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"Truthiness” in “Christian” America
Several weeks ago I had the opportunity to catch Brian McLaren lecture at Dominican University just outside of the city as he lectured on Truth-Telling in “Christian” America: Globalization, Poverty, and the Environment (I feel that ‘Truthiness in “Christian” America’ would have been a better and more appropriate title but I digress…)
As I walked into the room before he spoke I really didn’t know what to expect but I certainly didn’t expect the scene that I walked in on. The room was at about 70% capacity with 65% of the audience being over 60! I guess I didn’t realize that McLaren had that sort of readership, of following. There were maybe a dozen or so people that were my age or younger and one older gentleman behind me quipped, “There are more young people here than I thought would be. A professor must’ve assigned them to come.”
McLaren lectured for a little over an hour and left us with a rather interesting thesis considering much of the missles that are fired at the Emerging Church. His thesis (paraphrased) was/is that in our society—both Christian and non-Christian—we use truth as a weapon and by doing so we completely miss the entirety of truth that is out there. Because truth has become a weapon we only use the portions of truth that will help us with the battles and wars that we are facing and completely neglect the other side of the truth coin. The Emerging Church has often been vilified as watering down truth, or wanting to completely disregard truth altogether but McLaren’s assertion and thesis stands in direct opposition to this and instead flips the tables to say, “No, we believe in truth, but your actions show that you believe otherwise.” Instead, it is the self-proclaimed ‘defenders of truth’ that are essentially watering down and disregarding the truth that is really out there.
This was an absolutely fascinating argument which served as the backbone for how we currently deal with Globalization, Poverty, and the Environment (a focus on only one side of the issue). The arguement shifted from our current dealings to, “Let’s take a look at the rest of the story and instead shift our understanding to a fuller reality that encompasses all of truth and not just our own version/story/comfortable understanding of reality. Maybe one of the best arguments that McLaren put forth to illustrate this point was based upon world consumption. He said that it takes 2.5 acres of land to support one human life—this would support space to live, agricultural needs, water, waste, etc. However, the current world usage is 4.5+ and here in America we currently use 23.5 acres of land. Our understanding of truth towards this reality is completely lopsided and we remain blind to what our consumption means for other people around the world.
This is why I think the lecture would have been more aptly titled “Truthiness” in “Christian” America… our view of truth and reality is completely skewed.
As the lecture wrapped up, I had the pleasure of meeting Helen Mildenhall, a self-described “almost athiest” who works with Off the Map, and if you’re interested in reading some more in-depth notes from McLaren’s lecture she did a great job of blogging a lot of his lecture, which you can find here. My friends Jason and Glenn also attended with me and they also shared their experience and thoughts…
2 Responses to “"Truthiness” in “Christian” America”
I’m sitting in an airport right now. I’m really tired and grumpy, but I’m confused as to exactly how McLaren wants me to feel about needing 23 acres of land to support myself. Does he want me to be sad, angry, cynical? Does he want me to despair and hate myself? I am just weary of being made to feel guilt for problems that are beyond my immediate control. It would seem as if the only real solution to these problems would be globally enforced Christo-Communism.
I’m sorry, Monts. I’m sure it was a very good lecture, but these jerks in Kansas City have delayed my flight 6 FREAKING HOURS!!!!! The least they could do is apologize, but instead they confiscated my touthpaste because the tube was too big. MY TOUTHPASTE! Jerks.
wow, that’s a long delay… your angst is understandable!
my impression during the lecture wasn’t one of attempting to guilt us for using so much but rather to show us the discrepancy between our lifestyles in America and the rest of the world. it was more of an informational statistic than a “you’re a horrible person” statistic…
his point was to inform and push us to think about how we could begin to band together as a Christian community to think through solutions to this issue. he would say that it’s more than an individual problem, it’s a society problem and we must change the society/culture if we are to ever change the course of the planet.