2/25/13 Max late 20’s
Walking down the sidewalk in a part of Chicago that is becoming increasingly avante-garde, a young man named Max approached from the opposite direction, with sound-deadening earphones on. He looked radical and unapproachable, but I just smiled and waved my hands like I had something important to ask him, because, well, I did.
Max took off his headphones and agreed to answer my crazy question. One thing I have learned about trendy, cutting edge types is they will rarely back down from answering what is posed to them as a crazy question, priding themselves on thinking outside of the box. “What do you think happens after this life; what comes next, if anything?”
“I don’t believe anything comes next” he said, “because who can say it works that way? How do we know that what happened before this life doesn’t just happen again, or that what we know as past, present, and future doesn’t just happen all the same time?”
I wasn’t too impressed with his attempts to be profound, but I respectfully listened and asked more about his beliefs. As it turned out, he really didn’t have any, other than the belief that all that we know to be truth is meant to be questioned. I believe his was a classic example of post-modernist thought, people who make up a growing part of this generation. If traditional thought was replaced by modernism – what I’ll describe as the belief in the absolute truth of physical laws, science, and the inherent progression of civilization - post-modernism is a reaction against what are now seen as old, established truths, even to the point of absurdity.
“Truth is really only what you make it” Max told me, as he explained how he believes people just create their own realities based on what they believe to be true. I had to disagree. “I’m not so sure that makes much sense. It’s like saying that if I stand on the expressway and say I don’t believe in semi-trucks, I won’t get hit by one. I think it’s pretty obvious that truth exists independent of whether we believe in it or not.”
But even while Bible truths may appeal to those with established, old-school thinking, there are aspects that are new for every generation, and new to the experience of every individual. Isaiah 43 tells us “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert."
God was perpetually doing a new thing in the history of Israel, and now on a more local or even individual level is doing the same in us: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Max loves his self-image as one who thinks outside the box, but he doesn’t realize that one can’t honestly do so if they really don’t know what is inside the box. He had to admit that one thing that he rejected for being inside the box was the Bible, and that he really knew next to nothing about it. “You want to be innovative and original (in your generation)?” I asked him. “Try reading the Bible for yourself, and then actually taking what it says seriously, putting it into practice. Now wouldn’t that be outside the box!”
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