What is Truth? Pontius Pilate’s famous rhetorical question to Jesus echoes through the twisted wreckage of failed societies down to today. We cannot help but assume that our version of truth is the true version. In this article I want to consider truth from three different perspectives; my own cultural background, current Youth culture, and Contemporary “Consumer” Church culture. Then I evaluate these through a Biblical grid. My interest in this is based around the question: How much of our contemporary church culture is valid contextualization and how much is simply syncretism with the prevailing culture?
My perspective:
I grew up in a white, middle-class, and mildly religious farming family in New Zealand in the 1960’s and 70’s. Truth seemed simple, yet in our society it was becoming an increasingly complicated issue. My cultural worldview was broadly Western Modernity where it was accepted that truth arose from the power of human reason. Instead of accepting tradition and other forms of authority as the source of truth it was a time when critical thinking was being encouraged in an attempt to free society from “repressive” traditional structures and belief systems. We were being made aware of new ways of thinking and living through the influence for the first time of television, and through more commercially motivated print media. Truth was the name of a newspaper that my father read every Sunday – the truth of the contents was rather questionable. Image was definitely emphasized! The idea of questioning and discovering our own truth and with it the increasing power of image were expressions of emerging postmodernism. Oblivious to this I accepted these conflicting views of truth, unaware that “…modernity is only one particular story of how to read and order life. It is not particularly old…but it became our cultures normative way of reading the world.”[1]
It was this shifting sand of culture and lack of personal foundations that lead me on a search for truth - to seek stability in what we would now call a metanarrative – an overarching story that gives meaning to everything.[2] I remember thinking how lost I felt. My parents’ traditional answers were not satisfying to me. Following my peers into mindless partying also failed to meet my inner hunger. Somehow I realised that there was such a thing as truth that was bigger than tradition and bigger than scientific “proof”. I found Truth experientially in the person of Christ and this truth also gave me cognitive answers to the “big questions” of life. I believed the gospel because of the inner witness of the Spirit. So affectively I was - as John Wesley put it - “strangely warmed”. Cognitively I was satisfied that the Bible was defensible and I should trust it as a better foundation in my life that anything else including my own ideas. Evaluatively I now had a moral foundation – a combination of the promptings of the Spirit and the witness of the scriptures.
However I found that my background worldview of Modernity with its emphasis of digital sets where everything is neatly pigeonholed was to be a hindrance to my walk of faith. This view of truth – that it is limited to the scientifically and rationally proven – meant that “…truth claims that could not be verified scientifically were relegated to the lesser sphere of private value… with no role in the public life of the culture.”[3] Thus my faith faced a challenge – either prove God’s reality using scientific method or divorce it from reason and let it become a personal faith. My life was being partitioned and I wasn’t aware of it. [4]
I came to faith in the Charismatic movement, which was mixture of the mind-oriented Evangelical Fundamentalist theology[5] and heart-oriented Revivalist experience that called for a life-changing encounter with God. In theory this synthesis was good, but the new wine of the life of God in the Spirit was trapped in old wineskins of modernistic thinking. Every doctrine became a battleground: Should everyone “speak in tongues?” When would the “rapture” take place? The digital mindset couldn’t cope with the diversity of what the Spirit was doing. It was okay to just “believe in my heart” and have a “personal relationship with Jesus”. The atomized compartmentalizing of faith away from works lead to confusion and an increasing distancing of the gospel message from the big issues facing society. Faith wasn’t “provable” in normal scientific method so Christians backed away and the Gospel message was increasingly marginalized from mainstream society. Those who did concern themselves with issues of social justice were mainly the intellectual liberals – accused by the “true believers” of reducing the message to simply a “social gospel”.
Theologian Robert Webber points out the irony that although evangelical fundamentalism was “anti-intellectual” it “…remained rooted in intellectual thought…”[6] I viewed the Bible and Christian life through this essentially modernist lens whereby “…the Bible was transformed from a collection of diverse stories about Yahweh and his people through time to source material for systematic theologies based on linear, rational, abstract, and cognitive reasoning.”[7] Professor Scot McKnight says: “A distinct form of spirituality, not all bad, emerges from this form of Bible reading: an intellectual, heady theory of the Christian life that genuinely believes that if we have the right ideas, we will live more godly lives. That is, such a spirituality is a form of cognitive behaviorism.”[8]
I found myself stuck between a walk in the Spirit on one hand and cognitive behaviorism on the other. This dissonant view of truth limited my effectiveness as a believer - strong on knowing and doing but weak on being and relating.[9] In answer to Pilate’s question “What is truth?” - I could have given a statement of my faith, but I doubt he would have seen much challenge to his world.
Contemporary “Consumer” Church Culture
When applied to theology reason produced a type of evangelicalism that attempted to reduce Christianity to a set of beliefs or formulae. As words became exalted, belief in those words became more important than the reality behind the belief. Instead of faith in God we came to have faith in God’s Word, or at least in our reduced version of God’s word. So right “belief” becomes primary and actions became secondary. Reformation theology was soundly impregnated with this kind of thinking. Webber observes: “…both Luther and Calvin had emphasized that a relationship with God was based largely on right knowing... the emphasis on right doctrines produced a protestant orthodoxy, which in its worst expression was an embrace of orthodox teaching without the transformation of life.” [10] He calls this type of church formed by this thinking pragmatic evangelicalism. This pragmatic approach has produced in our day “…a method of evangelism that paid attention to marketing issues, sought to meet people’s needs, and relied on a seeker service...”[11]
The temptation with this understanding of truth is that it becomes easy for the means to justify the ends. To our end of “church growth” we apply our problem-solving skills and create means to achieve this goal. We set Key Performance Indicators such as levels of giving, attendance and growth. Then we apply the necessary inputs to achieve these goals.[12] So with our thinking shaped by modernity we formed church around this input-output model. Our root metaphor is mechanistic rather than organic. But because religious truth isn’t accepted in our culture we must add a postmodern version of truth based on image and emotion to provide the means - marketing techniques to promote good feelings in order to gain tacit adherence to propositional truth. Church competes with society not on the level of reason but on the level of image – following the societal trend toward technology, media, marketing, and franchising of church “brands”. [13] The means and ends are neither consistent with each other nor are they very much related to the biblical concept of truth because we have a modernistic, atomistic view of truth rather than a holistic view.
So truth for contemporary “consumer” church can be divorced from actions. In trying to compete in the marketplace it has forgotten that the “medium is the message”.[14] Truth is seen as a set of propositions – a statement of faith – that we give assent to. How we persuade people to assent is less important - and because the “conversion” process is incongruent to the message neither does the lifestyle need to be conguent. Truth hasn’t impacted on what Missionary-statesman Lesslie Newbigin calls the “plausibility structure” level[15]. Behavioralism is all that’s left and it’s not particularly effective.
To impact at this world-view level the gospel must be incarnated into the practices of the faith community. Our statement of faith is our community. Our community is our statement of faith. Instead in our attempts to contextualize the gospel to contemporary culture we have taken on board the worst of modern and postmodern thinking. We are simply consumers of cheap religious goods and services that lack the substance to meet the deep hunger and healing our society needs.[16]
Under the influence of postmodernity, both youth culture and consumer church culture are heavily influenced by image.[17] Image conscious consumers want to be seen as part of the hip church just as they want to be seen drinking the hip beer. In becoming just another product churches become competitive – their brand of church being better than the next. Competition destroys intimacy and unity – both precious commodities to the Christian faith. Is it okay for the gospel to be just another consumer product?
As the children of modernity we scoff at Pilate’s question. We know what is true and we can happily explain it in rational terms. But when it comes to “spiritual” truth the categories of modernity fail us and we turn to the subjective appeal of image that is the hallmark of postmodernity. We dither before Pilate and try to change the subject, hoping to draw him into the fold instead through our entertaining programs and slick presentations.
Youth Culture
Most youth do not talk about truth much. On one level they equate truth with “scientifically proven facts”, but they react against those who try to use truth to control them with the postmodern “whatever” or “yeah right” response – whether that be “evidence-based” truth (“drinking is bad for you”) or traditional moralistic truth (“God doesn’t like sex before marriage”).[18] They accept as truth that science has answered the questions about life and therefore faith is simply belief in myth to provide comfort for those who cannot face reality. So our young people are a product of rationalism and a scientific worldview fueled by the assumptions of the Enlightenment. Unfortunately while this may meet to some degree their cognitive need, it leaves the affective and evaluative areas barren and in crisis. This has birthed “…a ravenous materialism as matters of the soul were ignored or re-interpreted within this tightly controlled version of reality. When the life of the spirit is ignored, people will seek to feed the hunger of the neglected soul with the only nourishment available: in our context, the consumptive acquisition of material goods.”[19] Youth also try to fill the dreadful void with all manner of entertainment and activity. Psychologist Bruce Anderson says that this “poverty of the spirit” and the resulting slide into all manner of addiction is the inevitable result the destruction of community and commodification of culture that globalization brings – with it’s emphasis on image-as-truth for the sake of encouraging consumption.[20]
In pre-modern times truth was in the hands of those who claimed to speak for God. Their view of truth could be summarized by “might is right.” Their abuses of power lead to the Enlightenment reaction and the birth of modernity. Modernity instead put truth into the domain of the intellectual and scientist where “knowledge is power”. Postmodernity is in turn a reaction to the failure and abuses of modernity.[21] Truth and power have now been passed into the hands of the image-makers – the media and advertising world where “image is everything”. Youth do not realize that the truth they receive through the media is just as abusive and destructive as what they have rejected as it emanates from a globalized consumer culture intent on exploiting them. Therefore “…consumers and borrowers lacking self-control and self-awareness become easy targets for the selfish manipulation of producers and lenders. Advertising that offers instant credit, or that promotes products or instruments of sexual seduction, directly undermines the consumers self-control.”[22]
So affectively many young people are often dominated by fear, anger and frustration that they attempt to combat through “highs”. Their mechanistic view of the world, whereby we are simply bio-chemical products or evolutionary chance, sees no problem with chemically induced good-feelings. Their atomistic view of human nature sees no problem in abusing the body to extremes through binge-drinking, drug-taking, and all manner of high-risk behavior. These good feelings are tinged with negativity as the deeper needs go unmet, so self-harm, eating disorders and suicide are an epidemic. Evaluatively they often display high emotion, are particularist in their beliefs (“that’s right for you but this is what is right for me”) and place high value on achievement within the goals that are set for them by the market (having the latest things, having the right clothes, watching the right movies). They are often avid consumers and like any addiction it is insatiable. Everything becomes a commodity – including the spiritual, sexual and relational.[23] Their consumer-driven world is one of image with very little substance.[24] Such a life has little real hope. Newbigin says: “the absence of any sense of worthwhile future is one of the marks of our present culture. By contrast one of the marks of biblical counterculture will be a confident hope that makes hopeful action possible even in situations which are humanly speaking, hopeless.”[25]
Why are few young people finding hope in the contemporary consumer church? It is because consumer church is built on an uncomfortable mix of pre-modern authoritative truth, modern rationalism, and postmodern consumerism. This mix of values is confusing enough to Christians – so how can the young person find reality there? Missional Church Leader Tim Keel says: “I have found that many Christians, consciously or not, try first to convert postmodern people into a modern, Enlightenment way of thinking before they can share the Good News of Jesus Christ with them. Why? Because we have encoded the gospel in the categories of modernity.”[26] Yet with our commitment to the categories of modernity, we also have built contemporary church on a consumptive model that was the obsession of a past generation. So actually “…the Contemporary Church, having been built and enmeshed in the generational values of the baby boomer, is alienating a generation of adolescents.”[27] Globalization has seen the adoption of internationalised styles of “McChurch” that are simply a reflection of trends in society. Individuality and diversity both of people and nations are discouraged. Brand identity and conformity are essential.
So youth are hungry for more than the truth of image – they hunger to belong[28] - yet the global consumption model is so all-encompassing that the whole of life can be spent in it’s pursuit, and it is so seductive that we are unaware that in it “we live and move and have our being.” To Pilate’s question “what is truth?” the bored yet over-stimulated young person might reply: “whatever.”
The Biblical Concept of Truth
In the Bible, truth is in the ultimate reality of God and is incarnated through Christ and his Church. Christ is the Word made flesh. God spoke creatively and expressed himself in word (Logos) that produced the created order (Cosmos). The creation speaks truth that reflects the maker: "The heavens declare the glory of God..."
So the ultimate reality of the creator was expressed in his speaking into being of creation and finally in the expression of his son Jesus –who is Truth incarnate. He not only speaks words of truth but also is the expression of truth. His actions are completely congruent with his words that are also a complete reflection of the Father:
In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. Heb 1:1-3.
So Jesus says, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Jesus, the word of truth “…became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14). Jesus, who says of himself: “I am… the truth…” (John 14:6) calls us to walk in the same manner: “As the Father has sent me, I also send you.”John 20:21. We are called to also incarnate the truth in our lives and communities. We are not just to believe truth but to “walk in the truth” (3 John 1:4).
Professor Leonard Sweet says: “Jesus is the truth. Truth resides in relationships, not documents or principles. The Gospels don’t teach us about Jesus as principle but as Jesus as person…Not until the fourteenth century (at the earliest) did truth become embedded in propositions and positions.”[29] So truth is not found in words as modernity assumes but in the ultimate reality behind the words. Words and scientific reductionism are only weak attempts to describe ultimate reality.The apostle Paul says: “For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.”1 Cor 13:9. Completeness of knowing is impossible in our current state, as we live in bodies that are still unredeemed and have limited finite minds also marred by sin. They must be renewed progressively but will never comprehend fully.[30] So Jesus describes truth - not in terms of hypothesis and theory or systematic theology or evidence-based conclusions or provable propositions - but mostly through narrative, metaphor and demonstration. This actually works in a postmodern world where “…the alternative way of knowing truth… is to be convinced of truth through participation, not consumer appeals; through wholly lived display, not reasoned arguments.”[31] Webber asserts: “…the church becomes the post modern portal to truth”[32] In today’s society the community of God’s people “…needs to be an alternative culture. It needs to be defined over against the ruling values of society…a sign, a foretaste, and a witness to a humanity and a world shaped by the vision of God’s reign over the lives of his people.”[33]
Our medium is our message. Consumer church lives in a pragmatic divide where we think we can use marketing methods so long as the result is church attendance. This is faulty thinking that eventually only alienates most postmodern youth. Newbigin says:“The biblical story is unique. But how does the telling of it challenge the reigning world-view? The answer is that it can do so through the witness of a community which, in unbroken continuity with the biblical actors and witnesses, indwells the story the Bible tells.”[34] How do we know when biblical truth is present? Webber says that it is when “…the message takes up residence within the listeners life and heart… and has transformed that person into the image of the content.”[35] The answer to Pilate’s question from a Biblical perspective – if he was a young person today starving for truth and connection - could perhaps be “come and see”. Do we have faith communities that can say that?
So returning to my initial question: How much of our contemporary church culture is valid contextualization and how much is simply syncretism with the prevailing culture? I would have to conclude that too much of contemporary church culture is simply syncretism which mimics rather than challenges the world-views – simply adding a layer of Christian jargon over the top. True contextualization, Newbigin says “…happens when the word is not a disembodied word, but comes from a community which embodies the true story, God’s story...”[36] God give us grace to be that community.
[1] Alan J. Roxburgh, Missional Map-Making: Skills for Leadership in Times of Transition. (Jossey-Bass, 2010), 11.
[2] Within postmodernity “…the idea of a consistent, understandable whole shaping human life (often called a metanarrative) is replaced by the idea of a pastiche, where our lives are actually characterized by a multiplicity of private styles, moments, experiences, and choices that we use to pick and choose our own self-definition.” Roxburgh, 101.
[3] Michael W. Goheen & Craig G. Bartholomew, Living at the Crossroads, an Introduction to Christian Worldview. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 96.
[4] “Sociologically, modernity partitions each human life into a variety of segments, each with its own norms of behavior.” - Roxburgh, 10.
[5] Fundamentalism, the root of contemporary church culture, “…was characterized by a rigorous foundationalism – an intellectual frame of reference that adhered to the scientific method of empiricism and to the ability of the mind to arrive at factual propositional truth.” Robert E.Webber, The Younger Evangelicals – Facing the Challenges of the New World. (Grand Rapids: Baker,2002), 25.
[6] This “…Common Sense philosophy insisted that “facts” could be known directly. This conviction derived from Descartes’ emphasis on knowledge gained through the empirical method.” Webber, The Younger Evangelicals, 27.
[7] Tim Keel, Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, and Chaos. (Grand Rapids:Baker, 2007), 124.
[8] Scot McKnight in: Corcoran, Kevin. (Ed), Scot McKnight, Peter Rollins, Jason Clark. Church in the Present Tense – A Candid Look at what is Emerging. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 110.
[9] Categories from Tim Keel’s “Missional Leadership” paper, 2010.
[10] Robert E.Webber, Ancient-Future Evangelism – Making Your Church a Faith-Forming Community . (Grand Rapids: Baker,2003),32.
[11] Webber. The Younger Evangelicals, 36.
[12] Roxburgh says “Western culture came to see the world as a vast-input-and-output machine… This measure-predict-manage methodology became the framework for leadership, based on the conviction that we had the capacity and the method (science) to name all the parts and control those parts to produce our desired ends.”Roxburgh, 60.
[13] Webber says: “…many contemporary church leaders argue that the most effective churches will be those that allow Christian commitments to connect with the more laissez-faire attitudes of society. By making Christianity more like the culture of which it is part, some argue, the church will become more attractive, more relevant, and more accessible. ” Webber, Ancient-Future Evangelism, 158.
[14] “The idea that “the medium is the message” holds important ramifications for the communication of the Christian faith. First, the real message of Christianity is not rational propositions but the person of Jesus Christ with whom a personal relationship is possible…the church must be an embodied presence…communicating faith …through a combination of oral, visual, and print forms of participatory immersed community communication (or cultural transmission)”. Webber. The Younger Evangelicals, 65.
[15] Newbigin, Lesslie, The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society, (Grand Rapids:Eeerdmans,1989), 57.
[16] “…the general tenor of Christian faith has been watered down to a view perilously close to the meism and experience-centered spirituality of the day. In this setting the very substance of the gospel – both it’s doctrine and lifestyle, are threatened.” Webber, Ancient-Future Evangelism, 163.
[17] “Are we not in peril of marketing a version of that story in which God’s people are consumers of “spiritual” experiences and “mission” adventures? A story in which to be fully alive is to fulfill dreams and live out fantasies on a global scale…In buying into such a story, are God’s people not faced with the prospect of devastating disappointment, of a fragmented and potentially self-destructive engagement with life?” Rod Thompson in: Goheen Michael W & Erin G. Glanville (Eds.), The Gospel and Globalization – Exploring the Religious Roots of the Globalized World. (Vancouver: Regent, 2009), 130.
[18] “Old notions of ‘authority’, such as the idea that science enables human progress, are viewed with suspicion. Science is reductionist (it explains complex things in terms of its less complex constituents). Scepticism and/or cynicism are common.” G. Lealand and H. Martin, It’s All Done With Mirrors: About Television. (Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 2001), 93.
[19] Keel, 107.
[20] Bruce K. Alexander, The Globalisation Of Addiction: A Study In Poverty Of The Spirit. (Oxford University Press, 2008).
[21] “The postmodern turn is a reaction to the dominant political ideologies that caused the horrors of the twentieth century as well as a growing conviction that the Enlightenment claims of producing “facts” and “absolute truth” through the application of a universal method were fundamentally wrong. Roxburgh, 101.
[22] Paul Spencer Williams in The Gospel and Globalization, 130.
[23] “By disembedding cultural values and then placing them in the service of consumer markets, capitalism gradually reduces all values, all beliefs, and all meaning to a matter of taste, preference and consumption habit.” Williams, 132.
[24] “The surface (‘the look’ of form and style) is often more important than the content of ‘meaning’… a set of effects designed to entertain and to persuade viewers to consume and to experience pleasure. This is nowhere more exemplified than in the music-video genre” Lealand and Martin, 93.
[25] Newbiggin, 101.
[26] Keel, 128.
[27] Webber, The Younger Evangelicals, 156.
[28] “The power of connection is a healing power. Healing connections are here, there and everywhere for picking if the church can help postmoderns understand what it means to be connected – connected to one-another, connected to creation, even connected to the church itself.” Leonard Sweet, Post-Modern Pilgrims. (Broadman & Holman: Nashville, 2000), 120.
[29] Sweet ,131-2.
[30] Newbigin notes that even Albert Einstein understood the limitations of science and mathematics to describe reality where he quotes him as saying: “As far as propositions of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” Newbigin, 29
[31] Webber, Ancient-Future Evangelism, 62.
[32] Webber, Ancient-Future Evangelism, 63.
[33] Webber, Ancient-Future Evangelism, 158.
[34] Newbigin, 97.
[35] Webber, The Younger Evangelicals, 67.
[36] Newbigin, 152.
Comments