My Postmodern Poetry class had a day at the Heidelberg (a pretty popular college bar here in town) where we shared our Postmodern collage projects (the reason I haven't been posting 4 times a day like normal lately). The beer was flowing and the projects were really cool looking. I think mine was the least creative and took the least amount of effort/planning out of everyone, but Ronci said I got an A, so I'm okay with that.
But anyway, to get to the point (and the title of the post), I was sitting in line to get graded behind a girl named Ann in my class and she was making small talk with the guy in front of her and I heard her say that she spent her first two years of college at a little place called Covenant College in Chattanooga, TN. It's not every day (or any day at Mizzou, actually) that you hear those words, so I asked her about it and we started talking. It turns out her father in law went to Covenant Seminary when he had a mid-life crisis and decided to be a pastor. Weird. Small world. She also knew of Aaron Belz, who will be giving a poetry reading (that I'm going to) tomorrow night at the Artisan.
So Ann and I were talking and I was telling her about my major and that I wanted to go to grad school for it and everything and she mentioned that, growing up in the PCA she had always studied about worldviews and saw the world through the lens that everyone had their own personal worldview based on what culture they grew up in and their beliefs about reality. But, she made the point, that secular education is just catching up. Most of our postmodern poetry class was about worldviews. Our collage project was about the postmodern worldview and the shift from the modernist one that was predominate before that. No wonder I'm interested in this stuff, I was practically raised to think this way.
At my Christian high school we were taught apologetics by way of worldview (The Universe Next Door by James W. Sire was one of my Worldviews class textbooks) and had to write papers about how our worldview was affected by this and that. That is why I think this way about culture. It was a great conversation.
A few things come to my mind after reading this:
ReplyDelete1. Does worldview come from culture, or does culture come from worldview?
2. If it's established that an individual's worldview is shaped by his or her culture and unique personal experiences, doesn't this obviate a need for apologetics?
3. Though it might be progressive to talk about worldview origins, isn't it regressive to think a person's entire legacy can be deracinated by apologetic tactics and morphed to fit a western or Judeo-Christian mold? Reformed crowds have spent years developing apologetic strategies for backing people into Evangelical corners. They've created schools to train people how to do just this. In light of this, the Reformed study of the worldviews doesn't seem so broad-minded and progressive. It seems conniving.
These are just my reactions...
1. I think the line between the two is kind of blurry. I don't know, I've only been really thinking about world view (even though I was taught it years ago) and how it interacts with culture for about 3 days.
ReplyDelete2. yeah, i kind of have the same question. in one sense it seems extremely disrespectful to tell people that the culture they grew up in isn't right and that they should think differently. However, I think the overarching truth that nothing in our lives works perfectly and we're proved wrong constantly in a variety of subjects should make us be open to new ideas, especially those that disprove the ones that we inherited from our culture or developed by ourself through our world view.
3. I think that maybe everyone's job in life is to figure out how to change their worldview to more accurately reflect reality. I think the whole Christian prerogative with evangelism should be to help people to see reality and to see the need for Christ in their lives. However, lots of people suck at it and it becomes conniving and tries to back people in to corners.