Sharing the hope of the Gospel in a Critical Age of our post-post-modern culture - Guest Shane Rehberg

Old Fashion Dad Podcast

This week we get deep into theology, worldview, biblical justice and recent ideological cultural shifts... and why this all matters to us as Christians. If we don't understand the culture we live in and how it's changing around us, we won't be able to apply or share the Gospel in a meaningful way. Like Paul in Athens, using the "statue to the unknown god", to share about the one true God, we need to understand our culture in order to speak to people's needs. Post-modernism has given way to Critical Theory, as Progressivism becomes more extreme and more widely adopted. We unpack these issues and much more in this episode!

NOTES:

•This Weeks Whiskey: Small Batch Wyoming Whiskey, made in Kirby Wyoming

Show Notes:

•Guest: Shane Rehberg

•As a student of history and culture, Shane doesn't see history so much as who did what, when... but rather the history of ideas: Ideas create cultures and those cultures either succeed and or fail based on the quality of their ideas and values they are built on.

•Societies always change but our culture has been going through some massive and rapid shifts lately.

•WHAT IS CULTURE: Everything from the sort of stories we tell ourselves through books and entertainment, to how we relate and interact with one another - the norms that we agree to as a society.

•The combination of the COVID-19 pandemic + social unrest seems to be leading us to a tipping point as a society.

•"The Fiery Angel" book by - The stories we tell ourselves (and tell our kids) come first and that shapes our patterns that we see when we view the world. And our identity, culture and politics flow out of those patterns as our worldview.

•Think for example how the Disney narrative around women change over the years; from the damsel in distress, responding with kindness, love & patience... until her prince shows up and rescues her and they live happily ever after... to what we see now with a more common narrative of a young woman not listening to her father, leaving her parents care, proving her father wrong and living happily ever after.

• American Cultural Shifts in the 20th Century:

•Modernism: early 1900s to 1950s - People in general believe in the idea of an absolute truth and living morally based on Judeo-Christian values.

•Post Modernism: 1960s onward - A rejection of the concept of ultimate truth, where everyone determines their own "truth" (you would never say, your wrong and I'm right) and everything is considered just a matter of perspective. The highest good is to be "authentic" and "true to yourself". (This is the world that the oldest of the millennials and youngest of the GenX grew up in).

•Critical Theory: Repackaged Marxism gained popularity in college "intellectual" circles in the 1960s and became more popularized to larger society through the advent of BLM in 2018 and the social unrest of 2020 and through such books as "White Fragility". The basic premise is that people are primarily identified as members of oppressor or oppressive groups based on your gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. and your ability to know and perceive truth is directly related to your membership of one of these oppressor or oppressive group. For example, if you are white, you are inherently racist and therefore are blinded to your racism and your perspective and opinion don't matter as much as someone who is from an oppressed class, who has better access to "truth" because of the systemic racism they have experienced.

•It's easy for Christian's to unwittingly buy into some of our cultural narrative because of the re-defining of terms, like how our culture defines "justice" is very different than how God defines "justice"... and so Christian's find themselves saying, "we'll of course we should be fighting for justice and not be a racist" but they aren't looking deeper to see whether the worldview of something like Critical Theory is compatible with how God says we should relate to each other and to Himself (like Critical Theory requiring partiality, while God describes justice AS NOT showing partiality - It's a clear example of the world calling something good that God calls evil).

•Like being foreigners in a different country (specifically one that also speaks english), Christian's can find themselves using the same words as the culture but then find that while they are using the same words, they mean something entirely different (example: justice, racism, equality, fairness, etc).

•Acts 17:22 - Paul on Mars Hill addresses the Athenians, saying that he sees that they are a very religious people, observing the culture to find an opening for proclaiming the Gospel to them.

•Dr. Voddie Baucham: We find ourselves in a culture that has a very different worldview and values of Biblical Christianity.

•All Worldview contain these 4 essential elements that shape the story we tell ourselves and how we see and interpret the world around us:

•Creation: A Creation story about why are we here and how did we get here?

•Fall: Something went wrong - We all know that the world isn't the way it's suppose to be, so why is that?

•Redemption: What mush I do to become good and fix what is wrong with the world?

•Restoration: What does it look like once we become good and fix what is wrong. What is the end result or goal?

•The epistemology (the theory of truth) of post-modernism: Truth is determined by experience... and if you had experienced life the way I have, you would have the same perspective and see things may way (which is not a Biblically compatible worldview). The highest authority is a person's experience and personal perspective, not God's truth as laid out in scripture.

•The greatest "sin" of post-modernism is to be dishonest, in-authentic and put on a false image.

•The epistemology of our current culture (Critical Theory / Social Justice): Truth is centered around "oppression" and power struggles, and individuals access to truth is directly related to the oppressor/oppressed groups people find themselves in because of their race and gender.

•C.S. Lewis: Every human heart has a "God shaped hole in their heart". We are designed for worship and we will always find something or someone to fill that void.

•Culture used to say that there should be "equality", where now they say "equity"... meaning that it's no longer about treating people equal but rather a focus on unequal OUTCOMES, like if one group of people have something another group of people have (like larger/nicer houses), that would be considered "unjust" now).

•Works based righteousness (all worldviews apart from Christianity require you to save yourself through your own action and effort), all lead to two places: Success leads to pride and superiority. Failure leads to a loss of hope and despair.

Additional resources on the topic of Christian's engaging a Critical Theory Culture:

Relatable Podcast with Allie Beth Stuckey:

•Ep. 275 | Critical Theory: A Disastrous, Unbiblical Worldview - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098?i=1000485017940

•Ep. 282 | Exposing & Opposing Social Justice Theology | Guest: Dr. Voddie Baucham - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098?i=1000486696085

Just Thinking Podcast: Ep. 103 | The Church of BLM - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/just-thinking-podcast/id1328733796?i=1000491409327

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