The End of Relevance
July 1, 2001
WE HAVE BECOME EXPERTS AT EXEGETING THE CULTURE, AND NOVICES AT EXEGETING THE GOSPEL.
Farewell, Generations X and Y. Adios, Millennials. Ma'a salâma, postmodernity.
If there is one lesson the church can learn from 11 September, it's the futility of trying to be relevant to the culture. How many PowerPoint presentations on the characteristics of—take your pick—"postmodern culture," of "young people today," of "what seekers are looking for" are going to be dragged to the Trash icon in the next few months? The ill-fated attempt to move from description of culture to prediction always eventually founders on the sheer contingency of human life, the refusal of history to follow anyone's expectations. From the length of hemlines to the list of things that "everybody knows," culture always zags when the experts think it will zig.
It's happened thousands of times before—from the BabyIonian juggernaut rolling into Jerusalem in 587 BCE to the five-week roll of the dice that gave us our current president. On 11 September, it happened again.
Shortly before an airplane crashed into the Pentagon a few miles from where I sat toying with the remains of an oversized banana muffin, I had said to a colleague with a perfectly straight face, "Like most people my age, I have very few real heroes." Oh, I was a Gen Xer straight out of central casting—quick to see the flawed human core of every noble endeavor, emphatically including my own.
Well, forget it. I have hundreds of heroes now. Every fire fighter who was going up the stairs of the World Trade Center when the occupants were going down. The passengers on United 93 who fought for the privilege of choosing exactly where they would be smashed into oblivion. Jeremy Glick, age 31, who called his ...
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