{"id":449,"date":"2014-01-17T14:56:41","date_gmt":"2014-01-17T14:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=449"},"modified":"2014-08-12T23:44:51","modified_gmt":"2014-08-12T23:44:51","slug":"we-have-all-been-here-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/we-have-all-been-here-before\/","title":{"rendered":"We Have All Been Here Before"},"content":{"rendered":"

Certain narratives flow through our world defining and explaining where we have come, where we stand, and possibly where we are going. The television series Lost <\/em>was a perfect postmodern tale.\u00a0 A mixture of genres colliding into a huge question of existence, reality, and meaning, played through characters with the names of famous philosophers, scientists and thinkers.\u00a0 Certain characters represented certain narratives of how human\u2019s deal with reality and meaning.\u00a0 Furthermore, the Gilligan\u2019s Island <\/em>plot centered on a group of people \u201clost\u201d on an island, all having the same d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu experience of having been on the island before.\u00a0 There is a creeping mystery of a bunch of lost people sensing that they are meant for more, and that the mysterious force of the island has something for them.<\/p>\n

What is often amazing is that in a postmodern world, where meta-narratives no longer hold sway, so much of the world still ascribes to one or the other.\u00a0 This is of course ironic in and of itself, as postmodernism is an explanative narrative.\u00a0 What Charles Taylor enthusiastically jumps into in his A Secular Age<\/em> is helping us to see how modern man understands history and time differently, so that we now perceive of ourselves as progressing through history. \u00a0Taylor exhaustively chronicles Western society\u2019s slow slide into secularism, or a time when believing is an option. \u00a0As such Taylor thrashes the simplicity of secularization theory, that humanity through wit and reason has arrived at an enlightened state, banishing religion to the wayside for the betterment of the entire world.\u00a0 As a Christian, this often feels like tiresome elitist stuff\u2026 accusing believers as being bounded by cultural and epistemological prisons.\u00a0 Taylor turns the argument, taking us on a tour of the emergence of modern thought from the rise of Christian Reform movements which in attempting to raise all out of the medieval Catholic stratified nominalist mindset, essentially democratized church and society.\u00a0 This reform minded bent, when combined with the shifts to Deism (to better explain the scientific world) and the failures of Western society and church, called for a process of civilization of the world, which led to a radical shifts in elevating people out of a pre-modern mindset. Taylor calls it a \u201crage for order\u201d against the disorder and magic of the pre-modern world (63). \u00a0\u00a0In turn, this necessity led to the disenchantment of the world, and the rise of humanism, which has come to roost in the sense of invulnerability of man, that he lacks nothing, and needs no God.\u00a0 Taylor hits the nail on the head by seeing the bigger shift in human epistemology here, and not in grand subtraction stories.\u00a0 Secular society finds it ultimate expression and reason for leaving belief in \u201cauthenticity, or expressive individualism, in which people are encourage to find their own way, discover their own fulfillment, \u2018do their own thing (299).\u2019\u201d \u00a0\u00a0What emerges is that atheists and unbelievers are just as constrained and conditioned by the radical shifts in thinking.\u00a0 If we can get here, through iterations of human philosophical shifts, to a growing acceptance and idealism in humanism, then we can certainly get back, or get to another place.\u00a0\u00a0 We are not fixed in deterministic time.\u00a0 We have been here before.<\/p>\n

If anything, the Reformation and Protestantism opened up Christianity to new possibilities, and the shattering of homogeneity and corruption of power.\u00a0 He rightly asserts that gradual slide in Protestant countries, while highlighting the violent conflict in Protestantism which broke down the formal artificial walls between mystery, monks, professional priests of the true spiritual depth, with the nominalism of the average citizen.\u00a0 Unfortunately, its first steps went too far and not far enough all at the same time.\u00a0 They did not usher in Taylor\u2019s network of agape, and banished mystery (setting the stage for Western disenchantment), but still opened the door to change, and democracy and equality.\u00a0 But, this is probably the church in its essence, always reforming, always seeking to be a network of agape, yet falling short, geriatric waiting for the next iteration.\u00a0 We see this soon after the Reformation with the Wesleyans and the rise of Evangelicalism, and now with Pentecostalism.\u00a0 What will be next?\u00a0 We have been here before.<\/p>\n

Thus, for Taylor, secular modern society is that which finds human flourishing involving \u201cno relation to anything higher (151).\u201d It is important to note, that Taylor doesn\u2019t see the society as totally lost.\u00a0 For him, secularity is not a full out rejection of faith, but the need for competition between the many, and the end of naivet\u00e9 in belief. \u00a0It cannot be taken for granted anymore.\u00a0 This is an important point, where many lament the loss of privilege in Christendom, or on the more Anabaptist side, revel in the ashes.\u00a0 But, neither is a proper response, and both are knee jerk reactions, that fail to grapple with their own approbation of victimization.\u00a0 As Taylor laments the dark side of modernism in hyper individualism, personal rights, which find it\u2019s ultimate break from the stale bonds of the pre-modern in meaning in full sexual gratification and expression.\u00a0 Our society is drenched in this, and in the individualism to buy, be, to express one\u2019s self for one\u2019s own satisfaction and happiness.\u00a0 This is modern human flourishing.\u00a0 It is not found in loving God and loving neighbor.\u00a0 But, can it continue to be good and just?\u00a0 To express limits, or hesitations, is to offend (and to be pre-modern), which is now the highest order of oppression.\u00a0 In a society more concerned with battling housewives than wars and suffering, has exclusive humanism now begun to swing towards an inevitable collapse of meaning? Everyone is now a victim of someone else\u2019s oppressive opinion, while real people suffer and die in places like Syria.\u00a0 As such, modern society finds very little outside of itself to believe in, to guide it, to give it actual meaning.\u00a0 It is fragmented, and lonely, chasing after nothingness.\u00a0 Hollow men indeed.<\/p>\n

Taylor makes a keen observation here, in that Christianity has not had its full impact in Western culture as \u201cwhat we got was not a network of agape, but rather a disciplined society in which categorical relations have primacy, and therefore norms (158).\u201d\u00a0 God\u2019s in breaking of radical love has not fully saturated the society and church.\u00a0 But, this is not to say that it hasn\u2019t at times and even today.\u00a0 Taylor doesn\u2019t lose hope here; instead he believes that modern society is effectually doomed by its lack of mystery, meaning and ultimate transcendence.\u00a0 Like the searching heroes of Lost<\/em> mankind is still looking for ultimate meaning and purpose.\u00a0 Just this last week, brilliant writer Malcolm Gladwell wrote of his conversion back to Christianity by finding ultimate meaning, mystery, purpose, and agape power in God:\u00a0 http:\/\/www.relevantmagazine.com\/culture\/books\/how-i-rediscovered-faith<\/a><\/p>\n

This secular age, can and probably will pass.\u00a0 We can get back to where we were before, and if our churches and lives exhibit agape love, then all the more better to establish again societies where human flourishing in God can happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Certain narratives flow through our world defining and explaining where we have come, where we stand, and possibly where we are going. The television series Lost was a perfect postmodern tale.\u00a0 A mixture of genres colliding into a huge question of existence, reality, and meaning, played through characters with the names of famous philosophers, scientists […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"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":[21,189],"class_list":["post-449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminglp","tag-taylor-secular","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449","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\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1777,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions\/1777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}