Totomundo [the whole world]
June-July
Defeating Relativism through Relationships
Postmodernism and new-age are hot topics
for discussion. They are also what we are engaging
with all around us. I was successfully reached for
Christ in those contexts four years ago. As a
freshman in college, I was a new-age mystic who had
had no exposure to the Bible or to Christianity. Now I
am a Christian attending the Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary studying theology and its
implications on cognitive theory. It’s safe to say that
few new-age mystics go through such a
transformation. How did this happen? It is universally
recognized that the first step in reaching out to
postmoderns is overcoming relativism and
subjectivism. One way to battle relativism, and the
way that I was brought out of it, is through personal
relationships.
Christians, of all people, have the greatest
opportunity for deep and enduring personal
relationships. Every single thing God created,
humans and all of creation, has value merely
because God chose to make it. We as humans have
special value because we bear God’s image.
The Glass Box
You, as a Christian, often look back on your
past sins and on the general inadequacy of your life
from time to time. Reflection is a somber thing.
Eventually you leave reflection and move into
thankfulness, because Jesus Christ has provided
forgiveness for every single past sin. You hold close
to the memory of what Christ did for you. You are
free, you experience his nearness and you are
inspired. In order never to forget, you make these
thoughts of forgiveness and grace into pictures and
symbols in your mind, as though in a beautiful glass
box.
Different trials come your way, but taking out
the glass box restores the memory of God’s love and
salvation in Jesus. Once again you are moved and
feel the strength to keep forging ahead. You journey
many miles this way through rugged terrain and trials
of ever kind, taking out the glass box at moments of
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Furthermore, God deeply loves people, goes to great
efforts to have relationships with them, including
becoming a human himself in the person of Jesus,
and suffering to save humans of all shapes and sizes.
Nothing can take these facts away. They are
metaphysical, ontological things. All human beings,
born, unborn, old and frail, those with special needs,
have this great worth and value. Christians, above all
other religions and worldviews have overwhelming
reason to treasure people.
I had gone through high school steeped in
superficial friendships, yet the Christians I met in
college had such a real, genuine concern for other
people. They were not merely charitable, they truly
cared. Except for my parents, I had never before
been treated as a person with innate value; a person
made in God’s image. It was what I had been hungrily
searching for.
When it comes to relationships, postmodernity
is bankrupt in comparison to Christianity. For all the
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particular difficulty and feeling the power of inspiration
it provides.
As time passes and more difficult trials come,
the box seems to be less and less able to get you
through. The sweet memories of salvation are still
there but their power to inspire you is beginning to
fade. Eventually, you find yourself standing at the foot
of a cliff. You reach for the box (partially out of habit
and partially desperation) looking for hope,
inspiration, and guidance, but suddenly it appears
that it is only a box. And no matter how long you look
at it, hold it, shake it, and ponder it, no inspiration
comes and you realize that it no longer holds any
power.
The box has betrayed you and a deeper
loneliness sets in. It was always just the idea in the
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 Totomundo
Defeating Relativism continued
effort postmodernity exerts towards relationships and
social interaction, there were few actual relationships
it had brought me. In other words, it wasn’t working.
Although postmodernity wishes it could relieve people
of individualism, it cannot escape the rampant
individualistic consumerism of American culture.
Consumeristic relationships are ultimately “me”
centered. Engagement with others focuses around
what “I” get out of it (laughs, a fun evening, social
status, other perks).
Even postmodernism’s proposed solutions to
individualism ultimately fail because there are no
metaphysical grounds for the value of people.
Removing metaphysical value from individuals
removes any possibility of value for relationships
because relationships are merely collections of
individuals. Postmodernism also attempts to
emphasize relationships through asserting the value
of community directly. This fails because it is merely
an assertion without any reason or support. The
subjectivism of postmodernism gives freedom to
valuation making it unnecessary to value community
even though they suggest it.
Epistemological relativism will always
undermine any solid valuation of community because
ethics rests upon epistemology. Treating community
in a properly good way, as Christians did to me as a
lost person, actually was making metaphysical claims
that have direct epistemological implications against
relativism.
The Glass Box continued
box with its beautiful and memorable symbols that
moved you. Christ’s finished work and your salvation
experience were nothing but a moving, inspirational
idea, a beautiful picture that was stuffed into an
ordinary box.
One of the many inspirational ideas common
to Christianity is the liturgy of high church. The
comfort and familiarity of the calendar is your power
to keep forging ahead in life. Though the words you
hear and the songs you sing express true ideas about
God and religion, they are only pieces of data and
never anything more. It is a story and a picture that
remains far removed from relying directly on Jesus in
every moment in an intimate fashion.
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The application of Christianity’s unique
answer to the social needs of postmoderns and
American culture is that we need to be actively and
intentionally seeking more and more deep
relationships with lost people in order to combat the
relativism that is plaguing them. To start with, find
three or four people where there is already the
beginning of a friendship and really invest in it. If they
hurt you, ignore it to emphasize their great innate
worth just by being a person. Tell them why you
would never retaliate in the way they are used to
because they have value. Start being more aware of
how you communicate with others, including at work.
Be more gracious especially through email. There is
a real person that will be reading it! Any frustrations
(and usually there are many), even merited ones, can
quickly lead to short or harsh language.
If Christians had not invested deeply in me,
and gotten to know me and invite me into their lives, I
would have never seen the emptiness of
postmodernity and its inability to accomplish its two
goals: relationships and community. The very
relationships and the value that they treated me with
indirectly broke down relativism and subjectivism by
implication. Because Christians were able to provide
the community that I was eagerly searching for and
needed, they had already laid a groundwork for the
Gospel and made a platform from which to truly
engage me with the Gospel and Biblical Christianity
in a loving and meaningful fashion.
- Clayton Rothwell Louisville, KY
Another common glass box is Bible stories.
When these narratives are treated as inspirational
stories, historical or not, and they are divorced from
the daily living out of Christianity and a larger
framework of a Biblical worldview, they are bound to
fail you. The great and triumphant stories of Scripture
have immense inspirational ability, and this in itself is
not a bad thing. The problem arises when the stories
are used in a way that replaces how you should be
individually relating to the personal God.
The last example of an inspirational idea is our
salvation experience, as was mentioned in the
narrative. It is an emotional and significant picture in
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The Glass Box continued

the life of the Christian. Many times salvation and formula to recreate inspiration, the living Word is the
forgiveness are viewed as an events that occurred at means of God's active and intimate communication
some point in the past, offering constant reassurance, with us. The indwelling Spirit of God is what makes
relief from guilt and punishment, and a promise of a the Scriptures alive and dynamic to each individual
happy ending. The problem with containing this believer, in every culture, in every generation, in
reality in a box is that it cuts off the practical power of every circumstance.
redemption and forgiveness in our daily lives. One
can objectify Christ as an image of salvation and Rather than depending upon Bible stories (or
forgiveness, rather than relating to Christ as a person even a well-honed theology) as being our source of
to be known and followed. spirituality, we are called to know and worship God
himself. It is far too easy to begin depending upon
The glass box is one of the most deceptive and worshipping our knowledge of God and miss out
forms of false spirituality because it often has the on the intimacy of an actual relationship with Him.
content of Christianity correct, but Christianity is more The very same God who walked with Abraham, led
than content. First, they distance Moses, comforted David, and
you from God. Rather than
interacting directly with God, you
“...we are called to know raised Jesus Christ from the
dead is the One whom we are to
instead interact with some idea. and worship God himself. It know and worship now.
The worst-case scenario no is far too easy to begin
longer even views God as a
personal God, but views him as
d e p e n d i n g u p o n a n d Finally, rather than finding
security in our salvation
impersonal, distant, mysterious worshipping our knowledge experience of the past, we are
and impossible to relate to. of God and miss out on the instead called to actively turn to
Second, they also distance God
from your life, because the box
intimacy of an actual Christ now to understand and
live out the redemption that
is taken out occasionally, but the relationship with Him.” began then. This is true
rest of the time you are not spirituality. Christ's work in one
consciously handling life with sense was finished on the cross,
sensitivity to Biblical principles. Lastly, the box makes as far as we stand positionally before God, but in
God seem impotent in the face of particular struggles. another sense, our conversion was only the
Direct intervention, help, or guidance from God is not beginning. The danger in only finding comfort and
sought, only emotional or cognitive bolstering to keep confidence in what Jesus accomplished in the past, is
pressing forward. God’s power and care for this that we leave him in the past, and marginalize the
world and for you is drastically and painfully reduced. fulness of who he is now. The Christ who died for us
then is now living in us and ever present.
The good news is that God has something far
greater for us. He calls us to a dynamic relationship We must no longer settle for a glass box form
with Him, a God who has intimately walked with his of spirituality that will only fade in time and eventually
people since the moment he breathed life into Adam. shatter under the weight of real life. Instead, we must
This is where is where it gets exciting. turn to a true and robust spirituality with the living
God that supersedes ritual, images, and formula. He
Rather than looking to liturgy (and "worship" alone is zealously redeeming all things.
music in some circles) as being our source of
spirituality, we are called to look instead to the Word - Lisa McGary Louisville, KY
of God. Where static liturgy falls into ritual and

We welcome your comments and feedback.

Thanks for reading.

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