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“Don’t Be Conformed to This World”: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C.

Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

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Page 1: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

“Don’t Be Conformed to This World”: Understanding the

Western Story

Michael GoheenVancouver, B.C.

Page 2: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Incomparably the most urgent missionary task for the next few decades is the mission to ‘modernity’... It calls for the use of sharp intellectual tools, to probe behind the unquestioned assumptions of modernity and uncover the hidden credo which supports them...

- Lesslie Newbigin

Page 3: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Hidden Credo

• Humanism: “Must we not become gods?”

Page 4: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Humanist Credo: “Must we not ourselves become gods?”

• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)• ‘The Madman’• “We have killed God—you and I! We

are all his murderers! . . . How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderer of all murderers? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

Page 5: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Nietzsche’s Parable

• We have killed God in Western culture• We must become gods

– Creator– Redeemer: Humanism “assigns to us

nothing less than the task of being our own savior and redeemer.” (Corliss Lamont)

– Ruler of history

Page 6: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Hidden Credo

• Humanism: “Must we not become gods?”

• Rationalistic humanism: “Scientia potestas est [knowledge is power]”– Control of non-human creation by technology

– Organise society according to reason

Page 7: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Western Credo

I believe we are capable of defining the nature of the world and the meaning of human life (Creator).

I believe we can solve the problems of our world and bring about a new world of freedom, prosperity, justice, and truth with scientific reason (Saviour).

Page 8: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Hidden Credo

• Humanism: “Must we not become gods?”

• Rationalistic humanism: “Scientia potestas est”

• Living off Christian capital

Page 9: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Conversion of West (18th century)

Christendom

European

Society

Rationalistichumanism

European

Society

Page 10: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Light of the world

• 18th century called Enlightenment

• Scientific reason is the light of the world

• Religious faith commitment

Page 11: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

A New Faith . . .

The West had ‘lost its faith’—and found a new one, in science and in man.

- Richard Tarnas

Page 12: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Enlightenment humanist faith

• Faith in progress• Progress achieved by reason and

science• Scientific reason produced into

technology• Scientific reason produced ‘rational’

societal organisation and structuresProgress comes ‘by the application of reason’ to both ‘technical and social’ issues (J. H. Plumb).

Page 13: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

‘The ideas and values of the modern age are not only intellectualized but they are embedded in powerful institutions, arguably the most powerful institutions that have ever existed. . . . the key ideas, values, and characteristics of modernity are ‘carried by specific institutions . . .’ (John Davison Hunter).

Page 14: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

The problem of leading a Christian life in a non-Christian society is now very present to us. It is not merely the problem of a minority in a society of individuals holding an alien belief. It is the problem constituted by our implication in a network of institutions from which we cannot dissociate ourselves; institutions the operation of which appears no longer neutral, but non-Christian; and as for the Christian who is not conscious of his dilemma—and he is in the majority—he is becoming more and more de-Christianized by all sorts of unconscious pressures . . .

- T. S. Eliot

Page 15: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Age of Revolution (19th- early 20th c.)

• A worldview can never remain only as a vision or set of beliefs: Will always begin to reshape world

• Bringing society into conformity with Enlightenment faith

• French Revolution, Industrial Revolution, Democratic revolutions, American Revolution, Marxist Revolution.

Page 16: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Establishment of Enlightenment faith meant a narrowing of gospel

“The early Christian belief that the Fall and Redemption pertained not just to man but to the entire cosmos, a doctrine already fading after the Reformation, now disappeared altogether; the process of salvation, if it had any meaning at all, pertained solely to the personal relation between God and man” (Tarnas).

Page 17: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Economic form of modern humanism

• Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations 1776)– Goal: Material prosperity– Means: Rational organisation of

production, technology, free market

• Industrial revolution• 20th century: Western culture

shaped by economic idolatry

Page 18: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Romans 1.18-32 and Our Cultural Story

• “Worshiped and served created things”: Western culture more and more focusses on economic sphere of life

• “God gave them over”: Creation of wealth, consumer society, accompanying joys and ills

Page 19: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Every style of culture is in turn related to the religious question of how people view the ultimate meaning of their life and society.

- Bob Goudzwaard

Page 20: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Ultimate meaning of post-Enlightenment West

• End: Economic growth, material prosperity, consumption of goods and experiences

• Means: Market, economic processes, technology

Page 21: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Economic organisation of society

• Illustration of queen bee in beehive

• Queen bee’s task to produce eggs

• Whole hive functionalised and directed toward that task

Page 22: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

20th Century Development and Our Current Situation

• Postmodernity: Increasingly comprehensive and widespread challenge to Enlightenment faith (not working anymore!)

• Globalisation: Survival and global spread of an economic form of the Enlightenment faith (let’s take it to the rest of the world!)

• Consumerism: Fruit of both developments

Page 23: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

On the one hand . . . breakdown of modern humanism . . .

• Environmental destruction• Growing poverty• Nuclear threat• Economic problems• Psychological, social disorders

. . . leads to postmodern challenge.

Page 24: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Postmodernity’s Challenge

• Postmoderns are sceptical of certainty• Postmoderns are sensitive to context• Postmoderns tend toward humorous,

being relaxed, sometimes apathetic, non-committal

• Postmoderns highly value subjective experience

• For postmoderns, togetherness and community is important

Page 25: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

What is Postmodernism?

• Postmoderns don’t believe big stories of progress anymore

• Postmoderns don’t trust reason to get truth

• Postmoderns are suspicious of exclusive truth claims

• Postmoderns are suspicious of authority• Postmoderns tend toward pluralism—

many versions of the truth• Postmoderns are sensitive to the injustices

of humanist story• Postmoderns are appreciative of

community

Page 26: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

On the other hand . . . the success of modern humanism . . .

• Growing wealth• Degree of freedom, justice, and

stability• Scientific and technological

development

. . . leads to globalising of modern humanism.

Page 27: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Globalisation

• Spread of Enlightenment humanism around world

• Taken a strongly economic shape• Economics shaping all aspects of life• Global market to produce wealth for

all• Unjust market that benefits West and

wealthy

Page 28: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Consumer Society

• Combination of loss of meaning (postmodernity) and growing wealth and idolatry of economic processes (economic globalisation) produces consumer society

• Most powerful idolatrous force in West today?

Page 29: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Most powerful idolatrous force?

Consumer capitalism, both for good and for ill, is a pervasive and foundational reality of our day (R. Clapp).

Consumerism appears to have become part and parcel of the very fabric of modern life. . . . And the parallel with religion is not an accidental one. Consumerism is . . . arguably the religion of the late twentieth century (S. Miles).

Page 30: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

How Did This Happen? The Making of a Consumer Society

There was a huge gap . . . between production and consumption. How to close it? Industrial production’s momentum had already built up, so cutting production was not feasible. Manufacturers decided instead to pump up consumption, to increase demand to meet supply. But they realized consumption was a way of life that had to be taught and learned.

- Rodney Clapp

Page 31: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Consumption as Way of Life

Our enormously productive economy . . . demands that we make consumption a way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods in rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption. . . . We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption. (Victor Lebow, economist, 1955)

Page 32: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Making Consumption a Way of Life

• Planned obsolescence: Designing stuff to break down or be unusable quickly

• Perceived obsolescence: Instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary.

Page 33: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Advertising

• Average North American exposed to 3000 ads per day

• Creating new desires• Creating dissatisfaction• Selling the good life

Advertising and related media have served and still serve as important shapers of an ethos that the good life is attained through acquisition and consumption, and that would have its inhabitants constantly yearning for new products and new experiences (Rodney Clapp).

Page 34: Dont Be Conformed to This World: Understanding the Western Story Michael Goheen Vancouver, B.C

Critique of consumerism

• There is excessive consumption by some while others suffer want

• Excessive consumption threatens the environment

• Creates ungodly characterE.g., Early indoctrination into consumerism through deluge of advertising tends to breed “narcissism, entitlement, and dissatisfaction” in children. (Mary Pipher)

• For many consumption has become the

primary goal to the detriment of their own well-being