Transcript: Lesson 4 - Our Culture's Stories

Video: Lesson 4 – Our Culture's Stories Transcript 

Welcome, friends! Good to be with you again as we think about sexuality and God's  story. In this unit, Unit 2, we are going to dig more into the broader cultures stories and  try to understand the worldview that's there and the way that gets embodied in everyday  life. And so, some of what we are going to do in this section might at first sound a little  bit philosophical. Might sound to some degree a little bit intimidating but I want to  assure you, as we talk through some of these, these maybe headier concepts, I'm going  to work really hard to, to try to work with some examples and be really clear about  thinking through how we see some of these different worldviews, some of these  different stories embodied in the broader culture. And there's three of them that we're  going to walk through in this unit and maybe as you're listening to this, to some of these, you can see these in your culture, in your place where you're at and maybe for others of  you you would say I don't really see this so much. And so, that's why my encouragement to you would be that as we walk through these cultural, three different cultural stories  that are out there, you be reflective and, and pay attention to your own life and to your  own cultural situation. And say, what stories do I see there and how do those fit with the  biblical story and to some degree, how does that not fit with the biblical story. And so I  am by no means saying these are the only three stories out there. A but these are three  prominent ones that I see in North American culture. And as you think about your own  context, your own culture maybe you can see some points of connection and maybe you  can see other stories that are embodied there. 

Well, we said last time that different stories, different worldviews are trying to answer  the question, what's the problem? What's the solution? And that in answering those  questions, what they're really promising is rest. Again, Augustine says that, “our hearts  are restless until they rest in you Lord.” And, we can understand these three different  stories we're going to look at as three different ways that people are legitimately, they're  trying to find real rest. They're trying to find something that is going to meet the deepest  needs of their heart. And, these three stories are different things that promise at least  some level of rest, some level of salvation, some level of redemption. 

And so, the first story that I want to think about in our culture is the story of  individualism. That the way I think about this is, we find rest when I can really discover  and live out the “real me” and who I am. Now again, this is very prominent especially in North America and Europe. Very indiviualistic cultures that sell this story.  

Now I want to give a little bi t of philosophical background to help us understand the  story. Uh, John Paul Sartre was a French philosopher, an existentialist. Now that is a big  word. That's a bug term. What does extensialism mean? Uh, um, let me try to unpack  this a little bit. So as Sartre thought about the nature of reality, uh, he said, You know  when we look around the world we live in that part of it is understanding what things are

and what they're made for. And so he said ”think about all the different things that  human beings make.” He used scissors as an example of this. He says, “Look for us as  human beings we, we know what scissors are because we've decided we need an easy  instrument, an easy tool to be used for cutting paper. This is something we use in school, even our young children often get trained in how to use scissors. And so, when we look  at scissors, we know its essence. You say this is just in the label scissors we know what  it is because we know what it's for. It's for an easy, it's for cutting paper in an easy way.  And so, when we look at scissors, we can identify what it is and what it's for. And that's  part of the essence of scissors. 

Now part of Sartre's philosophy was that human beings have no essence. What does that  mean? Well, philosophically it just means this. We can't really say what human beings  are for. And we can't really define what it means to be a human being or what it means  to be a good human being. And say, here's a universal definition. And now we can look  at each human being and think about each of our lives and measure ourselves by that  definition. Or measure ourself by whether we do that well.  

So again, go back and think about the scissors a little bit. If somebody says to you,  “these scissors aren't working well.” It's because they have this universal idea of what  scissors are supposed to be and what they're supposed to do.  

They might say, “my scissors are too blunt. They're not sharp enough to really cut and so when I try to cut the paper, it doesn't work.” It might be something where uh, because  they didn't use them. The scissors are too stiff and they won't really work. They won't  open and close properly. And so, if somebody says, “these are bad scissors” or “these  scissors won't work,” we all have an idea of what that means. We mean that they don't  really function like they're supposed to.  

Again, this is what Sartre said when he thought about human beings as really, there is no definition of what it is to be human. Each person, each individual gets to define for  themselves, what it means to them to be a good human being or to live a fulfilled human life. That there is no universal definition. That there's no, we can't say like Jesus does  here in the first uh, the first and the greatest command, to love God and to love your  neighbor. And then I can kind of look and say, am I really loving God? Am I really  loving my neighbor? And if I'm not, I can say there's something wrong with me because  I have an understanding of the definition of what it means to be human. What it means  to live as I should.  

And so, what Sartre is talking about here, and this is in the, in the late 1920s, the 1930s,  the 1940s and on, is really this idea that we actually see in our broader culture today  through a slogan like, “you define you.” Or as some of my college students say, “you do  you.” And I get part of what that is getting at. It's just this good recognition that each of 

us are our own unique individual. That um, I'm not saying that we should downplay our  individuality. That everbody should be the same. That everybody should function  exactly the same. Think exactly the same. Feel exactly the same. I am not advocating  that at all. But that I think is a good, healthy, individuality. Um, but the kind of  individualism that is often there in our broader culture says, “nobody else can define  you.” Uh, not your family, not your culture, not your faith, not even God. That really it's  you who defines you. Uh, and then this then is something that we see in how  extensialism defines salvation or defines real rest. 

Salvation or rest in extensialism and this kind of individualism is found in being  authentic. Uh, and again, I want to be clear here. You know, I grew up in a church  background. Where I would say a lot of people were not authentic in the sense that  people oftentimes tried to kind of put on masks going to church. They wouldn't be open  or vulnerable about their own pain or their own hurt or their own sin. Uh, and so I think  it is important in that we are authentic in the sense that we're willing to be open. We're  willing to be vulnerable. We're willing to be truthful about our struggles. But, we also  have to acknowledge that in an individualistic culture, a culture that is driven by  individualism, there's this idea that I have to be true to me above and beyond anybody  else or anything else.  

Uh, and so really all of these factors are the good factors of human life like where I grew up, uh, my family, with its good and bad things going on, um, my faith tradition and  church background. All of these things individualism says those are all obstacles that we need to get over or get rid of in order to really define us.  

And so, when we think about individualism in this way, I think it is interesting to ask,  how does the story show up in our images, in our praxis, in our symbols. Um, in other  words we don't learn this story again through a kind of classroom setting where we come to kindergarten or first grade and our teacher said, “now I'm going to teach you about  individualism and how we should think about our self.” It's much more subtle but it's  much more pervasive. For example a recent book said that, “the main thing that is  communicated by most children's movies in American culture is individualism. Is the  need to set yourself apart from your family and to in many ways to be free from  anybody who's trying to tell you who you are or to define you.” 

Uh, and so, I think a classic example here, uh, a Disney movie probably as a parent, my  least favorite Disney movie, “The Little Mermaid.” Okay, if that's your favorite movie,  I'm sorry. Hang with me. Um, I don't want to offend you. You can still like it. I just want  to point out, the part that's interesting about Disney's version of The Little Mermaid is  that the little mermaid, to really follow her heart, to follow her heart, to follow her  dreams, she has to basically deny and disobey her family. She ignores and gives up any  responsibility to her homeland where her father is king and she's a princess. She has to 

basically put all that aside. She even for the way this movie unfolds, she has to  fundamentally change the nature of who she is. To change from being a mermaid to  being a human being. And so, it's sort of like everything about her that might define her,  it's all seen as an obstacle that she has to overcome and get out of the way. So as the  movie progresses, you see how this unfolds. Part of what's interesting is to actually to  compare Disney's version of The Little Mermaid to the actual original story of The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen. Part of the point of this story actually originally,  it did not go like the Disney movie went. Um, in fact, um, some of the things are similar  but the original story of The Little Mermaid actually ends with the little mermaid,  because she's trying to become human, but she fails in this quest. She disolves and turns  into sea foam. It's kind of a gruesome story for that time for young children. But part of  the point of the original story is you actually need to learn to accept certain things about  your limits and about who you are and rather than just rejecting all that and trying to  overcome that and see those things as obstacles you need to live into the limits that in  some way define us as human beings. And so, that's very different from the Disney  version which is essentially follow your heart and if that hurts your family or loved ones  or even sort of changes the nature of who you are physically, whatever that means, you  pursue that because you should always follow your dreams, follow your heart. You  define you. So we have to understand then that the story of individualism shows up a lot  in how we think about ourselves in a broader culture, So when we think about our  sexuality for example, our sexual identity, a lot of that revolves around, nobody else can  tell me who I am. That when I think about my sexual identity, when I think about my  gender identity, you know when I think about should I stay married or should I get  divorced, a lot of those questions revolve around this idea that well, search yourself, uh,  ask yourself and do what seems best to you. Do what really feels right to you. Uh, and in that way the number one rule is just be authentic and if you're authentic, it doesn't really  matter how many people you hurt. It doesn't matter what responsibilities you leave  behind. The important thing is that your content with who you are. And so we have to  recognize as Christians what we think about the story of our sexuality. That this is a big  story that's out there in our broader culture but this is not the Christian story. And so we  need to be in tune with the way that this story gets communicated to us in a variety of  ways so that we can be vigilant about understanding scripture and what scripture's  calling us to do versus listening to this other cultural story that's telling us what to do. So that's just a brief summary of the story of individualism and what that means. In the next video, we're going to think a little bit more about a very popular story and that is the  story of romance. So we'll pick that up next time. Until then, blessings.