A New Kind of Christan - Chapter 4

Just as there was a tremendous change in worldview when moving from the medieval world to the modern world (15th & 16th century) – a tremendous change in worldview is required as one moves from the modern to the postmodern world.

Changing your worldview/paradigm is never easy. There are real costs associated with it. There is something to be gained but there are also things that must be given up. One becomes spiritually homeless.


“To really get the impact of how different the medieval model was, we could imagine what would happen if we could take two of you students and send you back into the fifteenth century. Nobody could possible believe that you could be Christians. Of course, first there would be the obvious cultural issues – for example, even a medieval prostitute wouldn’t have been seen in public dressed like you – and your fine haircut would have made people either laugh at you or fear you were a witch of some sort. But on a deeper level, if you told them you didn’t believe in the pope and you didn’t accept that kings ruled by divine right and you didn’t believe that God created a universe consisting of concentric spheres of ascending perfection, and if you let it slip that you agreed with Copernicus that the earth rotated around the sun, you would surely be tried as heretics and perhaps burned at the stake.” To the Christian culture of medieval Europe, none of you today could be considered real Christians.

Is it possible that we moderns have similarly intertwined a different but equally contingent worldview with our eternal faith? What if we live at the end of the modern period, at a time when our modern worldview is crumbling, just as the medieval one began to do in the sixteenth century?

“Most modern people love to relativize the viewpoints of others against the unquestioned superiority of their own modern viewpoint. But in a way, you cross the threshold into post modernity the moment you turn your critical scrutiny from others to yourself, when you relativize your own modern viewpoint. When you do this, everything changes. It is like a conversion. You can’t go back. You begin to see that what seemed like pure, objective certainty really depends heavily on a subjective preference for you personal viewpoint.”

I believe that the modern version of Christianity that you have learned from your parents, your Sunday School teacher, and even your pastors is destined to be a medieval cathedral. It’s over or almost over. Most of your peers live in a different world from you. They have already crossed the line into the postmodern world. But few of you have. Why? Because you want to be faithful to the Christian upbringing you have received, which is so thoroughly enmeshed with modernity. One of the most important choices you will ever make will be made in the next several years. Will you continue to live loyally in the fading world, in the waning light of the setting sun of modernity? Or will you venture ahead in faith, to practice your faith and devotion to Christ in the new emerging culture of post modernity? I want you to invest your lives not in keeping the old ship afloat but in designing and building and sailing a new ship for new adventures in a new time in history, as intrepid followers of Jesus Christ.