I am bound to my identity in Christ
My 13 year old nephew and I sat and discussed Bach’s dynamic approach to music making, blending technical knowledge of music with ideas that stemmed from a reality created by and governed with divine authority. The mutual appreciation for classical music led to a brief decrying of the contemporary culture and its music.
Proceeding to offer some basic knowledge of the historical developments leading the nauseating, contemporary cultural climate, I told him of one of the last classically liberal and influential figures in America, John Dewey (1859-1952). Perhaps Dewey’s crowning achievement was his prominent role in establishing the Melting Pot Philosophy of the early 20th century.
One of the transformational thinkers of his day in education and psychology, John Dewey was also an atheist and committed humanist. So, why was John Dewey worth bringing up to my young, teenage nephew?
As distasteful as Dewey’s personal beliefs can be to my nephew and I, he represents an era beaten and left to die by the mid-twentieth century. A core part of Enlightenment philosophy, in which Dewey belongs, is that history is a place of darkness, and the light shines more and more as humanity increases in knowledge. “Technological mastery,” a key word of the Enlightenment, is achieved through knowledge of the material world and is indispensable to a better future for mankind as authoritative, rational beings.
However, the World Wars have left us with a few lasting glimpses of the fruits of Enlightenment ideals in action. On the one hand is the German people, the culture that once sat in the cradle of Enlightened Society. And it did not take much to undo their noble reputation. On the other hand, the Americans harnessed the power of technology to such heights, they found a way to eradicate millions of people in a moment. Put these things all together with mass graves, fields of dead bodies, and new, creative ways to kill, and Modernism produces a culture of death.
Therefore, if one wishes to make postmodernism make sense, it should be viewed as a repudiation to the ideas of modernism—that led to this catastrophe. It all sounds good. Indeed, people need to be put in their place sometimes. We aren’t gods. But it is along the trajectory of the postmodern critique and reshaping of culture that has brought us here, to the nauseating, contemporary cultural climate to begin with.
After reflecting on John Dewey with my nephew, let me bring John up one last time. He was a man of the Enlightenment and was philosophically a pragmatist, believing in the classical idea of how a culture was formed, involving a common language and core religious ideas, namely a text. These would foster communication. The Bible was the source, and its Judeo-Christian ethic was the culture binding glue. If one were an atheist, he could accept a written moral code as a stabilizing force; a Jew would accept the Old Testament and find some affinity with Jesus; and a Christian would uphold it, because the Golden Rule is their thing. Having the same language and a common religious background would build a flourishing society. Thus, American society was likened to a Melting Pot, an illustration that describes assimilation.
America doesn’t uphold the Melting Pot philosophy any longer, for it goes against the very grains of postmodern thought. Instead, society is thought of kind of like a mosaic. All the pieces of society can have their own shapes, colors, and textures. There is a diversity of competing voices that don’t understand each other nor wish to. People with similar purposes and values are left to form communities, and it is within these coalitions that the individual gains more power to be heard. Finally, a beautiful mosaic will be formed out of the seemingly chaotic state, or so we are to believe. And this goes hand in hand with identity politics.
The contemporary culture has been realigned according to postmodern critique, and it is seen in how American society has been reshaped for more than 50 years. But it is not just social formation where postmodernism has wielded the hammer. It is also the Protestant work ethic and its vital role in laying the foundation of America. The hammer has come down on education, history, logic, and the arts. And most notably, a blow has been dealt to lay the Christian influence of Western civilization in a bed of rubble.
But there is one thing all around and remains in a place that no man get to, and it involves Saint Matthew’s Passion and Johann Sebastian Bach. From Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible into the German language, which essentially formed a unified language across various Germantic tribes, Bach fits the betrayal and crucifixion of the Incarnate Son of God into a beautiful and powerful oratorio of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And as for Bach, it was his knowledge of man’s creation in the image of God and the freedom found from his own sins through the precious blood of Christ that allowed him to develop and use his polyphonic genius with such force and passion.
It is the Word of God and its proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ that remains unshakable against the always changing and fickle ways of man. If identity politics is the thing today, which I’m afraid it is, if we don’t decide what group or community to find our identities in, then others will decide for us. And in an age of expressive individualism, we don’t want that.
Therefore, how should I ground my identity? I am in the same group with my forefathers. We identify in Christ.
“That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” — John 1:9-13
