Political Ideals at Stake

An excellent news analysis made by a Straits Times journalist on the nature of politics in SIngapore.
http://www.asiaone.com/st/st_20060329_381298.html

The author has rightly pointed out that the political game - if conducted merely on the premises on material needs - will have disastrous consequences. If ideals like "love" and "justice" are merely rhetoric weapons of the powerful and play no part whatsoever in social life, then we are treading on a slippery path to big-time problems.

In my opinion, the current battlelines drawn between the ruling party and the opposition party is one that is clearly based on a materialist (or epicurean) worldview. This is probably inevitable, considering the amount of secular success that Singapore has achieved over the past 40 years.

To position the arguments within a different context, the church is playing the same game too (albeit sugarcoating it in spiritual mumbo-jumbo)... in her attempt to stay "relevant" within contemporary society. My question is: When is the church ever commanded to stay relevant? Isn't the duty of the Christian church to challenge the principalities of this world (not simply to convert them to become Christians), but rather to fulfill its mission to be the salt and light of this fallen world.

Sadly, we have been so used to the materialist rhetoric that it seems churches who do not abide by these rules are being labelled as being "un-loving". But as David F Wells rightly argues, "if the [church] cannot clarify for themselves who is sovereigh - God or the religious consumer? - what is authoritative in practice - Scripture or culture? - and what is important - faithfulness or success? - they will find themselves walking the same fate as the churches that failed before because whatever seriousness now remains will dissolve into triviality" (Above all Earthly Powers: Christ in a Postmodern world).

In other words, once the capitalist-consumerist-materialist system that our modern society is based upon starts to wither, it will take down all elements that have aligned themselves with her. If the defining characteristic of the church is merely a built upon such foundations, then it too, will capitulate along with everything else it stands for.

Eerdmans Interview with David F Wells

Check out Eerdmans interview with David F Wells, one of the foremost Christian writers and intellectuals of our time:
http://www.eerdmans.com/wellsinterview.htm

A short excerpt:

3. What do you see as the difference between popular postmodernism and academic or intellectual postmodernism?

David Wells: The difference is less in the ideas than in the degree of self-consciousness, and often the clarity, with which they are expressed.

However, there is a myth which needs to be laid to rest here. Intellectuals like to think that they are society's trend-setters, that what they are thinking is where reality is cresting. The result is that when intellectuals write about culture (and who else does?) they are inclined to see their ideas and their own culture as being in a cause-and-effect relation. They are the cause of which it is the effect.

In the modern period, however, this has rarely ever been the case. It is the culture, far more commonly, which gives the ideas their plausibility and which makes them seem inevitable. It is from the culture that ideas gain their traction and it is often because of the culture, when it changes, that they lose their traction. That is why, I believe, the Enlightenment ideology has lasted so long in the West and has become so deeply ensconced in our cultural elites, the gatekeepers, in academia, Hollywood, and many of our newspapers. The modernization of our society made Enlightenment ideas (like secular-humanism) seem inevitable, true, and incontrovertible. When this kind of public, cultural scaffolding began to shake in the 1960s, the ideas came tumbling down, leaving us with a void that the Enlightenment beliefs had once filled in our thinking. So we have come to be postmodern. For some, on one end of the intellectual scale, this is so in very cogent ways and for others, on the other end, it is so in ways that are more unthinking but nevertheless not any less real.

Reformed Evangelical Movement Seminar

Below is the link to the transcripts of the recent Reformed Evangelical Movement Seminar held in Singapore from Feb 23-26.

http://www.stephentongsermons.blogspot.com/

A couple of take-home points: Clearly the church in Singapore has much reforming to be done. Perhaps years of prosperity and personal affluence has left us with an extremely soft under-belly upon which the courageous Reformation spirit has been all but extinguished.

Speaking with Elder Yong after the seminar, he commented that many Singapore Christians are un-intellectual... prefering instead to dwell within the comfort zone of their own local church.

Another worrisome sign - in my observation - is the increasing compartmentalization of faith into the private sphere and there alone. The separation of church and state powers - which resulted as a recognition of the God-given rights of civil governance - is now brought to a situation (at least in the Western world) where the public confession of one's faith is generally looked down upon.

As David F Wells puts it: [Such faith/spirituality], with its individualism, its wholly privatized understanding, its therapeutic interest, its mystical bent, its experimental habits, its opposition to truth as something which mediates the nature of an unchanging spiritual realm, its anti-institutional bias, its tilt toward the East, its construction of reality, and its can-do spirit...is something which is emerging from the very heart of the postmodern world (Above All Earthly Pow'rs)

What then next?