{"id":36899,"date":"2024-03-20T14:51:09","date_gmt":"2024-03-20T21:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=36899"},"modified":"2024-03-20T14:53:42","modified_gmt":"2024-03-20T21:53:42","slug":"there-is-a-map-but-does-it-hold-meaning-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/there-is-a-map-but-does-it-hold-meaning-anymore\/","title":{"rendered":"There is a Map but Does it Hold Meaning Anymore?"},"content":{"rendered":"

My twenty-one-year-old son is agnostic. Or atheist. Or something else. He is not a Christian. Of that he is sure, but, if I understand him correctly, he doesn\u2019t find religion relevant enough to his life to be defined by a specific belief or religious system. This young adult was baptized, raised and confirmed in the Church. He loves and is loved by many who raised him in the Christian faith. Still, he has found his home base, along with many other young adults, within \u201cskepticism of the meta-narrative,\u201d[1]<\/a> the subjectivity of postmodernism.<\/p>\n

To be honest, this bothers me not as much as you might think. I believe that he knows where to find the Church or faith, should he have a hankering for More. He is surrounded by people who will continue to pray for him and speak into his life in positive, loving ways. I also trust that like God does for the the prodigal Son, God continually runs towards my own son, robes flapping in the wind, ready to gather him in a big bear hug. And I know, he is at a time of life when he is supposed to question everything, become independent, push back on his preacher mom. He is doing his job well.<\/p>\n

A Map of Meaning<\/strong><\/p>\n

That said, I trust that he knows where and how to find faith or God or the church if he decides he wants it, because we raised him in a community of faith that gave him a map of meaning,[2]<\/a> the meta-narrative of the Christian story while they also made him feel he belonged and was loved. I also realize that at twenty-one, he is still discovering the world, himself, and has relatively little life experience. Whether he likes it or not, one of my son\u2019s maps of meanings is the Christian metanarrative. He may hold it alongside the map that says there is no meta-narrative (postmodernism) and holding the two at the same time may get confusing, but I\u2019m hopeful the map of the Christian meta-narrative will, in the end, hold more meaning for him.<\/p>\n

This week we read Jordan Peterson\u2019s book, Maps of Meaning, the Architecture of Belief<\/em>, in which he makes the claim that \u201cSomething we cannot see protects us from something we do not understand,\u201d meaning, without a \u201cmap\u201d to show us where to go, how to get there, basic \u201crules of the road,\u201d chaos will reign. We cannot survive in chaos, and will do \u201canything- anything to defend ourselves against it.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Whether or not the Christian story is \u201ctrue,\u201d it is also a \u201cmap\u201d to follow. As Peterson points out, all myths (not using the word, myth to mean untrue), provide a \u201cmap\u201d of how the world came to be, how it is to work, where it is going, how we are to behave. However, when what Peterson calls an anomaly arises, sometimes a map can quit working for us, meaning, the map no longer help us steer our way out of chaos to meaning. He writes, \u201cThe emergence of anomaly constitutes a threat to the integrity of the moral tradition governing behavior and evaluation. Strange things or situations can pose a challenge to the structure of a given system of action and related beliefs.\u201d[4]<\/a> Which makes me wonder if this is what is happening with the \u201cChristian map.\u201d Have too many anomalies arisen, (for example: sex abuse in the Church, inequality of women, theologies that are not relevant to the here and now, postmodernism\u2019s emphasis on subjectivity), that the Christian map is no longer meaningful to many. Is this the case for my son?<\/p>\n

Creating Maps that Have Meaning<\/strong><\/p>\n

Postmodernism is one anomaly that has at the least, created a detour on our map of meaning. I wonder if Artificial Intelligence will completely take us off the map. In the beginning statement of his podcast on Maps of Meaning, Peterson says, \u201cIf we don\u2019t develop a moral sense as conscious and as elaborate as our technological sense the fact that we are capable of becoming increasingly powerful will necessarily do us in.\u201d We will have to create a new map of meaning that includes how we use artificial intelligence to enhance our humanity. In her book and her blog, Robot Souls, Eve Poole writes, \u201cWhether or not \u2013 and when- the robots will take over is a moot point,\u201d Poole writes, \u201cbut what would most help us navigate this contested terrain is a clearer sense of what it actually means to be human.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

From what I understand of Peterson (which admittedly is little), there are maps of meaning, or metanarratives that direct us in the way to be in this culture. Whether we are aware of it or not, we follow these maps. If we don\u2019t follow the map, we find ourselves lost, in chaos, or being corrected and directed back onto the map by the culture.<\/p>\n

As a leader, is it my role to help create maps of meaning for my institutions, my culture, the people who follow my leadership? Is it my role to keep people from making wrong turns? Is it my role to help people create new maps that have meaning for them and\/or for our world?<\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> Jordan B. Peterson podcast, Stephen Hicks: Philosophy and Postmodernism, Jordan\u2019s Conversation with Stephen Hicks<\/em>, May 5, 2019, Scribd. s<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Jordan B. Peterson, Maps of Meaning, the Architecture of Belief<\/em>, Routledge, New York, NY, 1999, the whole dang book.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid, xi.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid, 233.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Eve Poole, Robot Souls?<\/em>, 2017, \u00a0https:\/\/evepoole.com\/robot-souls\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My twenty-one-year-old son is agnostic. Or atheist. Or something else. He is not a Christian. Of that he is sure, but, if I understand him correctly, he doesn\u2019t find religion relevant enough to his life to be defined by a specific belief or religious system. This young adult was baptized, raised and confirmed in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":170,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2489,1778],"class_list":["post-36899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp02","tag-peterson","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/170"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36899"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36902,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36899\/revisions\/36902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}