A Creed For Postmodern Times
In the age which has been dubbed the “postmodern,” we find ourselves disillusioned with claims of truth and absolute certainty. After all, how can we know what is true?
Until the complete global social and political upheaval of the 20th century, the “modern” way of thinking — that is, the ways in which people thought since the Enlightenment in the 17th century — was quite good enough.
Let’s back up a little with a minor history lesson:
The Enlightenment: the period of time in the 17th century in which scientific thought and discovery became the main way in which to think of the world. Prior to the Enlightenment, the sacred and spiritual things held a far more prominent place in popular thought. After the Enlightenment? Not so much. Instead, reason, logic, and the scientific method ruled the day. What could not be proven (that is, observed with the senses) could not be true (that is, reality).
Simply, the result of the Enlightenment is the modern drive to discover what is true based on what is observable in nature.
The Optimism of the 20th Century: The 1900s opened with a crash-bang and people were incredibly enthusiastic about recent scientific discoveries and technological inventions such as mass industrialization, the lightbulb, the motorcar, the aeroplane, the telegram, and the telephone. What else could humans create? The possibilities seemed limitless! The world shrunk as communication and travel seemed easier than ever before.
The Complete Crash of the World Wars, the Great Depression, and the Nuclear Threat: By the 1950s, all enthusiasm about the potential for humanity to do great and wonderful things with their many inventions has been soured by the reality that the same inventions and discoveries could — and would — be used for great harm. War, famine, and disease decimated the world’s population. People began to distrust the established order; after all, wouldn’t all governments and powers ultimately use their resources to harm others? Nationalism, communism, and fascism all crashed spectacularly, resulting in a common disillusionment. Established religion took a hit as church-goers became dissatisfied with how churches had or hadn’t responded to one crisis after another. Faith became little more than a fairy tale.
It’s no wonder that we then leapt directly into the social revolution of the seventies.
Social Revolution: In the 1970s, our world began scrambling to find meaning in the madness. The “postmodern era,” a hotly debated concept, emerged. Quite simply, postmodernism refers to the shift of thought from “What is true?” to “Why does it matter?”
Why do scientific, academic, and technological advances matter if they don’t result in positive change for culture and society? Why should we follow the established order when we’ve been traumatized by them repeatedly? Why not overthrow social hierarchies and traditional gender and racial roles altogether?
Why not spend your days pursuing what feels good and right for you, regardless of what others think? Thus, the stereotypes of drugs, sex, and ‘hippies’ in the 1970s-80s were born.
The Millennial Age: The lightning speed at which our world has developed technology — including communication, the Internet, medical advances, metaphysics, space discovery, and probably much more that I don’t comprehend — has left the millennial population (by which I mean anyone who knew life ‘before’ the technological boom of the 90s and early 2000s) whirling. Our world is at (relative) peace; no major world wars, famines, or disasters have happened in a couple of generations — at least for those in the Euro-American sphere of the world. There is a growing appreciation for the ‘other’ due to feminism, the Black Lives Matter movement, a greater awareness of the harm of Indigenous residential schools, and the influx of immigrants into Euro-American nations.
Yet, there is a pervasive sense that social media does not, shockingly, connect one with others. Depression, anxiety, and mental illness have soared in the past twenty years (see Statistics Canada for more information). The COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated these feelings of disconnection, isolation, and loneliness. More than ever, we realize that we need people. However, we are unsure how to do this in a world that no longer trusts churches and established organizations and, despite the social movements listed above, we distrust people who are not like us.
We are where we are because of our past, whether we like it or not. As such, history matters. Whether we like it or not, we live in an age now called “postmodernity,” which has been influenced by each of the ‘ages’ listed above and comes with its own characteristics.
Note: My brief survey primarily discusses Western history (i.e. Western Europe and North America), which is not comprehensive of the entire world. However, it is essential to understand Western history as it relates to the current state of the world in which Westerners live. It is my hope that we do not ‘stay’ only in the West, though. Since we have access to many resources from across the entire globe today, we ought to seek to learn and understand the histories of the majority world, too.
Our Postmodern Concern: Why Does it Matter?
I believe the primary concern of today’s postmodern world is wondering why truth matters to us on a practical level. Does it meet our postmodern needs (to be explored shortly)? Does it make any impact on our daily lives? Our relationships? Our work?
Our modern forefathers spent so much time trying to find the truth through scientific discovery that they equated science with truth.
How often have you heard someone say, “But it’s science! Therefore, it’s true.”?
I read a quote in Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart the other day:
Science is not the truth. Science is finding the truth. When science changes its opinion, it didn’t lie to to you. It learned more.
Brene Brown, Atlas of the Heart, 134
Science is the process of discovery; it’s not the epitome of Truth.
Modernist historians and theologians fell into the same trap as their scientific counterparts. They researched the historicity and validity of the Bible, asking questions like:
How do we know that the Bible we have today is really the original Bible?
Who wrote the Bible?
Does archaeology back up the biblical stories?
Was Jesus a real, living person who walked on the earth?
Is the Bible infallible (without error)?
Did God really create the earth in seven days, or did he use evolutionary processes?
If they could answer these questions with a resounding ‘yes,’ then the Bible (and God) is true and therefore warranted believing in.
Proof of God/faith/Christianity resulted in a declaration of faith.
Approaches like this have led to the Christian subdiscipline of apologetics, which refers to the defense of the Christian faith. Lee Strobel’s A Case for Christ, A Case for Faith, and A Case for Creation are examples of such Christian apologetic works.
However, we have a problem. As important as those questions have been to work out through our history, we’ve realized that some things cannot be ‘proven’ according to scientific theory. This has led to
People leaving established Christianity and spirituality altogether because it can’t be ‘proven’ (e.g. agnosticism or atheism), or
People turning to other spiritualities and religions that address the uncertain, intangible nature of faith better than modern Western Christianity has (e.g. panentheism, relativism, universalism, Buddhism, etc.).
By and large, our postmodern world realizes that science doesn’t have all the answers and that human beings are spiritual creatures.
Quite simply, people are less concerned with finding answers than finding a point of connection — with themselves, others, creation, and a ‘higher power.’ We need relationships, to feel like we belong and are connected to others and the world. We sense something greater than ourselves, a higher purpose or power that can only be described in spiritual terms, not scientific ones.
There is a reason why Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism have become quite popular in the Western world. People seek a sense of connectedness with their own souls and the souls of others, recognizing where Western modernism has often crushed all suggestions of the soul or spirituality.
Unfortunately, the rigidity of Western Christianity has often been more concerned with being right than being loving and connected to others.
That breaks my heart.
Despite common evangelical thought, modernist Western perspectives are not inherently Christian. Christianity far preceded modernism and the Enlightenment! It existed 1500 years prior to the Renaissance. Christianity and modernism are not equal to one another.
In fact, Christianity is not a Western religion at all. Jesus was a Jew, which makes Christianity a Middle Eastern religion.
Western modernism has distorted the original Christian message for fear that we might accidentally communicate relativism (truth is relative to your context and cannot be absolute) or panentheism (the divine is found within all of creation) if we insist that Christianity is about relationships.
Christianity is about relationships and connecting with ourselves, God, others, and creation.
Today, Christianity is flourishing in the majority world far more than in the Western world, and I can’t help but wonder if it is because they have reclaimed (or retained) the original context of the biblical gospel narratives and sense of community better than we have in our individualistic culture.
The message of Jesus is that he loves people.
He came to restore our relationships to God, one another, and creation by the power of his great love and goodness. He came to bring newness of life and a new way of being to everyone, and he demonstrated it by his own self-sacrificial love by dying on a cross.
This is the absolute truth.
However, Christianity, as a religion, is made up of people, which means that it is subject to all the flaws of our various cultures, ages, and ways of thinking.
Therefore, Christianity must be continually formed to the likeness of Christ.
This means being familiar with the original contexts and narratives of the gospel and seeking to apply in our current age its principles of truth, goodness, love, and community as established by Jesus.
While we do not disregard the spiritual and theological giants of the modern age (e.g. John Calvin, Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, John and Charles Wesley, etc.), we must recognize that our world and worldview have shifted from what it was in their time.
In fact, these great theologians were only responding to the arguments and problems of their own time (e.g. the corruption of the Catholic church and the role of church/state). Therefore, their responses and works need to be evaluated accordingly by today’s scholars. How much of the situation then is relevant to us now? (The answer may be “far less than evangelical Christians often assume;” however, one can always learn from the patterns of history.)
The great creeds of our faith, though they communicate truth that has been discerned from Scripture and by dozens if not hundreds of faithful Christian theologians, scholars, and pastors, are contextual. They were written to declare what it meant to be a steadfast Christian during the issues of their time.
For example, the Nicene Creed of 325 AD and its subsequent revisions up to 381 AD addressed the common pagan belief of Gnosticism and how Jesus was not Gnostic. This was a hot topic during that time and had significant implications for how people lived their lives. Therefore, the great Christian leaders had to explore how the gospel of Jesus spoke to the issue of Gnosticism.
The task of the theologian and pastor is always to ask the question:
What are the issues facing our people today, and how is the good news of Jesus relevant to us?
Please don’t misunderstand me. The good news of Jesus does not change.
How we talk about Jesus and how he relates to our lives does change depending on our current culture, language, politics, and worldview. The language we use to describe our faith changes so we can communicate it best to our time and place.
Therefore, the good news of Jesus is contextual — the ways in which it has been interpreted over the centuries is each generation’s attempt at applying and relating to the gospel in their own time. Likewise, present interpretations must be relevant to the issues of our time.
For example, how is the good news of Jesus relevant to
The racial issues of Black Lives Matter and Truth and Reconciliation with the Indigenous populations,
The gender issues of the Pride community and feminism, or
The sociopolitical issues of patriotism, Christian nationalism, and Republicanism?
The good news of Jesus isn’t a message only for a distant time and place. It is real and applicable now in our postmodern age. Jesus always speaks life, goodness, and joy through his community, the church; that is the unchanging gospel message.
And so, I’ve written up a new creed, taken from the ancient creeds and the Scriptures, to consider how the good news of Jesus truly matters to those of us living now in a postmodern world.
A Creed For Postmodern Times
I believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit,
Three Persons forever in communion as One.
I believe in One God, the Creator of the universe.
I believe that he created human beings to reflect his good image
And be in relationship with him,
To take care of his creation and to love one another.
Humans rejected him,
Inviting chaos, evil, and brokenness into the world.
So he chose one nation, Israel, to be in relationship with him.
He made a covenant with them,
To live as better human beings —
In love, justice, and goodness — and
To show the rest of the world how to live as better human beings too.
They also rejected him.
I believe that God came to earth as Jesus of Nazareth,
Fully embodied as a human being
To show humanity how to be whole and healed.
He is the True Human Being who loved and served the people.
He created a new community that followed his ways
Of compassion, generous love, and humble service.
He selflessly gave himself to the ruling powers,
Who killed him because they feared his message
Of a radical new way of life.
I believe that Jesus gave himself so that the relationships
Between humanity, creation, and God could be repaired.
He defeated evil and death,
And sent his Spirit to live among his new people,
The ones who chose to follow his way of life.
I believe that the Holy Spirit empowers those
Who listen to and follow him —
All ethnicities, languages, races, genders, and classes —
To live as a new community of healed people
Who live and work to heal the still-broken world in which we live.
Through us, the Spirit touches
The brokenness, chaos, and evil
And restores it to what is true, good, and beautiful.
I believe that those who are in relationship
With the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
Are waiting for Jesus to return
To fully restore and heal our world
With his justice and love.
Until then, we live as his people, his church,
Striving, by the power of the Spirit and the love of Jesus Christ,
To make whole what has been broken
In the ways that we live, work, play, and rest,
Together.
