Breadcrumbs

Lots of interesting “more cultured than thou” posts flying around, and some that are a bit more honest and humble.

I got into the conversation via the Patrol piece Hipsters and Hamster Balls. Lots of links in that one. I got schooled in terms like post-irony and the New Sincerity.

Fitzgerald called out Mike Cosper and his piece at the Gospel Coalition. Cosper responded to Fitzgerald on his own blog.

I thought my friend Eric would have fun with this stuff so I emailed him and he pointed me to a lovely blog on Stuff Christian College Kids Don’t Like

Impressions

1. All this stuff makes me feel rather old, uncool, out of touch, uninformed, and reminds me I can never read enough, know enough, be informed well enough.
2. I also listened to the interview with Tim Keller from Veritas  and was pondering how those deeply in the grip of cosmopolitan relativism . The wielder of the blind man and the elephant illustration exalts herself as the seer of the mystery, unlike all those poor, uninformed, trapped-by-their-upbringing, mono-religionists, who thing they know the truth to the exclusion of others.
3. There is an arrogance to the position of consumer of the religions of the world, constructor of purer truth based on wider information. We imagine ourselves to be multi-cultural, imagining again we have no culture, and acting with condescension towards the poor souls who only have their one culture. We race each other to be broader, better informed, more capable of assimilating new information and adding it to our collective perspective, thus empowering us to rise above the fray and see things as they really are…
4. Embracing any knowledge or culture entails a choice that admits a preference and an asserted priority. Should we be embarrassed by this? Only if we also embrace an assumption that the truly superior has known all things, informed herself of all things, tasted all things, and has come in her considered opinion after looking down on all the kingdoms of the world made their choice, always subject to newer information of course.

We stand with Eve and the serpent, looking at that fruit and see it is good for making one wise.

We are born to places and times and our lives are stories that are particular, peculiar, limited, twisted and strange. We play our parts with the tools we are given and the people around us. A failure to come to terms with this takes doesn’t generally end well. Eve is shown some fruit, Jesus is shown the nations of the world. Given Jesus’ response in Matthew 4 this might have been the most trying of the three.

Aging

One of the things time and aging teach you is limitation. To be young, affluent, educated and powerful (although few wish to admit they have power) is to imagine limits won’t apply to you. We fill our culture with aphorisms about always reaching, always expanding, always journeying, never settling. Commitments, children, illness, catastrophe, poverty, death, all hem us in.

Adam’s ground was cursed. Fruit comes with toil and frustration. Some of that fruit is wisdom.

Advent

James KA Smith gets at this in his fine Advent Meditation. Redemption is most often tasted small and local.