LIFEdevelopment.info - Audience

THREE - THE UNIQUE CHALLENGES OF SECULAR POST-MODERNISM

No More "Great Controversy?"

For Adventists a major challenge is convincing secular post-moderns of the validity of our Great Controversy "meta-narrative." As we have seen, they are suspicious of people with "all the answers." They believe that any universal story of the world and its history from the beginning to the end claims much more than it can possibly know. To the post-modern mind meta-narratives like the Great Controversy are mere human constructs, fictional devices by which we impose order on history and make it subject to us. Post-modernists believe, with considerable ground, that grand narratives, in their claims to explain the whole picture, always result in oppression and violence toward those who don't buy the narrative. In rejecting the validity of all meta-narratives, secular post-moderns believe they are doing away with the violence and coercion that often accompany meta-narratives. They prefer living with many stories over living with grand narratives that are so often abusive and self-deceived.

But post-modernity has not succeeded in avoiding its own form of meta- narrative. Its rejection of meta-narratives post-modernism has become the larger interpretive frame that relativizes all other worldviews as local stories that have no legitimate claim to reality. In its rejection of big-picture narratives, therefore, post-modernity sneaks in its own meta-narrative by the backdoor. Radical post-modernism rejects the universal truthfulness of every other belief while assuming it own supposition as the only universally true one. This is circular reasoning.

While the motive of avoiding violence and oppression is a good one, the real reason for violence and oppression isn't meta-narratives as such. Grand narratives can be either poison or remedy, depending on how they are used. As poison they harbor the potential for oppression and violence, but as remedy they have the potential to promote justice and healing. The issue is not whether Christian faith is rooted in a grand narrative, but what sort of meta-narrative the Scriptures contain. The real problem is not meta-narrative, it is the violence of the human heart. Overcoming violence requires a remedy much more radical than merely getting rid of all big-picture explanations of the universe.

While all meta-narratives, including our own understanding of the Great Controversy, may be flawed to some degree, we can invite secular post-moderns to join us in a search for the best meta-narrative. Living without a meta-narrative is no improvement over the oppression and confusion of the past. While we may never know truth in the absolute sense, it was embodied in Jesus Christ and can be tasted in the reality of a relationship with Him. As Paul says, "we have not fully attained" (Phil 3:12), yet we can be on the path to a deeper appreciation God's big picture. Through prayer, we can invite the revealing power of God to go where we cannot go, deep inside the mind of the secular post-modern. God can open minds and hearts to the magic of His great Scriptural meta-narrative if we approach people in teachableness and humility (2 Tim 2:24-26).

What post-modern people tend to reject is not absolute truth so much as absolute knowledge, a rejection the Bible agrees with (Jer 17:9; 1 Cor 13:12). In fact, to the degree we seek to defend absolute knowledge we are not defending Bible truth, we are actually defending modern rationalism. To talk about absolute truth in a world filled with people who cannot grasp it fully is to speak in riddles.

Dis-Organized Religion?

As we have seen, the prevailing suspicion of authority in general promotes a corresponding suspicion toward religious authority in particular. Both modern and post-modern seculars tend to be opposed to what they often call "organized" religion. They fear coercion and the manipulation of their lives, sensing, perhaps, that religious coercion is the most vexing of assaults upon personal liberties. When secular people come to faith, therefore, they prefer to be involved in religious contexts where they are allowed considerable freedom and choice in the way they think and live. They like to be "involved" in the process by which they become converted.

We might as well be honest. Few Christian churches are more tightly organized and controlled than the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In my experience, structures and procedures that we often take for granted prove to be quite troubling as former secular people come in contact with them in a new-found Christian walk with us. We encourage people to become educated, for example, but then expect them to turn off critical thinking where the church is concerned. Fresh and creative ideas are frequently met with "We never did it that way before," or "Ellen White says," whether she did in fact say it or not.

The situation is not hopeless, however. I sense a rising openness among SDA administrators to create more caring structures and interactions in relation to the local church. It is time to remind ourselves about our own history as a people. The Adventist Church began as an anti-establishment church. We broke ranks with all the other churches because they failed to follow the Bible, so our roots are in the radical reformation.

Perhaps we can recapture some of the radical spirit of our Adventist pioneers without losing all the positive benefits that competent organization can provide. It is time for church leaders at all levels to surrender their need to control everything that goes on in the church. We need to allow the creative thinkers and administrators in our church the freedom to develop more effective structures than what we now have. Tinkering with the system will not be enough to attract secular post-moderns. We need to re-capture our "prophetic edge" and crack open our system for the sake of the lost, allowing for some "godly disturbance" along the way. The Life Development Network is the way we have chosen to create space within the system for secular post-modern people.

At the local level, however, no amount of systemic change will help if the members themselves are not genuinely open to change. If a local church is comfortable only with the ways they've done things in the past, secular post-moderns will not stay long. We address this issue from a point of some advantage, however. Today's generation has many mistaken ideas about what the Bible teaches. They think it teaches such unpalatable ideas as everlasting burning hell, child abuse, the subjugation of women and minorities, and administration by absolute fiat (as in the Papacy). In the past Adventists also left established churches because the conventional religious wisdom didn't jibe with what we found in the Bible. When secular post-moderns find out from us that the Bible isn't anything like they have been told, they are more likely to be open to its instruction. With more positive structures at the local and higher levels of the church, there is great hope that secular post-moderns will find the Adventist message relevant and refreshing.

Previous Chapter  |  Index  |  Next Chapter

home | news | about | events | contacts | departments | churches | resources | gallery | links | help | search

© 2002 British Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists