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The Princeton Lectures on Youth, Church, and Culture

1998 — Growing Up Postmodern: Imitating Christ in the Age of “Whatever”

Introduction

Descartes is history. That’s the conclusion of postmodernity. Foundational truth is out, relativity is in. Trace it to Hiroshima, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Challenger explosion. Technology is not the panacea we thought it would be. Trace it to Watergate, liposuction, spin doctors. Truth is not an objective reality anymore. Trace it to institutional differentiation, Baskin Robbins, cable TV. Choice can paralyze as well as liberate.

Nobody knows this better than the young people whose coming of age coincides with the turn of the millennium. They live in a world where microchips are obsolete every eighteen months, information is instantaneous, and parents change on weekends. The one constant in the postmodern adolescent’s experience is upheaval. Truth changes daily. The signature quality of adolescence is no longer lawlessness, but awelessness. Go ahead, youth say to the church. Impress me. When everything is true, nothing is true. Whatever.

It’s true that we live in a world that considers truth too relative to specify. The comics brought us mutant “X-Men” and now “X-Women”; consumer thinking brought us X-brands and X-spouses; pop culture brought us X-Files and Generation X. The letter “X” is having a banner decade, labeling “whatever” we don’t have the time or the inclination to explain.

Maybe the word “whatever” found its way into the contemporary adolescent vocabulary because “X” describes precisely the Truth they seek. In the early church, the Greek letter “X” (chi) referred to Jesus Christ. This generation of young people is neither the first nor the last in search of “X.” Paul recognized this quest in the Athenians, who went as far as to erect an altar to “an unknown god”:

What you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. . . The One who is Lord of heaven and earth. . . made all nations. . . so that they would search for God. . . . God will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom God has appointed, and of this we are assured because God raised him from the dead. (Acts 17:23-31)

We all seek “X,” God’s Truth beyond relativity. We are here because we are called to imitate and obey and proclaim this Truth to all who worship unknown gods. The Truth is out there, for young people and for us. May you find grace to peruse the “X-Files” of your own life in the days ahead, as we grope for “X” together. Though, indeed, he is not far from each of us.

Godspeed,
Kenda Creasy Dean
Director, Institute for Youth Ministry

1998 Lectures

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