A friend suggested that the Postmodern Christianity movement is really just conversations about how to be a Christian in the current climate - which I think is a great description of the core of this stuff, but pomo-christianity doesn’t describe the fruit or anything else surrounding the movement.

I think the postmodern approach is naturally deconstructive bubt really not so good at reconstruction, an attribute of nearly all westerners of a certain age. The problem is that I’ve observed lots of deconstruction, and then people sit in the deconstructed mess and wonder what to do next. The next two stages after deconstruction are sifting (to see what is good and can be built with), and then building (with what was found to be good along with new ideas).

My observation is that there are few that get to the building stage, most hang around the deconstruction stage and sometimes do a bit of sifting too. I’ve wondered if this lack of building is maybe just a matter of maturity?  Youth and stickability are not usually found together.

I guess my question is what is the fruit of this stuff? At best I see isolated victories in a crowd of cynical deconstructors.

[Regarding the postmodern christianity 'movement'] Some of the problem is that it is something else cool to be involved in, so like anything else in the world, a bandwagon was formed and hijacked what was helpful when it was simply just conversations. Now its this glaring, neon-flashing-sign distraction. We live every day in a warzone, we don’t need people to be de-visioned and decommissioned through deconstruction without reconstruction. We need humble, teachable warriors with vision and ready to be taught on the job. People that remember they’re running the last rescue shack a few yards from the gates of hell, and time is of the essence. There’s far too much time spent talking than doing - I wish people would stop talking about how to be a christian in the current climate and just be a christian in the current climate. People know enough, people have enough teaching, they’ve talked enough with their Christian friends about how to be a Christian, now can we just get on with saving the world? So much of what I read in websites and books on the subject is just pretentious time-wasting distractions.

Or perhaps, as I suspect, the whole issue is skewed by the god that is individualism? And this is where so much of it lies I think.  When people say post-modernism I think they often mean it as a smokescreen for individualism, for ‘being true to myself’ which the world tells us is a valid aim, rather than true to the kingdom at a cost of myself.

So to sum it all up to the question I’d really like people to answer: What’s the fruit of all this deconstruction? Where is the fruit of all these conversations?

Where is the fruit?

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