logo

The Next Generation
Sarah: A postmodern portrait
By Duffy Robbins

The three middle school girls seated on the couch kept the questions coming fast and furious. Their voices getting louder, the pitch more frenzied—they didn’t like what I was saying to their cabin group. Someone had said that one of her best friends was Jewish, and wanted to know if her friend, when she died, would go to heaven. Well, that led to questions about Jesus being the only way, which led to questions about how I could just say that I was right and they were wrong, which led to a discussion of truth, which led to more questions about how we could know anything for certain, which, as I recall, led to an agreement that it was time to order some pizza. It was kind of fun, and very interesting. But what it really provided was an up close (and out loud) encounter with postmodernism in the youth group.

In the last edition of “The Next Generation,” we began to think about this cultural mind-set sometimes referred to as postmodernism. Using an example from C.S. Lewis, we tried to describe it as the difference between looking along and looking at—the difference between the physiologist who knows about pain because he has studied it in medical school (looking at) and the high school kid who knows about pain because he blew out his knee playing soccer (looking along). Both of them know about pain, but they know in different ways.

To flesh this out a little more, let’s take one of those girls on the couch as an example. Sarah, a normal eighth grader in every way is neither all modern nor postmodern in her thinking. And she certainly doesn’t spend much time thinking about thinking, reflecting on her own worldview. But, at times, her questions and answers give us a clear glimpse of postmodern influence.

1. Sarah doesn’t accept any answer as the only answer because all of us have our own opinions. She might agree, for example, that there is a God. But, since all of us experience God in different ways, none of us can speak objectively about God.

2. Sarah has been taught to be suspicious of any big story (metanarrative) that claims to offer an all-inclusive way of understanding life. That kind of certainty strikes Sarah, at best, as arrogant, and, at worst, as an attempt by her school, her parents, her country, or her church to dupe her or force her into embracing their story.

3. Sarah doesn’t have the same respect for science that her parents have. They keep talking about how the world could be a better place if only everyone were more educated. Her parents talk often to each other about the key to this country’s problems being better schools and more money spent on education. But, to Sarah, it just doesn’t wash. She understands that science has been successful in conquering disease and stuff like that. But growing up in a world of dirty bombs and weapons of mass destruction, it just seems to her sometimes that science is just as apt to kill us as it is to cure us. She’ll go to school and do her homework, but she’s not buying their belief in human progress and some kind of bright future.

4. Sarah is reluctant to say that someone or something is wrong because she’s convinced that her own ideas about good and bad, sin and righteousness, are what they are simply because of how she was raised. Other kids believe what they believe, not because they’re right or wrong, but because they grew up in different families or even different cultures. In that sense, reality, whatever that is, is something that is created by the community you live in, you grew up in. It’s not something objective we discover; it’s something subjective we encounter.

5. Sarah kind of thinks her alternative friends are cool because they’re trying to strip away all the big stories they’ve been told by those in authority. One of the reasons they like punk and rap music, or wear black clothes and pierce themselves, is that they want to show that they aren’t buying into a lot of the baloney that kids are expected to believe.

6. Sarah’s favorite part of youth group is when the Bible study is over and the leaders turn off the lights, light candles, and play quiet music. It makes her really feel close to God. Her pastor always tells them that we get to know God by studying his Word, but Sarah feels like she gets to know God better by hearing her friends tell their stories about their faith and life. As a postmodern teenager, Sarah believes there is more than one way to know reality, and objective rational thinking is not necessarily the superior way.

Now, needless to say, this doesn’t tell the whole story about postmodernism, and it certainly doesn’t tell the whole story about Sarah. But, what it does is give us a look at postmodern thinking fleshed out. Never mind that Sarah’s sense of right and wrong is very fixed and firm when it comes to the way people treat animals. Never mind that she hates it in church when they use liturgy and serve communion—even though, for some people, that might be their way of feeling closer to God. Never mind that despite her mistrust in science and education she wants to buy and use every new technology that hits the market. And never mind that Sarah’s alternative friends all dress alike, and are all alternative in the same way.



Click here to send your response plus the title of this article to us at Good News.

Good News | 308 East Main St. | P.O. Box 150 | Wilmore, KY 40390 | 859-858-4661 | 1-800-487-7784
info@goodnewsmag.org | About Us | ©2007 Good News magazine