Exhortation

Cultures have traditionally been rivers (Z. Bauman). The current carries everyone along in the same direction, whether or not they like where they're going. When someone asks, "Why are we going this way?" it's a sufficient answer to say, "We always have." The only way to go a different direction is to jump out of the boat and find your own river.

If traditional cultures are rivers, modern culture is a sea. We can choose any destination or path we like, drift aimlessly without a direction, or change destination every time the winds shift. Etymologically, the word "heresy" means "choice," and as many sociologists have pointed out, in the modern world we are all "heretics."

Our choices have grown exponentially in the past century. Even in our little town, we can choose to eat Chinese, Mexican, French, American, Italian, and probably a half dozen other cuisines. A hundred and fifty years ago, if you wanted to listen to music, you had to make it ourselves, or you were at the mercy of the local music club or symphony hall. With our iPods or CD collection or computer, we can choose from thousands of pieces of recorded music in hundreds of different styles.

We can choose to spend next week in Maui, or to talk this afternoon to a college friend in Kuala Lumpur. These choices were not available in previous generations, and with those opportunities to choose come the burdens of choice.

How should Christians respond to this unprecedented expansion of choice? It is not wise to be nostalgic for the simpler days of the past. Solomon says, "Do not say, 'Why is it that the former days were better than these?' For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this" (Ecclesiastes 7:10).

But it's also not wise for us to think that we know how to handle the world we’ve made. We don't; and a first step to handling it wisely is to recognize that we're naïve children surrounded by thousands of new toys. We shouldn't be nostalgic or defensive, but we should be suspicious, because the world around us is dazzling and seductive. And John says, "Do not love the world."

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, October 22, 2006 at 08:01 AM

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