September 2008 Archives

Postmodernism seems to mean everything, anything, and nothing.  Postmodernism is whatever the reader wants it to be. "The postmodern author tends to blur genres, stealing from all over," writes David Lehman in his essay "The Questions of Postmodernism". It is personal conception and explanation that relies on opinions rather than facts, and rejects the scientific method and truth. They believe that facts are too limiting to establish anything.  They believe there is no absolute truth, but rather that truth is an illusion. That truth is distorted by people and groups to gain power over others.  The phrase "this sentence serves no logical purpose" illustrates postmodernism in three very unique ways.

                The first way is through the marginalized.  To be marginalized is to be denied a degree of power, whether it be individually, communally, and global.  Many paths of postmodernism are directed by the need to do justice to those who have been banned politically, economically, and rhetorically from the dominant culture.  The marginalized have directed the attention of postmodernists towards a doubt about knowledge, truth, and reason.  Modernity tries to argue that truth is valid, but they have discovered that behind every claim is a story.  A story the benefits specific groups and refuses others. The marginalized opened up doors that brought on skepticism of truth that made postmodernists believe that there was no logical purpose to it.

                Skepticism of truth is the next way that illustrates postmodernism.  As stated previously postmodernists believe there is no absolute truth.  They believe that people and groups misuse truth to gain control over others in society. They also believe that truth and error are the same. Postmodernists say that fact is too restrictive. What is fact today could be false tomorrow, so they rely heavily on opinion. They reject conventional logic, objectivity, and the scientific method.  To postmodernists, humans should create their own truths.  People should recognize that their views come from influences and what they have perceived and heard.  Sense and reasoning alone do not give humans a solid basis for declaring that something is true.   

                The final way postmodernism is illustrated is through consumer capitalism.  This gives consumers a number of options and choices.  The commonness of choice has delivered everything.  Everything is level in this situation.  Postmodernism has brought new ideas of consumption.  A postmodern comic showed two men looking at a simple hat through a window and the price was $25,000 and one man said "the price must be in the creativity".  Postmodernism takes things that are so simple and turns them into something so big.  In this new era the concept of small is non-existent.  Where is the truth in this new era? Everything is open to the consumer in this new era.  Marginalization and consumer consumption have nothing to do with each other, other than the skepticism of truth.

                Each of these characteristics illustrates postmodernism in their own way. Marginalization lead to skepticism of truth, which postmodernists believe has no logical purpose.  Skepticism of truth says that facts are limiting and that the people create their own truth.  They rely heavily on opinion which is what each person's definition of truth is, opinion.  Consumer capitalism creates this new era that nothing needs to make sense, it is what it is. "This sentence serves no logical purpose" illustrates postmodernism through these three ways, skepticism, marginalization, and consumer capitalization.

Postmodernism means everything, nothing, and anything. The term "postmodern" means different genres, eras, and ideas and blending them together to create something that has never been done before.  The three characteristics define postmodernism. People today are living in a new era. Through architecture and art, although it may not have some sort of symbolic meaning or logical reason to exist.  Architecture claiming to be postmodern normally seems to come from a rather ungrateful response to the overly proper and tasteless modernist movement, being that it is much more elaborate, expressive and often times serves no "logical" purpose.  "This sentence serves no logical purpose", it has no logical reason to exist. It defies the reader's expectations. It is also ironic because it illustrates postmodernism.  Postmodernism in every sense serves no "logical" purpose. Postmodernism is whatever the reader wants it to be.

This reader thinks postmodernism brings new ideas to the table. This reader doesn't consider herself postmodern at least not yet.  Traditional values are still instilled in this reader.  One day postmodernism will be the "way of life". People will believe in new era religion, that truth is opinion, and that nothing, everything, and anything serves no logical purpose.

A young princess is looking out her window feeling sad and lonely. She sees a young man waiting on a horse by the castle doors. She loves this man dearly but knows that her families are not of the same class, so they can never be together. The young princess is heartbroken as she knows she can never be with him. She wants to touch his face once more. She runs down from her room to the castle doors and the man is waiting for her, and she hugs him one more time. The man convinces the princess to come with him. So the princess jumps on the horse and they run ride off into the distance. He takes her to his cottage on the other side of the mountains. She is delighted to be the man but knows that something does not feel right. She has disobeyed her father, the king, and is not comfortable with the fact. The young man talks her into staying and says she won't regret it. The young princess still feels remorseful for leaving without her father's permission.  Back at the castle her father is wondering where his daughter is, when one of the maids says she saw her leave on horseback with the young man who lives on the other side of the mountain. The father is outraged and decides to go after her. The king rings the bell calling all the men in the town to meet at the castle. The men head off in a group to the other side of the mountain. Back at the young man's cottage the princess is happy with her decision and decides to go for a walk around the mountain. As she is walking she hears voices of men in woods. She becomes nervous and runs back to man's cottage, but it is too late the men already have reached the cottage.  The father knocks on the man's door and the he opens up and the father becomes irate. The two men fight over who is better for the princess to be with. They become angry with each other and weapons have been brought out. The young man is quicker than the king and kills him before he can retaliate. The other men take the young men back to the princess's castle, where he will be put on trial in front of all the townspeople. As he is walking up to the arena people are yelling and throwing things at the man. They sentence him to death and the young princess cries out "NO"! But it is too late they put the rope around his neck and the princess can only close her eyes as the love of her lays there to die. She becomes furious and burns down the town.

    N.T Wright's Simply Christian breaks down Christianity into three sections. Each section describes a part of the Christian faith. In the second section Wright addresses theological topics such as God, God's Kingdom, the History of Israel, Jesus, and the Spirit. Wright titles this section "Staring at the Sun" to relate back to the theological topics above.
    Staring at the sun discusses topics that consider God and the Christian faith. Staring at the sun is a metaphor of sight. Staring into the sun too long can damage your eyesight. Theology can do the same; it challenges you to look at your beliefs. Theology can obstruct your idea of the Christian faith. Wright uses the section staring at the sun to do the same; to challenge the readers' beliefs. He talks about where God is. Is God in Heaven? "God is in heaven," says one of the more hard-nosed biblical writers, "and you are upon earth; so let your words be few" (Ecclesiastes 5:2) (Wright 58). "Heaven" has this meaning, not because, in the earliest Christian traditions, it was the final destination of the redeemed, but because the word offers a way of talking about where God always is, so that the promise held out in the phrase "going to heaven" is more or less exactly "going to be with God in the place where he has been all along." Thus "heaven" is not just a future reality, but a present one (Wright 59). Wright goes on to talk about how Heaven is God's dimension and earth is our dimension. Just as heaven can refer to the sky, but very commonly refers to God's dimension of reality as opposed to ours, so the word "earth" can refer to the actual soil beneath our feet, but also regularly refers, as in the earlier quotation from Ecclesiastes, to our space, our dimension of reality, as opposed to God's (Wright 59). Staring at the sun relates to God, Heaven, and earth. When people look at the sky they think of God and Heaven, hence staring at the sun. Wright describes three options of imagining God's space and ours connecting to each other. The third option says that heaven and earth overlap and interlock. This sense of overlap between heaven and earth, and the sense of God thereby being present on earth without having to leave heaven, lies at the heart of Jewish and early Christian theology (Wright 65).
    The metaphor staring at the sun helps describe Christianity by describing when and how heaven and god intersect and overlap. They overlap in three different places. The first place is at Mount Sinai. Abraham keeps meeting God. Jacob sees a ladder between heaven and earth, with angels going to and fro. Moses discovers that he's standing on holy ground - a place, in other words, where (for a moment at least) heaven and earth intersect - as he watches the burning bush (Wright 64).  The second place is at the Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple of Jerusalem was the focus of ancient Israelite belief of the overlap between heaven and earth. But when David made Jerusalem his capital, the civic and political center of the whole nation, he planned a new project, which his son Solomon then constructed: a great temple, the single sanctuary for the whole nation, the place where Israel's God would now make his home forever. From that moment on, the Temple on Mount Zion in Jerusalem was the primary place, according Israelite tradition, where heaven and earth met (Wright 64). The third is through Jesus. When Jesus goes to the cross it exhausts the power of evil and creates a picture of what will happen someday.  When Jesus dies he creates an overlap for the people on earth to communicate with Jesus and God in Heaven. The metaphor helps relate Christian faith to people who do not fully understand all that Christianity covers. The section staring into the sun covers everything that is necessary in understanding the Christian faith.
    Staring into the sun can be confusing because it can mean so many different things. In this section Wright covers so many topics a person who doesn't have a lot of background on Christianity would be completely lost. Also in this section Wright asks a lot of questions but doesn't answer them which can leave the reader confused. So what did Jesus intend by it all? What did he think would happen next? Why did he walk into trouble in this way? And why, after his own violent death, did anyone take him seriously any longer, let alone suppose that he was the living embodiment of the one true God? (Wright 103). Why does Wright ask all these questions but not give us any answer or even some explanation to what will happen.
    N.T. Wright invites this reader to consider Christian theology more deeply. As a person who has attended private schools where Catholic traditions and lessons were taught every day reading text that asks questions that make the reader think have made this reader want to discover new answers about Christian faith. Discovering new traditions and facts about earlier Christian theology would be exciting and fun. It's always been interesting to hear new ideals but never know the meaning behind them.
    Simply Christian asks questions, discusses new ideals, and relates Christianity to metaphors that are easier to comprehend. By having three sections that describe Christian faith in three easy but different ways allowed for this reader to understand the context better. The theological topics he discusses in the book help give a background to early Christian theology and modern theology at the same time. N.T. Wright helped this reader make sense of Christianity.