Reframe Episode 2 - Cultural Stories

The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ reframes everything, bringing hope, life, and meaning to every part of human culture. And yet many of us can't see how our faith shapes much of everyday life and experience, Sunday to Sunday, the in-between days. Where was Jesus? I didn't think about the whole of who I am, what I was passionate about, and how God uniquely made me. What are God's purposes for us? What does it mean to be made in the image of God? How do we live in the world but not of the world? God wants to make us more ourselves. He is holding all things together, and he is reconciling all things to himself. We're exploring how does the biblical story reframe our story. We lead out of our stories to be located in the story, the biblical story in which God reveals himself, his character, and his life.

in-between days where was Jesus I didn't think about the whole of who I am what was I passionate about and how God uniquely made me what a God's purposes for us what does it mean to be made in

[Music] In modern culture, image and identity loom large in our lives. Everyone who's born on the planet asks questions of who am I and who are we and how should I live? I mean, I think to me that's built into the fabric of who we are. It's just the nature of the human condition that those questions, we may not be asked in exactly those ways, but I think they're asked in that way. So even when I watch commercials on perfume on TV, they're asking questions about who are you. They're our hosts of competing stories about what life is really about, how to get on, how to be happy. And many of them are at odds with the teaching of the Bible, the Christians. The question of identity can be deeply confusing and troubling. Many of us are like the disciples on the Emmaus Road 2,000 years ago. We want to believe in Jesus, though we have a hard time understanding just how he's the Redeemer of every aspect of our lives. Modern life has brought many benefits, but it's also brought the challenge of complexity and a multitude of messages telling us what to do. I learned a lot about the importance of personal salvation and personal morality, but I don't think I grasped any sense of how my faith interacted with the world and how to live out my faith in school or otherwise. So the lens through which I saw success and performance was always you do well in school, you go to a great school, then you get a great job, and you make a lot of money, and you have this perfect life. After graduating from college, Christina and her husband Ryan moved to Cincinnati, where they joined a local church. Christina began a successful career in business, but gradually she found herself asking some profound questions about her identity and the shape of her life. I was working as a management consultant, and I had opportunities to progress and make more money, and I was climbing the ladder. So it was just all about achieving that next milestone, and I realized I saw myself as how much I was making and what my billable rate was and what I was contributing to the company. And I saw myself as, you know, what my opportunities to climb the ladder were rather than the whole of who I am. In the culture I came from, it was about succeeding in the workplace and making more money to be able to buy this or that furniture, to go on this or that great trip, and even these restaurants. But that's where I feel like I started to wrestle with is this what life is about? I realized I saw myself tied to the value of money, not about who I was. The temptation to take on the values of our culture, to assimilate, is ever-present when it comes to identity. It seems that Christians have to know the stories of their culture and know the biblical story. When we don't know that story and when we don't see it, we fall for other stories, or these other stories. So contaminate the kingdom story that the kingdom story is distorted and, in some ways, actually ruined, and it collapses in and of itself. Jesus told his disciples he was sending them into the world, but they should not be of the world. If we're to avoid the temptation to assimilate, to look like everyone else, it seems it's vitally important to find out what sort of world are we in. In this episode, we're going to explore how the dominant stories of our culture shape identity today and how faith in Jesus Christ challenges us to live a very different way of life.

reframe our story we lead out of our stories to be located in the story the biblical story in which God reveals himself his character in his life [Music] in modern culture image and identity loom large in our lives

[Music] Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

human condition that those questions we may not be asked in exactly those ways but I think they're asked in that way so Eve when I watch commercials on perfume on TV they're asking questions about who are you they're our hosts of competing

[Music] So we were given an invitation in the last session, an invitation to see Jesus. And when we do that, it changes everything, doesn't it? It changes how we think about ourselves. It changes how we think about reality. It's a bit like putting on a pair of glasses when you finally got the prescription right. I've been struggling with that over the summer. The world comes into focus at last. It's beautiful. It's awesome in its beauty, but it's also extremely challenging. It's challenging because the minute we see him, we have to look at our culture again, and we start to look at the narratives that shape our own culture. We begin to ask new kinds of questions about our identity, and most of all, we begin to see how steeped we are, like tea bags in boiling water, in the culture that places values on us and in us that distract our gaze from Jesus Christ. So it's challenging. Now, the material we're going to look at together has a central question, a kind of pivotal question that runs right down through the middle of it, organizes it. And that question: three words, Who am I? Really, really simple, just about as simple as quantum physics. That might be simple for some of you, but it's certainly not for me. This is the question, I think, which forms the heart cry of the postmodern generation. But why this question? There's absolutely nothing new about it, is there? Every single generation throughout time has asked the question Who am I? Philosophers will keep asking that question until the end of time. We can't live everyday life unless we have some kind of answer to it. But I want to argue that there is something unique about the way in which we're asking this question today. If you see this, take a look at this picture: atom bomb at Hiroshima. Or you see this at Auschwitz. It's going to change the way in which you ask the question Who am I. It's going to change the perspective from which we consider who we are as human beings. It has to. And the dominant thought structures which have really prevailed in Western culture since the 18th century have inadequate answers for these kinds of horrors. Can you really believe confidently in human reason to perfect mankind in the light of this kind of thing? If civilization is inevitably progressing? And most of all, what kind of God can let this happen? Can we really rely on Christianity as a solid foundation for social identity? And during the course of the late 20th century, modern frameworks such as these, they fragmented, they've given way, and the certainties really are no longer certain. And it's left a vacuum of meaning right at the heart. I would go so far as to argue that it's actually left us with an identity crisis. Philosopher Charles Taylor says an identity crisis is this: an acute form of disorientation which people express in terms of not knowing who they are, not knowing who they are. And when identity collapses, we experience, I quote from Taylor, radical uncertainty as to where we stand. We lose coherent meaning. We lose it relationally. We lose it spiritually. And we lose it politically. So what I want us to do together is just to look at four characteristics of our contemporary identity crisis. The first is dislocation. January 1964, Bob Dylan wrote his third album, the title track of which was The Times They Are A-Changin'. And what Dylan does is he uses the language of the Sermon on the Mount, and essentially he calls upon his parents' generation to get out of the way, to let a new kind of future arise. The past must be dislocated, cut free from the present, and the present from the past. Now, nearly five decades later, we've lost our memory as a society, and we retreat. We treat with skepticism every kind of identity-forming story that gets handed down from generation to generation. What that means is our identity's been l...

disciples on the Emmaus Road 2,000 years ago we want to believe in Jesus though we have a hard time understanding just how he's the Redeemer of every aspect of our lives modern life has brought many benefits but it's also brought the

challenge of complexity and a multitude of messages telling us what to do I learned a lot about the importance of personal salvation and personal morality but I don't think I grasped any sense of how my faith interacted with the world

and how to live out my faith in school or otherwise so the lens through which I saw success and performance was always you do well in school you go to a great school then you get a great job and you

make a lot of money and you have this perfect life after graduating from college Christina and her husband Ryan moved to Cincinnati where they joined a local church Christine began a successful career in business but gradually she found herself

asking some profound questions about her identity and shape of her life I was working as a management consultant and I had opportunities to progress and make more money and I was climbing the ladder so it was just all about achieving that

next milestone and I realized I saw myself as how much I was making and what my billable rate was and what I was contributing to the company and I saw myself as you know what my opportunities to climb the ladder were rather than the

whole of who I am in the culture I came from it was about succeeding in the workplace and making more money to be able to buy this or that furniture to go on this or that great trip and even

these restaurants but that's where I feel like I started to wrestle with is this what life is about I realized I saw myself tied to the value of money not about who I was the temptation to take on the values of our culture to

assimilate is ever-present when it comes to identity it seems that Christians had to know the stories of their culture and know the biblical story when we don't know that story and when we don't see it we fall for other stories or these other

stories so contaminate the kingdom story that the Kingdom story is distorted and in some ways actually ruined and it collapses in and of itself Jesus told his disciples he was sending them into the world but they should not

be of the world if we're to avoid the temptation to simulate to look like everyone else it seems it's vitally important to find out what sort of world are we in in this episode we're going to explore how the dominant stories of our

culture shape identity today and how faith in Jesus Christ challenges us to live a very different way of life [Music] do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind [Music]

so we were given an invitation in the last session an invitation to see Jesus and when we do that it changes everything doesn't it changes how we think about ourselves it changes how we think about reality it's a bit like

putting on a pair of glasses when you finally got the prescription right I've been struggling with that over the summer the world comes into focus at last it's beautiful it's awesome in its beauty but it's also extremely challenging it's challenging because the

minute we see him we have to look at our culture again and we start to look at the narratives that shape our own culture we begin to ask new kinds of questions about our identity and most of all we begin to see how steeped we are

like tea bags in boiling water in the culture that places values on us and in us that distract our gaze from Jesus Christ so it's challenging now the material we're gonna look at together has a central question a kind of pivotal

question that runs right down through the middle of it organizes it in that question three words Who am I really really simple just about as simple as quantum physics that might be simple for some of you but it's certainly then for

me this is the question I think which forms the heart cry of the postmodern generation but why this question there's absolutely nothing new about it is there every single generation throughout time has asked the question Who am I

philosophers will keep asking that question until the end of time we can't live everyday life unless we have some kind of answer to it but I want to argue that there is something unique about the way in which were

asking this question today if you see this take a look at this picture atom bomb at Hiroshima or you see this at Auschwitz it's going to change the way in which you ask the question Who am I it's going to change

the perspective from which we consider who we are as human beings it has to and the dominant thought structures which have really prevailed in Western culture since the 18th century have inadequate answers for these kinds of horrors can you really believe confidently in

human reason to perfect mankind in the light of this kind of thing if civilization inevitably progressing and most of all what kind of God can let this happen can we really rely on Christianity as a solid foundation for social identity and

during the course of the late 20th century modern frameworks such as these they fragmented they've given way and the certainties really are no longer certain and it's left a vacuum of meaning right at the heart I would go so

far as to argue that it's actually left us with an identity crisis philosopher Charles Taylor says an identity crisis is this an acute form of disorientation which people express in terms of not knowing who they are not knowing who

they are and when identity collapses we experience I quote from Taylor radical uncertainty as to where we stand we lose coherent meaning we lose it relationally we lose it spiritually and we lose it politically so what I want us to do

together is just to look at four characteristics of our contemporary identity crisis the first is dislocation January 1964 Bob Dylan wrote his third album the title track of which was the times they are changing and what Dylan does is he uses

the language of the Sermon on the Mount and essentially he calls upon his parents generation to get out of the way to let a new kind of future arise the past must be dislocated cut free from the present and the present from the

past now nearly 5 decades later we've lost our memory as a society and we retreat we treat with skepticism every kind of identity forming story that gets handed down from generation to generation what that means is our identities been lifted out of time and

space lifted dislocated and it's no longer connected backwards in time to the events and the narratives which shape who we are and it's no longer connected forwards in time to vision and direction there's a history gap right in

the middle of course if a person loses their memory badly they've got a psychiatric problem and if a community loses its memory it needs help in the same way George Orwell the author of Animal Farm some of you know that

book he argued that the quickest way to destroy a people is to obliterate their understanding of history it's like being a leaf when you don't know you're part of a tree but past consciousness is not only linked to the present it's also

inseparably linked to the future if you don't know where you've come from it's extremely difficult to know where you're going direction requires identity an identity generates direction it's vital 19th century historian Lord Acton put it like this knowledge of the past is like

a compass without it were tossed around by the wind and we cannot our position the identity crisis that we're talking about here is resulting in a profound loss of social identity in our in our society as Christians however

we are located in a story with a past a present and a future beginning a middle and an end and at a time when social identities are dislocating and fragmenting we need to be rooted in the story that makes ultimate sense of

reality through saying in the last session it's time to recover our memory an absence of memory leads to a second aspect of how we construct our sense of self today invention one of the core values of our culture is self invention

every individual has the right to define and create who they are I am what I choose to be self creation mimics the values of consumerism and we form our identities through the acquisition of symbolic tokens objects images and they

clothe us with the self and they distinguish us in the eyes of others these symbolic tokens there might be a university degree they might be designer clothing there might be the postal code address that's prestigious that you have

coveted for a long time these things can be bought they can be sold they're traded and selves are then projected like an Instagram I designed my life and I image it one of the great stories of our culture

great in the sense of influential is that is The Consumerist story is that I am what I buy I am what I eat I am what I wear I am what I own I am what people think I am because of what they see I

have another story at work today is the story of passion the story of desire the story of sex so that I am what I feel I am my desires there were so many nurses flying around in our world today and a lot of them are

based on a command consumer mindset that you are what you buy you are the brands that you can afford to wear and unless you're part of that consumer autonomy or nothing you're an outsider so the good life is something that you can buy in

constructing yourself this whole cult of self fulfillment is the reason why we have our Super Bowls Super Bowls and why we have this intense shopping and consumerism of our culture today so clearly and we have tried to say that

the curing of the soul comes through shopping well it's crazy that does it give us that fulfillment that transformation that we need in our lives no it doesn't there's deep irony in here deep irony because identity culture is founded on

an illusion of uniqueness we understand ourselves to be inventing a unique identity but in fact the close interweaving of material consumption with identities creating homogeneity am I in fact buying my own lifestyle when I choose my baby buggy for example am i

consuming and buying somebody else's identity without knowing it and if my identity is bound up with these symbolic tokens is it actually anything more than a cleverly marketed brand but I just want to just pause there and just

underline it for one second we must not be deceived in a consumer society there is a vested interest in ensuring that acquisition and personhood are deeply connected okay consequently what we actually think of as freedom of choice may rapidly become

dependency we become dependent on consumption for meaning as human beings identity packages they always do come with small print having chosen certain tokens certain kinds of behaviors then we get obligated to them I need a certain kind of residential location to

reflect who I really am and who my children really are going to be but it may just be that in the future every decision I ever make is made with reference to my mortgage and it might just be that every person I go on to

meet I judge them by the same value criteria that I apply it to my own material situation this is a very well disguised form of slavery usually Peterson points out in his book traveling light reset of reflections on

the book of Galatians we have more freedom but we're less free now there's a there's a big problem right at the center of this way of thinking about identity and that's the problem of suffering this kind of identity

formation it doesn't have any resilience in the face of suffering and at some point what we find I think in every human life is that we just can't invent anymore somebody something gets in the way of us being who we want to be or who we were

once and we like to maintain that identity and we can't control that somebody or that something and if our identities are founded on those external here are now aspects of our lives they are incredibly fragile if this is the

way that consumerism works what other ways disaster xiety shape and define identity the question of identity is very very important because it affects everything about how we live and what sense of vocation that we actually have vocation actually comes out of identity

not the other way around so oftentimes in a party or something people will ask you what do you do well I'm I'm a professor oh I know what you I know who you are well you don't know who I am

but it's true in the whole of the Western world that the boomer generation has been the most professionalized in the history of mankind and so in consequence what the boomer generation is discovering is a disenchantment of having only a

professional identity it's a wrong identity well having been a CEO of a big company or being a demised scholar in an academic life to then discover that you're nobody is what is waking up people to say but was I fool to think

that my identity was only professional Augustine st. Augustine had a wonderful idea he said if you want to find out who a person is don't ask them what they do ask them what they love the Christian gospel can't coexist with a

materialistic philosophy because being always precedes doing we've been lovingly created I have been lovingly created before I ever achieved or acquired or consumed anything and my fundamental dignity as a person is not dependent on what I do is not dependent

on what I invest or what kind of image I project and as we come to see Jesus we start to see that we do not have to strive to acquire a self that is a radical statement in our culture I don't

have to invent myself out of a multitude of options and nor do you rather I can receive what's been given to me with gratitude and peace third characteristic fluidity postmodern identities are not static they are not stable they can change within a decade

they can change within a year less than a year as technology keeps on shifting the ground rules for human formation identity formation has to keep up it must be progressive successive multifaceted and what that leaves us with is a protracted existential crisis

I never stopped asking Who am I that questions meant to settle us it's meant to still us in the core of who we are and to free us into our god-given purpose but what's happened is the question itself has become a restless

obsession in its own right we are terrorized by it in our souls [Music] the cultural message heavily influenced by social sciences and heavily influenced by psychology is we have a very very strong attention paid now - the intrapsychic aspect of who we are to

the private and the internal side of who we are so language like be true to yourself or finding yourself or being yourself is all language that appeals to something internal or intrapsychic of who i am that i need to be and so the

great defense for a whole bunch of things now in the culture whether it's ethical or moral or religious is well that's who I am and if you actually dissect that sentence you know from a grammatical standpoint like that's who I am like it says

absolutely nothing you know you could be an ax murderer and you say well that's that's who I am it doesn't tell us anything it's not an identity that's that's deeply rooted in anything substantive and it's not an identity that ties to any bigger picture

or bigger story it's kind of this isolated fragmented individual the identity should be something that is integral and unchanging changing in terms of maturity and stages of life but nevertheless it's the same and so one of the features of the postmodern world is

the fluidity of its culture and therefore the fluidity of its identities it's almost as if they're floating around and we can pick and choose like a Halloween costume which one we're going to wear today but the narcissistic culture that we're living in is a

culture of a depleted sense of self and when you have a depleted sense of self you're totally self focused about your own insecurities I think one of the wax in the culture is a real debate of what it means to be human and I think the

culture right now in its in its advertising and its messaging gives us this this very strong sense that we need to be the best parents you know the best neighbors the best citizens the best this and then your brokenness then gets

very much hidden from view so all the quiet addictions and the quiet depression and the quiet angst and the quiet marital struggles and the quiet parental struggles are really I think pretty pronounced in the culture and so a lot of people haven't because because

their life is so fragmented and so privatized they're living with all this private pain they don't what to do with it they don't know where to place it [Music] it's a heavy heavy weight of responsibility on our shoulders to

invent your own unique identity especially when you have to do that autonomously as an individual you're on your own in it and there's nothing to guide but internal preference so decision-making cripples us with anxiety the stakes are just too high what

happens if you make a wrong decision and this is causing paralysis in our culture and yet Jesus Christ in this fluid culture is the same yesterday today and forever it's constant its faithful and he's constant in every facility of our

lives I love that word vicissitude every season of our lives he's constant and that's true in our lives but it's true throughout all the ages through all of history through all of time and in this age of fluidity in

this age of obsolescence there is nothing more precious for us than the eternal stability and the permanence that we have in Christ dislocation invention fluidity and finally final characteristic of our identity culture constraint diverse identities can create social conflict and the eclectic society

full of these multiform and shifting identities it has to be held together it needs structural and political coherence and our glue for that is a language of neutrality and toleration that Cardinal rule that runs right through the middle of political

discourse the backbone you can choose whatever you like so long as you do not interfere with my choices now it's really important that we stay here and I want to stay here there is tremendous good that comes from that kind of

plurality I'm not opposing pluralism here but what I am trying to say is that when it comes to identity at home I can select infinitely but in the public realm I cannot make a definitive statement so what happens is we're

trapped between hyper subjectivity on the one hand and hyper conformity or uniformity on the other do you again that's a torn life that's the fracturing of integrity and the church bears the brunt of that fracture in our society

the church always sits always sits on the boundary between the personal and the public as Christian communities we're trying to bring these spheres together it's not what I'm trying to do we're trying to bring together something at our society is trying to rip upon I

think most Christians wind up with a kind of compartmentalized life and they and we move from one compartment to the next and faith takes place in one compartment of our lives it's usually the private the sphere of leisure it's

usually at home on the weekends after hours that's sort of that's the space where it's permissible to be religious and then there's this other big compartment of our lives which is where we work where that private tape that we

have doesn't really find a place it's not really well we believe as Christians that Jesus Christ is the Lord of all of life not just part of it not just the private sphere but the public sphere as well

that the gospel applies to everything you name it and this artificial division of life into a public sphere and a private sphere creates a huge problem then for Christians feels like we're betraying our faith so we have four

words to characterize our contemporary society or framework dislocation invention fluidity constraint in conclusion really briefly let me suggest that this postmodern identity crisis it shouldn't really surprise us because we were made to know who we are we were

designed to know and that's true at a personal level individual level but it's also true at a societal level God's revealed himself to us as I am that's his name I am that's the ultimate existential question and the question

Who am I it gets settled once and for all in that statement we are because he is so be located in the story the biblical story in which God reveals himself his character in his life being located in the story of the people of

God through time received the gift of identity don't be afraid of suffering it's not going to undermine you might hurt you but it's not going to undermine your identity be constant in fluidity and be courageous in the face of

constraint do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed through the renewing of your mind [Music] what happens when we embrace God story as our story Christ identity as our identity God wants to make us more

ourselves the difficulty is that sometimes we have a wrong sense of what it means to be ourselves there is some sort of thing that if you peel it away like a bunch of onion peels then you're going to find the true me the true self

scripture says no that's not how you find yourselves you're not going to find who you are by peeling away onion peels it's something quite different if you keep in mind that the end goal is to be Christ to be in Christ when we become

christ-like we share in his way of being truly human then we become really ourselves when you have a strong sense of identity as we have in Christ then we have an identity that gives us all the space to be concerned about the other so

then our life is much more concerned with uttering that we live in the light of the other so we have a very different perspective on life because when one is secure in the love of God then you have

an ultimate security and so I think the consequence is now in the 21st century we're starting again we are in fact reframing a vision of things in the midst of her own crisis of identity Christine Buchholz was challenged to

rediscover her identity in Christ my paradigm started to shift and I felt like God really started breaking idols in my life I didn't realize that I had had this idol of materialism and so I started to value people differently as I

was shattering this notion that you're more valuable if you make more money you're more valuable if you've gone to a great college and just seeing enjoying people for who they were and not for what they had accomplished and you the

financial or socioeconomic status we walk around in this broken world and so we have these hurts in these pains and we think that's who we are sometimes but believe that the truth that God offers to us through Jesus is that no we we are

healed we are whole we are created in God's image the biblical story challenges the worlds definitions of identity and presents a radically different vision of reality and purpose but how well do we know this story the disciples on the amassed Road

thought they near the biblical story but couldn't see Jesus in their myths over the next five episodes we'll be exploring the big chapters of scriptures if we want to be a blessing to the world and not be conformed by the patterns of

the world we need to be located in the biblical story and see Jesus in our everyday lives [Music] [Music] you