Settling down in a new world

It’s time for the church to become post-postmodern.

In 1970, Alvin Toffler wrote the book Future Shock, which described a world of increasingly rapid change. What happens to the citizens of that world? Toffler used the already familiar language of culture shock – “the effect that immersion in a strange culture has on the unprepared visitor . . . bewilderment, frustration, and disorientation . . . a breakdown in communication, a misreading of reality. . . .”

Postmodernism was the response to future shock.

What does life in a world of endless change look like? Science and particularly physics supplied language that seemed to fit the bewilderment, frustration, and disorientation. “Relativity,” “the uncertainty principle,” “quantum leaps,” and best of all, “chaos theory,” entered our vocabularies as if we knew what they meant. The language of modern science morphed and entered the vocabulary and mood of our culture.

It is the language of confusion, and postmodern culture adopted ambiguity and uncertainty as its guiding premises. There are no reliable authorities or fixed laws, only the general impression that meaning must exist because life would be intolerable without this hope.

We are not the first generation to face overwhelming change, however. That status belongs to displaced peoples of all the ages, wrenched from their comfortable families, homes, and cultures and thrown violently into new worlds.

So what do people who have been torn from their homes do, once the shock has abated? They rebuild their lives in their new homeland.

And they usually discover that, whether they live in Israel or Babylon, in Africa or France, in India or Canada, much remains the same. And they begin to build on the things that do not change.

The shift from modern to postmodern has been somewhat shocking, but like displaced people throughout history there comes a time when you move on from the shock. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984, and even Arthur C. Clark’s Space Odyssey 2001 are now the subjects of history books. The once new world is old; future shock has come and gone.

We are no longer traumatized when we take boxes of cassette tapes to the dump, when mechanics can’t tell you what’s wrong with your car, that cameras no longer use film, and that DVD has made video obsolete. Such changes are the simple realities of our world and promise to go on indefinitely. We now know that the meaning of life doesn’t actually change every time a new technology or computer operating system enters our lives. We no longer have to translate the shock of incessant technological change into a doubt that the old moral codes still apply.

Future shock is gone and with its disappearance, postmodern culture has lost its reason for being. Its foundations have disappeared.

Now it’s time to define our new homeland on its own terms and not merely as a reaction to the trauma of endless change. It’s time to build on those things that don’t change.

And it is here that the church must find its voice again. The church’s message is about things that don’t change with technology.

As families fall apart around us the need for strong families and communities becomes more obvious. “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows . . . God sets the lonely in families” (Psalm 68:5–6). The time has come to stop lamenting the fact that the fatherless, widows, and lonely live among us and to begin joining God’s work of setting them into his family.

The ancient language of the God-shaped vacuum in the human soul resonates deeply in a culture of addictions. We, of all creation, are made in God’s image and crave the relationship that Adam and Eve had when God called to them in the cool of the evening. No wonder we have a sense of God’s presence when we walk in an ancient forest. But for all its beauty, God is not defined by a walk in the forest.

The most educated and richest century in the history of humanity is defined by brutality on an unimaginable scale. It has been a century of genocides, and the violence continues. We know the problem: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

Over all this is God’s astonishing grace. God sent his Son on a rescue mission. This mission is our unmoving cornerstone; it’s the eternal Good News to displaced people looking for foundations on which to rebuild their lives.

The language of postmodernism is seductive. There are plenty of anxieties, uncertainties, and fears looking for validation. They provide us with attention-grabbing hooks, but nothing more.

It’s time for the church to become post-postmodern. We have good news that doesn’t change.

James Toews is pastor at Neighbourhood Church, Nanaimo, B.C.