Postmode

I suppose the hardest thing about spending time away from home is the fundamental lack of relationships that I have here. I didn’t really struggle with this during my internship last summer in Colorado, and I suppose the reason for that was that God was graceful while I was learning about other weaknesses that I have, and I already had a context of relationships into which I fit rather easily. The fact that I am struggling with a lack of relationships here in New Jersey is not really all that surprising to me: I love spending time with people, talking about life and culture and God and everything in between. However, even if this weren’t the case, it wouldn’t be surprising to me in any other case either.

We are made in the image of God, and this includes all facets of his character and personality. Each of us mirrors some aspect of God’s nature. One of the things that Doug Wilson said again and again while preaching on Islamic beliefs and culture is that a culture has certain fundamental character traits that are a mirror image of the kind of God it believes to reign. In radical Islamic culture, it is not surprising that we find a certain kind of hatefulness towards others; this is tied to the nature of Allah as Mr. High-and-Mighty-By-Himself. In Christian churches it should not be surprising if Christians were loving and kind to each other (they are not, but this is only an indication of the failure to preach the Gospel - particularly God’s grace in giving us the law - in the same way that non-radical Muslim cultures are non-radical because they fail to understand what their holy writings actually teach.)

In a similar sense, if we believe that the God of the Bible reigns supreme, then there are several necessary (non-contingent) facts that explain why we are the way we are. The trinitarian nature of our God explains our need for relationship. If our God exists, then it is a necessary fact that God exists in a trinity and that this trinity shares a relational bond - and much more, a necessary bond. Some may disagree with this, supposing that they could say that God is above needing relationship, but God is a trinity, and that trinity has a relationship amongst itself. If this ceased to be true, God would not be God - and so each person of God needs the others; this is what it means to say that this facet of the character and nature of God is necessary. God without this facet would not be God.

Combine this with the fact that we are made in the image of God, and we ought to have an appreciation for why we feel alone sometimes. God is never alone because God is in eternal, completely fulfilling relationship amongst himself. But we do not share this kind of fully fulfilling, intimate and eternal bond with others. We are weak and frail, and the tenacity and intensity of our relationships with others can vary for the stronger or the weaker. Similarly, we can also vary in the intensity of our need for relationships. Nobody needs relationships with other people to the same extent that other people do. But lest anyone fail to understand what I am saying here, allow me to say this clearly and concisely: everybody needs relationships. It’s a fundamental part of our nature, and we rightly recognize it as a disorder when the source of an individual’s suffering is their inability to establish and maintain relationships for some reason or another.

While I’ve been out here I’ve realized how immensely true it is that I need other people. I’m far from the comfort of friends right now, and this lack has shown me my need. The good effect that this has had is that it is excellent at providing an environment in which I have experienced a level of closeness with God that I haven’t experienced before. I’ve seen this actively demonstrated in several changes of attitude (these are just the changes I thought of while preparing to write this - there are others):

1. Confession of sins. I don’t think I’ve ever really seriously been in the habit of confessing my sins before God even though scripture clearly commands this , and tells us what the benefits of doing this are - see 1 John 1:5-1:10, Proverbs 28:13.
2. A recognition of God in my needs. Seeing our weaknesses produces an understanding of our needs in relation to God. The common sense objection to this is that those who are not believers can see their weaknesses and yet don’t have an understanding of their needs in relation to God. But all this means is that they don’t really understand their weaknesses.

   If we feel satisfied, it is very easy to ignore our weaknesses, and upon realizing how much we lack we will gain a much better understanding of our needs. I’ve seen this happen in my own weaknesses as the lack of relationships to distract myself with has left me with no choice but to recognize my weaknesses and understand them in view of the relationship that sets the tone for all other relationships, my relationship with God.

3. A strong desire to submit myself before God. Submission before God is difficult, if not for the pride of wanting to say that I pulled myself up by my bootstraps, then for the ignorance of God’s word. Coming into a better awareness of my needs, and recognizing God as the source of all blessings and grace has the effect of making me realize that since I am not sufficient, and God says he is, I should therefore rely on God to provide for me and sanctify me.

All this to say, I’m far from being relationally shit-faced. I think sometimes I could be called a drunkard when it comes to my relationships. Sobering up for a little while has done wonders, but it doesn’t stop me from craving relationship with others. This in turn necessitates a stronger relationship with God, if I would seek to fulfill my needs but without being unfaithful: trying to fulfill this need by other means places it horribly outside of its proper context.

I hope it is possible to say this with all reverence, but Jesus was a tough customer. Contrary to popular opinion, the Lord of the gospels was not the original flower child, and He did not come in order to make us all feel better about ourselves. The image that many have of the Lord’s personality and strength of character comes more from man-made traditions and saccharine portrait painters than it does from the Bible. One easily envisions the image of a genteel limpwrist standing outside the door of someone’s heart, gently tapping, because of course the doorknob is only on the inside. The only thing missing from this vision is the ribbon in his hair. I have sometimes thought that a far better picture of Jesus knocking at the door of my heart would be a commanding hand from offstage, two rows of angels with a battering ram, and a worried-looking troll peeking out over the wall of a castle.
- Doug Wilson, “What Would Jesus Damn?”

Grace has no handles and is impossible for sinners to pick up. But grace does have hands and consequently has no difficulty picking us up.
- Douglas Wilson, “Grace Has No Handles”

The Church in the West has sacrificed so much of what she is supposed to be about that her relevance is lost to the lost. Parachurch organizations, such as seminaries, mission agencies, Christian counseling agencies, and evangelistic ministries, have risen to accomplish so much of what God intended the Church to do. She expects others to do evangelism, leadership development, and social care. We send the people with serious problems to professional counselors.

If you ask non-Christians why the local church is relevant, they will usually think of only two things: it is where you go to get married and buried (hitched and ditched), and many people are trying desperately to avoid both. Is this what Jesus bled and died for? Is this the best we can do with the power of the resurrection? We have a problem.
- Neil Cole, The Organic Church

The weirdest thing is everybody actually thought I was trying to fit in but that I somehow got it wrong. Does it look like I am trying to fit in with you? No. I didn’t realize how sacred Hollywood is. It’s like a religion, and I had shit on the church floor.
- Bjork in an interview in Spin

The unbeliever’s worldview, according to Kuyper, is characterized by being autonomous. That is, it is characterized by self-sufficiency or an independence from outside authority, especially any transcendent authority (one that originates beyond man’s temporal experience or exceeds man’s temporal experience). The autonomous man, as Van Til puts it, wants to be “a law unto himself.” And this leads, then, to what our society calls, “secularism” or “humanism:” the view that man is the highest value, as well as the highest authority, in terms of knowledge and behavior, rather than some transcendent reality or transcendent revelation. Rationalism is humanistic or autonomous in its basic character, maintaining the general attitude that man’s autonomous reason is his final authority — in which case divine revelation may be denied or ignored in whatever area a person is studying.
Greg Bahnsen, “At War With the Word: The Necessity of Biblical Antithesis”

Among Christians today it is very rare to hear any discussion of Scripture when our conversing concerns things such as manners, morals and values. It is not rare to hear people talking of these things, no; but when we do it is not often that we are concerned with our foundation, the Gospel. Rather, more often it is our own judgments of fairness that serve as a centerpiece of argumentation.

The success of the evangelical church in America lies in its appeal to these feelings about fairness. We say things that sound fair, so there tends to be very little disagreement in the culture itself, and most view it only as a minor problem to have to accept all that “Jesus and resurrection crap.” When Scripture does enter into the discourse, it is most often of all used to justify the positions that it is convenient for us to defend, and convenient because we already hold them. We like to prattle on about these things, referring to such and such who said some certain thing. Lingering in our minds is the belief that we follow and love God, and from this we assert our values as the default mode of judgment. This is good: if we didn’t start from some foundation that involved our own beliefs, we would be very poor arguers indeed.

But this is bad because it has a way of deifying our pre-existing views and the views of the prevailing culture to justify our beliefs. Take as an example one conversation I had with a friend about words: “Even our own culture censors swear words. Therefore, if even they think that swear words should not be used, we should also submit ourselves to this.” This absentmindedly ignores at least three relevant facts. Firstly, it ignores the fact that our own laws are not an indicator of right and wrong, but of the general consensus of people’s feelings on the matter. Our government is democratic; therefore we vote and where we do not vote we have established representatives who vote in our stead. Thus, in any case these laws are founded just as much in our own feelings and just as little in Scripture as we and our representatives are. Secondly, it ignores the fact that our culture, just like us, are to the same extent sinners saved by grace or sinners not saved at all, but nevertheless sinners; it should go without saying that one will not get from sinners to an unabashed love for God that contents itself in his law, but should it need to be said we can see from Romans 1 that we all have suppressed the truth of God in unrighteousness, and although those who are justified with the blood of Christ are saved and therefore free from sin, possessing always God’s promise to sanctify us, we are dumb sheep in need of a Shepherd. Yes, the sinners saved by grace will certainly resort to Scripture if they have to on a level that the sinners not saved at all will not, but we are still sinners nonetheless and our failure and our curse impacts every part of who we are. Thirdly, it ignores the fact that we are only playing a game of beggars being choosers, a game of picking and choosing the things that we happen to agree with. None of us would assert that it must be wrong to worship God if our representative government were to make such a law. No, I think the law of the land is not the right law or even the best law yet. Our best law is Scripture, and this is the best because it alone is what tells us what is glorifying to God. Scripture alone, by virtue of its foundation in the character of God, possesses the right to tell us what evil and righteousness are.

In its visceral acceptance of the traditions we happen to have come to accept, the church today is very akin to the Roman Catholic church as the Roman Catholic church always has been. We do not trust our paper pope (Scripture) but have instead chosen to follow our figureheads in their views and consensuses. We are just as much believers in tradition as the Roman Catholic church itself, and we believe that these Culture Popes are somehow blessed with revelation from God and can say no evil in their public proclamations, even when these sayings stand in stark opposition to Scripture. It is a lovely thing to value culture for the many things it brings to us, even today when our culture does not reflect the glory and pleasure of God’s decree like it ought to. But we are not saved by perishable things like our “Christian morals and values”, which have just as much right to be called Christian as Islamic morals and values. We are saved by the blood of Christ, who gave himself that he might redeem us from every lawless deed. To say that it is lawless is to say that there is a law; and to say there is a law is not to say that it is the law we already have: such a view is self-centered and vain, and will lead us in circles. We make laws because we feel certain ways towards particular things, and in the end we begin to feel certain ways towards particular things because of the very laws our own feelings have created. Our culture is not founded in the inerrant word of God, and neither is it founded in the character of God. Our God today is our own feelings about fairness, our flavor of Bibleish-sounding preacher the chief vicar.

We are addressed before we can begin to say I. We are given a name that we have to learn, but this name becomes who we are. We receive commands from outside before we ever begin to speak on our own, expressing our own opinions, etc.
- Peter Leithart, “The Church and Pop Culture”

Just a couple of nights ago, I was sitting outside my local cafe, smoking my pipe, and this very same musing dawned upon me, as it does on occasion: I am very attached to my name.  Not in the sense of loving it or being attached to it in an emotional manner, but in the very idea of who I consider myself to be.  The name I’ve been given now has come to sum up everything that I believe a John to consist of.  It would be very weird to start calling myself by a different name.