This blog contains two chapters.
Chapter 4: ... pressed to accept a pluralistic approach to God.
Chapter 5: We've taught them individualism.
…pressed to accept a pluralistic approach to God
‘One of the mistakes that human beings make is believing that there is only one way to live and we don’t accept that there are diverse ways of being in the world… and many paths to what you call ‘GOD’.
Oprah Winfrey[1]
I love all-you-can eat restaurants. I have actually developed an all-you-can eat restaurant strategy. Basically it consists of the following three stages.
1. Eat as much food as possible until I’m feeling slightly ill.
2. Visit the men’s room.
3. Eat dessert.
Of course I feel disgusting afterwards, but I figure that I need to get my money’s worth. It’s a terrible habit that I have.
Apparently I’m not the only person who follows this strategy. I remember one particular dining experience at an all-you-can eat restaurant as I was embarking on stage 2, I heard a voice calling for help in the next cubicle. I completed my associated task and followed the sound of the desperate voice. Sure enough, in the cubicle next to me, door wide open, was a young boy of approximately 10 years old, with an enormous puddle of ice cream puke at his feet. I told him that I would try and find his parents. I found a waitress and gave her the honour of locating his parents and being hailed as the hero of the hour.
Buffet meals satisfy our greatest culinary desire; that of being able to eat whatever we want, whenever we want. This is also the formula for the traditional Australian BBQ. Lay out as much burnt meat and salad as we can on the plastic outdoor setting and let the people eat as they feel led. We like to be in control and make our own choices. This desire to be in control of every aspect of our life is being manipulated by advertising agencies and media outlets to sell almost every product and experience under the sun. We have so much choice today; choice as to which mobile phone to buy, which clothes to wear, which music to listen to etc. This smorgasbord of options caters to our sinful desire to be the ruler of our own life.
Unfortunately this desire to be the ruler of our own life also affects the religious choices that people are making all over the world. No longer are people looking for a widely accepted or historically accurate belief system. The emphasis is now on making a religious choice that feels right for you. Ultimately this means that the kids that we want to share the gospel with have been manipulated into thinking that Christianity is just one delicacy on the smorgasbord of spiritual beliefs.
Generally speaking, our kids are a spiritually conscious generation. The combination of postmodernism, a cultural drift away from absolute truth and our ongoing search for purpose, ensures that kids are searching for something beyond the material world that they live in. This is exciting, right?
Culture-watcher Walt Mueller
[2] explains the cautious excitement that this situation brings -
‘Perhaps more than any other generation… they’re on a deliberate quest to understand and embrace faith…
While this is good news, it comes with a set of unique issues related to our culture and times…
Teenagers struggle with Christianity’s exclusivity and ultimately reject Christianity because Christians believe they alone have spiritual truth.’
[3]
Although this news allows us to be excited, the truth is that 21st century kids and their increasing spiritual awareness does not directly relate to the increase in the number of church-going, Bible-believing Christian kids. The kids want to believe in something, but the exclusivity and ultimate truth that Christianity offers, is not an attractive something.
Let’s look at this idea from a different vantage point.
In 1976, persons aged between 20 and 29 years made up 16.5% of the population in Australia and 14.5% of them acknowledged that they had no religious affiliation. (This is an affiliation with a church or religious organisation.)
In 2001, persons aged between 20 and 29 years made up 14.5% of the population and 23.2% of them acknowledged that they had no religious affiliation. Here we have a drop in percentage population, yet an increase in those who had no religious affiliation.
This makes me think that the kids are slowly becoming less spiritual. However, it’s not that they are becoming less spiritual, but rather that they are noticing and acting on the hypocritical nature of religious organisations.
If we take a different vantage point; in 2001, 82% of 65+ year olds confessed to being a Christian.
During the same survey, 60% of 18-24 year olds admitted that they are Christian. This vantage point does allow us to be quite positive about the spiritual state of our kids though. This is a good result, but it clashes with the previous statistics. The kids are saying that they are Christian, but at the same time saying that they don’t want to go to church. When reading through the New Testament and understanding the importance of church attendance in personal growth of Christians and in developing an understanding of the Bible, we need to take another vantage point.
In 1960, 41% of 18-24 year olds attended church monthly.
By 1980, this had dropped to 25%.
And in 2000, this had dropped again to 20%.
I worry that if this survey was to be taken again the results would be even worse.
So if our kids are becoming more spiritually aware but less likely to attend a Christian church, who or what are they trusting in?
A large proportion of our kids are going to say that they believe in a god. However, the god that they believe in can be defined as ‘moralistic, therapeutic, deism.’
[4]
This god is warm and fuzzy, easy to believe in (because he helps you when you’re in trouble), and stays out of your way when things are good. This is a god who, in the context of material possessions and wealth says ‘I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper and not to harm you.’ Jeremiah 29:11.
[5] This is a god who would never say, ‘Sell everything you have and give to the poor.’ Matthew 19:21.
[6]
Essentially what we are doing is pressing our kids to take a pluralistic approach to God.
Oprah Winfrey, world renowned chat show host is a pluralist. A pluralist is someone who believes that there are many ways to get to ‘God’. A pluralist is someone who accepts and promotes the idea that no one is right, because everyone is right. Winfrey has such influence however, that millions of American’s watch her shows and simply take on whatever ideas she presents. She has a lot to say about ‘how to get to God’.
During one of her shows, Winfrey shared her view on the idea that anyone can get to God, anyway they like. There’s no need to presume there is only one way.
A conversation occurs on air that goes like this:
Winfrey: There are many paths to, what you call, God… There couldn’t possibly be just one way.
Audience member: What about Jesus?
Oprah: What about Jesus.
Audience Member: There is only one way to get to God and that is through Jesus.
Oprah: There couldn’t possibly be one way.
Audience Member: Why? Because YOU say there isn’t?!
Oprah: There couldn’t possibly be one way!
(Audience applaud Oprah)
Winfrey, using the powerful medium of television, expounds her views in front of live audiences and large numbers of viewers. She is the only person to have been featured in Time Magazine’s list of 100 Most Influential People. There is power in her influence and she is using this influence to promote pluralism.
In another episode a viewer skypes
[7] Winfrey live on air and says, ‘After reading (the book that Winfrey plugged during her ‘Book Club’ segment) it really opened my eyes to a new way of living… one that doesn’t necessarily align itself with Christianity. So my question is, how do you, Oprah, reconcile these teachings with your Christian beliefs?’
Winfrey responds by saying –
‘I reconciled by being able to open my mind about the absolutely indescribable hugeness of that which we call God. I took God out of the box. I grew up in the Baptist church… there were rules and doctrine… I happened to be sitting in a church and this great minister was preaching about how great God was and then he said, ‘The Lord thy God is a jealous God’. Something struck me and I was thinking, God is all these things and God is jealous? God is jealous of me? And something about that didn’t feel right in my spirit because I believe that God is love… so that’s when the search for something more than doctrine stirred within me… God isn’t something to believe. God is.’
To a mature Christian this sounds like complete mumbo jumbo. But to a kid, searching for purpose in their life, the emotional words play on their minds and confuse them. Phrases like - ‘open my mind’, ‘took God out of the box’ and ‘didn’t feel right in my spirit’ – are words that talk about feelings. Pluralism is all about feelings. This is its greatest attraction and yet it’s greatest danger.
Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas touches on the idea that spirituality is a personal experience rather than an actual truth when she says –
‘I believe in a soul, and my soul’s in this body. After that I don’t think that this human mind can even fathom where the soul goes. Is it something you see, something you touch? I don’t know; I can’t really picture exactly what that is. When this life is done, that will go on. Hopefully it will be a good place, and hopefully I’ll lead a good life. I am not perfect, but I try to live a good life and to do better all the time. Hopefully that will reflect on my soul.’
[8]
Oh right. Yes well that made sense. (Remove tongue from cheek.) This is characteristically a postmodern, pluralistic view of religion. ‘I think that… er… I believe that… I don’t know… Hopefully… er…’
Billy Connelly is one religious observer who has been confused by pluralism; ‘I don’t get religion. I can understand God. I can understand people having a God and believing, cause it’s a nice thing to believe that there’s a big guy up there looking after everything. It’s a kind of consolation that, somebody’s making everything nice and he knows that you’re quite a nice guy but you do awful things … right?’
[9]
To me, logic suggests that I would like to follow a God who I know is true. He made the world, he saved the world, he loves the world, he exists and so I’ll follow him. That’s logical right?
Why would we want to follow a god who we’re not quite sure he exists or what his purpose is, or whether that good luck that we received today was luck or some divine intervention?
If you think about it a little bit, pluralism must make God angry. He institutes the great salvation plan of sending his only Son to earth to die an overtly painful and terrible death so that we might be granted direct access to God and heaven, and we throw it back into his face by saying, ‘You know what God, thanks for doing all that, but I’m actually going to ‘get to you’ on a different path.’
We as a society are spitting in God’s face. This is an insult. At any stage, God could’ve bailed from nailing his Son to a cross, but he didn’t so that we can have a relationship with him, and we decide we’re going to take another path.
It’s very simple; we must teach our kids that there is no other path.
Jesus said ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’ John 14:6
He didn’t say ‘I am a way, a truth and a life.’
Again (somewhat conveniently), the idea of pluralism is not new.
After his conversion Paul begins to travel and preach the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He reaches Athens in Acts 17 and discovers that the Athenians did nothing but talk and listen to the latest ideas.
[10] They were obsessed it seems, with discovering the many and varied religions or routes to ‘God’.
‘Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagas and said: ‘Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship, as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.’ Acts 17:22-23
The Athenians were worshipping any number of gods, covering all bases by even leaving a vacancy free for any god they may have missed. This is essentially pluralism.
What was Paul’s response to their pluralism? It was to simply preach the gospel.
‘The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else… for in Him we live and move and have our being.’ Acts 17:24-25, 28.
Pluralism is irrational, but the best way to approach the fight for the gospel is to develop an understanding and ability to express biblical apologetics.
[11]
Sean McDowell explains it this way, ‘The apostles of Christ ministered in a pluralistic culture. They regularly reasoned with both Jews and pagans, trying to persuade them of the truth of Christianity.’
He goes on to quote Pastor Tim Keller who says, ‘Christians are saying that the rational isn’t part of evangelism. The fact is - people are rational. They do have questions. You have to answer those questions. Don’t get the impression that I think that the rational aspect takes you all the way there. But there’s too much emphasis on just the personal right now.’
[12]
It doesn’t matter what you call our world; postmodern, modern or something else, people are still people.
It doesn’t matter how many talk show hosts suggest that there are many ways to reach God, there is still only one truth.
The reason why a pluralistic approach to religion is so popular is because it allows us to eat at an all-you-can-eat restaurant. We can choose what we believe and when we believe it. It connects directly to our sinful desire to be our own ruler.
The pluralists are shouting their message out loud. Christians need to shout louder because we have the truth.
GOT TIME TO READ ANOTHER CHAPTER?
We’ve taught them individualism…
‘
You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go.’
Dr Seuess
Even blind Freddy can see that our culture is one of individualism.
Next time you’re willing to hand over your hard-earned for a McDonalds feast during lunchtime at peak hour in a busy restaurant, try this experiment.
1. Choose a line to stand in, but leave a little bit of room between you and the person in front of you.
2. Then dawdle your way to the front. Don’t push, don’t shove, just move in your own time.
3. Count the number of people who push in, shove or get frustrated.
The people are hungry and the quicker they can get to the front of the line, the quicker they can fill their guts with processed food that takes a fortnight to digest, the quicker they can get back to their meaningless life.
For some reason, every McDonalds is the same. They have three or four registers open, but there are never three of four straight lines. There is always only one fat
[13] line where no one really knows who is supposed to be served next.
When hungry consumers arrive at McDonald’s they stand behind the part of the line that they think is the shortest or the quickest. Inevitably, the person at the front of that line has just ordered lunch for twenty friends, so they very carefully start to manoeuvre their body into a position that cuts them into the line next to you. For some strange reason, the register operator never looks up to the next person in the line when they are ready to serve, but rather calls out, ‘Who’s next?’
This then creates confusion because nobody really knows whether they are calling out for the person who was next in that particular line, or who’s been waiting the longest from any of the lines. And so, the person who gets served is usually the one who has the loudest voice and quickest reflexes, ‘I’m next. Can I please have a…’
Unconfirmed deaths have occurred in McDonald’s restaurants all around the world as people express their individualism viciously throughout the entirety of this desperate dance with fate, known as ‘ordering lunch’.
In the 21st century people have become communities of one. We no longer develop friendships with our neighbours, we haven’t got time to stop and chat with a friendly shop assistant and when we do get a spare moment to ourselves we are so exhausted that all we want to do is sleep. Right after we’ve checked our emails.
Sure we have relationships, but more often they are cyber friends. Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have eliminated the need for us to set aside time in our week to meet with friends at a coffee shop, park or favourite picnic spot. We can catch up with 436 friends at once when we read: ‘What’s on your mind’ at regular intervals throughout the day on our Facebook homepages.
We spend more time taking photos so that we can post them online then we actually do making memories that will stick in our minds. And when we find out that one of our 436 friends has invited someone else out for coffee all we need to do is delete them from our friend list and they won’t even know.
I remember taking a study lesson during exam block one term. The class was a bit fidgety for the first ten minutes before one brave soul put her hand up and asked, ‘Can we study with our iPods on please?’
I nodded and over 20 students stopped what they were doing and pulled out the music devices. I was gobsmacked. Luckily they didn’t notice that my chin had dropped to the floor in amazement. These devices cost up to $600, and almost the entire class had one of them in their pocket.
I replaced my chin and continued working.
After the first study session I sent the students out for a drink. Two girls remained in the classroom, sharing a set of headphones. I wandered over to them to ask what music they were listening to. Our conversation went something like this:
Me: What music are you listening to girls?
Girl 1: We’re not listening to music.
Me: What are you doing?
Girl 2: Watching a movie.
Me: Fthudfph (that’s the sound of my chin hitting the ground, again).
Two of the most intelligent and diligent students in that class had just spent fifty minutes of a study session watching a movie on a device that fitted easily into a pocket.
Now I’m not completely ignorant about the technology that kids are using these days, but I was absolutely taken back by this development.
I’ll speak more about technology in chapter 8. It’s the individualism aspect of technology that I want to consider here.
When the kids get a spare moment, like a flash of lightning, their listening and viewing devices are in their ears. And as each week goes on, the percentage of students owning these devices multiplies.
Now I’m not the smartest bloke around but I have made a couple of significant observations.
1. You cannot build a relationship with someone when you can’t hear what they are saying because you have headphones in.
2. You cannot build a relationship with someone when you are more attracted to listening to music or watching movies.
How did I go? Pretty intelligent observations right?
No. They are blinking obvious. I don’t understand how come our kids don’t realize that the reason they don’t have any friends is because they are too busy making love to their musical devices. This fact alone should be causing us concern. If our kids grow up as individuals who have been taught to look after people in the following order…
1. Me
2. Myself
3. I
4. Hmmm…
5. I suppose I’d better look after others too
… then we are stuffed.
As Christians we must be fighting the battle against our kids’ individual inclinations. We must find ways to encourage, and even insist, that they learn to look out for others.
Biblically, this command came straight out of Jesus’ mouth. Mark 12:29-31 reads, ‘The most important [command],’ Jesus answered, ‘is this: …Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second one is this: Love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.’
Here is Jesus’ command to be the opposite of individualistic. The context of these verses is important. The teachers of the law were trying to trick Jesus by asking, ‘Which of the commandments is most important?’ (12:28) They wanted an Old Testament answer, but Jesus gave them a New Testament one instead. The entire Jewish law book was re-written in just a few verses. Jesus wants us to live our lives firstly in relationship with him, and secondly in a way that puts other people first.
There are so many logical reasons as to why putting other people first is so important. In the 21st century, an age of mass media and materialism, there are two enormous reasons why which I’ll outline here.
Married to Their Jobs
If we’re not careful, then our kids are going to grow up requiring more dollars than ever to pay for their individualistic lives. This is going to require that they work harder than ever. Only a small percentage of them will get jobs that pay well for reasonable labour time. The high majority will need to hold down two or three jobs, or work long hours to gain promotions and bonuses, thus becoming married to their jobs.
‘In the twentieth century men and women sloughed off many traditional social and religious values as their belief in human temporal power grew. The world changed from one ordered for us by others to one we can manage and shape. Today many people in the West have high expectations about their rights to be happy and fulfilled and to invent themselves.’
[14]
When we become married to our jobs we lose perspective on things like; child-raising, rest, purpose in life and spirituality. This is extremely dangerous and will spiral even further out of control as the next generation follows in the footsteps of their Generation Z parents.
This is not following Jesus’ command in Mark 12. We must be willing to teach Generation Z that by putting themselves last they are able to make far more responsible decisions regarding finances and future. When you put others first, and place less emphasis on your financial gains and material possessions, you become more satisfied with your life. We must be showing this by example, and via creative and relational teaching.
The Pornography Industry
The pornography industry is an industry that thrives on individualism. I dare not search for statistics online; however you can be sure that the monetary value of the pornography industry would be high enough to feed the entire third world for a substantial period of time.
The pornography industry wants nothing more than for our kids to start thinking; ‘I deserve pleasure. I deserve to be happy. And I can take whatever measures I like to ensure that I get what I want.’
Pornography is an activity that predominantly takes place on our own as we justify the means for the gain.
From teenagers who want to experiment on their own sexually, through to married men (or women…) who are unsatisfied with their sexual experiences, pornography becomes easily justified when individualism is promoted.
In our ‘sex sells’ world, the pornography industry is licking its lips as our kids are becoming less able to think for themselves and more able to hack through internet filters.
But the main issue behind the market of pornography is individualism. If we were to think; ‘I’ll put my future wife/husband, current girlfriend/boyfriend etc first, and ditch the porn…’ we’d be a much healthier society.
But we’re not. And we are teaching out kids to think that ‘I can do whatever I want whenever I want.’
Individualism is promoted in our postmodern world. Our kids are manipulated into thinking it is ok to look after number 1.
We’ve got to teach against this. And we’ve got to do this with urgency.
[1] Episode of Oprah on March 17, 2008
[2] From the Centre for Parent/Youth Understanding (www.cpyu.org)
[3] In Youth Culture 101 p 58
[4] Christian Smith with Melinda Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual lives on American Teenagers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p41 In Youth Culture 101.
[5] In case you missed the point here, this verse has been taken out of context. Jeremiah 29:11 has NOTHING to do with scoring a new iPod. It needs to be read in context to gain true understanding.
[6] Again; a verse out of context! The ‘Christianity’ that our kids are attracted to is one that keeps the warm and fuzzy bits of the Bible, but ditches the difficult ones!
[7] …or talks to Winfrey via the internet.
[8] www.thunderstuck.org/viewed 4/6/06
[9] Billy Connelly in Enough rope with Andrew Denton, ABC TV, 20/2/06
[10] Acts 17:21
[11] Apologetics = being able to give a rationale for believing in God; defending the gospel.
[12] Susan Wunderlink, ‘Tim Keller Reasons with America,’ Christianity Today, June 2008, 39.
[13] I’m talking about the size of the line, not the size of the people in the line…
[14] Helen Trinca an dcatherine Fox, Better then sex – how a whole generation got hooked on work, Random House (Sydney, 2004) p 43.
