"America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise -- that American promise -- and, in the words of scripture, hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess."
I did not watch the Democratic National Convention (nor the Republican one), so I only recently heard some excerpts from Obama's speech, when I read Wilfred McClay's article in First Things. All of McClay's critiques of Obama's rhetoric are well worth reading, but the point that I want to highlight is the phrase "We must pledge once more to march into the future." When I first read this, I laughed out loud. Immediately, C.S. Lewis' words from The Screwtape Letters came to mind:
Once they [humans] knew that some changes were for the better, and others for the worse, and others again indifferent. We [the demons] have largely removed this knowledge. For the descriptive adjective "unchanged" we have substituted the emotional adjective "stagnant". We have trained them to think of the Future as a promised land which favoured heroes attain--not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is,
After my initial amusement, however, I began to be thoughtful. Obviously, it is obligatory for politicians to say this kind of drivel (Thomas Dewey apparently used the line "You know that your future is still ahead of you" in the 1948 election). The difference in 2008 is that I haven't heard anyone (other than rabid conservatives) mocking Obama for this silliness. The thought occurred to me - could it be that people have actually bought into the idea of "the future" as the "promised land which favored heroes attain?"
But we are post-moderns, right? We are supposed to be cynical and relativistic and self-absorbed. The last thing that I'd expect a post-modern generation to buy into is the idea that the future is synonymous with "progress" and things will get better as long as we give ourselves to the right ideas that are "in accordance with the general movement of our time."
Well, maybe not. For the last few years, I have been hearing rumblings that post-modernism is on its way out. Perhaps the most memorable line to this effect was in a talk by N.T. Wright. He introduced his talk with an analogy to Handel's Messiah in which the introductory Symphony is set in E minor, and then changes to E major with the "Comfort Ye" recitative from Isaiah 40:
"We need to be reading the Bible within the struggle to move through the sterility of modernism, through the perplexity of post-modernism, and out into the new possibility of post-post-modernism, which will be, so to speak, set in E major - a time of fresh hope and new comfort."
Another signpost of optimism about the decline of post-modernism is the "generational cycle" from Strauss and Howe's book Generations. The Millennial generation (those born from 1982 to 2001) are coming into their own as adults, and they are among Obama's most ardent supporters. According to Strauss and Howe's theory, the Millennials should be Civic generation, and therefore, will be much more inclined to public service, the pursuit of social justice, dedication to a cause, etc. The last Civic generation was the G.I. Generation that fought World War II (described by Tom Brokaw as "the greatest generation any society has produced"). Surely such a generation will have no patience for the cynicism and narcissism of post-modernism, right? Is this not a sign of hope for our nation and the world? Does this not lend credence to N.T. Wright's expectation of "a time of fresh hope and new comfort?"
I would like to suggest that it does not. In Obama's speech, I think there is an ominous portent of the worldview that is growing up around us.
In modernism, which Wright appropriately labeled "sterile", western culture abandoned faith in the Church, Scripture, and transcendent hopes. Instead, we focused our hopes on science, the "evolution of society" and progress. In a general sense, this was the worldview of much of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. There were hopes of worldwide peace, the advancement of science, the elimination of disease, and the triumph of humanity. Many Christians, who had conceded the ground of the authority of scripture and the origin of the universe, we swept along and began to wonder if perhaps the eschatological promises of the Bible were symbols for the progress of the human race into a Golden Age.
Two world wars culminating in the overwhelming victory of amoral technology over reason and morality - the atomic bomb - combined with philosophical seeds sown a generation before, put an end to the vain hopes of modernity. Out of its ashes arose a "reactive" (so to speak) worldview - post-modernism. Post-moderns abandoned absolute truth as non-existent (or at least unknowable), and cynicism and self-actualization divorced from all but the most primitive ideas of morality (don't hurt anybody who can hurt you back) became the rule.
So where are we going now? What will post-post-modernism be like? Western culture as a whole will never repent entirely of the sins of their fathers. We have abandoned the Church and Scripture. We have abandoned science and evolutionary ideas of history. We will not go back.
- We may reaffirm absolutes, but absolutes based on what? They will not be based on scripture, nor on reason as an absolute, so what is left for us to base our absolutes on? Consensus and political correctness?
- We may reaffirm the value of service, but service in what cause? We have become strongly averse to anything divisive, and we hunger for unity in a way that threatens to become intolerant of any claim to exclusivity. This will not be another Missionary Generation. It is notable that some voices in the American Church are calling for the inoffensive goal of "eliminating global poverty" as "the altar call of this generation".
- We may reaffirm hope for the future and faith in progress, but on what basis? God? Science? No. Human nature.
It seems like the journey that western culture has been on for the past few hundred years has been one designed by God to strip away pretense and bring out the roots of human nature. When history has stripped away all that we have trusted in and set our hopes on, what emerges? Hope in ourselves.
The last words of Obama's speech tell the whole story. "Let us...in the words of scripture, hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess." The verse Obama is quoting here is Hebrews 10:23. The writer of Hebrews called his readers to hope "for He who promised is faithful." Obama calls us to hope in ourselves.
That decision is at the core of the human experience. In whom will we put our trust?
Proverbs 28:26
26 He who trusts in his own heart is a fool,
But whoever walks wisely will be delivered.
