Josh Granberg is my brother-in-law and one of my best friends. His ability to see the undercurrents of cultural thought and experiences is amazing. He has a gift for understanding the world around him as it relates to the gospel of Christ. He is attending the Florence Academy of Art, one of the top art schools in the world, and has worked tirelessly to understand the world of art as it relates to culture at large. Art has the incredible ability to influence every aspect of thought and culture and God has intentionally placed Josh in the middle of it all in order to create lasting change for the Kingdom of God. In his blog below he is discussing one of the reasons we as the church should focus our time and energy on reaching into the hearts of the European people. I hope that you are blessed by what he has to say.
Throughout college I understood that America was
Philosophically about 30 years behind Europe.
Most philosophers identify the 1890's as the birth of the post-modern
mind in Europe and the 1920's in the USA.
I understood that to mean that we could view Europe as a foreshadow of
what would eventually come in America. I
don't believe that any more.
Much of our worldview is established through the questions
we ask. The questions that led to the
shift from a Modern worldview to the Post-modern one were different in Europe
than the ones being asked in America. In
Europe there were two areas that were the platforms for questions; the identity
of authority and the problem of pain, more specifically the pain brought about
by the world wars. Philosophers such as
Nietzsche and Sartre had philosophically undone the absoluteness of truth. The result was the death of God and the loss
of the church as the ultimate authority.
Governmental revolutions shook the trust the people had in their
governments and the World Wars destroyed the confidence and purity of man.
With the loss of both absolutes and authority we are now
facing the instability of a crumbling foundation on the grounds of
morality. There is no longer anyone or
anything to tell us or help us identify our moral code; and yet I believe we,
as humans, require a moral code. So were
do we find it?
While studying at the Florence Academy of Art in Europe I
have found it fascinating how highly the students I am studying with value
morals. I can't count how many times I
have heard someone say how much they admire another student after that person
has declined a cigaret or stated that they no longer drink based on moral
grounds. The other two common areas of
moral conversation have to do with life partners and, surprisingly, food and
diet. Everyone has a moral code that
they live by, but it is their moral code. So, again, where does it come from?
It seems to me that the moral code comes from that ever
persistent topic of pain. The European
moral code seems to be established on pain.
If I do something or experience something and it causes pain then that
action is labeled morally bad. The
opposite is also true. If you take
enough time to talk to one of these students that stopped drinking you will
find that they have experienced an incredible amount of pain because of
alcohol. Most of the students I study
with come from broken homes. They know
the pain that divorce causes, and therefore label divorce as wrong. They solve the issues that ensue from this
line of thinking by simply not getting married to begin with.
Because the authority has been removed from God, church,
government, society, and even man, what does that leave? Nature.
The result is that your diet is no longer a personal choice but a moral issue. We see our natural world being paved over by
humanity. We see the pain Mother Earth
is enduring and wish to do our part, and we do it by controlling what we eat.
What should the Christian response to this be? It seems to me that the answer is fairly
simple; the Christian life is a good life.
Being a Christian will make life more enjoyable, more fulfilling; you
will have more peace, assurance, and confidence. Naturally being a Christian does not mean
that you will never experience pain again.
But it does mean that when those times come there is someone deeper than
yourself to rely on. It is no longer the
fallible you that needs to have the answers or the strength but the infallible
one.
A helpful and insightful word. Morality-as-defined-by-pain and Mother Earth. Two clear idols of secular humanism.
ReplyDeleteA thought to follow: While certainly these idols can be affirmed in the elite and well educated of post-Christian Europe/UK, I'm wondering if these idols are shared to the same level by the lower economic classes in the cities and towns and in the less-educated cultures of Europe/UK. In my experience, I'm not so sure. Not that they aren't shared, but they may not be as high up on the list as others.
That said, I appreciate how Josh relates this to our window of opportunity for the Gospel. The full restoration of all things; from the ultimate rid of pain and suffering (in their words "ultimate morality") in the revealing of the sons of God all the way to the fact that "creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption." These are inroads for our witness, for sure.
Grace be with you -
Jr