This was a question I’ve had for some time now since the heyday of the Emerging Church came and went, but I haven’t put a whole lot of thought or research (read, Google search) into it until recently. I knew that postmodernism wasn’t quite as pronounced as it had been in culture in general, and particularly in the church, and personally I don’t hear much about it anymore, like during the Emerging Church days, which attempted a synthesized version of postmodernism with Christianity. There are certainly still elements of relativism as it pertains to how you know something for sure (epistemic humility, as it’s called) such as “you have your truth, I have mine,” but this is almost kind of assumed in culture now, not debated like it was.
Month: August 2018
To start, this is purely my experience based on trial and error. “Results May Vary,” or however the legal jargon is supposed to go to deflect responsibility for it not working, haha. 🙂
Father, in the beginning through Your Son, You spoke into the void of darkness and created all that exists. Jesus You are the radiance of the glory of the Father and the exact imprint of His nature. In You is life, and that life is the light of men. Just like Your creative act, Your light shines into the darkness of this world, and the darkness has not overcome You, because You overcame sin and the forces of evil and darkness at the cross. And not only that but even now, as Your people who live in this world that is stained with sin and its curse, Lord You shine the light of Your Spirit into our circumstances of suffering and pain. Lord in our weakness, in our hurt, in our longing, this is where You will meet us in great ways and are near, when we’re at our most vulnerable, anxious, fearful, and hurting. Lord would we rest in You and press into You as our fortress, shield and protector.
This is a fascinating article about the underpinning and foundation of China’s surveillance and social credit system and the systems engineering theories and methodologies that brought it about. I find it particularly interesting the author specifies the use of “carrots” (means of pleasure, getting at the desires and loves of the populace) and “sticks” (means of coercion, inflicting punishments on the populace for stepping out of line) to essentially control the masses. This has roots (though not one for one) in some things Aldous Huxley said in a lecture at Berkeley in the 1960’s about “scientific dictatorships” of the future. It’s worth listening to:
https://archive.org/details/AldousHuxley-TheUltimateRevolution
There’s something about understanding your ancestral roots that gives foundation to understanding who you are and where you came from. Diving into your genealogical records and background can give you some form of a framework to knowing more about your identity, why you are the way you are in various ways.
The same can be said of understanding the nature of our salvation, or rather the nature of how we were saved.
This was a theology conference put on by the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary on the Five Solas of the Reformation in 2015. Enjoy!