“Part of the point of postmodernity, under the strange providence of God, is to preach the Fall to arrogant modernity.”
N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is (InterVarsity Press, 1999) p. 183
technorati: emerging church, postmodernity
Here the quote in context:
ReplyDelete"We worship other gods and start to reflect their likeness instead. We distort our vocation to stewardship into the will to power, treating God’s world as either a gold mine or an ashtray. And we distort our calling to beauty, healing, creative many-sided human relationships into exploitation and abuse. Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud described a fallen world in which money, power, and sex have become the norm, displacing relationship, stewardship and worship. Part of the point of postmodernity under the strange providence of God is to preach the Fall to arrogant modernity. What we are faced with in our culture is the post-Christian version of the doctrine of original sin: all human endeavor is radically flawed, and the journalists who take delight in pointing this out are simply telling over and over again the story of Genesis 3 as applied to today’s readers, politicians, royalty, and rock stars. And our task, as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to the world that has discovered fallenness, to announce healing to the world that has discovered brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to the world that knows only exploitation, fear, and suspicion."
Yes. We need to understand our world and God's work even in that fallen world (as Wright points out) to connect with those to whom we're called by God to reach with the gospel. Wright does this so well here, I think, as reflected here.
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