THE METANARRATIVE AND SELF-MUTILATION

I like the German word Geschicte because it has two brilliant meanings. On the one hand it means "history", and on the other hand it means "story." Americans generically view the two words differently. When asked "Tell me about your father," you are being asked to provide facts. When asked "Tell me your story," you are being asked for an interpretation. I like the German word because it converges the two ideas: interpretation utlizes facts while facts are the elements of interpretation.


The metanarrative storyline has been the dominant, interpretive methodology of Modern culture. The metanarrative converges the "little" histories into an overarching history so that the "little" histories are subject to the interpretive structure of the overarching drama. The "nationalist" story form is a metanarrative: the "story" of the nation provides the lens through which ancillary stories (the stories of the "other" nations) are contextualized. The Christian metanarrative is a salvation-based plot of creation-fall-redemption (or some similar version). For example, within this overarching framework the English primarily founded America to be a "city on a hill" for all other nations to follow as well as the African-American primarily being brought to America to "hear the Gospel and be saved."


Similarly, this structure is replicated in most relational structures, too, so that marriage is a "sanctifying" ordinance and children are to be "blessed" if they endorse parental values. In this view the government's basic function is to punish the "bad" and to reward the "good", therefore, perpetuating justice (the righting of wrong). Even in the church, "discipleship" emphasizes salvific replication until the "earth is full of the glory of the Lord like the waters cover the sea." Another way to say it is that the metanarrative determines the history, the story.


The metanarrative is not an invalid way of looking at history. It is, however, not only invalid but dangerous when viewed as the absolutely only perspective. To do this is to equate this "one" narrative to the "deductive" perspective of God. Such is the replication of Platonic or gnostic heresy where one finite perspective is elevated above others, rendering the others not only susbtantially inferior but morally inferior (aka, ungodly). A singularly strict interpretation of the metanarrative exacerbates the POMO's panic over determinism, namely genetic inheritance. It is a trait of the POMO to pierce, tatt, and otherwise alter himself. The POMO reads a suffocating determinism into an absolute metanarrative interpretation of history. Simply put, the POMO tries to transcend the "story" given him by his Modern ancestor by "marking" himself in a way that genetic inheritance or DNA cannot replicate. Look at the Goth who paints his face a deathly pallor or the crumper who masks himself with clown paint or the increase in symbolic tatts or piercings in significant places like the eyebrow, lip, tongue, nipple, navel, etc. Understand that these are all forms of circumcision, and circumcision was originally introduced as an imposition upon the human body that transcends genetic inheritance. The symbolic alteration of his body is one way that the POMO distinguishes himself from his Modern parent. For the POMO it is freedom. It is a new beginning. He is creating a new person, a new people, a new story.


So the POMO rejects the metanarrative or is fine with the metanarrative so long as it is accompanied by the interpretation of several "micronarratives", lessening the absolutist implication of the metanarrative. The POMO arrives at truth by the correlation of micronarratives (personalized stories); so the POMO will generalize the similar ideas common to each micronarrative. For example, the POMO will look at the creation narratives of several people-groups and conclude that all people-groups have a creation narrative or story that embodies their own particular primordial values. Or they will look at the religions of various people groups and ascertain that Jesus is to Allah what Allah is to Eastern consciousness and so on. The POMO then concludes that 1) the tendency in every people group is to deify a personality, and that 2) the desire to worship a deity is inherently human.


Notice how in this micronarrative the content is important to the specific people-groups, but not necessarily important to the whole (global). In other words, the micronarrative says that it is good for a Christian to worship Christ just as it is good for a Muslim to worship Allah just as it is good for a Buddhist to worship consciousness. The post-modern micronarrative allows for the vicarious attribution of one to the other. Because the POMO sees faith as a universal (that it is inherently human to worship something), he sees faithlessness as an atrocity though he will not impose his content upon another. That is why the POMO says that it does not matter what you believe in but that you must believe in something. You must believe in something. That is why the POMO emphasizes that each individual must be true to himself, so the content varies from person to person but faith is there all the same. That is why a POMO can be friends with people of other cultures, religions, and backgrounds (that to the Modern seems incompatible) and not have a problem at all. He does not look through a metanarrative expecting the replication of the same content. He looks from one micronarrative to another micronarrative to yet another micronarrative expecting the generous correlation of contentless similarity: a generous ambiguity.

POMO RACIST TENDENCIES (2)

Modernism reinforced the concept of empirical racism by enforcing nationalism. It is impossible to understand Modernism apart from nationalism, and it is impossible to understand nationalism apart from empirical racism (a visual emphasis upon race). Throughout the 19th & 20th centuries, the true nationalists of a nation tended to be the racial majority of that nation (apart from colonialism). This model trickled down to other sub-governmental forms within that nation: industry, media, regions, districts, community organizations, churches, neighborhoods, communities, clubs, gangs, schools, families, etc. so that relationships & interpersonal relationships were largely developed along the lines of race or what I term The Old Fraternity.

It is not racist to be nationalistic or patriotic or even a racial majority or minority. However, it is racist to be nationalistic or patriotic when no final authority exists save the state and when the individuals of that state themselves embrace a statist mindset. Why? Because statism is the political form of Atheism. Statism subscribes to no transcendent authority and claims to be comprehensive of all reality. Because statism is not comprehensive of all that exists, neither will it be comprehensive of all humans. Because it is not comprehensive of all humans, statism excludes certain humans. By design.

On what basis does statism determine which humans it will exclude? On the basis of empiricism: material distinction. Why on the basis of empiricism? Because Atheism is materialistic, it argues that the final reality is matter. So it will make decisions based on the superficiality of the visual or what it terms "natural law" or the "apparent."

Christianity is set against Atheism, because Christianity says that God exists back of matter and that He is the Final Reality. So decisions about matter are to be made on the intrinsic character of God's revealed character: not what God has not said about Himself and his world but what God has said about Himself and His world. Atheism is oppositional and makes distinctions on the basis of material alone, so race is the critical factor to understanding the interpersonal human relationships of the Modern era. It is the chief determining and empirical factor to distinguishing humans.

Atheism had it's own "sacred-secular" distinction. It's "secular" portion took credit for the "sacred" portion it intellectually argued did not exist. So it annexed the Christian concept of personality by making superficial judgments about private property. Atheism will claim the aspiration to protect the property rights of individuals. Nevertheless, it will provide a form in which certain persons or peoples have their property rights suspended or revoked. Atheism lacks an intrinsic integrity to deal with the "everything" it claims.

The Modern concept of race cannot be overcome by more Modern logic. Racial reconciliation is a good example, especially the way it happens in the Christian church. In the face of a choking, post-modern environment, the religious Modern for the past couple of decades has been faced with the repugnance of many "theological" positions he held that were as arbitrary as Atheism's statist ideology, empirical racism being an obvious one. So how did the Modern try to "escape" with an ironically "righteous" indignation the racism intrinsic to his own religious expression?

The Church has sought to intentionally graft minorities into majority congregations. The current emphasis upon racial reconciliation in the American Church is largly an emphasis upon the reconciliation of Blacks and Whites, other races being ancillary. The roots of this approach are engined by the old generation’s repulsion of the racist sins of its past. My first response whenever I see this kind of thing happening is to analyze whether or not the motivation is along the flow of the post-modern world spirit which is towards a lack of distinctions. Remember that the drift of Modernism was the creation of a new world on the basis of artificial distinctions. The drift of the post-modern world spirit is the reconciliation of exremes or an emphasis upon a lack of distinctions.

It is easy to champion "racial reconciliation" because it is the drift of POMO culture. Moderns who embrace this post-modern spirit yet who still think on the basis of antithesis are deceived into believing that their repentance of Modern racism equates that they are no longer racist! Yet they go on making empirical judgments in every other category of life (including race) because they have not repented of their idolatrous fixation upon material.

Suffice it to say that the current Modern generational lament against chattel slavery, against unbridled industrialism, and against chauvinistic tendencies does not automatically qualify as repentance. In addition, I would argue that if only Modern racism is being renounced and not the entire Modern system (which is the development of "non-theistic" culture), then it is probable that such renouncement does not qualify as genuine repentance. And much of it is not. Much of it is sentimentalism because the Modern wants to be indispensable. The Modern revolts against being transient. The Modern wants to be "relevant" because the POMO is relevant. The Modern wants to be POMO. But he is not. It is not intrinsic to him.

Secondly, the church has sought to diminish the emphasis upon racial distinctions. Dimishing distinctions is a Modern solution to the problem, because Moderns are all about empirical uniformity. If everyone looked and acted like me, then we would not have a "Modern" problem anymore but a wholly different one. As I have said before, the general drift of post-modern culture is towards the resolution of extremes or the abolition of distinctions. The problem, however, is that these resolutions are largely coming from the Modern generation which means that Moderns are wanting a "place" at the table of the new cultural discussion and are willing to make certain cultural concessions that are not in alignment with their beliefs, cultural or religious.

In addition, the tendency of the Modern generation is to discuss the deficiencies of the past. It is not that hindsight is 20/20, but that hindsight takes less effort than foresight. That is not to say that there are not thousands or hundreds of thousands of Moderns who are after "racial reconciliation" the right way, but it sure is not the commercialized way and it can never be genuine if it is compartmentalized. Nature doesn't allow for such distinctions!

So what does this mean for the POMO? The very same negative, racial stereotypes championed, the POMO embraces positively. That is why Hip Hop culture which was formerly an ethnic subculture, universally embraces people groups of every tongue, tribe, and nation. It is a rebellion against the artifical categorization of humans into "kinds." That is its swag. And that is the one illustration of how the post-modern is trading The Old Fraternity for The New Fraternity: relationships based upon behavior.

POMO RACIST TENDENCIES (1)

Modern science argued descriptively because it was rationalistic. As a rationalistic system, it argued from data and only from data to which it was predisposed. Modern science could describe to you the color green, but it could not tell you why hunter green was to be preferred to olive green in a particular situation. This is one way science divorced itself from the classical discussion of morality.

Similarly, Modern science could describe to you the differences in skin melanin, say, between Whites and Blacks, but it could not tell you why a White was to be preferred to a Black—though it did. And that was a characteristic problem with both the Modern Christian and Modern non-Christian.

Modern science defined itself too narrowly to discuss information morally, because it only deals with matter. Matter is its final reality. Modern science, having no authority save the “fact,” did not have a self-consciously moral context for making moral determinations about facts even though facts were moral determinations in the first place (for they are either “right” or “wrong”). Modern science discussed facts divorced from their moral context. That resulted in science exploiting whatever it discussed. Why? Because it was only descriptive.

The Modern, atheistic world-view uniquely bred amongst the religous and non-religious the concept of segregation based upon race. Modern racism emphasized the superficially visual and behavioral (aka, scientific) aspects of people groups so that it believed, for example, that “Black” and “White” people were genetically programmed to idiocy or brilliance, immorality or high culture, superstition or intellectualism, respectively. It did not take into consideration moral aspects like religious belief or ethnic (world-view) history.

It interests me that the same POMO who rejects Modern racist culture, is affected by Modernism all the same in a very underhanded sense. For not only does the POMO accept people of different races as his close associates because of his extreme tolerance, but he foremost embraces the superficially behavioral aspects of those races. So not only will the POMO youth have a best friend who is Japanese, and not only will he develop a taste for Sushi and the martial arts, but he will also seriously consider the commercialized virtues of Zen via Yoga meditation techniques and reincarnation via the recycling culture.

POMO'S & SPIRITUAL REALITY

Though he believes in the Judeo-Christian God and believes that He created the world, the Modern Christian, nonetheless, divided that world into regions of sacred and secular: a realm where God allegedly was and a realm where God allegedly was not. The Christian would consider the reading of the Bible to be a sacred exercise in which God existed. However, the Christian did not consider, say, the reading of Beowulf or of Newsweek to be a sacred exercise, but a secular one in which God was—at the very least—absent.

The typical Modern Christian was not committed to either realm of reality as exclusively governed by God, though he maintained that the two worlds existed, nonetheless. The problem—as you can see—is that if much of an individual’s life is lived within the “secular’ world, then God does not exist where it matters. After all, how do you Christianize air or earth or water, three very essential things to human existence?

This truncated position created within the Modern Christian a schizophrenia, for he operated differently in both worlds. When he ate a candybar, he had no thoughts of God. When he took Communion, he suddenly had thoughts of God. Because he was not committed to either world as totally comprehensive of reality, he capitulated to the atheistic argument that God was not Lord (over everything).

This is a fundamental religious difference between the Modern and his POMO: the Modern is frustrated that the POMO will not compartmentalize life as easily as the Modern can. The POMO sees compartmentalization as artificial, because it does not transcend the matter with which it deals. The POMO is not familiar with the atheistic orientation of Modernism save that it stands for everything against which he is in revolt. That is one of the reasons why the POMO revises everything Modern from music to movies to history, tainting it all with a mystical tinge.

The POMO cannot tolerate the idea that mechanics is the final word on reality. He prefers a world in which mechanics is diminished, which is why he shuns serious systems of thought. The POMO does not mind acquiescing to a system so long as he is allowed to view it as a game (artificial), but he begins to feel claustrophobic around Moderns who take any ideology seriously (artificial system). Fundamental to the POMO's revolt against mechanics is his rejection of the Modern concept of determinism: the idea that a man is the sum of his DNA.

The POMO also rejects the Modern toleration of two views of reality: sacred and secular. To the POMO, the secular view denies those items of the world with which the sacred deals—like God, the soul, meaning, revelation, etc. That is why the POMO is always remaking Modern music, Modern art, Modern fashion, and Modern movies by recasting them within a spiritual light. Spirituality is the air he breathes.

In short the POMO rejects the exclusively sacred and the exclusively secular realms and vies for only one realm. As a result, the POMO has retrieved the concept of deity. That concept, however, is one that champions not a particular deity but only the concept of deity. The POMO affirms a multitude of deities and does not necessarily prefer one over another.

The POMO does not champion a particular god but only the concept of a nebulous god who provides a nebulous context. The Modern, atheistic alternative either 1) acknowledged that an infinite God existed, yet apportioned Him only the sacred realm of reality, making Him impotent in the secular realm or 2) did not acknowledge that God existed yet talked and talked as if a god existed. Either position does not embrace all of reality.

My point is that one can converse with a POMO if one acknowledges the existence of a god. That is one reason I do not believe in "evangelizing" the POMO. I know that sounds counter-cultural to most church ideology, particularly the conservative strain, but I am telling you there is merit in my position which I will explain in detail a few blog posts from now.

POST-MODERN "GAMING" TRUTH

When asked a question such as “Have you finished your homework?” the typical POMO child gives various ambiguous answers: 1) he will evade (I did not bring any homework home), 2) he will imply ignorance of the question by stalling (I normally don’t have homework on Tuesday nights), 3) he will answer in the interrogative (Did I tell you I had homework?), or 4) he will deny any knowledge of the answer (I don’t know), etc.

Modern parents—especially those who strongly want to relate to their children—tend to tolerate inconsistent statements from their children for stretches at a time. However, they usually have a breaking point for the sake of their own sanity. What is often difficult to explain to the frustrated, Modern parent is that his child is not merely lying, being ignorant, or playing dumb. Rather, the POMO views himself as humble, open-minded, and honest next to his absolutist Modern parent who thinks on the basis of authoritative statements. POMOS see themselves as making far fewer mistakes in judgment than Moderns who accuse intolerantly and assert narrow-mindedly.

The POMO tends to feel castigated by the attempts of his parents to "get" the truth out of him which is one of the reasons physical punishments have had and have deliterious affects on the POMO. The Modern could survive physical punishment and categorically get over it. The POMO endures punishment with a martyr's psychology or with psychological breakdown.

The Modern parent will insist to his POMO that the truth is simple! But we no longer live in a culture dominated by the simplicity of Newtonian physics. Space and time are elastic and truth is just as elastic to the POMO! What the Modern does not understand (or even care to understand in some instances) is that the Modern generation is the last in a long line of generations in which confidence in antithesis has deteriorated and given way to the kind of cultural absurdity that alienates him from his child.

Because he does not understand his child’s view of truth, the Modern parent does not realize how far removed he is from his Post-modern child. The Modern knows that a tree is a tree—not a non-tree—and he can say something affirmatively about the tree. In one sense, that logical reliability is a great privilege.

The POMO is too humble to agree that a tree is a tree, because for him it is arrogance to affirm as true any statement over which a variety of persons, peoples and faiths disagree. POMOS preface every statement with an unspoken sentiment of uncertainty: If anything can be known for certain, then I feel well today, If anything can be known for certain, then I am happy to see you, or, As far as we know, World War I began in 1913.

The POMO affirms nothing save that we do not know for certain anything we think that we think we know. Right about this time the Modern parent begins to be nostalgic about his own inferior era. What the Modern does not understand is that, though he thinks on the basis of antithesis, his cultural view of truth is “relative” truth which is not the “absolute” concept of truth he is always hailing!

Relative truth is truth suspended: truth that is right at certain times and wrong or irrelevant at other times. The most acute example I can give of Christian “relative” truth is the sacred-secular distinction, the elevation of spirit over matter, which I will address at length later.

Let me illustrate POMO communication with the popularity of reality TV. Reality TV attracts the POMO for five reasons in particular. There is 1) a defined world or reality (Survivor’s island, Trump’s business world, American Idol’s stage, etc.), 2) a defined hierarchy of authority (the host, judges, and an order amongst team players), 3) defined ethics (rules governing the rounds), 4) defined allegiances (standards to which both the judges and players agree), and 5) defined consequences (being voted off the island, being fired, not moving to the next stage, etc).

The POMO likes this context and he is certain about this reality because for him the context for the reality has been defined. He understands the breadth of the game’s universe. He has his bearings. He might personally disagree with a player’s action, but he understands that the game rules define the moral “right” and “wrong” within that reality. He might personally disagree with a judge’s call, but he understands that the consequences are essential to the reality and he will only employ those tactics (including the various forms of immunity) for which the rules provide. The context for the reality makes all of the difference in the world for the POMO, and he can maintain this kind of respect, this kind of equilibrium in gaming situations that he cannot in "real" life.

Moderns must understand that it is the bent of POMO culture to assume that nothing can be known for certain but to speak as if something can be known for certain. The truth of our greater reality is a context that has yet to be established for the POMO. It does no good to roll ones eyes or to snicker at the absurdity of this generation’s logic, for the POMO is clearly communicating himself all the same. The POMO does have a logical form, it is the insistence of the Modern to impose an artificial grid upon the POMO's reality that has exacerbated the relationship of the two generations. The problem chiefly lies in that the Modern wants the communication on terms with which he is familiar: relative truth!

Moderns want to speak with POMOS. POMOS do not necessarily want to speak with Moderns. They want to speculate with them. The Modern does not know what to do with this except 1) to demand that the POMO communicate with him in the Modern way at the expense of real communication or 2) to play along with his POMO logic while still not understanding it at the risk of becoming absurd himself.

The Modern parent assumes that he is really communicating to his child when his child speaks affirmatively about anything. However, those affirmations are usually personal and not universal affirmations or convictions. The truth of the matter is that the POMO is fundamentally more honest than the Modern, for the Modern takes relative truth too seriously when relative truth in reality is arbitrary. Though the Modern thinks on the basis of antithesis, he applies antithesis when he wants to apply it and he does not apply it when he does not want to apply it.

The POMO does the same, except that antithesis is a game to him in the first place! The Modern observes this disregard for antithesis, and he is incensed—even though he himself demonstrates a lifestyle that truth is relative! It is the POMO who should be incensed, because the POMO is told by the Modern that relative truth is back of everything. The POMO goes, "Well if truth is relative, then let's play with logic!"

AND THEY CHOOSE ANIMISM INSTEAD OF CHRISTIANITY

Antoine Rutayishire, a Rwandan pastor who survived the Hutu genocide of the Tutsi minority of the 1990s, writes in his book Faith Under Fire: Testimonies of Christian Bravery "Before the massacres, no one would have believed that such a thing could happen in a country like Rwanda. Tucked just south of Uganda, west of Tanzania, north of Burundi and east of Zaire, this beautiful green and hilly land was considered one of the most Christian in Africa, with 90% of the population calling themselves either Roman Catholic or Protestant."

One of the most Christian countries in Africa? By what standard? Were family units, village and city life, schools and universities, local and national governmental agencies saturated with a life-system uniquely Christian?

"The 1991 census showed that 89.6% of the population was Christian with 62% belonging to the Roman Catholic Church and the rest of the Protestant Churches. In Protestant circles, Rwanda was equally known as the cradle of 'the eastern Africa revival.'"

The Cradle of the Eastern African Revival? What revival? What constitutes a revival? Over one million people were massacred. Were the 20% who did not call themselves Christian solely responsible for the violence? What was the standard for measuring conversions? According to Rutayishire, it was “European culture and concepts.”

"The period between 1927 and 1942 marked this progressive conquest of the ‘Christian kingdom in the heart of Africa’, actualization of the long dream of the founders of the missionary societies...When you read carefully the excerpts of missionary reports, there is no single mention of conversion, repentance, obedience to God’s laws; the elation is about ‘conversion to European culture and concepts.’"

Herein is another example of the religious fixation upon Modern, measurable means to validate or invalidate spirit. It was the same sacred-secular view of reality that hindered the Chinese church from stabilizing and growing: an emphasis upon an ambiguous spirituality and a "sacred" disregard for the physical world.

The collective results of 20th century missionary efforts were1) the exportation of Modernism, and 2) the simultaneous destruction of the native fabric of Third World culture. In other words, not only did this Modern form of missionarying give nothing to illustrate its authenticity by giving the culture something measurable, something tangible it could grap onto, but it also eroded what was already unique to that culture.

Keep in mind that of much native culture was targeted for annihilation by the Christian West because it was not compatible with Modernism. In the end, what did the native have that was uniquely his own? Nothing. Cannot Christianity have as many valid expressions as there are cultures, or is it uniquely American? Wherever the secular-sacred distinction takes hold, it tends to produce the same bland, monolithic culture in which 1) there is a philosophical disregard for the physical world (including international, national and regional culture) and 2) there is the destruction of what was already there (pagan or non-Christian culture).

In Cry the Beloved Country Alan Paton is speaking about Western culture through the African John Kumalo:

"I do not say that we are free here. I do not say that we are free as men should be. But at least I am free of the chief. At least I am free of an old and ignorant man, who is nothing but a white man’s dog. He is a trick, a trick to hold together something that the white man desires to hold together."

Modernism not only provided the false aspiration of superior culture , but it also destroyed any semblance of covenants the native had to his tribe. By the time Modernism took its toll on the African male during this period, any covenantal duties he previously had to the tribe were smashed. What was left?

"'But it is not being held together', he said. 'It is breaking apart, your tribal society. It is here in Johannesburg that the new society is being built. Something is happening here, my brother.'"

In the end, animism was preferable to Modern Christian culture. And that is exactly where the POMO is.

SACRED-SECULAR ABSURDITY

The sacred-secular distinction has played itself out in discomforting ways during my education career even, my problem largely being with zealously religious families. I will ferret out that their children are not as upright as the parents have showcased them to be and will discover, say, a drug addiction, deep-rooted lying, or a sexual deviance to name a few. And you know what parents will tell me the very next day?

"Oh, we talked with our child, and you WILL see a difference today. We talked for hours, we prayed, we cried, and she really has changed. The Spirit of God was REALLY at work." I will smile and tell the parents I am very hopeful, but then I will say something like this:

"Insofar as your child's interaction with drugs, did you call the numbers your son was texting to find out who his suppliers are? Did you tell the youth leaders at church the names of the kids who are doing drugs with your daughter? Did you get your daughter drug-tested and would you furnish me the results? Are you still giving your son large sums of cash for allowance? Did you take your daughter's license away so that she can't drive?"

"Insofar as your child's lying, what gives you cause to believe your son is sincere? Did you check up on whether or not your daughter actually was at church last night or at a friend's house? Why did you give your son four hours of unsupervised free time with his friends after you told me you were going to monitor him?"

"Insofar as your child's promiscuity, did you or are you going to get your boy tested for STDs? Are you still going on that trip today and leaving your daughter home all weekend? Did you turn off your son's phone service perrmanently? Do you think that your own infidelity has anything to do with this? Are you monitoring your daughter's Internet use? Does your daughter still have cable TV in her room?"

Nine times out of ten, do you know how these families will respond? They will preach at me. They will tell me that I don't understand teenagers, or I don't understand forgiveness, or I don't understand what it is like for them, or I don't understand faith, or I need to come to their church where the truth is being spoken and learn from their pastor, or they will give me some asinine reference from Scripture that allows them to remain in this sacred-secular fantasy. However, when their "special" child commits the same offense again and again, the parent will shell out thousands of dollars for drug rehab, for intensive counseling, or sometimes they will give up their child altogether when they could have shut their mouths and looked at the total reality in the first place.

This example serves to underscore how you cannot show-case authenticity, and it is equally absurd to apply this thinking to areas of spirituality or missionarying (even though mission organizations/mission brokers expect periodic, measurable evidence). You can count the members of a church and end up with a number, but you cannot count the number of authentic Christians in that church. You can measure the authentic Christian influence of that church bythe volume of its various relationships to the community (the highest marks given to its ultimate indispensability), but you cannot tout that means as exclusively sacred.

"But with the falling out of three global empires—the Chinese, Russian, and American—who will now guide the emerging global culture? What will be at the core of the culture of the twenty-first century? Would it be raw, selfish materialism? Or will the gospel of Jesus Christ take its rightful place at the heart of the new cultural synthesis that is now emerging? That is the question."

When Ling uses the word "materialism", do not mistake him for meaning an infatuation with material possesions. He means a worldview emphasis upon the material with material as the validating factor of every portion of reality. According to Ling, Third World culture was “ready for harvest” because they were more easily susceptible to the appeal of Christianity than the Modern because they already subscribed to a deity of some sort. I know that this is a harsh thing to say, but it is true. However, as Samuel Ling cogently ascertains, back of the esoteric nature of Western missionary endeavors was materialism, which means that, though a genuine sentiment to “reach the lost” existed, the framework for reaching the “lost” was absent deity (authentic demonstration) and to be found in statistical averages, probability factors, and a mechanistic view of cause-and-effect.