And yet, and yet…

[This is the introduction that I’ve written for the book I’m currently writing on Metamodernism and Christianity…Currently in development]

I have terrible vision.

As a kindergartener, I can remember struggling to see the boards (or the transparencies for those of us who went to elementary school in the Dark Ages). Sports were difficult for me, especially baseball. As a young kid trying to focus in on a ball flying my way at 40 mph created quite a bit of anxiety. I had to become an expert at squinting at a very young age.

I was not blind for sure. I could see the big shapes and generally figure out what was going on. But without the definition of the lines, my bad vision created a need for me to fill in a lot of content that I could not discern. I learned pretty early on how to assume things. I would reason my way to the answers, skip words in reading, and hope I guessed rightly. This caused a lot of frustration especially in math, which I found especially frustrating. In my mind, I’d get to an answer, know I’d done it right, but then found I had actually done it incorrectly. With assumption as my primary method for understanding the blurry images of my life, by nature I was compelled to make up my own rationale and understanding of what was real and true.

Luckily, my parents cared for me too much to allow me to stay this way. As a first grader I got glasses (super cool for a skinny little kid who wasn’t great at sports), and then later in 4^th grade I got contact lenses. All of a sudden, new worlds opened up for me. I was able to see the lines, to really understand the things I was being taught, and slow down my assumptions to pursue precise answers. Though I still struggle sometimes to really focus in and take the time to learn and observe, having corrective lenses changed my life. Being able to see the lines, to see the reality, changed everything.

When I neglected my vision, I would find myself in precarious positions. I remember once in particular on a group trip with my church youth group my lack of good vision and neglecting my lenses was a problem.

2002, Gallup, New Mexico: our youth group had traveled from Texas to New Mexico to help run a Vacation Bible School at a small church. If you’ve never traveled on a ministry trip before, we did the normative thing and stayed overnight in the church, specifically in the sanctuary. The spacious pews were an excellent firm base for sleeping, while the high ceilings really gave an ambience. Anyway, in this particular sleeping arrangement I had to walk all the way across the church to remove my contact lenses rendering me effectively blind. But in my mind, it was no problem. All I had to do was walk from the bathroom into the sanctuary to my assigned pew and grab a couple of hours of sleep. As I walked to the pew, I could see and hear some blurry figures talking quietly a couple of pews ahead of me but I didn’t give it a second thought. Upon arriving at my pew, I quickly pulled off my shirt and basketball shorts (leaving my boxer shorts on of course…) and turned to lay down. It was then that I heard a bewildered gasp. Scrambling for my glasses, I popped them on only to find to my chagrin that one of the high school girls from my group was sitting in a pew three rows away from mine chatting with a group of guys. Because of my lack of vision, I found myself in a quite embarrassing situation. What I assumed was true was not, while missing the very real fact that I was making an idiot of myself in front of a girl in my group, not to mention the guys who never would really let me live that down. Lacking vision created a very real problem for me.

Our culture has a vision problem.

When it comes to truth, our culture knows and sees that something is there, but cannot discern the lines. They recognize that the truth is tangible enough to devote their lives to causes. But not knowing the defined lines of what that truth is, individuals in our culture fill the blanks with the most appeasing end game. When the individuals of our culture make the statement of “finding their own truth” this is what they mean. They know a truth is out there, but it’s blurry in their vision.

In the course of this book, we will take time to examine how our culture sees the world and uses that vision to understand and make sense of the world. We’ll examine how we got to the vision that we have and will examine the philosophy that now forms the way we approach the world. My hope is that as we really take the time to consider how we understand the truth of the world around us, we’ll learn ways to help others see with clarity.

So one question may interrupt early in this process: what gives me the right to make the wide-reaching generalizations we’ll talk about in this book? I’m glad you asked! I am a pastor, having served in several capacities and environments during my time in ministry. I’ve had the joy to watch the maturing of Gen Z and how they took their first steps in the adult world with their Minecraft backpacks and Vines. This book will not be primarily about Gen Z (though there will be some discussion about generational issues and I will try to direct you to the experts on the subject!). We will focus on the way we now interact with the world around us, especially in the ways we think about things. While I’m no psychologist nor a neurologist, I hope that together we’ll be able to observe and analyze the real way we see the world.

We will follow a roadmap that hopefully will give us the clearer picture of what our society believes and how we as the Church can respond to it. Consider this like those fun reading charts at the eye doctor where the text gets smaller as it moves downward. As we identify the largest line that we can see, we can then get to what is blurry, but which is nonetheless still there. We will start by understanding the dominant styles of thought that affected the history of the past century. Then we will focus in on our current environment to see if we are still in those modes of thought and take time to understand the quality of the differences we now experience. Having taken a grasp of the secular culture, we’ll examine how the Church has responded and how Jesus would respond. Then having answered all the world’s problems (joking), we’ll take some time to consider how we can and should and must be the Church for the future. It is the Church with a clear vision that will march into our coming generations, and that’s the kind of Church I want to be a part of.

With that in mind, let’s go together on this journey of learning to see. Open your eyes friend; there’s a world to discover.