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The Rhythm of the
World
A Dangerous
Playground?Responding to David F. Wells:
on the moral distinctiveness of today's churchin contemporary Western society.
Lucy Cheesman
B3
13th May 2003
Supervisor: Dr. Anna Robbins
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OUTLINE
Introduction
Part 1: The Rhythm of the World
i) The Hum of Postmodernity
Vanishing Acts
Truth
Revelation and Reason
Collapse of the Metanarrative
Sin
Changing Concepts
Salvation from what?
Character
The Third Domain
Support Structures
ii) The Bass Line of Secular Salvation
Self Construction
Personality
New Adjectives
Celebrities and heroes
Consumerism
Seeking the Signified
Marketing Church
Therapy
Self-Potentiality
Substitute Religion
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Part 2: A Different Beat
i) Out of Step with Holiness
The Role of the HolyGod as Other
Ultimate Purity
Transcendent Presence
Worship Perspectives
God as Reference Point
The Place of Sin
Guilt and Shame
ii) The Distorted Lyrics of Human Nature
Questions of Identity
A Twilight Knowledge
Recognising what we are
Remembering what we were
The Embarrassed Church
The Great Contradiction
Reinterpreting Sin
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Introduction
Functionally, we are not morally disengaged, adrift, and alienated; we are
morally obliterated. We are, in practise, not only moral illiterati; we are
morally vacant.1
This is what David F. Wells calls his beguilingly simple thesis, in his bookLosing
our Virtue. This essay responds primarily to this volume. However, it is third in a
trilogy, preceded byNo Place for Truth and God in the Wasteland. There will be
references to these works, in order to grasp continuity of thought and theme. Wells
writing deals primarily with the United States of America, and thus will in some ways
be culture specific. Cultural differences exist within the West itself. Furthermore, his
concern is the evangelicaltradition.
This project looks at Wells argument that the Church reflects too much of the modern
(and postmodern) world, betraying its call to be in the world, but not of it. It buys into
a postmodern spirituality, which lacks a moral centre, essential to the Churchs
distinctiveness. His primary concern is the Church, and the business of retrieval, of
preserving and reclaiming those riches of our classical spirituality that are especially
in danger of being lost.2
Part One looks at cultural elements that Wells sees as creeping into the Church; Part
Two deals with his call to restore the moral centre, by focussing on a Holy God. This
will include any relevant critique. The main response occurs in Part Three, where we
reflect on Wells thesis, and how church needs to relate, or not to relate, to culture.
1
Wells,Losing, 132
Wells,Losing, 7
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Part 1: The Rhythm of the World
i) The Hum of Postmodernity
Wells contends that in attempting to communicate with culture, the Church is guilty
of dalliance with the world from which it is meant to be set apart. In dancing to the
beat of the modern world, the Church unwittingly propagates its ideals. He proposes
that, although intending to be more effective, the Church compromises its moral
distinctiveness, instead of offering an alternative rhythm. He considers some
elements of spirituality as lost, whereas cultural elements creep in and compromise
the Churchs integrity.
Vanishing Acts:
Truth
Revelation and Reason
Wells proposes that the Enlightenment enthroned reason above God, claiming that
objective truth was sought naturalistically, not in revelation. In the Enlightenment, itwas no longer believed that God had spoken, or that he wanted to speak, and so
truth was sought out of relation to him.3 Wells doesnt chart any progression of
Enlightenment thinking, or differentiate between which Enlightenment this is,
whether French, English, or Scottish, which are significantly different from one
another.4 Also, Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke had a strong theistic
worldview. However, Locke was an empiricist, criticising those who did not subject
revelation to reason.5 For Descartes, God remains the ultimate guarantor of it all,
but, says Hicks, in a sense even Descartess Godwas a God established by
reasonthe criterion for his nature and activity was that they should be rational. 6
Wells links this subjection of revelation to reason with postmodern rejections of the
metanarrative. Modernitys authority rested on stolen Christian assumptions, seen
3
Wells,Losing, 123.4 Sell, Confessing, 135.5
Hicks,Evangelicals, 27.6
Hicks,Evangelicals, 26.
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as fraudulent by the latter day children in our postmodern world.7 They rejected any
overarching story. Wells blames much of this on the Enlightenments individualism,
in contrast with Reformation individualism. The difference, says Wells, is the form
of accountability; Reformation individualism was accountable to God.8 The
Enlightenment world placed humanity at the centre, and recast the whole sorry
scheme of things bare-handed, as it were, leaning on our own reason and goodness.9
Gradually, he says, this certainty evaporated, as the Enlightenment promises proved
to be empty.10
This statement is broad and possibly premature, as the debate
continues over whether postmodernity even properly exists.
The Collapse of the Metanarrative
Wells considers grand Enlightenment ideas to have collapsed under scrutiny, as the
humanistic became dehumanising. Modernitys bureaucratic structures remain, while
original beliefs are jaded. Postmodern thinkers, he says, are the vanguard of a
profound reaction to the failure of the Enlightenment project, giving expression to a
deeply held suspicion that modernity is in fact the enemy of human life. 11 Due to
modernitys dance with a humanistic metanarrative, the ensuing disillusion affects all
metanarratives. For postmodern thinkers, objective truth has now fallen into disrepute
generally. In some ways, Wells comments, this helps Christians to critiquemodernity, but on the other hand their virulent attack not merely on Enlightenment
meaning but on allmeaning has made Christian faith less plausible in the modern
world.12
Universal truth claims are accused of being vehicles of oppression, due to past
experience of imposing truth claims on societies. This has expanded from critiquing
the hegemonic, imperial, absolutistic claims of modernity and violence done in the
name of the progress, to encompass a widespread suspicion of any comprehensive
metanarrative of world history that makes total claims.13 Things become
community exclusive, each governed by its own epistemological and ethical
framework. The postmodernist position is one of moral nonrealism: the belief that
7
Wells,Losing, 123.8
Wells,No Place, 141.9
Wells,No Place, 57-58.10
Wells,No Place, 63.11 Wells, Wasteland, 47.12
Wells, Wasteland, 4713
Middleton and Walsh, Stranger, 71.
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be geared toward and bound up with his neighbour.20 For Wells, this natural self-
orientation means that we refuse to bear the pain of moral recrimination, or accept
the reproach that such self-scrutiny may entail.21
Wells sees classical spirituality as
centred around truth, but postmodern spirituality as based on the search for power,
be it in dramatic charismatic encounter, or in therapeutic methods of handling our
situations.22 We seek power for ourselves, and this, says Wells, is the essence of
pride, what C.S. Lewis calls the great sin, which is the completely anti-God state of
mind.23
Salvation - from what?
Understanding sin means that we recognise the need to be saved, for if there really is
no danger from which deliverance needs to be sought, then there really is no necessity
for anyone to take the Gospel seriously and believe it.24 Salvation language loses
power. Grace is misunderstood. If we dont see ourselves as sinners, we dont see the
need for atonement. For if a human is basically good with intellectual and moral
capabilities essentially intact, then any problems to his or her standing before God
will be relatively minor.25 Also, says Erickson, sin closely relates to our
understanding of the nature of God, of humanity, and our approaches to ministry and
society.26
If the concept of sin slides out of spirituality, then it impacts widertheological understanding.
Character
The third domain
Wells charts a third domain between freedom and law, once inhabited by affirmation
of truth and cultivation of character.27 He claims this space has been evacuated. God
has not only been placed at the periphery of the public sphere, as religion is privatised,
but also in our private universe, as in that which is public, there is no centre.28 The
place is missing where law and restraint areselfimposed.29
Self-obsession and
20
Berkouwer, Sin, 251.21
Wells,Losing, 186.22
Wells,Losing, 43.23
Lewis,Mere, 100.24
Wells,Losing, 180-181.25
Erickson, Theology, 581.26
Erickson, Theology, 581.27 Wells,Losing, 63.28
Wells,Losing, 60.29
Wells,Losing, 63.
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autonomous ideas result in the search for self-gratification, responsible only for
individual happiness.
Concepts of character as wholesome and good, something to be formed, have been
replaced by desire for self-fulfilment. Hauerwas notes in his earlier works that our
character is not a shadow of some deeper but more hidden real self; it is the form of
our agency acquired through our own beliefs and actions. 30 This process of
formation by what we believe and do seems quite alien when the true self is seen as
discovered, not made. The modern mindset sees humanity as essentially good. This
Pelagianism results in the idea of goodness as discovered inside us. Sense of the
cultivation of character or self-control, and quests for goodness outside us are lost.
Support Structures
The vacuum of this middle territory becomes a conflict zone. Social constraint
(chiefly, law) battles it out with self-expression. Law must now do what church,
family, character, belief, and even cultural expectations once did by way of instructing
and restraining human nature.31 Individualistic society provides few external
restrictions. Without these outside elements to act as mentors, or points of referral,
we are abandoned, with boundaries in continual flux. It is a contest in which the selfstands in one corner, glowering across the ring, and society stands in the other corner,
looking no less determined.32 Expressive individualism drives us demanding
freedom from any external expectations, as opposed to a sense of personal
responsibility. We seek to please ourselves, not others, to do what feels good, not
what we know to be right.
It is not character that defines the way that expressive individualism functions
today, but emancipation from values, from community, and from the past in
order to be oneself, to seek ones own gain.33
For individuals in todays church this aggravates moral dilemmas, as support
structures are dysfunctional. Right and wrong become harder to discern where
boundaries are less easily fixed. Social systems that once functioned as restrainers are
30
Hauerwas, Character, 21.31 Wells,Losing, 64.32
Wells,Losing, 64-65.33
Wells,Losing, 67.
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no longer central in our lives. Self-control is a lonely task, and hardly a virtue where
self-gratification is considered a right. Bryan Wilson notes that it is no longer a matter
of wishing not to be controlled by external agents. Now, we are in a time when a
permissive society tells us that even self-control is bad; that there is something worse
than misbehaviour, namely, that individuals should be thwarted in doing what they
want.34 This attitude of self-seeking, claims Wells, is evident in postmodern
spirituality, which focuses on self-expression and individual fulfilment.
34
Wilson, Transformations, 19.
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ii) The Bass Line of Secular Salvation
Wells proposes that the focus on self leads to a secularised salvation, where cures to
our ills lie essentially within ourselves, and in what we can purchase. New ways of
defining ourselves arise.
Self Construction:
Personality
New Adjectives
Wells comments on the shift from character to personality. Personality is based more
on self-expression than self-control, more on image than virtue. The terminology is
different. Character is good or bad, while personality is attractive, forceful or
magnetic, now attention has shifted from the moral virtues, which need to be
cultivated, to the image, which needs to be fashioned.35 Ideas of self become based
more on appearances and impressions. These impressions are not primarily character
judgements instead they are assessments of likability. The paradox is in wanting to
be yourself, but also seeking others favour (however superficial). Wells asks, how
do we fly in the face of conformity by becoming different, while conforming enough
to be liked?36 The vision that sprung from personality was one of unlimited self-
expression, self-gratification, and self-fulfilment.37 Guinness also notes the new quest
for designer personality:
The emphasis is now on surface, not depth; on possibilities, not qualities; on
glamour, not convictions; on what can be altered endlessly, not achieved for
good; and on what can be bought and worn, not gained by education and
formation.38
Celebrities and heroes
Wells highlights this in discussing celebrities and heroes. Individuals were once
perceived heroic because of character. Now the cult of the celebrity supersedes the
admiration of heroes. Theirs is a glamorous, more easily granted (if not as enduring)
fame. Reasons for celebrity status are usually to do with successful image, rather than
35
Wells,Losing, 97.36 Wells,Losing, 103.37
Wells,Losing, 99.38
Guinness, Time, 47.
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admirable qualities, as they embody nothing and are typically known only for being
known. Fame, in our world of images and manipulation, can be manufactured with
little or no accomplishment behind it.39
Actual accomplishments and skills need not
relate to morality. People may say its all about the music, that lifestyle is
unimportant. (Interestingly, acting itself is being something we are not, and songs
dont necessarily represent the true lifestyle of the writer.)
Celebrities wanting to be emulated have very different primary qualities to that of the
hero. The reason for their following is image-based. Manufacturing replaces
cultivation; identity becomes commodity. Does the church unwittingly buy into an
image-based ethic, with its own celebrities? Gibbs and Coffey identify the modern
evangelical superstar, placed on a precarious pedestal of fickle popularity which
undermines authentic spirituality by emphasizing publicity hype and image at the
expense of substance.40 They suggest that spiritual superficiality of leadership
means spiritually shallow churches.41
To take a wider view, if celebrities carry the
adjectives of personality, not character, then do attempts to change church image
mean that church, too, is emptied of character? Do image based churches attract more
followers, and are these followers are true disciples, in the line of denying self?
Image sells. Wells sees the Church as trying to sell itself to a consumer society.
Consumerism
Seeking the Signified
The postmodern person, says Wells, is a consumer.42
We search to fill our emptiness.
Goodliff sees shopping as expressing a deeper malaise, needing the regular fix of a
shopping spree to ward off the sense of meaninglessness of existence and to keep the
inner demons of boredom or depression at bay.43
Additionally, we seek to purchase
new definitions of ourselves. We consume what we think might help. It is, as
Baudrillard states, not merely that we purchase the product, but chase after what it
signifies. Ultimately, this is what they always said money couldnt buy. Happiness,
written in letters of fire behind the least little advert for bathsalts or the Canary
39
Wells,Losing, 100.40
Gibbs & Coffey,Next, 121.41 Gibbs & Coffey,Next, 123.42
Wells, Wasteland, 218.43
Goodliff, Care, 54.
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Islands, is the absolute reference of the consumer society: it is the strict equivalent of
salvation.44
Advertisements offer secular salvation by suggesting products can improve life. They
associate products with some personal status or achievement, offering them as a
means to fill the emptiness of the modern self.45 Advertising functions on a far-
reaching platform. For, as Baudrillard comments, when it speaks of a particular
object and brand it potentially glorifies all of themin targeting each consumer, it is
targeting them all, thus simulating a consumer totality.46 Offering self-gratification,
it creates desire for it, telling us what we want, with the imperative of need.
Possessions start defining us. The consumption framework dictates our mentality;
everything can be bought and sold. Shopping malls replace cathedrals, with their
unique blend of high commercialism and undaunted fantasy.47
Marketing Church
Culture influences identity. We can become so used to our consumer culture that it
seems natural and right, and allow it to reshape all aspects of our lives.48 Wells
argues that the consumer mentality infects the Church. Congregations become
consumers customers shopping around to find a satisfactory church. The focus ison meeting personal needs. Groothuis sees this as symptomatic of postmodernism:
Those holding a postmodernist view of truth may appear very spiritual, and to go
along with Christian belief to a point, just so long as religion meets their felt needs.49
These felt needs Wells suggests, are what the Church today is trying to meet in order
to survive. However, if everything is based on individuals needs, then there is a
serious danger that the message itself will become distorted and edited down in the
interest of relevance and immediacy.50
Wells cites the research of Donald E. Miller, using features of what Miller calls new
paradigm churches, to illustrate what he calls postmodern spirituality. He quotes
Miller as saying that these churches do a better job of responding to their
44
Baudrillard, Consumer, 48.45
Wells,Losing, 112.46
Baudrillard, Consumer, 125.47
Wells,Losing, 88.48 Bartholomew, Christ, 9.49
Groothuis,Decay, 275.50
Gibbs and Coffey,Next, 50.
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clientele.51 This idea of clientele shows an approach based on individual needs,
not requirements of faith. However, Miller also says that more importantly these
churches successfully mediate the sacred, bringing God to people and conveying the
self-transcending and life-changing core of all true religion.52 Nevertheless, Wells
claims that these efforts focus on pleasing people, not God, resulting in a gospel seen
as glossy and saleable. If Wells is correct, this implies salvation itself is for sale,
placing it in the consumers court, rather than within doctrines of God and of sin. It
becomes a buy-able factor, rather than a gift, especially if salvation is equated
primarily with happiness and self-fulfilment, rather than rescue.
In his vision ofLiquid Church, Pete Ward claims that church needs to embrace the
sensibilities of consumption.53
He considers the tendency of shopping to be less
about need than desire. 'To shop is to seek for something beyond ourselves. To
reduce this to materialism is to miss the point, or more importantly it is to miss an
opportunity.'54
He sees an opportunity, where meeting needs is replaced by
stimulating desire for God. He considers that it is possible to offer choice without
being dictated to be customer demand, and envisions a church network of goods and
services.
Unfortunately, it is hard not to think of materialism when considering this issue.
Consumerism is a loaded term. If we take the desire for something more as a factor
in shaping the church, then a new terminology is needed. Participating in
consumerism, for those such as Wells, will automatically mean that the gospel is
something to be bought and sold, thus belittling its function and reality as saving
grace. Faith becomes merely another product. By using the same tactics as the
secular society, in order to sell what it offers, church can endanger its
distinctiveness. Ward gives a new sheen to consumerism, but it is difficult to remove
negative connotations from the word.
51
Wells,Losing, 31.52 Miller,Reinventing, 3.53
Ward,Liquid, 72.54
Ward,Liquid, 59.
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Therapy
Self-Potentiality
Psychotherapy is popularised in our culture, especially in America. Patients become
clients, doctors their counsellors.55 It has expanded beyond the sphere of science and
medicine. Hurding describes Freuds theories and practises as the tree of
psychoanalysis, from which other offshoots sprouted.56 These focused on more than
just external behaviour. Freuds theories related to the inner life of a person, asking
what was going on below the surface.57
However, Freuds concepts of negative
human instincts have been succeeded by the alternative notion of inner self as
positive.
Ideas of self-potential are illustrated by approaches such as that of Carl Rogers, who
saw human nature as essentially good, in the sense of being constructive and
trustworthy.58 He placed much emphasis on self-expression and experience. Wells
sees this liberationist psychology as placing redemption in ones self, with the result
that both meaning and values become relative to each self.59
Wells identifies this as
the dominant therapeutic emphasis today. Popular culture sees self as having the
potential to heal itself. The therapeutic, says MacIntyre, has been given application
far beyond the sphere of psychological medicine in which it obviously has its
legitimate place.60 It is, says Wells, a secular spirituality, which has been cut
loose from its superintendence by the experts.61
To become a psychological man, says Philip Rieff, is to become kinder to the
whole self, the private parts as wells as the public, the formerly inferior as well as the
formally superior.62 We have become psychologically kind to ourselves, believing in
self-goodness and the right to self-express, seeking inside ourselves the cures for our
ills. Wells sees this introspection as typically Western, saying it is a remarkable
thought that buried within are the balms for our wounds and moral failures.63
He
agrees with Christopher Lasch in saying that we have become narcissistic in our
55
Wells,Losing, 111.56
Hurding,Roots, 55.57
Hurding,Roots, 58.58
Hurding,Roots, 129-30.59
Wells,Losing, 28.60 MacIntyre,After, 30.61
Wells,Losing, 111.62
Rieff,Feeling, 5.
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personality, with an exaggerated sense of importance, and that our culture itself now
echoes the narcissist personality hollow without a core.64
Substitute Religion
The spawning of societys obsession with the self and psychotherapy invades the
public conscious with the idea that a therapy exists for everything. Wells sees it as
resembling a substitute religion, although Lasch suggests that it constitutes an
antireligion, chiefly due to societys unfuturistic outlook, concerned only with
immediate needs.
Love as self-sacrifice or self-abasement, meaning as submission to a higher
loyalty - these sublimations strike the therapeutic sensibility as intolerably
oppressive, offensive to common sense and injurious to personal health and
well-being.65
However, we can argue that this harmonises with self-enthronement. The selfis the
higher loyalty to which all else must submit. This supports Wells argument; the self
is seen as the place of healing, worship, and authority. Where we used to approach
God for healing, we now go to personal therapies and techniques. We read self-help
literature, which assumes that healing is possible because the self carries within it the
means of its own healinga secularised form of salvation.66
We could call it,
perhaps, the modern equivalent of wisdom literature, but there is no fear of the
LORD here. It is reverence of a Holy God that Wells calls us to regain, and intrinsic
to an alternative rhythm to that of the world.
63
Wells,Losing, 122.64 Wells,Losing, 108.65
Lasch,Narcissism, 13.66
Wells,Losing, 111.
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Part 2: A Different Beat
i) Out of Step with Holiness
Classical spirituality, Wells suggests, had the moral centre that postmodern
spirituality lacks. It focuses on God as transcendent Other, both in majesty and purity.
Most important is the role which the Holy has, which gives weight and shape to the
understanding of God.67
If the Church is not informed by moral centredness, based
on the otherness of God, it cannot distinguish itself adequately from culture, or
recognise cultural elements within itself.
The Role of the Holy
God as Other
Ultimate Purity
God as transcendent ruling authority is not just a matter of objective truth. Wells
stresses the importance of Gods nature. God is holy ultimate in purity, set apart
from us. Wells accuses postmodern spirituality of over-emphasising experience of an
immanent God of love. We have turned to a God we can use rather than to a God we
must obey; we have turned to a God who will fill our needs rather than to a God
before whom we must surrender our rights to ourselves.68 We lose the recognition of
God as wholly Other, and the recognition of ourselves as created, but fallen beings.
In response, this often results from good intentions, seeking to communicate God in a
culture very different from biblical times. However, in these attempts, we can over-
accommodate, trying to fit God into cultural attitudes and ideals. The aspects we have
explored in Part One not only impact our view of ourselves, but our view of God.
All too often our pictures of God get caught up with what is current, the now, the
up-to-date. We feel we have to find the right image for God. So we try and make
God fit the surrounding culture in some way or other. Not to do so would make us
67
Wells,Losing, 35.68
Wells, Wasteland, 114.
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irrelevant. And in a culture where image is all-important this is too high a price to
pay.69
Even if unconsciously, the line between God and self can become so blurred that he is
no longer functionally distinctive. He becomes too familiar, too close to be set-apart,
too much like us to be holy. Ironically, God is holybecause God is not like anything
else.70 By overstating, or misunderstanding, his immanence, we lose the sense that
God is over and above everything.
Transcendent Presence
Wells contends that postmodern spirituality has made Gods love pre-eminent. By
removing Gods holiness from his transcendence, ideas of his relatedness grew, andimmanence loomed large.
71Erickson describes God's immanence and
transcendence as 'nearness and distance' ways that God relates to creation.72 Wells
dislikes this description, because 'if God's holiness is distant that is to say, not a
present reality the church loses its moral life'.73 Gods holiness is intrinsic to the
moral vision Wells seeks for the church. He doesnt advocate a remote God. The
philosophers radically transcendent God, and pantheism and panentheisms radically
immanent God, are both removed from the living God of biblical-prophetic
tradition.74
If ideas of holiness as separation are pushed too far, we are left with holiness as some
sort of ethereal and disembodied existence, in isolation from potential
contaminants.75 This kind of semantic baggage creates problems when discussing
holiness. Unless holiness is understood as a dynamic part of the Gods nature, rather
than a less than theology of what God is not, it retains a certain negativity which
feels more heavy than awesome.
69
McFarlane,Holy Spirit, 15.70
McFarlane,Holy Spirit, 19.71
Wells,Losing, 51.72
Erickson, Christian Theology, 327ff.73 Wells, Wasteland, 92n.74
Bloesch,Almighty, 262.75
Riddell, Threshold, 75.
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Worship Perspectives
Wells notes the mystical nature of postmodern spirituality, containing ideas of
direct, personal access to God, mystery over rationality, and understandings of grace
as a power that brings psychological wholeness.76 He sees worship in this
spirituality as individualised and experiential, illustrating the emphasis on love. This
replaced old emphases on consecration and commitment in classic hymns, with the
thought of loving God, and occasionally of being in love with God.77
The trouble with the debate over Gods holiness and love is that Gods holiness can be
seen as sparring with his love, as if they were competing elements. This illustrates a
confusion of Gods holy love with sentimentality. We use the language of romance,
not reverence. Webber makes this point, saying that worship can be reduced to warm
fuzzies, and God is no longer the God of judgement, whose holiness inspires fear
and awe, but just our buddy, our pal, our friendIt panders to me-ism Gods chief
value is in making me feel good.78
This links to Wells contention of grace as power
bringing psychological wholeness so too is Gods love seen sentimentally, or even
selfishly, as something to be demanded, not to be grateful for.
However, worship songs reflect certain phases in church life. Recently Vineyard UKreleased an album called Holy, containing lyrics focussed on Gods holiness and
transcendence as well as immanence.
Awesome God, Holy God, I worship you in wonder,
Awesome God, Holy God, as you draw near, Im humbled
By your majesty79
However, many Vineyard songs convey a deep intimacy. This sometimes risks loss
of reverence, especially when the language used is more applicable to a human lover
than a transcendent God. Intimacy that degenerates into over-familiarity regarding
God and the nature of his love, is both presumptuous and embarrassing to those who
see God from a transcendental perspective.80 The nature of divine love is
misrepresented as casual sentimentality. It is shallow thinking to imagine the love of
76
Wells,Losing, 46.77
Wells,Losing, 45.78 Webber,Ancient-Future, 124.79
Beeching, Awesome.80
Gibbs & Coffey,Next, 155.
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God as something weak, soft and indulgent. Absolute love implies absolute purity
and absolute holiness: an intense burning light.81
God as Reference Point
The Place of Sin
Sin seems an unpleasant, accusing word in todays society. Wells thinks the
Church needs to recover an understanding of sin. The problems of sin-recovery
seem to be the relocation, or disappearance, of the reference point. Sins only
reference point is the Holy God. In our failures, we are not able to penetrate the
real character of sin, because we cannot take its measure, see its nature, in relation
to God.82
It is Godwho defines sin. Berkouwer also emphasises this, for to
understand sins essence we cannot ignore this relation of sin and God and regard
our sin as mere phenomenon in human living.83
Biblically, sin is defined in reference to God, who is holy and perfect. In this sense
sin is relational, and also works out relationally. In its primary and most fundamental
sense, Ramm states, sin violates the perfection of God, and that perfection is the
basis for human beings to relate to each other.84 Making understanding of sin purely
anthropological means having only one half of a two-sided relationship. Without
God, sin and guilt become confusing terms, as standards to measure them by are lost.
Guilt and Shame
In divorcing guilt from shame, and emptying shame of moral tones, we live, says
Wells, with guilt in remission.85 When guilt (over violating a moral norm) is
divorced from shame (over disappointment with what we are not), then the former is
inevitably transformed into the latter. Guilt disappears and all that remains is
shame.86
Failing to obtain the correct image, before others and ourselves, causes
embarrassment and shame. Shame can be false or real. Because we are basing our
feelings on the judgements of others, not God, we have no means to measure it.
81
Watson,Real, 39.82
Wells,Losing, 181.83
Berkouwer, Sin, 242.84 Ramm, Offense, 94.85
Wells,Losing, 129.86
Wells,Losing, 130.
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Guilt is the compass point that lines up our actions with the moral worldin
which we live. Whether people know it or not, this world is a part of that moral
reality whose apex is the holiness of God and which is given verbal expression
in the moral codes of Scripture. Shame has to do with our location in oursocial
world.
87
Wells suggests that shame relates to the horizontal plane of psychological
understanding rather than against the vertical realm of theological knowledge; thus
the cure is within that plane.88
However, here Wells seems himself to divorce the two
realms. He divides them too sharply. It is also misses the connection between right
relationship with God and others. In the command to love God and neighbour, 'human
relations are not compartmentalized or set off to a certain area of their own. They
dont have their own relative norms and criteria. Rather we are always concerned
with the One who is God in and over all things.'89
Wells shows how our moral understanding is warped, while feelings about ourselves
are confused, based on popular opinion (particularly infalse guilt and shame).
However, the relation and meanings of guilt and shame are complex. Some consider
that objective guilt is emphasised, without enough reference to shame within our
relationship with God. We [have] emphasised guilt and justification at the expense
of shame and adoption.90
Reintegrating guilt and shame lessens the danger of
neglecting one or the other. Disagreement over the terms shows the issue as not
easily defined.
Confusion over the nature of guilt and shame, and the relationship of sin to humanity,
relate to our self-perception. Additionally, Wells notes that what we think of the self
and what we think about God are closely related.91
The place of holiness in Gods
transcendence is lost; so too is the moral understanding of the self. Wells contends
that in moving away from the language of human nature and towards self-
consciousness, we lose the universality of human createdness, and human fallenness.
87
Wells,Losing, 131.88
Wells,Losing, 140.89 Berkouwer, Sin, 244.90
Long, Generating, 103.91
Wells,Losing, 51.
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ii) The Distorted Lyrics of Human Nature
Questions of Identity
A Twilight Knowledge
Remembering what we were
Wells sees our present reality as contradictory, due to the memory of what we were
created to be. He interacts with Brunner, believing the imago dei was not totally
obliterated in the Fall. In us lies a moral understanding in conflict with societys
narcissism, and the strains of moral experience that continue to be heard in our fallen
world are constant reminders of who we once were.92
We still ask big questions; we
still experience remorse. As Brunner asks, What is the origin of this sense of
disharmony which becomes most acute when I refuse to do what the law within me
commands?93 The conflict exists, says Wells, between what we are and what we once
were.
From the creation, we have a twilight knowledge of the kind of God before
whom we are standing, and we have some sense of how we should comport
ourselves in life, but from within ourselves we find only the urge to disregard
what we know and to dismiss what we should do.94
Any goodness we possess is the goodness of our createdness, which needs to be
affirmed. This is God-constructed, not self-constructed. Rogers view on human
nature conflicts with the biblical picture. Behind these Rogerian concepts is the
baleful idea of autonomy, that men and women can be, and should be, completely
self-governing with respect to their destiny.95 However, as we have seen, Wells
wishes to restore God as our ultimate reference point, away from the world of the
internal and psychological.96
Even if ideas of moral absolutes are dismissed, we possess an internal moral sense,
and the more morally threadbare life becomes, the more our nature cries out against
us.97 Wells sees this moral sense as reminiscent of the image of God within us. He
92
Wells,Losing, 148.93
Brunner,Divine, 28.94
Wells,Losing, 161.95 Hurding,Roots, 120.96
Wells,Losing, 124.97
Wells,Losing, 163.
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talks chiefly about this 'memory' of what we were, which is a slightly awkward term.
A memory is not an actuality; it suggests something no longer exists. The actuality of
our createdness needs to be affirmed. It is not just an inkling in the mind, but part of
human identity. This relates to our future hope, in understanding recreation and
restoration from our fallenness. It is also universal. Wells sees the language of self-
consciousness as taking away this sense of a common nature.
Recognising what we are
Modern society tends to protest human innocence. The Bible states that none are
innocent. Indeed, the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth (Genesis
8:21). The idea that the source of goodness lies within, where answers to life can be
discovered, conflicts with the attitude of Christ. Only romantic fictionalizing can
interpret the Jesus of the New Testament as one who believed in the goodness of men,
and sought by trusting it to bring out what was good in them.98 Wells considers
moral living based on confidence in the selfs own goodness, with self-referential
standards, as suffused with sin.99
Wells contends that recognising our fallenness makes sense of the desire for self-
satisfaction. We are able to identify the contradictions we experience, confessingsomething has gone wrong. We are not who we were created to be. For all have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:22). Against Gods standards,
we fall short. Our true nature, says Wells, is seen in relation to God. God defines us.
If sin is inherent and none of us righteous, we continually need God, as we cannot rely
on ourselves. It entails gratitude rather than demand.
The Embarrassed ChurchThe Great Contradiction
The frustration we feel in the conflict between the moral sense and our fallenness
Wells considers as giving Christian faith its best access to a postmodern culture that
has given up on serious thought, rational argument, and historical defenses.100 He
considers the new spiritual hunger in the postmodern world as reacting against a
98 H.R. Niebuhr, Culture, 25.99
Wells,Losing, 195.100
Wells,Losing, 192.
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life stripped down by the rhythm of modernity.101 Wells objects to any
reverberations of stripping down within the Church itself.
The nature of the Church is itself a great contradiction, the place of Gods revelation,
yet still a community characterised by human frailty. In the Church is Christs grace
but also pride in its many forms. Here, in an even more intense form, are the
contradictions of the postmodern world.102 Brunner notes the non-existence of a
purely divine or purely spiritual Church. It belongs to the essence of the Church that
it is at once divine and human, sacred and secular.103 Church always interacts with
current cultural elements. It is meant to place our moral sense and opposing fallenness
into the right perspective. However, Wells sees the church as embarrassed about
professing its faith, particularly regarding sin, and thus the atonement as salvation
from sins consequences. This is not only due to the pressure people feel to be civil
in this secularized society, but also due to the Churchs moral fabric [having] been
worn bare and its sin in failing to grasp what sin is all about, which is apparently
lost on it.104
Reinterpreting Sin
Wells illustrates this urge to make sin more acceptable by using the example ofDonald Capps. Capps says that the woman who anoints Jesus feet is commended for
herself-trust, and that the time has come for us to recognise that taking care of
ourselves this once-in-a-lifetime gift is emphatically not a self-indulgence, but a
moral imperative.105
This is irreconcilable with the gospel emphasis in denying self
for the sake of Jesus. Wells is justified in criticising Capps, who has substituted the
psychological self for the moral self, the dynamics of shame for the workings of sin,
therapy for the Gospel, and psychological wholeness for biblical justification.106
Wells also cites the example of Robert Schuller, who reinterprets sin as poor self-
image and salvation as its reversal.107 These examples, Wells claims, show that sin
has lost its moral weight in the Church itself, which should be where sin comes to
101
Wells,Losing, 193.102
Wells,Losing, 197.103
Brunner,Divine, 527.104
Wells,Losing, 197.105 Capps,Depleted, 168.106
Wells,Losing, 199.107
Wells,Losing, 200.
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light. Soon, says Wells, guilt becomes bad and pride becomes good.108 Since
Wells identifies sin most fully with pride we can see the irony in this reversal. The
problem with these examples is that they are fairly extreme. Wells uses them to
portray general trends, but they are very specific cases, and cant be used as
portraying the state of Christian spirituality in general.
Using Millers research to illustrate postmodern spirituality, Wells criticises this
spirituality for its (however unwitting) lack of moral centredness. Conversely, Miller
notes that these churches consider human selfishness or to use the old-fashioned
term,sin as the core cause of all social problems. Mere increase of social programs
wont do, for people need to shift from servingselfto serving God, and hence be
born again.109
Hence Miller observes that these churches do have a sense of sin.
In describing their worship styles, which Wells criticises for absence of lyrical
content, Miller discovers that during worship people in Vineyard churches often
experience a real conviction of individual sin. Nearly as often as people experience
joy in worship, they spoke of brokenness, pain, sorrow, repentance, and memories of
wrongs they had committed without retribution.110 Saying that these forms of
Christian spirituality have re-translated sin entirely seems without warrant.
Wells criticises the Church for displacing God from the throne room, and instead
enthroning the self. Kenneth Leech observes that much contemporary spirituality
within the Church itself is highly individualistic and directed more at self-cultivation
than communion with God.111
Preoccupation with the self seems to be a modern
hazard. Wells calls the Church to resist this tendency. The bottom line is the relation
of church to culture.
108
Wells,Losing, 200.109 Miller,Reinventing, 109110
Miller,Reinventing, 89.111
Leech, Sky, 128.
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Part 3: A Timeless Discord
i) Recognising the Chords of Culture
Debates surrounding Christian living in the world arent new; the problem has been
an enduring one through all the Christian centuries.112
The Church community
continually faces crises of discernment. 'There is always a tension, sometimes
creative, sometimes destructive, between our Christian faith and the values of
contemporary culture.'113
Miller describes new paradigm Christians as not easily
fitting into traditional categories; they could be described as fundamentalists, but are
seeking cultural relevance, instead of being culture-denying reactionaries.114 Wells
sees this as mimicking modern cultures moves.115
Perception and Interpretation
On Being Whole
Places of Healing
Wells notes, from Miller, that postmodern spirituality emphasises the therapeutic.
However, Miller himself highlights the new paradigm churches he investigates as
hostile to the narcissism they see in contemporary values, despite their openness and
tolerance.116
For new paradigm Christians worship of self is replaced with worship
of Godpersonal meaning is achieved in living rightly ordered relationships as
revealed in scripture; therein lies freedom, not in self-driven pursuits of individual
happiness.117 He perceives a therapeutic form outside the framework of narcissism,
unlike Wells. It relates to self-expression and healing, not sought from within, but
from God. In this light, the therapeutic is not entirely negative. If, as Wells suggests,
the self has been emptied out, logically it needs re-filling. This is revealed in thedesire behind consumerism and the need to reconstruct ourselves. The issue is the
source for reconstructing our self-understanding. Moral dilemmas start when we
approach self, not God. In his dismissal of the therapeutic, Wells doesnt engage with
Christian counsellors who have a distinctive commitment to the truths of living
112
H.R. Niebuhr, Culture, 3.113
Greene, 'The Spirit of the Age', 22.114
Miller,Reinventing, 121.115 Wells,Losing, 32.116
Miller,Reinventing, 21.117
Miller,Reinventing, 151.
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Christian faith, while still seeking to broaden their understanding of people through
psychotherapy theories.118 For example, Larry Crabb, in his approach to biblical
counselling, strongly emphasises the fallen self-centredness of human nature and
asserts that anything that counterfeits life and thus encourages people to press on
without turning to God is dangerously wrong. The core of all helping effort must be
Christ.119
The Sufficiency of the Atonement
Most seriously, Wells accuses the therapeutic of undermining belief in the sufficiency
of the atonement. If these elements are add-ons for spiritual wholeness, it implies
Christs work is incomplete. Medieval piety reached for moral attainment to
complete the work of Christ. We reach for psychological technique and knowledge to
do the same thing.120 If technique becomes more important, or more necessary than
fundamental aspects of Christian faith, then the Churchs distinctiveness is
endangered.
Nevertheless, churches that Wells sees as manifesting postmodern spirituality do
focus on God, albeit in a way more experiential than cerebral. This doesnt mean that
the atonement is seen as insufficient. Understandings of it may be wider than simplyobjective justification, or penal substitution, which for many American
Christiansinterprets the significance of Jesus death fully, completely, without
remainder.121 New emphases, such as shame and adoption, need not replace older
interpretations, but build on them. However, the centrality of the cross is central, and
seen as integral to evangelical faith. Any other theme as the focus of theology would
be taking a step away from Evangelicalism.122 If people understand themselves as
saved by psychotherapy, not Christ, then this is a real problem.
However, using therapeutic technique does not necessarily imply that salvation is
being sought elsewhere. Scripture does not grapple with issues of living in the
modern world; it simply does not address many issues people face today. This takes
place in a society where ethical dilemmas are expanding and developing in
118
Jones & Butman,Psychotherapies, 21.119
Crabb, Understanding, 211.120 Wells,Losing, 30.121
Green & Baker, Scandal, 13.122
Bebbington,Evangelicalism, 15.
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unprecedented areas. Christians generally are in a great deal of moral confusion.123
Due to the experiential nature of postmodern spirituality, it can be harder to navigate
through moral waters. It is not unfaithful to search out how to reasonably expand our
understanding beyond what God chose to reveal in the Bible.124 Wisdom is needed
to discern those situations where self becomes the source of reliance, not God.
The Role of the Holy Spirit
Wells seems to discount most experience as selling out to narcissistic society. Where
the experiential is over-emphasised, objective elements are endangered. However, not
all experience is emptied of moral centre. Wells claims little about the Holy Spirit.
He states that moral redirection is through the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit
and that more confidence is needed in the Spirits power, as well as in the atoning
work of Christ.125 This is barely mentioned elsewhere, and given little significance in
his thesis. This seems odd, considering Wells appeal for having more confidence in
the power of God.
Wells refers to the Holy Spirit being asserted, especially in Charismatic/Pentecostal
circles, as responsible for changes that are actually the products of modernised
culture, and that here the art of discrimination is also unceremoniouslysurrendered.
126He cautions against saying that self-indulgent experience is the
Spirits doing. However, he doesnt address realexperience of the Holy Spirit as a
balance to this argument. Neither does he discuss the Spirits role in helping people to
grow in holiness.
On Being Holy
The Importance of Otherness
Wells sees God as holy, set apart, and transcendent, claiming that postmodern
spirituality makes God too immanent. An older reaction is seen in Barths strong
emphasis on God as Other, contrasting with Schleiermachers God-consciousness. In
Barths theology, God is God, not man writ large; and he cannot simply be spoken of
123
Riddell, Threshold, 7.124 Jones & Butman,Psychotherapies, 21.125
Wells,Losing, 207,208.126
Wells,No Place, 182.
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the light of Jesus, as the emphasis shifts fromseparation to involvement.133 Jesus
holiness, he suggests, was an inner reality that did not require separatism, existing in
culture without fearing contamination. Holiness is separation to, rather than
separationfromIt need not fear contamination because it proceeds outward from the
heart.134 Focussing on the dangers of compromise may result in withdrawing from
culture entirely, thus purged from its influence. As Greene warns, the more church
perceives its fundamental relationship with contemporary culture in terms of
antagonistic or subversive opposition, the more it tends to withdraw into its own
cultural ghetto.'135
Riddell relates this to mission, for true holiness wont keep us from the world, but
drive us into it in faith.'136
The Churchs presence in the world is Christs presence in
the world. Christian holiness stems from union with Christ, not from virtue or
behaviour. The true source of holiness needs to be recognised when calling for moral
reform in the Church. The Gospel the Church supposedly preaches is one of liberation
and freedom, not a moral crusade. In turn, Riddells view needs to be tempered by the
recognition that we are not yet perfect. We cannot do away with wisdom in areas of
weakness. It is still helpful to have a sense of not belonging to the world (John 15:19,
17:14). The Church can take seriously the call to holy living while still being awareof its dependence on Gods purpose and grace.
132
Bloesch,Almighty, 159.133
Riddell, Threshold, 73.134 Riddell, Threshold, 81.135
Greene, 'Spirit of the Age', 22.136
Riddell, Threshold, 87.
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ii) Stop and Rewind?
Future Vision
Medium and Message
Miller identifies a second reformation, challenging not doctrine but the medium
through which the message of Christianity is articulated.137 Wells is concerned that
in heavily concentrating on medium, the original message is lost. Miller observes
sociological aspects (from a liberal viewpoint); Wells calls for reformation, not of
medium but of faith and truth (from an evangelical viewpoint). Wells believes the
evangelical church cannot afford to buy into modernitys structure and style.
Changing Image
Brian McLaren, who advocates totally revamping church style, confesses that when
we change the medium, the message that's received is changed, however subtly, as
well. We might as well get beyond our navet or denial about this.'138 However, he
considers it worth the risk. He calls for new ways of doing theology, a space for
confessing inadequacies and uncertainties, being involved in an exciting journey of
discovery, waking up slumbering Christians and perhaps attracting the outsider as
well.139 Approaches like these have merit and sound good, but can be dangerous,
especially if taken out of context (loyalty to the Word of God). However, being so
paranoid about the Churchs future that the only way is backwards is also dangerous.
Miller notes that new paradigm Christians are responding to the pessimism of
postmodern culture by transforming it rather than simply rejecting it in the hope of
recovering a simpler, less corrupt bygone age.140
Wells considers attempts at changing church image as weakening biblical identity.
He comments that in attempting to sell Church, it is supposed that what has
distinguished the Church in its appearance and functions should be abandoned.141 It
is difficult to see exactly what Wells criticises here, as he uses examples of casual
dress, the removal of pews and the changing of robes, and cites all contemporary
137
Miller,Reinventing, 11.138
McLaren, Other Side, 68.139 McLaren, Other Side, 69.140
Miller,Reinventing, 122.141
Wells,Losing, 201.
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hymns as empty of theological substance.142 With the exception of hymnal content
(although even this reflects cultural emphases), his examples are very appearance-
driven and seem rather irrelevant to morality. Ironically, here he seems to defend
culture, as all styles and forms are in some sense cultural.
Courageous Faith
Wells claims the Church lacks the courage to believe Gods power to save, and that
todays churchly trendiness is really yesterdays unbelief.143
The style doesnt need
to be changed, for the message is powerful enough on its own. Attempts to help
God along dilute the message, showing disbelief in the Gospels power. Certainly,
disillusionment undermines confidence, but Wells doesnt seem to acknowledge that
it is for the love of God that some people (particularly church leaders) try and amend
style. Wells doesnt encourage or affirm such motives.
Conversely, his argument could also work the other way round; God is not limited by
changing styles. Style always fluctuates, and always relates to culture. Courageous
faith will not always be static, and will be eager to present the Gospel in various
communication forms, remaining faithful to the message. Wells negative criticism of
attempts to access postmodern generations can lead to a Church paralysed by self-condemnation as well as one moved by genuine repentance. He appears to allow little
room for grace.
Recovery or Discovery
Past and Present
Wells focuses on recovering what has been lost in spirituality. In his passion for
reclaiming the moral centre, he seems to advocate returning to Reformation
spirituality, existing before the bankruptcy of the Enlightenment experiment144.
However, history cant be reversed; every era is culture bound. Different questions are
asked in different times. We cant continue giving the same rehearsed answers to
changing sets of questions; otherwise we are irresponsible stewards of the message.
Historically, theologians have continually worked through deep questions of faith,
142 Wells,Losing, 201.143
Wells,Losing, 108.144
Wells,Losing, 145.
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addressing specific concerns, often to combat current heresies. We cannot reverse the
emergence of the therapeutic, or the rise of consumerism.
Perhaps the Church has had a time of rediscovering Gods active presence
(immanence) among his people. In turn, the need arises to rediscover his holy
transcendence as if climbing a spiral staircase, each redressing the balance of the
generation before. Ultimately a balance is needed; otherwise we get trapped in a
reactive spiral, taking energy away from the Churchs mission. As with Gods love
and holiness, they need not be seen as competing elements. For example, Gibbs and
Coffey say that new-paradigm churches are recapturing a sense of the transcendence
of God encountered through his immanence.145 To discount false, self-oriented
experience should not discount true experience of God.
Wells doesnt offer much practical, specific guidance towards change. Any study of a
specific subject encounters this danger, but Wells doesnt seem to progress from his
statement inNo Place for Truth, merely reiterating and embellishing his arguments in
the following volumes. Churches can easily become disillusioned with criticism that
offers no sense of progression. Losing Our Virtue, with its predecessors in the
trilogy, takes a largely condemnatory stance without really giving any practical senseof forward motion.
Too Harsh a Sentence?
The children who have grown up or are growing up in the postmodern world bear
its mark. They are cut loose from everything, hollowed out, eclectic, patched
together from scraps of personality picked up here and there, leery of
commitments, empty of all passions except that of sex, devoid of the capacity for
commitment, fixated on image rather than substance, operating on the seductive
elixir of unrestricted personal preference, and informed only by personal
intuition.146
This is a bleak evaluation, and a gross generalisation. It takes the idea of
postmodernity and applies it right across the board, without appreciating the nuances
involved. We have seen how Wells can be selective in his examples, whereas other
145
Gibbs & Coffey,Next, 141.146
Wells, Wasteland, 222.
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Conclusion
The modern world is so painful, so costly, so brutal to life that mimicking its
rhythms, rather than providing an alternative to them, will soon be seen to be the
hollow charade, the empty mirage, that it is. The happy campers in modernitys
playground are blithely unaware that this is a dangerous neighbourhood.147
Wells sees mimicking the rhythm of the world as a risky enterprise. He calls for
cultural engagement, discerning the wolf of secular salvation dressed in religious
clothing. Secular salvation draws its power from the self. Life becomes image-based,
compensating for emptiness of character. In consumerism we seek new ways of self-
construction. Finally, we seek the source of our strength within, taking the
therapeutic emphasis to its extreme, believing we can heal ourselves.
Wells sees this as resulting from relocating the Holy God from transcendent point of
reference, to the place of customer satisfaction. Over-emphasising his immanence
and love, blurring them with self, means that we lose reverence and awe, and finally
confidence in our God. As the Self nudges God from the throne, we lose the
understanding of ourselves as created, moral beings. We merely wish to satisfy theself. This, says Wells, is a quintessential part of our fallenness. Understanding our
fallenness makes sense of this desire for self-satisfaction.
Wells exposes subtle reinterpretations of cultural elements within evangelical
Christianity. The Church needs to be bold in speaking its message, not tempted to
exchange language of sin and forgiveness for need and fulfilment. However, there are
times when the Church can learn from culture, and work within it. Although Wells
makes valid criticisms, they do not apply in all cases. Antagonistic approaches are
unhelpful where encouragement is needed. Different views must be considered
carefully in and drawn on where appropriate.
Practical suggestions need to be made as to how to avoid compromise. Advocating
return to the past is not feasible. Positives can be taken from both past and present,
correcting each other in seeking future moral vision. There needs to be a balance
147
Wells,Losing, 52.
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between Gods immanence and transcendence, between his holiness and love, which
arent competing elements, but complementary. Finally, what is needed is the
wisdom to discern where Self has replaced God, seeking true perspective on
ourselves, in order to be a distinctive community that testifies to the power of God
alone.
9,992 words
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Attwood, David, Changing Values: How to find moral truth in modern times,
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Bartholomew, Craig, Christ and Consumerism: An Introduction in Craig
Bartholomew and Thorsten Moritz (eds.), Christ and Consumerism: a Critical
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