting directly with God, you dead is the One whom we are to instead interact with some idea. and worship God himself. It know and worship now. The worst-case scenario no is far too easy to begin longer even views God as a rather than finding d e p e n d i n g u p o n a n d Finally, personal God, but views him as security in our salvation impersonal, distant, mysterious worshipping our knowledge experience of the past, we are and impossible to relate to. of God and miss out on the instead called to actively turn to Second, they also distance God now to understand and intimacy of an actual Christ from your life, because the box live out the redemption that is taken out occasionally, but the relationship with Him.” began then. This is true rest of the time you are not spirituality. Christ's work in one consciously handling life with sense was finished on the cross, sensitivity to Biblical principles. Lastly, the box makes as far as we stand positionally before God, but in God seem impotent in the face of particular struggles. another sense, our conversion was only the Direct intervention, help, or guidance from God is not beginning. The danger in only finding comfort and sought, only emotional or cognitive bolstering to keep confidence in what Jesus accomplished in the past, is pressing forward. God’s power and care for this that we leave him in the past, and marginalize the world and for you is drastically and painfully reduced. fulness of who he is now. The Christ who died for us then is now living in us and ever present. The good news is that God has something far greater for us. He calls us to a dynamic relationship We must no longer settle for a glass box form with Him, a God who has intimately walked with his of spirituality that will only fade in time and eventually people since the moment he breathed life into Adam. shatter under the weight of real life. Instead, we must This is where is where it gets exciting. turn to a true and robust spirituality with the living God that supersedes ritual, images, and formula. He Rather than looking to liturgy (and "worship" alone is zealously redeeming all things. music in some circles) as being our source of spirituality, we are called to look instead to the Word - Lisa McGary Louisville, KY of God. Where static liturgy falls into ritual and

We welcome your comments and feedback. Thanks for reading.

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