Reaching Post-Moderns & Ed Dickerson

[John317]

Much of this has been around for a long time-- for instance in Nietzsche's and other existentialist's writings. Also, some of the same notions have influenced many current Seventh-day Adventist writers and teachers who tend toward the liberal view of the Bible. These commonly regard it as containing unimportant errors and even false beliefs which they say SDAs need to jetttison and replace with doctrines more acceptable to postmoderns.

What would such a Seventh-day Adventist church look like? And how would the book "Seventh-day Adventists Believe" be different if such changes occurred? For instance, would the Investigative Judgment, Creation's literal week of 24 hour days, and the universal flood all be retained or thrown out? How about the virgin birth, Jesus' literal resurrection, and a literal second coming? Or "The Spirit of Prophecy"?

And how are we to distinguish between the truths of the Bible and the unimportant errors or false teachings it contains?

Is the book called Adventism For A New Generation a pretty good start?

[there buster]

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a systematized dogmaticism that requires every person to submit their thought and souls to the authority of "leaders" in a church.

If I saw the church that way, I could neither belong nor ask others to.

[Amelia]

Ed, is your book easy to read and understand by those of us who are simple minded?

[cricket]

But, there's the thing, you don't "see" it that way. You don't have the same frame of reference/mind as the postmodern.

[there buster]

My, my. Quite a list.

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Also, some of the same notions have influenced many current Seventh-day Adventist writers and teachers who tend toward the liberal view of the Bible.

As I've already noted, academic postmodernism is a different animal than the cultural variety. The average teenager knows little of Nietzsche, less of Derrida, and cares not at all. Yet they hold culturally postmodern views.

The first public airing of this phenomenon probably came in 1987 with Allen Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind." He starts by saying that, at the end of a long life of thinking, Socrates said, "This one thing I know, that I know nothing." Then Bloom said, "Today, the typical college freshman knows that he knows nothing: How did it all become so easy?"

Cultural or popular postmodernism is the easy version.

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These commonly regard it as containing unimportant errors and even false beliefs which they say SDAs need to jetttison and replace with doctrines more acceptable to postmoderns.

I'm having difficulty with that sentence, which leads me to two questions.

1)SDA's do not hold to inerrancy. Doesn't that mean that we agree there might be "unimportant errors?"

2)And assuming that "unimportant errors" exist, why would they affect any of our fundamental beliefs? Wouldn't errors which affected our fundamental beliefs be "important" by definition?

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What would such a Seventh-day Adventist church look like? And how would the book "Seventh-day Adventists Believe" be different if such changes occurred?

When you ask what such a church would look like, are you speaking of a) a congregation, a worship service or c) a worldwide institution?

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For instance, would the Investigative Judgment, Creation's literal week of 24 hour days, and the universal flood all be retained or thrown out? How about the virgin birth, Jesus' literal resurrection, and a literal second coming? Or "The Spirit of Prophecy"?

I don't anticipate that the core of these beliefs will change much, if at all. How we describe/explain them will change greatly. If I have any gifts in this area, that's how I employ them. Jerry D. Thomas has a book out explaining the 28 fundamentals to children. I'm sure he (and others who have read the MS) thought I wanted to change the fundamental beliefs in some way, they would not have endorsed my book.

It is important to note here, however, that, just as there is a difference between academic postmodernism and cultural or popular postmodernism, there is often a difference between what the SDA denomination proclaims as its doctrines, and what individual members my believe.

That disconnect is, it seems to me, inevitable and somewhat irremediable. We all tend to make mental and verbal shortcuts about our beliefs. These sometimes result in serious distortions.

I also recognize, John317, that there are a number of SDA's who have thoroughly adopted postmodernism themselves (I call it "going native"), and they do indeed use it as a cover to try and re-engineer Adventism.

They do so, as does postmodernism generally, by equating the current SDA expression of our beliefs with modernism, and rejecting both. Thoroughly modernist SDA's react with predictable indignation.

What both sides forget is that the Gospel confronts every culture and philosophy. Modernists are correct that popular postmodernism is contrary to scripture in some respects. And postmoderns are correct that modernism is contrary to scripture in some respects.

Recognizing these problems is useful for those of us attempting to bridge the gap, but we get nowhere with the people we're trying to reach if we start with a critique of their philosophy.

Everyone who comes to Christ must let go of cherished falsehoods. Moderns and postmoderns alike. But too many of us start by cleaning someone else's house of error, rather than filling it with the beauty of Christ. And Jesus himself warned us what happens with an empty house.

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And how are we to distinguish between the truths of the Bible and the unimportant errors or false teachings it contains?

Since we as a denomination do not hold to inerrancy, then we must wrestle with that question.

If we held to inerrancy, it would eliminate that struggle, but raise others more difficult, as evangelicals who believe in inerrancy have discovered.

[there buster]

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Ed, is your book easy to read and understand by those of us who are simple minded?

I don't talk about postmodernism at all in the book. It's title is "Grounds for Belief" a series of conversations in a coffee-shop/cafe type setting. 'Grounds for Belief" is the name of our cafe style outreach.

It's an easy read.

[there buster]

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But, there's the thing, you don't "see" it that way. You don't have the same frame of reference/mind as the postmodern.

If I saw it that way, I couldn't help them. I had a student once, in my classroom days, who saw history as "a series of wars and dates." Needless to say, she didn't like history. While I could understand why she saw it that way, I couldn't have helped her learn history had I shared the philosophy.

There's an important difference between understanding a world view and sharing it. In any mission field, Christians need to understand the religion and culture of those they work with. To the degree that it's healthy, they need to immerse themselves in that culture. But if they converted to the other religion, their whole purpose in going would be defeated.

That's one of the great challenges Christianity faces today. Some have essentially converted to postmodernism. As I said in another post, the gospel confronts every culture and philosophy. So, although raised in a modern culture, I do not accept it uncritically.

As I understand it, understanding what those around us believe, while doing our best to be true to the scriptures, is what is meant by being "in" the world, while not being "of" it.

I regularly immerse myself "in" the postmodern world in order to communicate with postmoderns, but I am not "of" the postmodern world.

[cricket]

Understood, completely! Even so, not all postmoderns will see the church as is/was described. That, too, is important to remember when reaching out.

[bevin]

There is one aspect of post-modernism which I thoroughly approve of - not believing something just because some-one or some institution threatens you if you don't.

I don't think it is possible for us to know absolute truths - everything I know is subject to revision as I recognize my previous errors and have new data.

I think morals are simply derived short rules for "if you do this, then that is likely to happen, so don't do this". For instance "if you tell lies, then people will learn that you are not a reliable source of information, hence will discount information that you give them later, so don't tell lies unless this is an effect you actually want".

Does that make me post-modern, or what other label should I have?

/Bevin

[cricket]

Sensible! Reality-based!

[Dr. Shane]

I believe in absolute truth to a certain extent. The Ten Commandments, for example, I believe to be an absolute basis for morality.

[cricket]

I believe in absolute truth too. I just don't believe that it is so easy to pin-point who exactly has the absolute truth. And because of such, I'm not going to say that what I believe has greater merit than what you believe, or vice-versa. We are each on a separate journey to the same place.

[there buster]

Ordinarily, I wouldn't do this, but sine you asked:

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Does that make me post-modern, or what other label should I have?

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There is one aspect of post-modernism which I thoroughly approve of - not believing something just because some-one or some institution threatens you if you don't.

Actually, that's a characteristic of modernism. Relying on reason and observation rather than authority.

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I don't think it is possible for us to know absolute truths - everything I know is subject to revision as I recognize my previous errors and have new data.

That statement is about 50/50.

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I think morals are simply derived short rules for "if you do this, then that is likely to happen, so don't do this". For instance "if you tell lies, then people will learn that you are not a reliable source of information, hence will discount information that you give them later, so don't tell lies unless this is an effect you actually want".

Philosophically, that statement is pragmatism.

IN sum, every person I have ever met is more complex than any single label. That certainly includes you.

"postmodernism" is a verbal shortcut describing a general worldview. To add to what Jerry D. Thomas wrote, to reach people who generally hold that general worldview requires a comletely different approach than we have used in the past. It's not that postmoderns cannot understand what we present. It's that the way we present them doesn't engage their attention.

[John317]

My, my. Quite a list.

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Also, some of the same notions have influenced many current Seventh-day Adventist writers and teachers who tend toward the liberal view of the Bible.

As I've already noted, academic postmodernism is a different animal than the cultural variety. The average teenager knows little of Nietzsche, less of Derrida, and cares not at all. Yet they hold culturally postmodern views.

True, but the cultural variety, whether they know it or not, have their beliefs because of men who lived before them such as Nietzsche, who anticipated many modern views of things. It may do no good to talk to these average teenagers about Nietzsche, but studying him sure gives one insight into postmodern thinking. There's hardly anything that postmoderns say that was not first said by Nietzsche.

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The first public airing of this phenomenon probably came in 1987 with Allen Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind." He starts by saying that, at the end of a long life of thinking, Socrates said, "This one thing I know, that I know nothing." Then Bloom said, "Today, the typical college freshman knows that he knows nothing: How did it all become so easy?"

I would rephrase that to "the typical college Junior or Senior," because my experience is that the typical beginning freshman still thinks he knows quite a bit. It usually takes a couple of quarters before it begins to dawn on him that he knows much less than he thought.

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Cultural or popular postmodernism is the easy version.

That's what happens when ideas that were once rejected and attacked not only are recognized but become identified with what a particular generation deems common sense. The very air seems to breath with such notions and ideas.

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These commonly regard it as containing unimportant errors and even false beliefs which they say SDAs need to jetttison and replace with doctrines more acceptable to postmoderns.

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I'm having difficulty with that sentence, which leads me to two questions.

1)SDA's do not hold to inerrancy. Doesn't that mean that we agree there might be "unimportant errors?"

It depends on the kinds of "errors" one is referring to. If one is talking about errors that resulted from transmission or copying, then, of course, such errors do exist. However, usually it is possible to determine the correct reading by comparing the manuscripts, so that these kinds of errors due to transmission are not the ones that I have reference to. Rather, what I mean by errors are those which the prophets themselves wrote. Many teach that the prophets and apostles wrote "errors" which modern critics consider "unimportant." This includes some SDAs.

While Seventh-day Adventists do not believe that God dictated the Scriptures word for word, we do believe that the Bible always tells the truth and that it always tells the truth in all that it talks about. Number one of Fundamental Beliefs says, "The Holy Scriptures are the infallible revelation of His [God's] will. They are the standard of character, the test of experience, the authoriative revealer of doctrines, and the trustworthy record of God's acts in history." The Bible is clear that God cannot lie or speak falsely. "Every word of God proves true..."Prov. 30:5. "God is not man that He should lie..." Nu. 23:19. Somewhere Jesus is recorded as having said, "The Scriptures cannot be broken." Scripture in the original manuscripts, then, does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact.

Examples of "unimportant errors": (1) the number of angels at Jesus' tomb; (2) the blind men of Jericho; (3) the Inscription on the Cross of Christ; (4) the number of demoniacs healed; (5) Matthew 27:9; (6) Mark 1:2,3.

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2)And assuming that "unimportant errors" exist, why would they affect any of our fundamental beliefs? Wouldn't errors which affected our fundamental beliefs be "important" by definition?

Yes, all the errors could affect our fundamental beliefs but not all Adventists believe this. Notice that I said the liberals tend to believe also that the Bible contains even "false beliefs" in addition to the "unimportant errors." For example, they might believe that the Bible writers were wrong in their belief in the Universal Flood, the literal seven day 24 hour period of creation, in Adam and Eve, in the miracles of Jesus, in the resurrection, and in Jesus' second coming in glory.

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What would such a Seventh-day Adventist church look like? And how would the book "Seventh-day Adventists Believe" be different if such changes occurred?

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When you ask what such a church would look like, are you speaking of a) a congregation, a worship service or c) a worldwide institution?

What would the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church look like? That is, what would it preach and teach and what sorts of books would it print?

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For instance, would the Investigative Judgment, Creation's literal week of 24 hour days, and the universal flood all be retained or thrown out? How about the virgin birth, Jesus' literal resurrection, and a literal second coming? Or "The Spirit of Prophecy"?

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I don't anticipate that the core of these beliefs will change much, if at all. How we describe/explain them will change greatly.

Would we substitute our words in place of the Bible's expressions? For instance, would God the Father become "mother" or "parent"? Isn't it true that a change in how those beliefs are described or explained may also change to some extent the beliefs themselves?

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...It is important to note here, however, that, just as there is a difference between academic postmodernism and cultural or popular postmodernism, there is often a difference between what the SDA denomination proclaims as its doctrines, and what individual members my believe.

Just as it frequently happens in the Roman Catholic Church in which are millions who know practically nothing of their church's real teachings. So in the SDA church there are fewer and fewer people thinking the same thoughts and speaking the same words as the Bible says we should. If we're constantly contradicting each other, and can't even agree among ourselves what is the truth, why should anyone believe we have the truth or know what we're talking about? Is it any wonder, then, that they don't believe any of us can find agreement? because it only confirms them in their distrust that there is anything like absolute truth.

[Jeannieb43]

I read yesterday the latest Adventist World mag (or whatever the right title is for the Ad Rev World Ed) and it had an article on the reaching post-moderns

Unfortunately the result is going to be exactly the same as today, except it will take longer to get there. The process will get people into the SDA church, and when they find out what the real beliefs actually are, they will leave again

The "real beliefs" are different, depending upon who's preaching. One of our ministers in California, in speaking to a former SDA friend of mine who came to visit church, said, "Welcome back; we're reinventing Adventism." I think he meant, We're learning to speak the language which postmoderns will understand; we're learning to accent the positive and not the negative.

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The SDA church needs to actually consider CORE CHANGES - what a radical thought - it doesn't help to put up a nicer street sign and pave the drive-way if, when you get into the house, it is dilapadated inside

Just what Core Changes would you recommend? Lifestyle restrictions, mainly? or the Pre-Advent Judgment? just what?

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I have my doubts - the monthly mag arrived from the Atlantic Union today. It had a terrifying traditional article on sex, marriage, and homosexuality and threatened an even worse series of articles in the month's to come

/Bevin

The reason some people emphasize those lifestyle restrictions is that they're apparent; they're visible; they're easily seen by the world, so as to make the member easily judged.

We must caution those who dwell on such things: "Man looketh on the outward appearance; but the Lord looketh on the heart."

Even our conference administrators need to be reminded thus.

IMHO sex, marriage and homosexuality are minor matters. We are not to judge others. The really major matter is: Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus?

[Woody]

Jeannie ... I am sure you would agree but I wanted to put my own words into what you have said here "The reason some people emphasize those lifestyle restrictions is that they're apparent; they're visible; they're easily seen by the world, so as to make the member easily judged."

I would like to say that this is a tool of the Devil.

Since it is only God who is to judge ... the Devil knows that he can trick the church into judging the "easy" sins to see. The church then makes it an issue of membership. That way ... they get to sit in judgment of those members that have problems in those obvious sins.

Like I say ... it is a trap of the Devil.

[there buster]

Actually, most of the issues you raise come from the heritage of the 19th century. There is nothing particularly postmodern about them. In fact, postmoderns would consider most of them uninteresting.

[Bravus]

Hadn't noticed it before, but the title of this thread is ambiguous in an amusing way.

[there buster]

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sex, marriage and homosexuality are minor matters. We are not to judge others. The really major matter is: Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus?

Interesting. "Sex, marriage, and homosexuality" are in fact relationship issues. And our relationship with Jesus is intimately connected to our relationship to others.

[there buster]

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Hadn't noticed it before, but the title of this thread is ambiguous in an amusing way.

Quite so. Wonder which is more difficult?

[Dr. Shane]

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sex, marriage and homosexuality are minor matters.

I couldn't disagree more. Human relationships is one of the most important matters in true religion. The relationships we have with others is something we will take to heaven, provided they are saved too.

Minor matters to me are things like jewelry, women ordination and even diet. The way we interact with other humans is one of the greatest issues in our spiritual walk with the Lord.

Consider James 1:17 "Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world." and 1 John 3:10 "whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother." Here we see our faith being judged by the way we interact with others.

[John317]

Actually, most of the issues you raise come from the heritage of the 19th century. There is nothing particularly postmodern about them. In fact, postmoderns would consider most of them uninteresting.

Could you give an example of a postmodern person you've seen become a Seventh-day Adventist as a result of your approach.

Would you expect that by the time a postmodern person is baptized and joins the church, he/she will be a firm believer in the 28 fundamental doctrines of the Seventh-day Adventist church or would that now be considered an irrelevent goal?

In 1973/4 a bunch of us students from Pacific Union College would go on Sabbath to the campus of UC Berkeley and witness to them about Christ. We had an outreach program for them at the Berkeley SDA church and were successful in attracting students and others to Sabbath vesper programs. I see no difference between the mindset of the "postmoderns" of today and the way those students were thinking in 1973/4.

[bevin]

So, if post-modern's care about relationships, and if sex/marriage/homosexuality are relationship issues...

what will a post-modern feel about the traditional SDA position on this topic - that sex is only valid in a monogamous heterosexual marriage?

what will a post-modern feel about the traditional SDA health position - it doesn't matter how unfit or obese you are, or how much chocolate/sugar/fat you eat provided you don't eat shell-fish or pork

what will a post-modern feel about the rules that tithe must be spent on specific items and not on others

...

/Bevin

[there buster]

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I see no difference between the mindset of the "postmoderns" of today and the way those students were thinking in 1973/4.

Yes, that's clear.

[there buster]

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So, if post-modern's care about relationships, and if sex/marriage/homosexuality are relationship issues...

what will a post-modern feel about the traditional SDA position on this topic - that sex is only valid in a monogamous heterosexual marriage?

You didn't ask me, but this is an interesting one. The answer comes in two parts.

Postmoderns-- here I'm speaking primarily of those under 35 --

are even more clueless about relationships than their parents. They are marrying later and less often, and divorcing sooner (the term "starter marriage" has come about from this generation). So they have a love-hate relationship with relationships. They deeply desire them, but have little clue on how to initiate and build them.

(Author's note here: that's why two chapters of my book are devoted to learning to trust, and learning to build friendships)

(Father's note: It's been interesting to see how this lack of relationship skills plays out in reality. I had two daughters get married this last calendar year, one at 23, the other at 26. I have been giving workshops on relationships of all kinds since the girls were 7 and 10, so they had a head start. But finding an SDA Gen-Xer suitable for marriage---whew! And no, I wasn't unduly involved. I mainly observed.)

In general, those under 35 consider homosexuality normal and healthy. They're ambivalent about marriage anyway, since, as they see it, so few make marriage work. This makes them generally open to letting anybody who wants to have a go at it-- after all, how much more messed up can it get? That would be their general take on it.