Introduction:

John 1:14 makes the startling statement that the eternal Word of God became flesh and lived among us. John Stott in one of his books commented that the Incarnation is the pattern by which the church should approach its mission. The premise upon which his statement rests is that Christ is not only the teacher; He is the lesson, the subject matter. This pattern of incarnational living is extremely critical at this, your cultural moment - a moment when your generation is no longer asking "is Christianity true," but "is Christianity worth believing?"

Many of your lives parallel the experience of a young man with whom I shared a couple of hours and a couple cups of coffee. Raised in a Christian home and bred on a diet of rational, propositional argument for defending the faith, he had little encounter with the relatively new kid on the block - postmodern unbelief. Many of ALC's graduates find themselves equally frustrated as they bring the propositional, rational arguments that were constructed in the context of modernity to bear on the postmodern context, a context that is essentially a "dislocating human condition" that goes far beyond mere relativism. It is a new philosophy that permeates the very fabric of western civilization. From its gatekeepers in education and the media to its storefront purveyors in everyday culture, postmodernism offers a new way of viewing the world. In fact, Christian thinker, Os Guinness, believes postmodernism represents a "watershed moment."

In attempting to understand this watershed moment, most scholars point out that the term "postmodern" refers to time rather than a distinct ideology. The modern period has ended; the postmodern period has begun. Gene Veith associates the shift from the modern to the postmodern in America with the culture revolution of the 1960's, symbolically climaxing with the demolition of the Pruitt-Igloe housing development in St. Louis on July 15, 1972. The Pruit-Igloe housing development was the poster boy for modernism with its exemplary high technology, modernistic aesthetics, and functional design. Yet as Veith points out, "the project was so impersonal and depressing, so crime-ridden and impossible to control, that it was uninhabitable." Furthermore, the demolition of the Pruitt-Igloe housing project is a paradigm for postmodernism. Veith critically explains, "the modern worldview constructs rationally designed systems in which human beings find it impossible to live…while it may have been appropriate to dynamite modernism, most postmodern theories refuse to provide a more habitable alternative."

Although the term postmodern denotes time, postmodernism deals in ideas. Postmodern theories and their departure from modernity constitute a second critical element that defines this watershed moment. Modernity as seen through the eyes of the Enlightenment triumphed 3 causes: 1) human reason, 2) scientific discovery, and 3) human autonomy. Postmodernism has jettisoned objective truth altogether. Gene Veith elaborates by saying that "the intellect is replaced by the will. Reason is replaced by emotion. Morality is replaced by relativism. Reality becomes a social construct." The popular postmodern expression "whatever" embodies abandon in that it affirms random impulses; truancy in that it refuses to step outside of self into the other; drift in that it yields to a meaningless determinism; guilt in that it allows for any moral direction; and promiscuity in that it surrenders to "whatever."

Based on the foregoing description of this cultural moment, as ALC graduates, you face the following challenges in the face of postmodern unbelief:

• Bringing an absolute message to a world that does not believe in absolutes.
• Marshalling propositional arguments in a post-forensic age.
• Affirming purpose and meaning in a meaningless, deterministic culture.

Because of the foregoing challenges, it is imperative that as ALC graduates, you learn to live "incarnationally." To do so, consider the following three directives based on how as Christ lived:

1A Live His Words - with the key value being truth:

His Words were absolutely true.

Allen Bloom stated in his book, The Closing of the American Mind, that you can be sure of one thing regarding today's college students, relativism is the culture of the day. He is absolutely correct. In the culture to which you go, there is no agreed upon source of truth - only "truths." Whether you read Nietzsche or the meta-narratives of Foucault, relativism rules the day, and absolute truth is viewed as an outdated and antiquated notion.

But the dire message that your generation needs to hear is couched in unequivocally absolute terms: I am the Way, the Life and the Truth. This will perhaps be your greatest challenge, to communicate an absolute message to a culture, that is, to fellow students, to neighbors, to the proprietors of local businesses, who reject absolutes.

Do you remember one of the interviews conducted by RC on the college campus that the visited - the young man wearing the designer t-shirt and jeans, standing brazenly tall and declaring without reservation that truth for him was personal - defined in his own individual terms. He is not alone nor the exception. But such a view will be unable to sustain when the storms of life begin to blow.

Such was the case with me. I was an exemplary product of the relativism of the 60's and early 70's. But there came a point in my early 20's when I questioned the direction and purpose of my life. Doing whatever made me happy was no longer making me happy. It was then that the absolute message of Jesus Christ's existence and work and call came to me - and I not only willingly responded, but with a sigh of relief. Finally I discovered a source of authority that not only had the right answers to my questions, but also the right to answer my questions.

A wise thinker of old once said, that "no sooner does the truth come into the soul's sight, but that the soul recognizes her as its first and old acquaintance."

So, as you live His words, be prepared to live the absolute message under the Lordship of Christ - for God will bring to your doorstep, those like me with honest questions. The absolute truth and authority intrinsic to the incarnation casts a different light upon the questions of our existence.

So, do not silence the questions - but by all means reconstruct the definitions, rephrase the conversation, challenge the assumptions - and let the absolute message of Jesus Christ resonate with hearts ready to embrace that first and old acquaintance.

His Words were existentially true.

Do you remember the challenge from Richard Weaver to consider the "metaphysical dream of the world" and the challenge from Stuart McAllister to "read the cultural symbols?" The need to understand the cultural moment against the backdrop of the Christian worldview is critical.

The cultural gods that have supplanted the rightful place of Yahweh are all around you. Consumerism has invaded our lives. As McAllister noted, Descartes's axiom of "I think therefore, I am" - has been replaced by "I shop, therefore, I am." Personal happiness, personal authenticity, attraction to the world's goodies have distracted this culture from the eternal and left no space for the possibility, nor plausibility of the Gospel. Reality is defined in temporal and personal terms.

Yet you have a gospel that is reality engaging. This is especially true, because although personal happiness and authenticity are the superlatives of the day - they are far from the dominant experience of most. Psychologist, Arthur Croaker, described the mood of the postmodern era as "panic."

You no doubt are familiar with the lyrics to the once popular song by Harry Chapin, "Cats in the Cradle." A ballad of a father preoccupied with his career and accumulations that he missed the truly important with his son. I believe the song became so popular because its message resonated with the plight of too many similar scenarios. His wife, who wrote the words to the song, asked him when he was going to slow down the torrid pace of his life. "At the end of the summer," he replied. Tragically and ironically, Harry Chapin was killed in a car accident that very summer.

Perhaps even truer now than in his own time, are the words of St. Augustine: "Our hearts are restless, until they find their rest in Thee." Therein lays your "ontological advantage" in communicating to a world that is in search for something. You must be navigators of truth. Carefully, thoughtfully, creatively steering the absolute truth of the eternal Logos to bear upon the heart, mind and daily lives of your generation that is frantically searching for something and bearing the fruit of panic.

2A Live His Ways - with the key value being authenticity.

Behind postmodern skepticism regarding the Christian faith is actually that of modernity's elevation of the individual. As Christians, we often parry with a quick defense of the individual. After all, isn't the essence of the Christian faith a personal, individual relationship with God through the redeeming work of Jesus Christ? Furthermore, from an empirical standpoint, the various totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century should signify a warning against the tyranny of the collective.

However, on closer inspection, Christian theism should echo the concern that postmodern thinkers are raising regarding the radical individualism of modernity. While rejecting the self-determining, autonomous individual who stands isolated from any historical and cultural context, postmodernism emphasizes the "individual-within-community." In fact, the individual-in-the-abstract does not exist. The individual always stands in relationship - relationship with God, self, others, and the natural world. The individual is pivotal to human discussion because his volitional power affects those relationships. Although the individual occupies this pivotal position, his position should not be misconstrued as self-determining, resulting in the radical individualism of modernity.

The underlying, but often missed, concern of many postmodernists as they challenge the notion of the individual is the concern for authenticity. This concern is often expressed as dismay over the Christian's allegiance to doctrine yet a disavowed sense of community.

Here again, postmodernists offer a legitimate critique of the Christian's active acceptance of the individual but passive stance toward community. At the heart of this critique is the postmodern understanding of identity construction. Paul Ricoeur, in Oneself as Another, examines the themes of narrative identity and personal identity and their link to a philosophy of action in relation to others. Standing in harmony with other communitarians, Ricoeur affirms that people come to an understanding of self through the mediation of the community in which they participate. Their sense of identity as personal narrative develops through the narrative of the community. Therefore, the community mediates a transcendent narrative that encompasses such traditions as truth, virtue, and the common good, that then drives identity construction.

Christian theism should recognize this communal phenomenon as it relates to identity construction. Foundational to this construction is the reality of the Trinity and the fact that God's identity is defined in communal terms. Furthermore, the Christian lives in the context of many communities, one of which is the church. It is this community that should strongly shape the identity construction of its members as it mediates the metanarrative that is summed up in Christ. Such identity construction answers the question of authenticity. As believers live out the metanarrative as mediated through the church and mirror the community expressed in the Trinity, the watching world will observe something authentic. The gospel will thereby be presented not only propositionally, but also the gospel will be embodied in relationships that are affirming, authentic, and reconciling. This authenticity in relationships will answer a hunger for which the postmodern longs and finds conspicuously absent in modernity.

3A Live His Works - with the key value being love.

Throughout our discussions in Christian worldview class, I have reminded you (endlessly…:) of what Francis Schaeffer called the "final apologetic": love. Love - not defined in postmodern terms such as tolerance or sentimentality - but love as defined and exemplified by the Incarnation. We must learn to love as Christ loved - for He is not only loving, He is love. As one author has said, we need to be a loving church to a dying culture.

Let me suggest just two reasons as to why demonstrating true, biblical love is such a critical issue at this cultural moment.

First, our students are inheriting a culture that speaks much of love but demonstrates just the opposite. In one of his books, Dostoevsky depicts a conversation between two characters who are discussing hell. "Hell," says one of them, "must be the inability to love." And in that sense, as Ravi Zacharias pointed out, all hell has broken loose on our culture; for with all of the talk of love, we witness betrayals and atrocities to our fellow man as those in multiple American high schools can sadly attest. We witness the break up and break down of the family - the very formation center of love and human relationships.

You will remember our literary journey through the musings of the French Enlightenment - and especially that of Voltaire's Candide - where we witnessed first hand how far from God's intentions the human sensibilities have strayed. The exercise of such sensibilities were misdirected at best - and often purposely directed toward personal enjoyment and fulfillment apart from any absolute moral base.

But love by definition has nothing to do with self-gratification. Love is the posture of the soul and its attachments are binding. Love is sacrificial - an issue of the will and not merely the emotions and sensibilities. Such a definition of love will take us our entire lives to flesh out. But then again, we have a teacher who is love personified. As Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica regarding love, "You have no need for someone to write to you, for you, yourselves are taught by God to love."

But then there is a second reason why love was the great seal that Christ placed upon His redemptive work - why love is such a superlative testimony - and that is the issue of authenticity. As Schaeffer pointed out, if we are to expect the non-Christian to believe that God exists and that we really believe what we profess to be true - then we must wear the mark. Love is the clear, objective standard of truth.

In your consistent demonstration of love, even in very taxing situations, others will see something of a crucified love. That kind of love demonstrates something authentic and genuine. Show that to the world, and perhaps as Dorothy Sayers has said, "the world might see something worth believing in."

Conclusion:

And so, to sum up, remember Paul's words in Ephesians 5:1-2: "Be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love just as Christ also loved you."

A big task for high school graduates...but remember, your God is the God of the mustard seed. He simply asks that you walk by faith, trusting Him to do for you what you cannot do for yourself. So, keep a big God before your eyes and remember your calling.

C.S. Lewis put it this way: "Our Christian destiny is to be as little as possible ourselves; to acquire a fragrance not our own, but borrowed; to become clean mirrors filled with the image of a face that is not ours."

Live His Words; live His Ways; live His Works; live incarnationally. God bless you.



see previous messages: august 2005, september 2005, spring 2006