Postmodernity, wrote Jean
Francois Lyotard, entails an incredulity towards metanarratives.[1] We might put this the other way around. Postmodernity finds mini narratives credible, the narratives of local communities. That is, that a story gives meaning to one’s
own life is sufficient to make it right or true, without regard to some larger
understanding. Simply put, we create our own meaning and identity.
Constructed Identity, Not Universal, Natural
Law
This way of thinking has now
reached the level of the Supreme Court (Obergefell
v. Hodges, 26 June, 2015).[2] One might say that this is not the first time
the court has interpreted law in light of postmodern thinking, but the decision
announced today to legalize same-sex ‘marriage’ is a prime example of
postmodern logic. Marriage is what we say it is, not what God established
in creation.
We need to recognize, however,
that what we refer to today as postmodern is a perspective that has long been
with Western society. The focus of
Modernity was on establishing universal laws and principles through a
scientific rather than faith-based mode of argument. The undermining of faith and the affirmation
of rational argument, particularly scientific investigation, required a freedom
from established social and intellectual conventions. After doubt
regarding what came before so as to argue from incontrovertible foundations (the
Cartesian method) came a prioritizing of liberty
among the other values. Freedom was a
way to pursue a different path from the social forces that used to direct
society, as exemplified in the American and French Revolutions at the end of
the 18th century. Freedom
came to entail a personal pursuit of happiness, a construction of one’s own identity. This pursuit of freedom ran alongside
scientific exploration, although the two were not by any means in full
accord. If science found that something
was an incontrovertible fact, those who wished to resist a universal, natural,
and objective metanarrative found their freedom challenged.
Indeed, postmodernity believes
that identity is constructed, not handed down to us by religion, government,
science, or anything else. We have in
recent weeks discovered some fascinating examples of the idea that we can
construct our own identities. One man
insists that his sexual identity is not confined to his biological make-up but
is rather something that he can construct.
A woman of European descent determines that she should be able to define
her identity in terms of her own choice, and so decides to consider herself
black.
The reason I earlier suggested
that the Supreme Court has already ventured into this arena of postmodern
thought was in the case of Roe v. Wade (1973). The court decided that being considered human
was not based on having life alone but also on viability—the viability of the
foetus. It also found that a woman’s
rights were to be considered in this matter: a woman had the right to determine
whether or not to ‘terminate a pregnancy.’
In this decision, the meaning of human life was restricted by
independence (the child’s freedom
from its mother by being able to live on its own) and rights (the woman’s freedom to choose what she wished to do
with her foetus). Thus the Supreme Court
at that time moved in the direction of the logic of construction of one’s own
identity rather than affirm a more universal understanding of human life.
Today’s decision by the Supreme
Court was a major affirmation of constructed identity. If two people of the same sex wish to
‘marry,’ then they have the ‘right’ to construct their own meaning of marriage. In antiquity, Stoic philosophers argued that
identity was God-given. One of their
terms for homosexuality was ‘against nature’ (para physis). Thus, one
philosophical tradition without any Christian influence opposed homosexuality
on the grounds that it was not according to nature or the laws God had written
into creation. This was precisely what
Jews and Christians at the time argued from a different tradition of moral
thought—a theological tradition based on the Old Testament. They believed that God’s purposes in and
definition of marriage were to be found in his creating male and female for
marriage to one another (Gen. 2.24).
This is also the basis for Paul’s opposition to homosexuality in general
in Rom. 1.24-28.
What we find today, however, is
an incredulity towards a creation metanarrative. The culture’s conviction that we can
construct our identities runs fully against the Biblical teaching that God made
things a certain way and that humans were not to go against this. The idea that we can construct our identity
is something that came to full expression over one hundred years ago in the
West in Existentialist philosophy.
Existentialists taught that humans were ‘thrown’ into existence, that
their existence precedes essence. So, for instance, in Friedrich Nietzsche's view, the
'superman' was the one who exercised his will freely; he created his own
identity (see Thus Spoke Zarathustra). Or, in
Jean-Paul Sartre’s view, we begin with ‘nothingness’ and need to create our ‘being’
through our own choices and actions (see Being
and Nothingness). This means
that we do not begin with some definition of ourselves to be found in nature or
God’s laws but that, through the decisions we freely make, we construct our
essence, our identity.
Thus, what Christians in the West
now face is suppression of their ‘metanarrative’ of creation and opposition to a God who has his laws that stand against one’s freedom to define
things according to the way he or she desires.
We Christians, instead, believe that God made us and that we are, as the
Old Testament often says, to walk in his ways.
As Paul says, ‘…you are not your own’ (1 Cor. 6.19). We find ourselves challenging a culture that
lives by the value of freedom without regard for God.
Limits of Engagement and Church Discipline
Love is a major part of the
Christian life. We are called to unity
in Christ and to show love for those outside the faith. Yet love is not to be diluted into our
culture’s affirmation of tolerance—an affirmation arising out of the conviction
that everyone gets to construct his or her own identity. Indeed, ‘love’ for Christians has more to do
with directing people back to the God of all creation, showing them what it is
to live—to find life!—in his ways, and telling them the good news that Jesus
died for their sins and that the Holy Spirit is given to enable them to live
righteous and holy lives.
This is also why church
discipline is so necessary: those claiming to be believers are not free to live
however they wish in the Christian community (as we see Paul argue in 1 Cor.
5). Christian love, if Biblical, is
based on living according to God’s precepts.
As Jesus said to his disciples, ‘"If you love me, you will keep my
commandments’ (John 14.15). The notion, touted by some, that the church
should be welcoming to homosexuals living in homosexual marriages is not
Biblical—no more so than accepting persons willfully practicing bestiality or
living in incestuous relationships—two other examples of adults exercising
their freedom in sexual matters. We need
to extend these examples to other sins than just sexual sins, of course. Persons struggling to become free of sin are
certainly to be welcomed and helped, but persons willfully continuing in their
sin and denying that their actions are sinful are to be excommunicated.
Excommunication is a loving gesture to show willfully sinful
people that their way leads to ultimate judgement (1 Cor. 5.5) and exclusion
from the Kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6.9-11).
If the person is simply welcomed into fellowship, this toleration of sin
will give the person a mistaken conviction that God, too, will not judge him or
her. (Similarly, to discipline children
playing with fire to teach them that fire is dangerous and that they will be
burned is a loving thing to do. If someone
does not believe fire burns and sees playing with it a beautiful thing, he or
she may think such discipline is abusive.)
Moreover, failure to offer loving
judgement[3] of
persons continuing to live in willful sin undermines the purity of the community
of believers in Christ. Paul sees the church as ‘unleavened bread,’ a
community that has prepared itself to celebrate the Passover of Christ’s sacrifice
(1 Cor. 5.7-8).
1 Corinthians
5:6-8 6
Your boasting is not a good thing. Do you not know that a little yeast leavens
the whole batch of dough? 7
Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, as you really are
unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. 8 Therefore, let us celebrate the
festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the
unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
The holiness of the
community must be upheld, and the church is not a community without standards
of membership. Some expect this to be
the case, since their postmodern notion of community and Christian unity is
that everyone accepts everyone else no matter what.
To get at a Christian
understanding of community, consider two golf courses. One golf course is owned by a wealthy club
with exclusive membership, such as only for men with a certain income. The other golf course is open to any players. Some people think that Christian standards of
community make it like the club-owned course.
In actual fact, the church is more like the second golf course: everyone
is welcome. Both golf courses, however,
expect and require persons to play golf on the course. If several people showed up at either golf
course to play Frisbee instead of golf, they would be disrupting the purpose of
the golf course. Christians welcome
people into their midst, but their purpose is to create a righteous community
that walks in the ways of the Lord. For
a person entering into such a community but willfully sinning—whether through
unjust business practices or homosexual practice—would be like a Frisbee player
showing up at a golf course that welcomes everyone to play golf.
Attending homosexual ‘weddings’
(‘But he is a relative!’) is just one example of compromise of Christian
witness that believers are already having to consider. One might be
tempted to argue in this case that Christians should not judge those outside
the faith, only those inside (so 1 Cor. 5.9-11), and so attend such a wedding
ceremony. However, attending a homosexual wedding goes way beyond not judging—it
involves a level of affirmation similar to participating in idol worship. We should doubt
that John the Baptist (or Jesus) would have attended Herod Antipas’s wedding
ceremony: he divorced his wife in order to marry his sister-in-law (Mark
6.18). The argument that we should not participate in some sinful
practice is one already put forward with the photographers and bakers who do
not want to support an act that is sinful. Persons withdrawing money from
Wells Fargo bank or no longer buying Tylenol because of their promotion of
homosexuality in television advertisements are doing so not because these
companies serve all customers but because they are advocating a sinful way of
life (these are two recent examples in the USA). The early Corinthian
believers had questions similar to these: should they attend ceremonies
(banquets, birthday parties, etc.) with their unbelieving neighbours when a god
or goddess was also part of the celebration? To this question, eating
food sacrificed to idols, Paul gave a clear answer when it involved affirmation
of or participation in such ceremonies, ‘No!’ Believers could eat meat
sacrificed to idols bought in the marketplace—when the food did not involve
participation in or celebration of idolatry.
But they were in no way to eat food sacrificed to idols in the context
of celebration or worship of the god or goddess (1 Cor. 8-10). The Xhosa
asking whether he as a Christian can 'go to the mountain' (to participate in
religious ceremonies of manhood) is asking the same question in a different
cultural context: ‘Can a Christian participate in ceremonies that lead to
accepting him as a man within the community but that also involve non-Christian
activities, such as sacrifice?’ Paul also appears to be addressing the
subject in 2 Corinthians:
2 Corinthians
6:14-18 Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. For what partnership is there between
righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship is there between light and
darkness? 15 What agreement
does Christ have with Beliar? Or what does a believer share with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement has the temple
of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,
"I will live in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and
they shall be my people. 17
Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and
touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you,
18 and I will be your father, and you shall be my sons and
daughters, says the Lord Almighty."
Such a theological argument
extends beyond engaging in temple worship with others in society; it has to do
with limitations on Christian engagement within society. While we should leave judgement to God of
those living against his ways, we equally should not celebrate or participate
in their sinful acts.
The Gospel, moreover,
offers real change, not just forgiveness of sins (1 Cor. 6.11). But the
church that thinks it is doing well by showing unconditional love to persons
willfully continuing in sin is a church that has affirmed that we create our
own identity and receive God’s smile of approval for our creativity and
exercise of freedom. It is also a church that denies the power of God to
transform sinners. Here, too, mission in the West runs contrary to the
culture. The Gospel message is not only that God forgives us for our
sins—and homosexual practice is a sin—it is also about the life-changing power
of God at work through the Holy Spirit in our lives to release us from what
binds us and frees us to walk in the ways of the Lord. This is good news.
Conclusion
Postmodern, Western culture is
the culmination of an experiment in freedom initiated already in the
Enlightenment. It parted from the
universal, science-based, affirmation of some metanarrative or other that
defined Modernity. It affirmed the
construction of identity over whatever claims were made in Modernity and
whatever claims were made in religious faith.
It has come to see sexual identity as constructed. With today’s announcement by the Supreme
Court that same-sex coupling can be considered to be marriage, we have another
example of an authority understanding freedom as license and identity as
locally (individually or socially) constructed.
This argument is easily applied to incestuous and polygamous marriages. It probably also applies to bestial
relationships and the pornography industry.
As long as ‘freedom’ is protected, what is to limit one’s own
construction of a sexual identity or one’s own definition of what constitutes
‘marriage’?
Christian mission to the West,
then, faces several new realities. It is
a mission in a post-Christian society.
It is conducted by a minority community facing increasing opposition
from the larger society. It challenges a
Western notion of freedom. It finds
itself announcing a universal message—the Gospel for all people—to solve a
universal problem—sin. In order to do
so, it claims that there is a universal right and wrong established in the
sovereign will of the Creator. This is
experienced by Postmodern society as simply incredulous, since the assumption
is that truth is local, that identity is constructed—even sexual identity.
How, then, should we live? Christians can be glad that there is an
increasing clarity about what it means to be a Christian. In previous generations in the West, the
faith was regularly compromised as the Church, government, and society
negotiated a political settlement about how to live within ‘Christendom.’ There is simply no room left for such
compromises: we are now all Anabaptists.
(Anabaptists are known for, among other things, refusing to compromise
Biblical, Christian faith and practice in the face of pressure from governments
and society—including established, state-sanctioned churches. They lived against the grain of culture where
it was contrary to Biblical teaching. Unlike Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, Orthodox, and Roman Catholics in the 16th century, they saw the Church as radically separate from the State and were often persecuted.) This
frees us to bear a clearer witness, even if persecution comes with the
package. This also brings with it a
needed purifying of the Church. And it
also means that we have a challenge not only to offer a particular message to a
hostile culture but also to offer a new vision of community to it. The new, post-Christian climate in the West
calls for Christians to stop attending church and start being the Church.
In all this, we have a tremendous task ahead. Our efforts are best spent not bemoaning the demise of the society in which we live but in getting on with our mission of being God’s people for this time and place and proclaiming the good news in Jesus Christ that our sins can be forgiven and our lives transformed by the power of the Spirit at work in us and through us.
In all this, we have a tremendous task ahead. Our efforts are best spent not bemoaning the demise of the society in which we live but in getting on with our mission of being God’s people for this time and place and proclaiming the good news in Jesus Christ that our sins can be forgiven and our lives transformed by the power of the Spirit at work in us and through us.
[1]
Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern
Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. G. Bennington and B. Massumi
(Minneapolis, MN: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1984; French, 1979), p. xxiv.
[3]
One often hears people say that Christians do not judge. Behind this statement lies a serious
confusion regarding several Biblical texts. First, when Jesus said, ‘Do not judge’ (Matthew
7.1), he was not uttering an absolute statement. He finished the sentence with ‘so that you
may not be judged.’ He went on to warn
against hypocrisy. He further said that
one should not point out the speck in someone else’s eye when one has a log in
one’s own eye. In other words, Jesus was
not saying we should not judge because everything is alright, there is no such
thing as sin, let’s tolerate or celebrate each other’s decisions and
actions. Rather, he was warning not to
be hypocritical when judging. Another
passage to consider comes from the Lord’s Prayer: ‘forgive us our trespasses as
we forgive those who trespass against us’ (Matthew 6.12). The point is not that there is no such thing
as sin but that we should forgive others because God has forgiven us. Christians offer a message of forgiveness for
sin, not a denial that certain actions are sinful and so should be
affirmed. A third passage to consider is
one discussed in this essay, 1 Cor. 5.9-11.
Paul says that Christians should not associate with sexually immoral
people (v. 9). He qualifies this statement by saying that this does not mean
that Christians should not associate with sexually immoral people outside the
church, ‘since you would then need to go outside the world’ (v. 10). Rather, he says, this applies to persons
claiming to be believers who are sexually immoral—and then he extends the list
of sins to other than sexual sins (v. 11).
He concludes, ‘Do not even eat with such a one’ (v. 11). His view on judgement is summarized in vv. 12-13:
‘For what have I to do with judging those outside? Is it
not those who are inside that you are to judge?
13 God will judge those outside. "Drive out the wicked
person from among you."’