New millennium begins with a world in chaos
United Press International - November 29, 2000 13:40
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By UWE SIEMON-NETTO, UPI religion correspondent
WASHINGTON, NOV. 29 (UPI) -- So you thought you entered the new millennium 11 months ago? Well, think again. The Christian church of the West -- Roman Catholic and Protestant -- celebrates the 2,000th anniversary of Jesus' birth Dec. 25.
Let's not be pedantic about precise dates. Some scholars think Christ was born seven years earlier, but that has been decided on long ago as the beginning of our calendar. It is even less certain that his birth occurred Dec. 25, or on the following Jan. 6, when the Eastern churches celebrate Christmas.
But the fact is that whenever we date a document or letter, we refer implicitly to what Christians believe was a cosmic event: that God became a human being to experience humanity's suffering, that he died for humanity and redeemed it by taking its sin upon himself.
More awe-inspiring still, what lay as a baby in that manger in Bethlehem was the very aspect of God through which the entire universe was created. As the Gospel of John puts it: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men."
The term, Word (Greek: logos), refers to Christ. In philosophy, "logos" is the supreme reason that pervades the structure of the universe.
On Dec. 3, the first Sunday in Advent, a new church year begins and in the three weeks that follow most of the world's 2 billion Christians will prepare to rejoice in the commemoration of a mystery that sets their faith apart from all others. It is encapsulated in the words of Martin Luther: "God made himself small for me."
It will be the first church year in the third millennium. Andre Malraux (1901-1976), the French writer-politician, once said that it will be "either be a religious one or none at all." In other words, without a return to faith, there won't be another millennium for humanity.
Malraux's words proved prophetic. The world's two largest monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam, are growing robustly. Ironically, though, this takes place at a time when, at least in the West, the noisiest cultures reject the claims of these religions to absolute truth and moral standards.
In postmodernity, as this era is now called, we are told that everybody may set his or her own truth or value, both of which have been uncoupled from divine revelation, from God's law and the natural law that God has written upon everyone's heart, to quote the Apostle Paul.
The result can only be chaos on an unprecedented scale. But to Jews, Christians and Muslims, chaos is contrary to the will of God. It is Satanic in the sense that it returns the universe to the state that existed prior to Creation; it undoes God's work.
Christians say that, prior to his incarnation, Christ was the executor of Creation -- and still is because Creation is a continuing process. That is why leading Christian thinkers point to him as the antidote to the postmodern chaos that is fragmenting humanity and is at the root of the "culture of death" that Pope John Paul II never tires of castigating.
One can argue that the Stalin, Hitler and Mao were the progenitors of this lethal culture, for they taught the world that moral levels may be lowered at an individual's whim. In the eyes of faithful Jews, Christians and Muslims, the current mass destruction of unborn life falls into the same category.
So how does the incarnate Word of God -- who, Christians believe, structures the universe -- fit into this chaotic environment? How does He lead humanity out of it?
To answer these questions, United Press International has asked theologians, scholars and laymen from many denominations to contribute to a series of weekly articles titled ``Christ and Postmodernity.''
This series will begin Dec. 1 and run until Easter in 2001. In the first installment, Prof. Gene Edward Veith of Concordia University in Wisconsin will outline postmodernity because he was the first scholar to define this phenomenon from a Christian perspective.
Other writers will look at this topic from a multitude of angles. For example, a female seminarian will discuss how Christ can bring a "gender peace" after decades of postmodern "gender war."
A Lutheran pastor will reflect on how to preach Christ in postmodernity, an Anglican professor will write about postmodernity's many gods, and a Catholic scholar will discuss about the importance of the Eucharist in this troubling era.
A prominent historian will muse about the meaning of the cross in this period of perceived multiple truths. And a Jewish scholar from Jerusalem will propose the mind-ordering Christian works of Johann Sebastian Bach as a remedy for the chaos prevailing in much of today's music world.
Ironically, postmodernity's diffuse properties give us cause for hope -- and gloom. Bidding farewell to scientific rationalism, postmodern humanity has opened itself once again to beliefs that cannot be proven scientifically.
As a result, the world has witnessed incredible follies: educated people committing mass suicide so their souls may be picked up by a passing spaceship that will take them to a better world; learned men and women in the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo sect believing themselves called to trigger the apocalyptical Battle of Armageddon so that everything will be made anew.
We have witnessed the folly of Harvard lecturer Timothy Leary, who taught a generation of young Americans and Europeans the use of the drug LSD as a substitute for God. When last he was heard of, his ashes were orbiting the planet in a capsule shot into space at his request.
But postmodernity's farewell to the dictates of rationalism also has led more and more people back to orthodox Christianity. Evangelicalism now grows faster than the world's population. In the United States, it has become the most dynamic force in Protestantism.
In the mainline denominations, Christian renewal groups are thriving, especially in the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church USA, both of which have suffered from heavy bouts of liberal theology pushing the Social Gospel.
UPI's columnists will explore all of these developments in the new series that, in a sense, will read like a drama in installments.
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