Why I Changed The Title

This blog used to be called “TRUTH – Christ To A Post-Christian Culture (v. 3.0)”  Even before that, it was called “Seeking the Truth”.  I recently (in case you’re a new visitor or someone who spent hours wondering why the title had changed) re-titled it so it’s become “Christ To A Post-Christian Culture – Shifting Paradigms”  Because I’m casting about desperately for content since the ill-conceived H. Jackson Brown fiasco, I decided to spend this post on the very inane ‘why I changed the title’ subject.

A very pessimistic young man once wrote in his journal ‘life is change’.  In the years since I wrote it I’ve come to some pretty startling understandings about what it actually means, understandings which I hope that I can redeem from the culture that produced them and that you can receive as valid and worthwhile.

First – it qualifies nothing.  Yes, life is change, and when I was thinking about it I was also reading Dan Simmons’ Endymion, and his messiah for the human race condensed her message to two words – choose again, which probably influenced my thinking at the time.  I wanted to be concise in my understanding of the world. but that conciseness has been at the expense of a number of other things.  So to simply say ‘life is change’ is simply saying that things need not affect you, nor need you take them as formative or destructive. This opens the doors to some very strange understandings.

Second – It alleviates one from the responsibility to try and effect change, because it nullifies causality, distancing oneself from it.  Change happens, but what do you do about it?  How is it started?  Is it for the good or for the bad?

Lately, this belief has been coming back to haunt me.  But I’m going to use it for good, now.  Because life is change is also a very concise message of optimism.  You’re never anywhere, or in anything for long, and that can be very liberating.  I think of Tristran Thorne in Stardust, whose statement “I”m not a shopboy” is the rallying cry for taking the steps you need to take in order to effect that change.  And to truly believe that life is change is to truly believe that the condition in which we find ourselves is not a permanent one.

And that brings me ’round to why I changed the title.  “Paradigm’ means two things.  First, a paradigm is an example that serves as a model or standard by which to measure.  Secondly, it means a set of assumptions, concepts, values and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality.  These are very limited Wiktionary definitions, but their essence is important.  I’ve given this blog the title “Christ to a Post Christian Culture – Shifting Paradigms” for two main reasons.  First, it intimates that the message of Christ necessitates radical change.  The assumptions by which we govern the world must be altered to have as their foundation the call to take up our cross daily, to come from labour and heavy drudgery and receive rest.  The call to deny mother and father so that we might be counted worthy of Him, to count everything as loss that we might gain Christ.  Yes, even the call to suffer and rejoice that we have been counted worthy to do so in his name.  The call to do greater works than these.  The call to go out in the world and make disciples of all men.  We must demand of ourselves adherence to the new standard of Christ, by which we must measure all things.

Second, the understanding of shifting paradigms that I hold is that life is change for this reason – we are always in motion, at the physical, at the molecular, and at the spiritual levels.  We are always in the movement of sanctification, we are always changing.  But the object of that change must be Christ-likeness, and the fitting for the glory for which we hope.  Thus to bring Christ to a post-Christian culture means that we must be so different as to be intolerable to a world that already tolerates so much.  That we must be party to collapsing worldviews (even our own) and be there to preserve the hearts and minds of those who emerge afterwards.  And finally, to bring Christ to a post-Christian culture means that we need to understand that everyone else is always moving, too.  Or at least, always being moved.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Structure

An oath in court is a false one to those who can no longer believe in the solemnity of swearing on the Bible. Truth, then, becomes a travesty because if there are no consequences, there are no incentives towards holiness.

This is the essence of the new machinery of life. Why swear on the Word of God if you can’t believe that that Word holds any consequence in your life? Why should it be true in a culture of relativism, and in which justice can be decided on the flip of a coin, as Two-Face so strikingly portrays?

Buy the right people, entice them with extravagance, and you have the courts on your side. Press the right button, edit the right words and truth becomes an artifice of fiction. This is the structure of the world.

Assume nothing. Believe that the knowledge of good and evil – that which we sinned in when our first parents were kicked out of paradise – is no longer the ultimate goal, and you’ve got to start really questioning where faith stands in relation to itself. Go one further, and take a look at what has become the new pinnacle of aspiration – Self-actualization, self-creation, self-delusion. If we can create ourselves anew with new clothing, new scents, new products, what point does a Creator have, and what point does the fact that we are image bearers of God have? What’s the new ultimate goal?

Let’s look at what I’m really saying here.

Moral absolutism is essential to the Christian life. We need definition of what constitutes good and evil, and where those definitions come from. So the first step in building a worldview in right relationship to God is this:

He is good.
We are not.

We are sinful, poor people, wretched in spirit and drowning in need.
He is sufficient, rich in provision, abundant in joy, and seals us up against the evils of the world.

He is right.
We are wrong.

And in all of our sinfulness, only He can save. Only He is the way, the truth, and the life. Begin with this, and there’s hope.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer

Assumptions

When you come from a Christian background, you make assumptions.

When you come to a society where truth is relative and information subjective, you’ve got nothing.

So let’s lay some groundwork.

We are rebels without a cause…engines of sex and fun and commodity without a driver. We are purveyors of fine lines (Want a life…going cheap! I just feel like having a good time!) and back-alley brawlers with Jesus. But we know…somewhere…that we…are…WRONG

Christ crucified: Why? Sin punished: Why? Suffering from the hands of a [good] God: Why? Where’s the hope? What difference does it make in my life? I’ll tell you.

Have you ever felt guilty for no good reason? Empty, hollow, alone, dead? Have you ever walked a road ‘a million’ times, and never looked around? Have you ever wondered why we use terms like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, or ‘that’s a sin’, or ‘But it’s my life to live?’. You know what the truth of that is? You know where it comes from?

It’s because we know there’s more. We know that something in us speaks to decency, to compassion, to ‘humanity’, and it’s because we know that we’re doing something we are not designed for, and that we should, in our morbid self-sufficiency, pay the price for it.

NewsNewsNewsNewsNewsNewsNewsNewsNewsNewsNewsNewsNewsNewsNewsNewsNews

We can’t

Jesus did

That’s it.

But there’s more…so much more to begin with. Assumptions, you know.

In a society, in a culture, where truth is defined by the skin you sleep in and by the only thing that makes sense…your own point of view…we are still subject to rules of right and wrong, moralities taught to us by our fallen fathers and mothers and by a world where we put on philosophies like suits of clothes to suit the day. There is, without doubt, something in us that recognizes good and recognizes evil, although it’s a moral compass that may be demagnetized. Or, better yet, we’ve each got a hold of Captain Jack’s little treasure, ‘a compass what pints the way to your heart’s desire.’ There’s a weighted analogy for you. But we are moral creatures if we are human creatures, and we have to, in this, give total and entire credit to God who is holy, who is just, and who is Creator.

Let’s make this Biblical:

Genesis 8:21-22:
And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.”

Undeserved grace I. And here’s the best part: Ask yourself if this is good or evil.

Deuteronomy 10:14-21
Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear. He is your praise. He is your God, who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen.

Romans 2:12-16
For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles [that's us] who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

The essence, number 1, the first principle, whatever you call it, is thus:

There is right and there is wrong. God shows this in his character, Jesus shows this because He is God, and both condemn that which is evil in men, but for love have paid the price.

When you come to the aimless generation with a heart and a message, you’ve got to make assumptions.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.