Postmodernism has No Gratitude - Do You Have it?

The first thing you might want to note about postmodernism is that it does not have a shred of gratitide. And there is something pathologically wrong with a person who doesn't have any gratitude. Especially when they live in what, so far, is the best of all possible worlds. And so, if you are not grateful you are driven by resentment and resentment is about the worst emotion you could possibly experience apart from arrogance. 

Resentment, arrogance, and deciet; there is an evil triade for you. And if you are bitter with everything that is going on around you despite the fact that you are bathed in wealth there is something absolutly wrong with you."

Jordan Peterson

Victims Of Our Own Ideologies

"Famous revolutionaries, theoreticians, and Prophets, seven years before their own inglorious destruction, welcomed the roar of the crowd, not guessing then that their own time stood on the threshold, that soon their own names would be dragged down in the roar of "Scum!" "Filth!""

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago 

The Mole Of Totalitarianism

"As we begin to understand our judicial practices, we realize now that the public trials were only the surface indications of the moles tunnel, and that all the main digging lay beneath the surface."

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago 

Extrajudicial Reprisals

"It would have been impossible to carry out this hygienic purging, especially under wartime conditions, if they had had to follow outdated legal processes and normal judicial procedures. And so an entirely new form was adopted: extrajudicial reprisal, and this thankless job was self-sacrificingly assume by the Cheka, The Sentinel of the Revolution, which was the only punitive organ in human history that combined in one set of hands investigation, arrest, interrogation, prosecution, trial, and execution of the verdict. 

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. 

Fabricated Dreams And Illusions

".... the modern and postmodern self largely lives in a world of its own construction, and it reacts for or against its own human-made ideas. While calling ourselves intelligent, we’ve lost touch with the natural world ......" 
~ Richard Rohr

Human Nature Is Our Problem Utopia Can't Exist

"Naturally, the first reaction of conservatives to this advice will be to reject it. Conservatives do not want to behave like leftists, who see politics and government as a means for transforming the world and the people in it. Temperamentally, conservatives are cautious because they know that the problems the world faces are caused by human beings, not by the social institutions that progressives plan to change. Social institutions reflect who we are far more than they shape what we will be. Therefore, all political “solutions” are imperfect; all will fall far short of their goals; all will require constant reforms to fix the additional problems they create........

Conservatives are realists who believe in the constitutional skepticism that guided the Founders. They know that human nature — not society — is the insurmountable obstacle to equality and justice, and that a democracy works only through compromise and respect. Democrats pay lip service to this wisdom but don’t really believe it. There is no compromising utopian goals, and they will accept no lasting modus vivendi with those who oppose these goals."

David Horowitz

Reacting To Our Own Constructions

".... the modern and postmodern self largely lives in a world of its own construction, and it reacts for or against its own human-made ideas. While calling ourselves intelligent, we’ve lost touch with the natural world and, as a result, lost touch with our own souls. I believe we can’t access our full intelligence and wisdom without some real connection to nature!"

~ Richard Rohr 

The Great Commission Loses Meaning for the Church of the West?

"(There)..... is the vast ignorance of its own members about the texts and traditions of their faith. A clergy friend of mine put on their calling card “Great Commission minded.” When his spouse gave that card to a friend who was in trouble, she looked at it and said, “It says here that you are Great Commission minded. How big a cut do you take of the offering?”

(So Beautiful. Leonard Sweet. David C Cook, 2009. pp37)

New Church Paradigms?

As the body of Christ grows from the infant to the toddler stage, it is seeking direction for its journey forward. It has gradually stepped around the barrier of old wineskins and has come to view different infrastructures.
Our view is often limited. Old paradigms are blinders, making it impossible to see peripherally. To describe it another way, we now “see through a glass darkly.”
As we step forward, we must see the emerging Last Days wineskin for Christ’s ekklesia. It does not yet exist. Should the Lord tarry, perhaps it will arise in the last half of this century. Can we set our vision to pioneer its lifestyle?

(Ralph Neighbour, forward of "Nexus, The World House Church Movement Reader, Editor Rad Zdero, William Carry, 2007 pp. Forward)

Bridges of Understanding with Islam?

"Even a cursory reading of Islam reveals that there are vast areas of agreement between the Islamic view of Allah and the Christian view of God. Both Islam and Christianity affirm the absolute reality of God as the center of everything that is. Islam does not debate the existence of God; it is taken for granted as an undeniable reality. Allah is the creator, the Lord of history and the one to whom everyone must give an account on judgment day. Both Islam and Christianity affirm that God sends prophets, that he calls us to worship him, and that he is the central reality of our existence."

— Timothy C. Tennent,Christianity at the Religious Roundtable:Evangelicalism in Conversation With Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2002), p. 152

Can We answer why Jesus?

"Arguably, the Church's greatest challenge in the next century will be the problem of the scandal of particularity. More than ever before, Christians will need to explain why they follow Jesus and not the Buddha or Confucius or Krishna or Muhammad. But if, while relating their faith to the faiths, Christians treat non-Christian religions as netherworlds of unmixed darkness, the Church's message will be a scandal not of particularity but of arrogant obscurantism."

Gerald R. McDermott, Can Evangelicals Learn From World Religions? Jesus, Revelation, and Religious Traditions(Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2000), p. 10

Salvation among the Nations-God's Great grace!

"A fundamental point in this theology of religions is the conviction that God's redemptive work in Jesus Christ was intended to benefit the whole world. ...The dimensions are deep and wide. God's grace is not niggardly or partial. ...For according to the Gospel of Christ, the outcome of salvation will be large and generous."

Clark Pinnock, A Wideness in God's Mercy:The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1992), p. 17
(Pinnock is arguing that there is evidence of many being saved not 'Few" as many fundamentalists argue)

The Challenge facing us Through Postmodernism (& Pluralism)

This sentiment is very relevant to us today. Half of the people sitting in our pews really believe this deep down inside. How do we respond, and keep missions passion?

"How can you tell but that the Turks had as good Scriptures to prove their Mahomet the Saviour, as we have to prove our Jesus is; and could I think that so many ten thousands in so many Countries and Kingdoms, should be without the knowledge of the right way to Heaven... and that we only, who live but in a corner of the Earth, should alone be blessed therewith? Everyone doth think his own Religion rightest, both Jews, and Moors, and Pagans; and how if all our Faith, and Christ, and Scriptures, should be but a thinks-so too?"

(John Bunyan,Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners,ed. Robert Sharrock(New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 31)

A further Examples of pluralism's emerging.

"The needed Copernican revolution in theology involves an equally radical
transformation in our conception of the universe of faiths and the place of our
own religion within it. It involves a shift from the dogma that Christianity is
at the center to the realization that it is God who is at the center, and that
all the religions of mankind, including our own, serve and revolve around
him."

(John Hick,The Second Christianity,3rd enl. ed. of Christianity at the Centre(London: SCM Press, 1983), p. 82)

"Christians, in their approach to persons of other faiths, need not insist that Jesus brings God's definitive, normative revelation. A confessional approach is a possible and preferred alternative. In encountering other religions, Christians can confess and witness to what they have experienced and come to know in Christ, and how they believe this truth can make a difference in the lives of all peoples, without making any judgments whether this revelation surpasses or fulfills other religions. In other words, the question concerning Jesus' finality or normativity can remain an open question."

(Paul F. Knitter,No Other Name?A Critical Survey of Christian AttitudesToward the World Religions(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1985), p. 205)

"A theology of world religions that wants to be true to the empirical situation
in the way the religious traditions confront each other must not evade or play
down the conflict of truth claims. If we look to the history of religions in the
past, there was always competition and struggle for superiority on the basis of
different truth claims."

(Wolfhart Pannenberg,"Religious Pluralism and Conflicting Truth Claims,"in Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered,ed. by Gavin D'Costa(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1990), p. 103