Pre-Previes Sermon for MERCYhouse Nights. August 31, 2008

Welcome to the pre-preview service of MERCYhouse nights. I am excited about what we are about to do, but I have a confession to make. Tuesday night I couldn’t sleep. My mind was racing a mile a minute. I had a ton to do both this week and last, for MERCYhouse proper, and for the church plant, and I didn’t know how everything as going to get done. It got to the point where I was doubting whether I should even be planting a church right now. I thought for a few hours about what else I could do with my life, since I have a math and physics degree, and could get into political science grad school, I figured I could get a “real” job somewhere, but nothing seemed right. I thought maybe I could just go back to manual labor and live life, and things would be easier. I was so stressed my eye began twitching (which happens to me about twice a year), and all I could think about was cigarettes. I wasn't sure I could write a sermon this week, and thought, maybe we can just launch next week, or maybe we should just do a house church and launch in the Spring, and many other things as well.

I would like to tell you I prayed about it and everything got better, because that seems like a very pastoral thing to say, but that is not what happened. I did pray about it, and things got worse. Things I had forgot I had to do came to mind, appointments with people, Ryan’s birthday party, tasks that need to be done around the house, working Circe Du Soliel next week for IATSE. So my prayers we answered with more stress and another few hours of no sleep. I would also like to tell you I fell asleep and woke up and prayed and God had worked out everything and it was all solved, because that also seems pastoral, but alas, that too is not what happened. What happened is I woke up, didn’t pray, really, I mean I did, but quickly and not sincerely, and then went to my second job at the Jones Library. And while I was delivering books like I do every Wednesday and Friday, all I could think about was how I don’t have enough time.

When my shift ended at 11 am, almost half of the day wasted, I couldn’t get my thoughts straight. I was only focused on how I couldn’t write a sermon and do everything else that needed to be done. We will see Sunday night if I did get everything done. My guess is that I will, but I will not see Sarah many nights this week, because I am a slight workaholic, or rather I have workaholic tendencies. But here I am, writing a sermon, so something had to have happened. And what is it that happened? Nothing, really. I mean something happened, but nothing monumental. It is not like all my other tasks were taken away, or I magically was able to have 26 hours in my day by going really fast (which is a Relativity joke, Einstein would laugh), or anything else. All that happened is I went to Panera, which is where I go to write sermons, checked my email, did some other things online, made the MERCYhouse Nights logo (which if anyone wants to touch up, I would not be opposed to), and cut and pasted the text I was going to preach on this week to a Word Document. Now, before we go on, I have to tell all of you that I get the text online, so there is a lot of footnotes and ads that come along when you copy the text from the website I use, which I was upset about, because it was just one more task impeding my sermon writing. I began deleting all the footnotes, and end notes, and commentaries and ads that came along with the text this time, and as I was doing this, the sermon started to take form.

See, as I was deleting all this crap I didn’t want, it was near impossible to not read the text. I needed to know where to stop deleting, and where the next edit had to be. So this text that I had picked out a few days before, with a completely different intention, began to affect me immediately. I knew the sermon that I was supposed to preach, and so, right after all the undesirable text was removed, I began writing this introduction, which brings us to where we are now. What impacted me so much that I began writing a thousand word introduction? Turn with me to your programs.

In Colossians 1:11-14 we read:

May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

It was a reminder of who we are, what we have, and where we were. Paul writes first that we would be strengthened, next that we would endure, then give thanks to God; that we have an inheritance and that we have been delivered from the kingdom of darkness, from this world, and brought to a new kingdom, a better kingdom, the kingdom of Heaven, ruled by God’s Son, Jesus Christ, and that through him we have redemption and have been forgiven all our sins. It almost seems like the entire paragraph should be written in reverse though, doesn’t it. Doesn’t is seem to make more sense to tell them they are first forgiven, and then redeemed, and then part of a new kingdom, and then should give thanks, and then they would be able to be strengthened? But this is not what Paul says. And I think there is a good reason for this.

First, the section of the text we are not reading tonight is Paul talking about all he has heard about the Colossian church. He then goes on to pray for them. The conclusion of the prayer is where we begin this week. Paul is not writing to non-Christians. He is writing this to the church. This is important. I think if he were writing to non-Christians, the order of the text may well be reversed. There would be a call to faith, and then the promises of that faith. But he is not doing that here, he is praying for his brothers.

As I lay in my bed unable to sleep, by fears were not that I wasn’t a Christian, or that my Identity was a fraud. What I didn’t need was a prayer to reconcile me to God, per se. What I needed was assurance of what my Identity gave me. What I needed first was a prayer for strength, and then the assurance that this would be answered. That is what Paul is doing here as well. He is praying for the Church. These are people, who I imagine sometimes had the same problems that I had. They were still sure of their salvation though. When we cry out that this world sucks, we are not looking for salvation, but sanctification, and even glorification.

What Paul is doing is praying that we would know more of God today, that we would be continually sanctified. He knows that they have fears and stress and weaknesses. He knows that sometimes life wears on us and we feel like there is nothing we can do. Paul, then, is approaching the Colossians in this manner. He doesn’t need to pray for their salvation, they are already saved. What they need, what we very often need, is the assurance that God is making things better, not someday, but now. There is strength to be had, and endurance and patience and joy. When I set out to write this sermon and felt overwhelmed, what I didn’t need was a discussion about how Jesus saved the world, what I needed was the truth that since I am His, He is here now.

Paul doesn’t end there though. It is almost trite to tell someone God will work it out, is it not? How many of us have been hurting and had someone say, “Don’t feel sad, when God closes a door, he opens a window.” And then they go on their merry way. So Paul begins praying that they would be strengthened, but he ends this section reminding them why they can be. He reminds us that we have been redeemed. He tells us that we can be strengthened, but this is only because of God and our new Identity in him. Remember, we have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light. Remember that God himself qualified us for this, and that because he has qualified us, we have a share in an inheritance. We are now in the realm of God’s beloved Son.

Paul says be strengthened, but be strengthened in your Identity.

May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Know what God has planned for you. See what he had already done. Look to the future, as you look to the past. Know who you are, and in this truth, know that God will give you all things. This is how Paul sets up this section, and how he sets up so much of his letters through out Scripture. And this must be the first lesson for us today. Having the Gospel firmly in our hearts, we can be strengthened by God himself. When we have sleepless nights, things look bleak, we are suffering, we can be sure that God will strengthen us, because we have been moved already to a new kingdom. Not because of anything we have done or could do, but because God himself qualified us. When we feel distant, or like we may fail, or we are weak, or we can not endure, Paul tells us we can. This strength is not found in us, in our actions, or in our deeds and thoughts, but rather in God himself. We then can be strengthened by this. As we read a few weeks ago in Romans

8:31What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

As we plan on planting a new church and changing this Valley, we need to have this always at the forefront of our thoughts, even when sometimes we can’t sleep and want to give up. Scott’s going to come up and lead us in a time of worship in a minute, and then we will continue in the text. I encourage you to use this time to know God more fully and the plans he has for you. He will strengthen you and give you all things. He has already moved us from the realm of darkness to light, and now will do so much more.

Let’s pray. God thank you for your promises. Thank you for your strength. Thank you for our new Identity. Thank you that we have been redeemed, that we are of a new kingdom, that we have an inheritance. We give you this time, our visions, this church, our lives. May we glorify your name. May we rest in your Peace. May we know the truth of our Salvation more daily.

(Scott Leads us In Worship Time)

In his letter to the Colossians, the first thing Paul does is remind us who we are. He is telling us about our Identity. He is rallying us around what God promises we can be, and what we are. But that is not the end. Paul sees the Church at a point in time. He recognizes what the people are struggling with, what we all struggle with, and he is reminding us of the greater truth that we have. He tells us about the greater reality. He speaks of the greater Identity we possess. And then he changes gears slightly. In this next section we don’t read a thing about ourselves. Paul writes in Colossians 1:15-20

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Paul reminded us about who we are, and now he is reminding us about whom God is. We have a new Identity in Jesus, and Paul tells us why this is important. He reminds us who Jesus is. Paul goes through a list of attributes. These are important. They are very important, especially in light of the last section. We are putting our hope in Christ, and if he is weak and powerless, so is our hope, and ourselves. But Paul tells us that Jesus is anything but weak. Here are his character traits

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

This Jesus isn’t some lowly shepherd who is meek and powerless. He is the image of the invisible God! He is the creator, and the reason for creation. In Revelation he is called the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and End. He is so far above all ruler and authorities, above bosses, and jobs, and promotions, and laws, and bureaucracy, and politicians. One of the things that I have been stressing about these past few weeks was getting a place for us to meet. There is a lot of red tape and work involved, and at the end of it all, someone can just say, “No.” And Paul would say why worry. Remember Christ will strengthen you, and remember who Christ is. These rulers and powers are his. They were created by Him, and for Him. He is their ruler. He is the Lord of Lords.

And Paul goes on. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Not only is he eternal, and creator, but he is in the mix. He is not some distant deity watching from Olympus and we can go along our merry way not running into him if we are real careful. He is right here, all the time. Nothing exists, holds together, with out him. He is not some watchmaker who created the universe from afar and lets it go its course, he is much more like an incubator that holds his creation from within and sustains it every moment. He is a present and intimate God. He is not far off, even when we feel he is. He is here with us, in us. He is the head of the church, the beginning, and the firstborn among the dead that he might be preeminent in everything. In everything, he is first. There is not an aspect of creation he doesn’t own, know, sustain.

Paul begins this section in the heavens. It is a picture of a very large, powerful God. It is God as Creator and King. But as he speaks, we see God continually coming closer to us. Finally, in the last attributes given to Him, we see that he was human, that he was pleasing, that he died. The last attribute is the cross, and what this act did. This God, who is so big He is preeminent in all things, is also so big that he can empty himself of Godhood, come to earth, suffer and die, and rise again so that we may be reconciled to him. This God who is so large he sustains all things, all things, was also the God who decided to make peace the only way he could, by giving himself up as an offering, by turning himself over to save the ones who would have him killed. This omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent God also became a helpless babe and died upon a cross in shame so that we whom he loved so much could be reconciled to him.

This is the God to whom Paul tells us our Identity is secure in the first part of this section. This is the God who will give us his strength. This is the God who will help us to endure. This is the God that rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us the kingdom of light. This is the God on and in whom our hope rests. And this is the God who is still in charge today. It is he who is still in control, who still sustains, who still strengthens. This is the God to whom we cry out in our pain, and stress, and insecurity. As we look out to our Valley, we see a dark place. We see few Christians, fewer churches. We see an uphill battle. We have decided to plant a church, and I stay up all night worrying about how this will get done, or if we will find favor with the building rental people, or do people even want to come. I look out and feel the weight of near impossibility upon me. I see others who have tried and failed and think that maybe the current trends of the decline of Christianity might be inevitable. I see powers and rulers aligned against the church, and I wonder how we can over come. I find myself awake, afraid, and weak. And I imagine some of us here today may feel the same. But then Paul, in my weakness, reminds me of God’s strength.

This God, who rules the Universe, also rules this Valley. This God, whom kings will bow to, is also Lord of our bosses, of Amherst, of Umass. This God, who is so big I can hardly imagine Him, is the same God who died. This God, who is preeminent in all things, has also called us to himself. This God, who could have chosen not to sustain his creation anymore, is the same God who made peace and reconciled all of Heaven and Earth to himself. This is the God that Paul tells us we find our hope in, our strength in, our life in. He is not a weak Palestinian Peasant, but the mighty ruler of the Universe, and it is he, and no other who has not only reconciled us to himself, but given us new life, a new kingdom, a new identity.

Scott is again going to come up and lead us in another time of worship. Meditate on this Jesus that Paul speaks of. Know His power and might. Know who he really is, and be in awe. Know this Jesus anew.

Let us pray. God thank you for who you are. I confess that I often forget who is in charge, and how big you are. I ask that you would keep yourself in the forefront of our thoughts as we plant churches, talk with friends, work our jobs, eat our meals. That each and every breath would be recognized as your intimate hand sustaining us. I pray that we would know more fully your power and your intimacy. That we would remember that You were both before creation, and entered into it. That we would see that you are so big you could make yourself so small. Thank you for who you are.

(Scott Leads us In Worship Time)

Which brings us to our final section. Paul reverses himself here. Where we were talking about where we can be, and who God is, now Paul will remind us where we have come from to further inform where we can be. We read in the conclusion of this section in Colossians 1:21-24

21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, 23 if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

You who were once alienated and hostile in mind. Remember, he says, as we hold onto these truths, that we used to be as lost as the rest. We were evil in deed. God did not reconcile us to himself because we were good. We were evil. He did it because he is good. We need to keep this in mind. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I forget this sometimes. I think that I am a great person now. You laugh, that’s good. I need to be constantly reminded that I was evil. It is not that I did some bad things but was basically good. I was hostile to God. There was nothing redeemable in me. What Jesus did, that same Jesus we just read about, was reconcile me to God in spite of all this. And even more, it is not that we are still evil, but just get a pass, we are holy and blameless. Sometimes I hear the Gospel presented as follows.

We are wolves. We are evil and murderers and we kill the Farmer’s valuable sheep, which he loves. (I know there are some wolf lovers out there who may be upset, remember, this is not my analogy; I am in fact disagreeing with it.) The bigger problem is that only sheep get into Heaven, not wolves. What Jesus did was to be the spotless lamb and die so we could get in. The way it works, apparently, is that he stands at Heaven’s Gate and hands us his wool. It is beautiful and white, and we put it on, and we are saved. (Now I know the fur lobby will have a problem here. Remember, not my analogy.) This is not the Gospel though. We don’t put on Jesus coat and sneak past God, like he is some senile old man who doesn’t see a wolf dressed up as a sheep. The truth is much more profound. In this analogy of a farmyard, we actually become sheep. It is not some false righteousness that we put on to get by a gate keeper. We are presented before God as truly holy and blameless and above reproach.

Jesus holiness isn’t loaned to us to get in to Heaven, it becomes ours. Though we were evil, we now become good. Though we were once hostile to God, now we are righteous. Though we once lived in the kingdom of darkness, we now have been moved to a kingdom of light. Though we were once alienated from God, now we are his sons. This is the Gospel. This is what we need to remember.

The tendency, at least of me, is to hear the first two sections of encouragement, and forget this last. I then begin thinking about how much strength God should give me, and how good I am, and I forget that it is not me who reconciled myself, or did anything good, but God. So I try to rely on my own strength and get everything done, and I get stressed and I stay up late wondering how it will all work out. Or, quite honestly, I do just the opposite. I remember how bad I was, and how I screwed up so much in my life, and I start thinking I will do it again, or that I can’t do anything. And I stay up late wondering how all will get done, and worrying about conversations I had earlier in the day, or the year, or decade. Both places lead to hopelessness and despair. That is why Paul gives us these three sections.

We need to remember where we have come from, who God is, what he has done, as well as the promises of where He will take us to truly have the Gospel. We need all three of these sections if we are going to plant a church. We need all three of these sections if we are to truly live a redeemed life.

Paul ends here with a warning, and I don’t want to get into a debate about lost salvation or any of that, I will leave that to the professionals. But I think it is a warning we need to heed nonetheless. It is fitting and telling that he ends with it instead of beginning with it. He could have said that we need to not loose faith, but rather remember where we have come from, what God has done, who God is, and where we are promised to go, but that is not the order of this section, or Colossians 1 as a whole. I think the reason he leaves it for the end is not because it necessarily deals with lost salvation, but it calls us back to the beginning. I believe that this warning is the same warning Paul is giving the Colossians in the first section.

In that section he prays that they may be strengthened, that they, and we, might be able to endure and have joy. He reminded us why we should have these things. He is praying that the Colossians don’t despair. He would only pray that they would endure if there was danger they wouldn’t. When I was up all night, it felt like a crisis of faith. I could either chose to believe in God and what he has planned, or go find another job. Paul prays that the Colossians might endure because they very well could give up the life God gave them and find a new calling. Remember, though, I never doubted my salvation or God, just everything else. And Paul, in this section, reminds me to continue to faith in him. He is reminding us that this is not a one time thing. We don’t pray a prayer and everything is good. Sometimes we need to endure, be strengthened. Sometimes we feel weak, and don’t have much faith at all.

Paul is saying here, remember the Gospel you first heard. Remember everything we just talked about. He says continue stable and steadfast. The image I get is that of a tug boat verses a speed boat. The tug boat is slow and steady, but it can tow anything. It is not ruined by rough seas, bad weather, or shallow bottoms. It may be tossed and turned, have to slow down and hole up, but it will not sink. The speed boat on the other hand, is fast and flashy, but is broken in the slightest gale. We are to be tug boats. Sometimes it may not seem like we are going fast. It may feel like we are going to capsize, but we hold onto by faith, what we know, and we can make it through. We need to remember how our vessel is constructed, and take solace in the fact that it is not going to sink, even if it feels that way.

We need to remember this Gospel. We need to not shift from this hope. We need to be steadfast. This is Paul’s conclusion to this section, and it is mine to. As we go out from here and try to start a movement there will be plenty of obstacles. There will be storms and shipwrecks, swells and capsizes. We may at times feel like we are going to drown, or maybe that we are drowning already. There will be times when we stay up all night wondering what we are to do, feeling helpless and hopeless. There will be times when it is all we can do to wake up, when we feel the world against us, when we feel God distant and uncaring. There will be times when we don’t doubt our salvation, but everything else. And there will be times when we doubt our salvation. And what Paul says, what I say, is hold firm to the faith you have been given. Be steadfast and stable. Remember the hope of the Gospel. Remember the Gospel.

Remember everything that we talked about today. Remember who God is. He is here, he is intimate. You are saved. You are a citizen of a new kingdom. You no longer walk in darkness, but light. You have an inheritance. Remember God himself reconciled you to him. It is not because of what you did, but because of who He is. Remember that you were once evil, and are now righteous. Remember creation was made through Him, and for him. Remember He sustains it. Remember he died on a cross. Remember he is preeminent in all things. Remember he died so that you might live. Remember you were alienated, but now are his son, holy and loved. Remember the hope we hold on to, the love we hold onto, the God we hold onto.

On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread and he broke it. And he said, “This is my body, broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup and said, “This cup is the New Covenant of my blood. Do this as often as you drink in remembrance of me.” As he spoke these words he instituted the sacrament of Communion. He did this as a way to remember and reunite with him. He did it only hours before he would go as a sheep to be slaughtered. Tonight we take it to call us back to this Gospel that we have. To remember the hope that we have. To remember the sacrifice that we have. To remember the Identity that we have.

Scott's going to come up and lead us in a final worship time. If you are a follower of Christ, you are welcome at this table. Before you come though, I encourage all of us to reevaluate what Paul says to us here in Colossians 1. Remember who you are, who God is, what he has done. Remember his promises and his person, and come to this table worshipping our Creator, Sustainer, Savior, and Friend.

Let us pray.

Book Chapter 1

Here is the first chapter of the book as promised. Hope you like it.

Chapter 1

What Happens After Post Modernism Dies: The Rise of the Après Post

In the previous chapter I tried to give an extremely brief synopsis of the historical roots of Modernism and Post Modernism. I intend to also give the same analysis to Après Post. Before I do this, however, it benefits us to first examine both Christian and Pagan creation. One of the foundations of world view is the answer to the questions “Where do we come from?” and “Why is the World as it is?” Both Christianity and paganism have answers for this, and the closer our culture is to identifying with their answers, the closer it is to these world views.

I want to here introduce two terms- Apollonian, and Dionysian. These two words, according to Camille Paglia, define pagan culture[i]. She defines them as follows: The Apollonian is order. She links this with Apollo, the god of healing, protection of society, technology. It is linearity, rationality, objectification, classification. It is the conquering drive with in us. It is architecture, beauty, and logic. The Dionysian, which she also calls chthonian is the opposite. This is linked to the Greek god Dionysus, god of wine, ecstasy, fertility, as well as transvestite. It is primordial ooze. It is chaos, emotion, nature. It is irrational, unclassifiable, uncultured. There are more to these terms than mentioned here, but they are unimportant for our work. The reason I quote them, and will make use of them, is simply because they are handy. Paglia is a pagan, and is also arguing a pagan world view. I am not advocating her conclusions, but, since I want to describe pagan culture, it is convenient to use pagan terms for its general world view.

Now then, what is that world view? It is relatively simple. Paganism around the world believes that the Dionysian, the chthonian existed first. In the beginning there was disorder, chaos, the untamable. The gods then created order out of this. The Apollonian elements of order and sense are secondary. The way the gods do this in various pagan societies varies slightly, but the principle is the same. There is primordial ooze that needs to be conquered. The gods then do this, and this provides a home for humanity. We are always in peril though. The chthonian is always trying to come back, and will. It is unconquerable. Nature is king, and nature can’t be subdued. The Apollonian, in pagan societies, is tenuous at best. It is valued and necessary, but the chthonian will always reemerge. Disorder is the rule and order the exception. This is the essence of creation for pagan cults. They are always worried about returning to nature. Chaos is constantly feared and revered for this reason. Mother Earth cults emerged out of fear of her retribution. The Dionysian gods needed to be appeased or they would wreak havoc on society.

The pagan world view holds a dualist interpretation of history. There is constantly a battle between Apollo and Dionysus. Chaos and order are at odds all the time. We are merely spectators to the game. The Yin Yang demonstrates this beautifully. Both sides are symmetric. The share the same power. They have the same colors, only inverted. They are always encroaching on the other, and being encroached upon. There is balance. And there is not necessarily a value attached to either. Neither is “good” or “bad” in the traditional sense, they just are. That being said, pagan culture has always valued the Apollonian. They see order as “good” for themselves. But there is not overarching judge. When chaos enters, it is not evil, just detrimental to us humans.

Christianity stands in stark contrast to this. It has always been noted how different the Judeo-Christian creation is. There is no disorder at first. Unlike all pagan myth, Scripture stands on the grounds of order. It doesn’t begin with many gods fighting, or having sex. It begins with God, and God alone, who rationally speaks creation into existence. It is a thought, not an after thought. There is plan in his creation, not chance. God says let there be light, and there is light. He then systematically creates the Universe. He creates in a planned way. He creates land before land animals, sky before birds, sea before fish. There is a direction. It is guided. This is anything but pagan. God does all this in anticipation of his Magnus Opus, Man. Man is not an after thought; he is the reason for creation. When we get to the end of Genesis 1, we see that is as all for this “animal” that is to be different from all the rest.

The creation story then zooms us in. We were given the big picture in Genesis 1, and now the text will focus on us and our creation. Even here, order is the rule. Man was created by will, not accident. God forms him. Ask any artist and they will tell you they know what they want to create before they create it. Their art (although may look it at times) is anything but random. A sculpture sees in his clay what he wants to make before he first touches it. This is the image we have in Man’s creation as well. He formed him from clay. This was an artist producing his masterpiece. He puts this new man, Adam, in a garden He has already prepared. Notice that a garden in not “nature” in the pagan sense. It is controlled and tame. He then gives Adam a job. This is a God with a reason. The garden was given so Adam could have a job, the job so that he could create and be fulfilled. God had thought about his creation. He had loved it before it knew what it was. He knew its needs and desires. God then gave man a wife. And not just any wife, a perfect wife. Adam falls head over heals for her, singing a song the first time he lays eyes on her.

And everything was great. God created order, nature was in submission to man. But something happened. Disorder entered. Satan, for what ever reason, was allowed into the garden, and he tempted Eve. She sinned and Adam did too, and creation was altered. Man had created evil, sin, death. What was there in potential only, was now reality. This, though, is not pagan either. Order was first, disorder second. They are not equal. Disorder will show its face again and again because of sin, but it is not coequal with order. God is only one. There is not the duality seen in paganism. More than this, order will eventually win. We don’t know it at first, but Satan and his chaos are going to loose forever. God has had a plan even for this all along, and it will be revealed throughout Scripture, culminating in Christ and the Cross. Here death and chaos are finally conquered for good.

But we don’t need to look that far to see this God of Order and his plan. Throughout we see God intervening and creating order. He established a Law, gave a Promised Land with boundaries and condition, rescued his people multiple times. The Old Testament is full of an orderly God. He gives prophesy and then makes good on his promise. He has a plan, and it will be carried out. Notice also in Scripture, the main cause of disorder is people or Satan. Both of which are created. Neither is co-eternal with God, or able to fight him when he wants his plan carried out. The chaos produced is not natural, like the pagan world view holds, but something other. It entered into creation, it was not there from the start. Humans are the cause of the disorder. It is not existent apart from us. We are at its roots. This is perhaps the least pagan idea imaginable. Chaos was not conquered and brought to order, order was usurped by us allowing chaos to enter. And remember, chaos will loose eventually.

Regardless of theology, we all agree that there will be an end. Time, at some point will cease. God will reign, and his kingdom will exist. This is one of the promises of Scripture. Chaos is finally put in its place. A new city is created. This is order. This is not pagan. Pagan time is cyclical. There is no beginning and no end. Chaos eventually wins. The Christian and pagan world views then are wholly different.

Paganism looks at natural disasters, animals eating humans, disease and famine and says that this is simply the Dionysian returning. It is primordial power taking back what is rightfully hers. It is chaos triumphing over order. We as Christians look at the same world and see sin and its consequences. Nature at one point didn’t have teeth. The ground rebelled as a curse from God. We were to live in a garden, peaceful and subdued. We changed the rules though, and now the whole thing is messed up. This isn’t the natural order of things though. The pagan would say we cry out against nature out of fear. This is why we think things aren’t the way they should be. Christianity says that we cry out against nature because we sinned. Things aren’t the way they should be, and someday all will be fixed. There is no such promise in paganism.

The pagan world view is sexual. Sex is the culmination of creation. Most of the creation stories involve a god or gods fornicating to begin everything[1]. In sex there is seen the most elemental. Sex is worshipped. Paganism is visual. It places emphasis on looks. There is a reason Palestinian art doesn’t exist. There is also a reason Greek and Roman art conquered the world. Paganism needs objects. Very often in pagan culture the true essence of a thing can be trapped in its image. This is why some less developed culture still thing photography voodoo and won’t allow their image to be captured. This is why God forbids the creation an image of himself. It was a reminder to Israel that he was different. He couldn’t be caught and controlled. He was not like other gods, and they should not be like other people.

Pagan culture is materialistic. It needs objects and things. How many pagan cultures buried what the dead would need in the after life with them? Paganism worships, in Paul’s words, created, rather than Creator. It worships objects. When the Greeks went into their temples, they thought the gods truly lived there. They were in physical form. They needed food to eat. In Hinduism still today food and milk are left at altars for gods to devour.

Pagan culture has its own set of values. A pagan morality. Honor and valor are among its supreme virtues. The weak are a burden on society, and as such should be weeded out. Vengeance is justice. The survival of the clan is all important. Charity and love are seen as vices, weakness, and must be purged. Look at ancient Greece. In Sparta infants with any supposed defect were left on a hill to die, or buried before they could cry and bring doom upon the city. A war was fought over proper etiquette (the Trojan War, fought over hospitality, not a woman as everyone thinks today). 300 Spartans (and unlike the new movie portrays, a few thousand other Greek men) stayed knowing they were going to die fight over 50,000 Persians. This battle too has its roots in honor, a Persian city being burned a generation before, being the catalyst of the Persian invasion of Greece. Forgiveness is not something to be found or tolerated.

Having its creation stories rooted in sex and violence gave a common identity to pagan culture of sex and violence. Power reigns supreme. As Athens answers Melos in The Peloponnesian War, “Might makes right.”[ii] Dominance and subjugation are supreme pagan yearnings.

As I write this, I realize that some people will disagree with mine and Paglia’s assertion about paganism. Drew Campbell, a former pagan priest turned Christian, disagrees with Paglia whole heartedly. He would say the essence of paganism is the sacrificial system. The pagan system of sacrifice functions as follows: we sacrifice to our gods so that we will get from them in return. I buy this as well. This doesn’t negate the other assertions, though. I will incorporate all these thoughts into my description of pagan culture.

(expand)

We should also look at how this differs from the Christian sacrificial system. In Judeo-Christianity, unlike paganism, God can not be “bought off”. In Christian sacrifice, the sacrifice is just a symbol of what has already happened. When Christians give sacrificially they do it because they have already been given. The greatest difference is that God himself was the sacrifice. We do not offer things to God to gain good standing with him, he offered up Himself so that we could become renewed through His Spirit. God gives through Grace, he does not demand through wrath. So I agree with Dr. Campbell that paganism also at its root has a distinctly un-Christian sacrificial system.

What about culture today though? Modern Man, as I said had Judeo-Christian morality. Some of the greatest freedom movements in history have their roots during this time. Beginning with the Declaration of Independence we see Man given political autonomy and rights. Life, liberty, and property were not under the authority of a king or lord, but given to the individual. The roots of these freedoms are found in the idea of a benevolent Creator God. Soon abolitionism will sweep the West, having its roots in Christian ideologies. Woman’s suffrage and civil liberties too have their roots in Modernity and its acceptance of Judeo-Christian values and ethics.

These values differ greatly from some of the ones I attribute to paganism. They are in fact, for the most part polar opposites. Submission is regarded as valuable. Love and forgiveness held as the highest goods. Charity is not seen as weakness. Christians routinely saved and adopted the children left by pagans on mountains to die of exposure. They saved the weak. They forgave their enemies. In Nietzsche's opinion they imposed their “slave morality”.[iii] This was a morality of weakness. It is not pagan in nature. It is un-pagan. It values human life, no matter how “weak”. It loves God’s creation. People are something to be valued, not something to be dominated for ones own purposes.

We will explore this more later.

I said that this chapter was going to describe the Après Post and its rise, and now we will finally look at it. Historically, it can be seen as the non-Christian answer to Post-Modernism. Post Modernism is defined in the lack of absolutes. There is no truth outside ourselves. Reality is how we perceive it. Morality is subjective, as is everything else. This philosophy can not hold itself up though. Paganism and Judeo-Christianity can last because they have truths. There are things to be passed down. They offer answers to life’s problems. Post Modernity has none of this. When we are falling asleep and think, “Why is the World so bad?” Christianity answers because we are fallen, but we can be redeemed. Paganism answer too with, “This is an eternal struggle between forces”. Post Modernity can only offer, “Just because you think it is bad, doesn’t mean it is, who are you to judge? “ And humans, being created in the image of God, recognize this is not the truth. It can’t satisfy our inner being.[2]

Post Modern thought can’t sustain itself. Even in the most Post Modern of people I meet there is still the notion of right and wrong. For quite some time we will go back and forth about this being universal, or relative, but none of them are willing to say Hitler had a right to do what he wanted to do, or rape of a 9 year old is acceptable. The limits of their philosophy are blatantly obvious. Post Modernism is merely a reaction to Modernity. It is not a movement in its own right. It has its origins in the same place that Modernity does, though it tries to cast of its roots. Nothing can live long away from its life source. As Post Modernism succeeded in killing Modernity, it will also succeed in killing itself. Even its philosophical origins, firmly grounded in science, are Modern by nature. It was Modern man that found Quantum Mechanics. This is a contradiction that Post Modernity can’t long live with. And I say it is already dying.

Culture won’t allow a vacuum though, so as one movement dies, another must find life. And this is what is happening with Après Post culture. As we look at the culture around, we will see some things that conform to Post Modern thought, and some that blatantly contradict it. This is a coherent world view though, and it is pagan. The reason for the sometimes agreement and sometimes disagreement with Post Modernism is that this new paganism is not of a “brand” like we would think of. We can’t identify it as Norse or Greek or Roman paganism. It is its own thing. It is greater than the sum of all of these. What it loses in its specificity, it makes up for in its grand appeal. First let us explore the similarities it has to Post Modern Culture, and why they could be confused.

Remember that culture seeps. It is fluid. Some of what we see is due to the new paganism arising, and some is residual Post Modernism. I am not sure if even I fully see the differences, though I am trying. One of the greatest “achievements” of Post Modernity is the idea of tolerance or acceptance. One of the places this works itself out in society is the realm of religion and spirituality. It is a cultural belief that all religion teaches pretty much the same thing. That being “good” is enough. That spiritual truths are relative. “If it works for you great, but it is not my thing”, is the philosophy of most of older America.

This thought still pervades American culture, but I see the justification for it changing. Under Post Modern thought, this was true because there was no spiritual truth. All roads lead to the same place because they all ended in irrational darkness. This is not the case in an Après Post world. All roads lead to the same place because all gods are the same. You call yours Zeus, and I’ll call mine Jupiter, and another will call theirs Orion, and a forth Odin, but they are all the same. They all tell us some truth about the world. There are absolutes, they are just bigger than any structure we put on them, and as such, all structures are valuable. This is pagan, not Post Modern. Rome could let their conquered countries worship the local gods because they shared the same world view. This didn’t work in Israel, or with the Christians, and as such they were threats to the Empire and had to be crushed, and this is what Rome tried to do.

In Post Modern America, people don’t want to hear about your spirituality. What works for you should stay in your house. The spiritual is frowned upon because it is inherently false. Especially Christianity, which claims exclusive rights on God. The very fact that it is so exclusive proves to the Post Modern that it is false. These are not true for Après Post. People are extremely open to and interested in your spirituality. It is seen as inherent in a well rounded individual. It is the atheist and nihilist who are on the run, as shown by the recent flood of books turned propaganda and agenda of the new wave of atheist, like Richard Dawkins. The culture that is about to be usurped is always the most vocal. It gets louder as a last resort to be heard. The winning culture can just exist, secure in its trophy.

Atheism is the height of Post Modern (and Modern) scientific thought. It is the absence of all spiritual and moral truth. I very rarely have had conversations with true atheists today, and all of them have been over 35. I work mainly with college students, and find most of them are spiritual. They believe something is out there, but don’t believe any religion has exclusive claims on it. They do however, think most religions the same, and that all of them have some value. The new generation has a belief in god(s). They are pagan by nature. Atheism and its Post Modern spirituality is being cast aside for pagan spirituality. People want to hear what you believe and why, because you may have truth they don’t. They want to have spiritual conversations to find out what is really there.

They believe all religion leads to enlightenment because they think the name of god unimportant. Odin or Zeus, the principle is the same. Here they split slightly with previous pagan culture that would have attached a high value to knowing a gods name. If one knew its real name, one could have power over it. This “superstition” is thrown out by the modern pagan who still retains his Modern, rationalistic origins.

This then is the root of their tolerance. It is the tolerance that Assyria and Babylon and Rome had for its conquered people. When Rome besieged a city, they would very often build a temple to that cities god and then worship it. They would fold the new paganism into theirs. After they seized the city and controlled the people, they would let them return to worship of their old deity. They could do this because the cities deity was now also part of Rome’s paganism. Remember, they didn’t tolerate Christianity for quite some time, and even looked upon Jews with suspicion. They knew they were outside the pagan system. They could tolerate all brands of paganism, because at the root they are all the same.

This mirrors very closely the tolerance of today. Spirituality people are interested in. Christianity, very often they are not. Their ideal of tolerance fails them at Christianity. This has to be the case with a pagan culture. Christianity is the only true threat to it. In fact, it has been the only culture that had managed to make pagan cultures fall. It is Christianity that is credited with the fall of Rome, especially by Romans. Its values are just too different. It is everything paganism seeks to destroy. If the tolerance experienced in America today was truly Post Modern tolerance, then there would have to be a more blanket hate or openness to all spiritualities. Either they all have truths, or none. Being an ex-alcoholic, I deal with a very many spiritual people. AA is full if them. Most will tell you though that they are not interested in my Christian God. At one meeting in particular, a woman was talking about how her god had not been answering her prayers and she was having a crisis of faith. She asked about other people’s higher powers, but specifically asked that the Christian God not be brought up. She was asking for pagan advice from pagans. She could tolerate their gods because they fit in her world view. She knew Jesus didn’t, and as such can’t tolerate him.

This is found throughout AA and other spiritual meetings. All people’s view of god are equally valid, except when the higher power is God, or there isn’t one. I have yet to meet an AAer who would allow an atheist to speak, let alone be one. They have been healed spiritually. They know there is a spiritual world. And it doesn’t matter who you pray to. No Jesus here. He claims to be the Truth, the Way, and the Life. That is not true to the group. We must check him at the door.

So Après Post culture is tolerant of spirituality, but hostile to Christianity. At this moment it appears as though it may just be tolerant, even of Jesus, but after many long conversations, I tell you it is not. The tolerance of Jesus is skin deep. The tolerance of spirituality is to the core. As Après Post gains power, we can most likely see a growing hostility to Jesus. Look at Europe. Often they are ahead of us. We follow them. Evangelism, a Judeo-Christian value, is outlawed in most places. The church is viewed with contempt. I have rarely met a European who is not venomous when speaking of Christianity. This will be us soon enough. We can see it beginning to seep in with extreme and continued blame for the worlds atrocities blamed on Christianity. People remember the Inquisition, but forget Abolition. They remember (and judge) the crusades, but forget civil rights. The list goes on. Christianity is becoming increasingly demonized, and a pagan culture must do this.

The irony of this increased hate from the culture is that it may in fact help Christianity spread. The church has most often grown under persecution. The seeds of faith are son in the blood of the martyrs. This may be the best thing to happen to Christianity for Western culture yet.

So Après Post is tolerant, like Post Modernism, but for very different reasons. Après Post is also materialistic, like Post Modernity. But this too has different root causes. Post Modern Man must be materialistic because there is not truth outside of it. There is no inherent goodness. What is good is what feels good, tastes good, sounds good. If this is our driving philosophy, why not indulge materialistically. We should get as much as we can at any means, because there is no meaning to anything else. If there is no meaning to life, at least we can have fun. This is the Post Modern world view. I don’t think this is why most of us are materialistic anymore though. People don’t want things because there is no meaning to life, but because there is meaning. They want to get the best job to make a name for themselves, have the most pay to provide for their family, have the youngest skin to be desired the most, have the prettiest wife to be honored among their friends. There is meaning to life, it is just pagan. Honor and desire, sexual prowess and fertility (as shown by looks for the female, and stature for the male) are high pagan ideals.

They are also materialist as a way to worship. We will look at this in detail later in the book. I will argue one of our gods is celebrity. You can’t worship celebrity without being materialist. We own DVD’s, whole TV shows, extended directors cuts, because these are our new myths, and the actors and characters our new gods. This requires we own the best TV, sound system, DVD rack, to worship them properly. Remember pagan sacrifice. It was done to gain something in this world. That is inherently materialistic. Only this world matters right now. We need to succeed here, and we will do what we have to, to make sure we attain our ends. This is not Post Modern materialism by default. It is actually an ideal. He who dies with the most toys wins, in an inherently pagan statement, testified to by tombs of every pagan king ever to rule.

You may have picked up on another quality of Après Post as you have read. It has intrinsic truth. It is a rejection of the Post Modern thought that there are no truths. It has a value system it sees as universal. This has not had the proper gestational period to be birthed out right, but as we will see, it is there awaiting the proper moment to loose itself upon the world. Après Post has a universal ethic and morality, though, and we can see it if we look. I direct the reader to the Chapter on Batman the Dark Night as the first signs that this pagan truth is about to burst forth. Paganism has always had truths and morals. They are just different that that of the Church. As already said, the values of paganism are honor above all else. Christianity holds love as supreme. But the violation of honor presupposes a right and wrong. Synonyms for honor offences show us this in crystal clear terms, we have wronged someone, done them wrong, etc. You can’t wrong someone unless there is a right, and there can’t be a right if we are relativists. Après Post has truth.

The truth that Après Post holds to is that of a dualism of sorts. It is this Apollonian and Dionysian struggle I have talked about. There is good and evil. They are constantly in battle. There is order and chaos, and one becomes the other. There is virtue and vice. What good and evil are, we will see is un-Christian, but they are external truths nonetheless. Many of Après Post’s virtues, we would call vices, but they are there. Post Modernism couldn’t last because it lacked external truth. This is why it has only been 40 years since it won in pop culture, and is now already in decline. What it allowed though, was a transition from old truths to new. The old Judeo-Christian ethos will be fully thrown off in Après Post Culture, and paganism completely put on, and this was only possible as quickly and smoothly as it has happened because there was a vacuum in between.

Après Post is honor-centric, and this goes hand in hand with another quality. Whenever there are strong honor cultures we find strong tribal tendencies as well. One is defined by the group. The hyper individualism of Post Modern Man left the field ripe for group identity to be sown. Not only can honor only be hurt if there are external truths, it can only be hurt within a group context. It is the shame of the group to the one dishonored that demands honor be upheld. This is pagan. The Christian knows he is not honorable, and more than this, is commanded to forget honor. When Jesus tells people to go the second mile, it is a commentary on honor. The Roman soldier could force anyone he wanted to carry his armor 1 mile. Israel felt dishonored by this (as did everyone else, I imagine). It is a reminder that they were conquered. It was an insult to honor. Jesus tells his followers to carry it two though. Assume greater dishonor. Throughout the Gospels we are told the last shall be first and first last, the greatest least, and least greatest. This is the opposite of honor culture. It is Christian.

We will see in my chapter on violence, among other places, that the idea of going two mile is repugnant to this culture. We are far more apt to throw the armor down and take the beating, or give it, if our armor is not carried, than any other reaction. And this reaction is strongest in groups. Violent videos on the internet almost always show groups aiding in the violence, egging it on, or condoning it. We see people forming alliances based on music preference, sports team, political preference. And more than this we will form boundaries around these groups to define ourselves and the others. Boundaries are inherently pagan. Christianity destroys them when it arrives. It did so in master slave relations, male female relations, parent child relations.

Paganism needs boundaries to be. Après Post also uses boundaries to classify and quantify. This is not Post Modern. Post Modernity, as a reaction to Modernity, will reject classifications and “boxes”. Even trying to define Post Modern in near impossible. It rejects boundaries and definitions. Après Post embraces them. Looking at hardcore subculture, and hip hop subculture, we will see clear delineation and honor codes. We will further see this is political rhetoric (mostly talking heads) and gang violence, both of which are based on honor and the group.

Après Post is also a sensual and hierarchical culture. Group dynamics can only work in hierarchy. So too, honor can only operate in hierarchy. There is a pecking order. Because of this, it also has respect for authority missing in Post Modernism. The authority respected isn’t traditional authority though. That was thrown off by Post Modernity, and like most things Après Post, will be left there for the new system. There are new systems emerging, and within subcultures, the authority chain is already well defined. If you don’t believe me go to a hardcore rock show. There are leaders and followers, and everyone knows there place. There are people within the circle that have the ability to tell others what to do, and negotiate compromises between two parties when fights break out.

Because of all of this, Après Post culture is violent. The way to enforce honor and hierarchy and group is always with violence. Violence within the group happens when people step out of line, when boundaries have been crossed, when someone’s honor has been questioned. Violence outside the group happens on the same levels, but also on one more. It bound the group together. You know you are in by what side you fight on. This will be seen again, in the study of hardcore and gangs. But violence is pagan. It is not Christian. Christianity sees violence as sin, paganism as a means to an end. It is not judged as evil all the time. It is simply the Dionysian that Paglia identifies, asserting itself. It is one side of the yin yang. Violence is sometimes needed for peace.

Après Post, as I have already said, is pagan. It is everything Christianity is not, but also most of what Post Modernity is not as well. It has its highest ideals in sensuality, image, and honor, all of which are really just different sides of the same thing. It also holds a wholly different view of sex than Christianity. Après Post views sex as necessary. Post Modernism liberated sex and sexuality. It freed sex from taboo and threw of the Judeo-Christian morals that curbed types of sex that were at odds with God’s design. The Post Modern reasoning was that Scripture was wrong. There was no truth in sexuality. We could choose our sensuality as we wished. Again, this is not the Après Post reason for sexual freedom. It is much more deviant than this. The Christian who wishes to remain a virgin until her wedding is not misguided and missing out, as the Post Modern would think, but selfish, subversive, and lacking. It is our duty to sleep around and become the best lover we can be. Our partners deserve no less. Sex is a god, and as such we must worship. Women who slept around used to be called names. I don’t see that anymore. Women who don’t sleep around are now called things. Sex is an assumption, not a choice. Après Post worships sex.

And this is not just men. Women have been taught, contrary to almost all other cultures, to desire promiscuous sex. Woman have been sold visualization. Men have always been sexually attracted primarily by sight. This is traditionally not seen as a woman’s first need. Today, though, woman are told it should be their first thought. Men should be well dressed, extremely fit, and extraordinarily good looking. Personality doesn’t matter. Looks are what count. This is only true if sex is the end. As long as we don’t have to talk or see someone again, we can focus on looks. Families take more. Looks wane. Sex as god demands visual attraction and no more. “Cougars”, older woman who have had a ton of work to look 20 (kind of) and date young men are the epitome of this in our culture right now. They know more than most of us.

As we move through the book, more characteristics of Après Post will come to light, but I think these are the major themes. Other qualities will be shown to sprout from one of these limbs. And of course there will be things in culture that I don’t write about, don’t see, or aren’t Après Post, and so won’t make it into this book. Après Post is a new paganism, a union of some Modern, Post Modern, and Ancient beliefs, most of which are actually ancient. It is a scientific, rational understanding of a pagan dialectic, with a belief in pagan narrative. Over most of the book we will be examining parts of culture to come to a greater understanding of the Après Post. We will look at art (and pornography, arts basest substitute), popular methods of entertainment (video taking over books as the most accurate cultural temperature and driver), sub cultures (which are growing at alarming rates and diversifying in ways never seen in non pagan cultures), and yes, even science. Après Post, like culture before, has a science to back up its findings. Ironically, it is the very large, the same science that helped to begin and define the Modern Age. This again can be interpreted as a casting off of Post Modernity. Après Post, as we shall see, will reinterpret what was there before Post Modernity, but in its own terms.

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[1] Pagan creation stories here

[2] I am not here implying Paganism can fully satisfy; only God can do that. Paganism can give answers to why we are unsatisfied though, and for some, that is all they need. If we are told we can’t be satisfied, we can continue to live in that system. It is here that Christianity has its greatest tool against pagan culture. We will explore this in the last chapter.

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[i]Sexual Personae, Camile Paglia

[ii] History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides

[iii] Nietzsche

Here's the Book Part 1

Here is the Introduction to my new book. I will post a chapter a week until it has all been posted, and then I will be removing them to publish. Hope you enjoy.

Introduction

There is no shortage of Christian books attempting to discern and classify our culture. From the Emergent steam, to mainline denominations, there seems to be an endless flow of authors telling us what is happening around us, what the cultural thermometer is reading. And for good reason. It is only by knowing the culture that we live in that we can effectively communicate to people. And communication is of primary importance if we want to share with people Christ and the Cross. So pastors and teachers write books for other pastors and teachers, and they tell us what the predominant culture is. I have personally read many of these books, and have been greatly influenced and helped by them. I in no way want to discredit them or take away from the work they have done. That is not the purpose of this book. The purpose of this book is in fact right in line with those other great Christian writers of our time. Why then am I writing? Because I think those authors whom I have read are wrong. Maybe wrong is too harsh a statement. Some of them are wrong. But more often I find they are incomplete or dated.

Let me explain what I mean. If you were to pick up any book on culture today, Christian or not, you will most likely find the word Post-modern somewhere in its pages. This, the students of culture say, is the culture we live in. Here is where I begin to disagree with others. We are not living in Post-modern times anymore, but rather something like postmodernism, but wholly other. Today’s culture is something I will call Après-Post, or “after post”. It is a culture that is distinct from post modernity, but is birthed from it. It is in direct succession from Postmodernism. Après-post, as we shall see, is both a reaction to, as well as an embrace of, Post Modernity. We will find Après-posts roots in both what it accepts questionlessly from post modernity, as well as what it castes off.

One of the hallmarks of post modernity, as any student of culture will agree, is its love of the relative. Relative morality, relative likes, relative truth. As a reaction to the Modern Age’s absolute, the relative became the center of post modern culture. The modern age, so full of promise and promises, failed the West so drastically it had to be cast off. Science, the epitome of absolute, seemed to hearken in a new age. Disease and death were on the run. Poverty and hunger were ready to be crushed. All of man’s problems seemed on the brink of being solved. Through study, categorization, and the discovery of external truths, it appeared that the human race was at the dawn of utopia. As with anything as fluid as culture, it is hard to place an exact date on the beginning or end of modernity. It is generally agreed that the beginning of Modernity was around the time of the Enlightenment, and after the Second World War it was over. This is sticky though, especially the timing of its fall. It could be argued that it was in decline as early as the Terror (the time after the French Revolution), but I would argue it really began its demise at the outbreak of the American Civil War.

I place it there for a number of reasons, the main being that the movement known to us as pragmatism has its historical roots in events surrounding said war.[i] Pragmatism is anything but modern. Modernity stressed ultimate truths. There were laws and principle that existed apart from us. They were eternal and external. Pragmatism as a political theory rejects this. We were no longer guided by principles, save the principle that we are to do what ever works. And here we have the roots of post modernity.

Post modernity can be seen in music, art, and philosophy well before the Great Wars. But like everything else that needs to be communicated, it took time to spread throughout Western Civilization. Some people, because of education or profession are closer to the cultural shift (if not guiding it) than others. Culture seeps. It creeps. It does not affect all areas equally, either in speed of infection or seriousness. This is one of the reasons it is so hard to pin down. For every example of modernity’s decline, we can also find places it thrived. But what is important is that the great wave of post modernity crashed upon us. What began as a small swell out far at sea, eventually turned into a tsunami that swept us all away with it. The Great Depressions of the world slowly but surely shook humanities faith in the science of economics and agriculture. The First World War, mostly due to the invention and use of weapons like chemical gases, machine guns, and tanks, began to chip away at the fantasy of scientific progress as morally benevolent. The Spanish Influenza of the 20’s forced society to re-examine its faith in the promise of mastery over disease. Discrepancies in sex, race, and class in all countries lead to social upheaval and crushed the dreams of idealist that a perfect society could be created. The atomic bomb, the culmination of modern hubris, gave man control over the most powerful force known in nature, but also sealed the coffin of Modernity. What the modern age and scientific truths had given us were Fascisms, holocausts, genocides, and destruction. The myth of progress had been demolished.

As I already said, artist, philosophers, and yes even pure scientist, had abandoned truth long before. Curiously as Modern Man woke up and shrugged if his modernity, he looked to the “experts” to tell him what to believe. As he begins to shrug of absolute truths, he will hold onto the truth that scientists, artist, and philosophers know better than he. What they have been working on since the mid 1800’s he will grab hold of to stop him from drowning in the sea of despair the modern age created.

And what had these “better men” been working on since Darwin? Nothing less than Postmodernism. They didn’t call it that at first. In fact, at first they were extremely modern. The scientist of Darwin were trying to be scientific. They were attempting to find the truths that nature holds. The theory they came up with though, told them there were no truths. The guiding principle was chaos. Natural selection. This will have supreme political, legal, and social consequences. At about the same time the mathematics of statistics is discovered. Found by the same “classical” scientific method, it would later be interpreted to show that there need not be absolute truth. And finally Quantum Mechanics hits the stage, ushering in this new era.

Science, which began to unlock the secret Laws of Nature, found out that there were in fact no laws at all. What seemed to be rational and deterministic turns out to be anything but. Darwin’s evolution is anything but Deist. The driving force in evolution is environmental factors. More than this, two identical environments may create completely different creatures. There is no rhyme or reason to the science. We put reasons to the survival of species after the fact. There is no promise in Darwin that if we replicated precisely the adaptations that occurred we will end at the same results as previous. There is no rule governing survival. The rule is what ever works at a specific time and place is what works.

Biology, which used to be the realm of category, rationalism, and rule, was now the realm of chaos. So too with math. Math was once the realm of discrete facts. There were numbers and graphs and formulas and everything could be solved. Things were concrete, rational, Modern. The science of statistics was then discovered, and all of this changed as well. Statistics is a different type of Math. Yes there are formulas and graphs and data, but something completely other had been thrown in the mix as well. Statistics gave not discrete pieces of data, but explained why there were discrepancies between data. It told mathematicians and scientists alike that there was doubt and error in all measurement. Initially it was used to show that there was in fact a true fact being measured. The discrepancies were explained as instrument problems, collector error, equipment malfunctions. Once fully complete though, statistics actually disproves this. The “true” value of something need not exist at all. It is only an average of all other things being measured. The best way to understand this is with example. If we were to give a 100 question test to 100 people and grade each test we can then come up with the average grade. This average grade refers to the grade the “typical” person would get on this exam. But no one needs to actually have this grade. If 50 people got 90’s and 50 people got 70’s, the average for the class would be 80. The average person should score this. But this grade is mythical, as is the man. No one in fact received an 80. The statistics point us to a reality that doesn’t exist.

And add to all of this Quantum Physics. Just as Newtonian mechanics was the guiding science for the Modern World view, so would Quantum Mechanics define a new culture. Under Newton the world was ordered, rational, knowable. There was a divine clockmaker. Everything could be known. His equations were deterministic. What this means is that if we knew the speed and position of everything in the entire Universe, we could know everything. There is no mystery. Quantum Physics changed all that. Quantum mechanics is the science of the very small, or more precisely only matters on the very small scales. That is why it was not discovered earlier. With the discovery of the electron though, the world of the very small was brought to life. And what was found was that the very small was unpredictable. It did not work in the Newtonian way. It was statistical, not deterministic.

In Newton’s Universe if we knew where an electron was and how fast it was going (its velocity), we could follow it forever. In Quantum Mechanics, not only could you not know where it would be (you could know a probability of it being in a place), you couldn’t even know its potion and velocity at the same time. There was a property, described by the physicist Heisenberg, called the Uncertainty Principle. This said that is was impossible to know some things simultaneously, like position and velocity.

The statistics that seemed only to apply to our measurement, now seemed to govern nature itself. And this wasn’t due to equipment or operator error. It was intrinsic in the new science. No matter how hard we tried, no matter how clever we were, we can never know both the position and momentum of a particle at the same time. This means we can never know for sure where it went or how it got there. We can only talk about the probability of it taking a certain path and landing a certain place.

When we shoot a stream of electrons across the room, we can know very little about where each one lands. This is radical and different. If I shot bullets across the room, I can know where each one will go. More than this I can predict and follow them. We can’t do this with Quantum Mechanics. Not only do we not know where and electron will land, we don’t even know how it will get there. All we can know is a probability of an electron landing somewhere. The Universe, that once seemed rational and ordered, at once becomes unknowable and illogical. We still today don’t fully understand the very small. In a moment, an electron shattered our knowable reality. Soon elementary “particles” will be both particle and wave, and both at the same time (don’t think to hard about this, I have a physics degree and haven’t met a person whose head doesn’t hurt by this). Quantum “fuzziness”, Uncertainty will be the rule. This is the science for the Post Modern age.

Post Modern Philosophers would point to this quantum uncertainty to “prove” their thesis that there is no absolute. Unsure of what all the science and mathematics behind quantum mechanics meant, people set about to describe this new world. Many interpretations of Quantum Mechanics emerged, the Copenhagen Interpretation is the one that mostly won out. One of its tenant is that the act of measuring does something. It collapses the wave function. I don’t want to go into what this means in too much detail, but basically it is the process by which the wave know as an electron becomes a particle known as an electron. What is important for us is that the particle has no “reality” before it is measured. It is in a superposition of states, meaning anything the particle could be, it is it before the measuring. The most famous illustration is Schrödinger’s Cat. In this experiment there is a cat in a box with poison. There is a 50/50 chance the glass holding the poison will break and kill the cat. Until we open the box (measure), we can’t know if the cat is dead or alive. In fact, he is both dead and alive. When we open the box, we measure its state and find it is either alive or dead. At this point the cat’s wave function collapses. This is the standard academic interpretation of Quantum Physics.[ii]

And this is important. This philosophy will be the science that Post Modern Man will point to, to justify his thought. The fact that measuring changes something is far from the Modern. It means there is no truth in the particles themselves. They are functions of us. By measuring one way we can alter the particle in way A, and my measuring another, we alter the particle in way B. The particle has no definite existence apart from us. If this is true for the smallest of particles (it is not necessarily true, it is just the major interpretation of the Quantum Mechanic equations), then it will be argued that is must also be true of our morality. If the physical realm has no true reality, if everything in the material world is in flux and malleable, why is this not true of the moral? And so Post Modern philosophy finds a scientific foot hold.

Art at this time is also tending away from the Modern and towards the Post Modern. It begins with the “abomination” (as it was thought to be by the artist “in the know”) of art know as Impressionism. The highest goal of the Impressionists were the absence of lines. Color and form were supreme. With the rise in popularity of Monet, Renoir, Gauguin, et al, was the waning of the Renaissance. The crisp, sharp, defined edges of Da Vinci and Michelangelo, had run their course. The true essence of the thing was now seen to reside is its relation to others, in shadow and light, rather than it its true “Platonic” form. Once it had been accepted as a legitimate art form, it did not take long to morph. Impressionism quickly lead to Cubism and the terribly named Modern Art .

I say Modern Art is terribly named because it is anything but modern. Modern art, that is art that shows off traditional Modern values is the art of the Renaissance and Neo-Classical movements. Modern art was definite, real. There as not abstraction. People tried to capture what they saw. Portraits became lifelike, perspective was discovered, still-lives were born. There was an intrinsic reality to the object being painted or sculpted, and its nature was tried to be captured. Modern Art as an artistic movement is the absence of all of this.

Cubist and then the “Modern Art” movements are distinctly Post Modern. They throw off traditional “truths” of the object, choosing to define their subject in the artist terms. Perspective is thrown off in favor of either its absence, or the inclusion of many perspectives. True colors of objects, the way we actually see them, are questioned and replaced. Placement of eyes, ears, noses move to anywhere and everywhere. In surrealism we see melting clocks, dreams come reality, objects out of place. Reality as reality is cast off, and a new reality, the artist mind is put on. This will culminate with some of the more contemporary artists like Pollock, who in his late phase merely drips paint onto the canvas, to the artists always in the news for their next big stunt, like using feces as a medium. But these movements have their roots over a hundred years previous. It is my assertion that we will see a decline of “modern art” soon. I in fact think we are already seeing it. As I stroll my local coffee shops, most of what I se on the walls are again recognizable objects. More than this, there is pictures and video used alongside the typical artist medium. As we will see, this is a very important cultural thermometer, as I suggest (along with many others) that television (or less specifically, video) is Pagan in nature, and therefore part of Après-post culture.

Philosophy too followed this road. During the Enlightenment we have the great assertion by Descartes, “I think therefore I am.” Later in the same work we will be given proof of the existence of a benevolent God. And it seemed this was philosophy’s job. It was to find the internal truths, while science found the external. Systems of logic were set up to test assertions and surmise their truthfulness. This was not to be the path of the mother of sciences for long.

Philosophy will soon “show” that there is no truth. American Philosophers soon openly give up their belief in God, and following a road carved by Emerson, embrace the internal self as the only thing trust worthy (this too will eventually be tossed). Rejecting absolute truth, they try to make sense of the Universe, and make a living. Pragmatism is born. It is the belief that all inherent beliefs are bad. We are to do what seems best at the time. There is no truth to compare to. Its greatest champions are men like Dewey, and Supreme Court Justice Holmes. Philosophy will eventually come to the point it is now at. The greatest question facing philosophers today is how do we knew we know, or can we even know to begin with. The vast majority of contemporary philosophy professors will most likely tell you, you can not know anything. A far cry from Descartes!

As is often the case, the philosophy comes first, and it finds a science to cling too. This was true of the Ptolemaic Universe, of the Enlightenment, the Social Darwinists, and the Post Moderns. What is ironic of Post Modernity rejects the truth of science, yet bases this rejection on science itself.

And so Post Modernity was born and spread. And we are left with the problem we have today. There are a lot of books talking about Post Modern Man. And I have already said the premise of this book is that Post Modernity is dead. Before we move forward though, we need to have one more piece of the puzzle. Since Modernity was founded in Nature being rational, it was assumed that all laws, both physical, spiritual, and moral, could be discovered. It was assumed they were there. Morality was thing bigger than you or I. They generally accepted the Morality of Scripture as supreme and good. They agreed with Paul that all people had an innate knowledge of good and evil, as well as God.[iii] But Modernity failed. Post Modernity took its place. Having rejected absolute truth in the physical and psychical, it was not long until it was also rejected it in the spiritual and moral.

We could argue about when this rejection of morality entered culture, if it has peaked, and if so when, but let us instead just say it has. More than this, it has peaked a few times, the 1920’s, 60’s, 90’s, the present. We have seen multiple waves of immorality because, as I have already said, culture changes slower some places than others. At present we see a culture that most of us as Christians would call immoral. We see pornography running rampant, sexual promiscuousness as the rule not the exception, drug use and violent crimes in the youngest members of our society. We see videos on YouTube showing us the brutal beatings of schoolmates. We see a decline in youth in Church. We hear throughout our culture that there are not Spiritual Truths, that all roads lead to the same place, that we cant possible know the truth (since the is none), that Jesus can’t possibly be the only way. We see all this and we call it Post Modern. That is why there is so much literature on the subject. But I think we are mislabeling some of it.

Certainly there are still post modern strains in America, especially with those after the Greatest Generation, and ending with Generation X. It is here that the Post Modern thought, that began with the end of the Civil War, in art, science, and philosophy, comes together for the “Common Man”. It is in these classrooms that the teachers of Post Modernism are serving. It is to these masses that Modernity truly dies. The elite of culture finally won and drove their new philosophy into the minds of the West in these years.

We look at culture and still see Post Modernity because these are the generations still in power. They are the writers and directors of film and television, they are the school board members and teachers and principles, they are the novelists and newspaper editors. They are not the ones on You Tube, and Facebook, and MySpace though and this will become very important later.

We see movies like No Country for Old Men, and we cry, “This culture is so Post Modern.” And this movie is Post Modern to the core. There is no one good in it, and no one bad. The most evil character of the film _______ has his own guiding principles, his own morality, that he is at least true to. All the other neglect or compromise their morality at some point in the film. It is the serial killer that is most consistent and “moral”, if we can call it that. There is no redemption. Everyone will be murdered in the world it creates eventually, even if we don’t see it on camera (the cop for example). Good doesn’t triumph; in fact it can’t because no one is good. There is no such thing. There is no innocence, no morality, no redemption. It is Post Modern.

And so cultural anthropologist and pastors watch it (or read a synopsis) and come to the conclusion that since it is Post Modern and did really well at the box office and award ceremonies, that the culture must also be Post Modern. And as I said before, they are not totally wrong. Most of the culture is post modern, but there is a rising tide that we are ill prepared for, and that is what the remained of this book will be about. While we sit and try to crack the Post Modern Code, society is moving forward, and if we don’t move with it, we will be lost. I am not saying stop reading about post modern culture. In fact, if you are trying to reach certain populations in our culture, those over 35, (maybe 25) those in more traditional communities, those in other countries, you may do well to put this book down now and read some of the better commentaries about Post Modernity. However know that culture is not static. It is viral and infectious, always mutating as it enters the new host. Soon this Après-post will sweep through all of post modernity, and 10, 50, 100 years from now Post Modern Man will be as antiquated as Modern man is today.

The quick history of Modernism and Post modernism just given are by no means meant to be all inclusive. I don’t have time here to go into the rise (and fall) of modern medicine, the distrust of Authority, the Founding of America ( a triumph of Modern Man), the Industrial revolution, rise of Labor Unions, etc., etc., etc. The intricacies and delicacies that drive history are better left to historians. It is important though to remember where these movements came from. They are not isolated in history, but rather the culmination of it. I am glossing over most of what these world views hold mainly because there have been great work dedicated to just that. Only the main tenants are necessary for us here to move forward. We will see more details of Post Modernity as we move on, especially as I hold contemporary culture up to Post Modern thought to both compare and contrast it to the present time.

Post modernity, as I said throws off all truths and values. There are no absolutes. Everything is relative. The only guiding principle is to have no guiding principle. This is not what I find in the horizon of culture anymore. Après Post, as a reaction to post modern thought, in fact does have absolutes. There is a morality and a truth that is greater than us. What is even more than this, it is a system that Christianity is well suited to answer. Après Post is Paganism reborn. I will show through television, movies, the rise in the science of Cosmology as supreme, literature, art, celebrity, pornography, and the rise internet, as well as the material on it, that society is not guided anymore by a lack of morality, but by a pagan morality. Modernity assumed Christian Morality, Post Modernity no morality, and Après Post is assuming Pagan morality. To a Christian, unfamiliar with pagan culture, pagan morality looks like the lack thereof. It is immoral, in the Christian sense of the word, but we must not let its immorality have us assume there is unmorality. We see pornography on the internet and we assume that the people doing it do not have morals. I will attempt to show that they do have morals, they are just not ours. They are worshipping their pagan gods, and some (more likely the men) feel like good people. Post Modern thought would say that there is nothing wrong with porn because there is no truth in Christian morality. We can throw it off if it doesn’t work for us. Après post theology would say that we should encourage sex and sexuality because it is healthy (read morally right).

And this phenomena is not just present in pornography and sexuality (though certainly it must be most present there). We will see that the rise of violent videos on the internet, and well as Ultimate Fighting, violence as a means to good in both TV and movie scripts, as well as the rise of gangs in America Suburbs (a place previously safe from such organized violence), all point to the rise of a pagan value system. The rise of “Celebrity”, visual sensuality, and superhero legends will all also point to a shift in culture form Post Modern nothingness, to pagan truth.

In the next chapter I will describe what I call Après Post culture in more detail. I will be mapping out pagan values and morality and explore how this is both an extension of and revolution to Post Modern’s dogma of relativity. We will explore pagan themes from various cultures, traditions, and times, though we will go though this rather quickly. We will then take a look at the predominant cultural paradigms emerging today, seeing how they very easily fit into the long history of paganism on the world. Finally we will discus what has to be done to reach this new culture. Just as the churches of 70 years ago won’t fit in most places today, so too will our new church plants need to adapt to the culture surrounding it to survive.

As we proceed forward I will pull from such varied sources as The Bible, C.S. Lewis, Camille Paglia, Greek Myth, Mark Driscoll, Louis Menand, feminism, Marxism, pornography, television, film, contemporary literature, Harry Potter, Hannah Montana, Barak Obama, the Simpsons, Christian Literature, Comic Books, the internet, blogs, Tabloids, Disney, Augustine, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the list goes on. As a Christian book this may seem light on Scripture, and that is partly due to the nature of this book. For the majority of it I will be trying to describe and discuss culture, not proscribe a solution. For those looking for my Biblical grounds for discussion, they will be scattered throughout, mainly as counter points, and most dense in the first and last chapter. I will be constantly comparing Après Post to the Christian world view, but will be assuming the reader knows his or her scripture and I need not quote it all the time. Some of the authors I will be quoting are anything but Christian, like Camille Paglia, who I will be quoting often in the next chapter, even stealing some of her terms. I do this, not in promotion of them, I very often disagree with Paglia, but because I find their observations or opinions illuminating. Paglia, for example is pagan. By studying her and what she considers pagan in our culture (and like myself, she finds a lot), we can come to a greater understanding of both our culture and the pagan understanding of our culture, which, if we are going to try to combat (and indeed I am), we should have the greatest understanding of “the other” we can.

As I quote these taboo people, shows, and ideas know I am not promoting them. They are aids in our study. Although I find myself sometimes agreeing with some of their observations, again like Paglia’s assertion that Film is extremely Pagan by nature, and we are an extremely pagan society, I do not always agree with their conclusions. As you read this, remember this is a cultural thermometer. I am not trying to proscribe an action, but rather describe a culture. As such, I will pull from sources I normally would never condone. Know too, however, that Scripture is held in the highest regard. I view it as the Living Word of God, and although I won’t fill this book with it, my heart is overflowing.

I think it is safe for us to proceed. The first chapter, “What Happens After Post Modernism Dies: The Rise of the Après Post” will clarify some of the ideas thrown out in this introduction, as well as more clearly define the three main world views that exist right now: Post Modern, Christian, and Après Post. I realize there still are some Modern Men, but they are all either now Christian, Après Post, or such a small faction as to be left out of this discussion. We will see the historical roots of Après Post, and how it is beginning to lowly show its face. I say it has been in existence for a few years hence, at least, and is gaining momentum daily. Let’s see what it means to be Après Post.

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[i] The Metaphysical Club

[ii] I recommend Schrödinger’s Cat or Fear of Physics for a further explanation that is easy for nonscientist to understand.

[iii] Romans 1