Tag: Modernism

Are We Worshiping the Idols of Modernism?

February 15, 2021 / Trent / 0 Comments

Why do we fight about Creation? Why do we avoid secular music? Why do we hesitate to talk about Jesus at work? Why is Jesus passive in Communion?

It’s often because we are heavily influenced by the Modern worldview. So much so that we see reality from, not only a Christian perspective, but a Modern one as well.

Modernism might be in our church!

Modernism has gotten into the Western Church and has shaped how we think about God, how we read the Bible and how we worship. It’s a big deal and we need to understand it.

Microwave Chicken Teriyaki Jesus

April 1, 2016 / Trent / 1 Comment

I really liked Bryan F. Hurlbutt’s book Tasty Jesus. In it he asserts that Western Christianity holds to various cameos of Christ that aren’t accurate. This is because we tend to reconfigure Jesus to suit our personal preferences. In order to make complex cultural and philosophical ideas accessible, Hurlbutt uses food analogies to illustrate the shortcomings of five most significant “christological malformations” in the Western church. His analysis of these is thorough and nuanced. But I’m wondering if, perhaps, there is not a configuration that might be added to his list, and a food analogy that would challenge the view of Christ held by many of the readers of this book: Modern evangelicals.

Hurlbutt’s 5 Predilections

First, here are Hurlbutt’s five predilections that wield a lot of power in the Christian West:

Theological liberalism has largely naturalistic roots and, consequently, has stripped Jesus of his deity. This is the “creampuff Jesus,” tasty, but of no nutritional value at all.
Fundamentalism is a response to theological liberalism. It tosses out the creampuff, but keeps crossing things off the menu–out with the potatoes, pasta and bread. This no-carb approach eliminates important parts of a balanced diet. Ultimately, this approach is spiritually toxic.
More recently, postmodern ideas have influenced ideas of Christ–the core of this stance is relativism. Like a meal at a smorgasbord, this version of Christ can appeal to many diners because it makes no absolute claims. Have some pork chops, top them with ice cream and vegetable soup–whatever.
Gourmet Jesus is the Christ of those who believe in the prosperity gospel–God wants you to be rich. The Biblical promises of spiritual or eternal flourishing are understood to mean material prosperity–God’s wants you to eat lobster thermidor. He clearly says so in the Bible, if you take a few verses out of context.
Pop-culture Jesus–this is a “shallow and spurious” Jesus. Gastronomically, this is the homogenized Jesus, heated to the point where anything dangerous or confusing has been eradicated. It’s the opposite of the delicious unpasteurized cheese you can buy in Europe.

These are Hurlbutt’s five. There might be a sixth cameo of Christ that is significant enough to be added to this list. It is the view toward which many of the readers of this book might lean.

My Sixth Cameo of Christ

I called this group Modern Evangelicals. That’s Modern, with a capital ‘M’–it’s the church that is highly influenced by Modernism.

These terms are so overused that their meaning has become unclear, so let me explain who I’m talking about.

They aren’t like the traditional mainline churches for they have left behind traditional liturgies and no longer hold strictly to their traditional theologies.

They are, like Hurlbutt, critical of the Emergent church because it adopts post-Modern idolatries.

But they are conservative, meaning they resist change. But in their resistance to post-Modern idolatries, they hold on to Modern idols.

4 ways which Evangelicals Worshiping Modern Idols:

Rationalism: They take a rational approach to reading the Bible. They tend to talk about the Bible in terms of inerrancy rather than inspiration. They have a tendency to think of truth in the narrow sense, of fact, rather than in broader terms.
Materialism: They think of Communion as a meal of literal bread and juice through which we remember the sacrifice of Christ. There is no supernatural encounter through the physical materials. There is no mystery. Jesus does not interact with his people through communion.
Individualism: There is a strong emphasis in the role of the individual. It is the individual who decides to follow Jesus. This decision is celebrated in believer baptism. This emphasis places the role of the community and that of God in the background.
Secularism: They do not deny the transcendent, of course, but they tend to see a radical separation between the transcendent and the immanent. For example, they will emphasize the the divine authorship of the Bible at the expense of the human authorship.

They will be quite happy with Hurlbutt’s five cameos because they are not particularly guilty of any of these. Just as it’s easy for Canadians to see peculiarities in the American view of the world (and vice versa), to which they are themselves blind, so too Modern evangelicals can easily see problems in the Liberal or Fundamentalists stance, but fail to see the plank in their own eye.

What is the gastronomic analogy that might get at some of the limitations of the Modern evangelical take on Jesus?

A microwave Teriyaki Chicken dinner.

It is an individual serving, efficiently prepared with the modern convenience of a microwave. It’s slightly exotic–it’s teriyaki, after all–but it’s largely Westernized. The ingredients are theoretically tasty and nutritious, but the effects of mass production and microwaving have removed most of their structure, taste and probably nutrients. It’s convenient, only requiring a few minutes to prepare and eat–ideal for busy people on the run. Even if you ate it every day, you could do worse–it’s probably healthier than any of the other five diets.

Now, I know plenty of evangelicals that do not have the microwave teriyaki chicken image of Christ. For these, the analogy would be more like a healthy, well-balanced dinner–an herb-roasted chicken with mashed potatoes, steamed asparagus and a small, sweet dainty for dessert. But I think even this more robust and balanced picture, as compared to the microwave meal, reveals the limitations of the evangelical Christ.

The best gastric analogy for the Real Jesus

I think it would be a family meal, something Middle Eastern. My daughter told me about the meals she ate in Israel. These were family meals. They ate fresh pita and hummus, tzatziki, olives of course, lentils, roasted vegetables, lamb on skewers, lamb in grape leaves. Importantly, this is a balanced meal. But the contents, especially the spices–cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, thyme–were strange to her western palate. She had to humbly look to her hosts, even the children, for some indication of how to eat it and what to put with what. She was not confident, uncertain. She was repeatedly surprised–sometimes delightfully, at other times, unpleasantly by the flavour combinations. This meal was full of grace and love–the family that prepared it, pulled out all the stops because there were guests at the table. My daughter felt so blessed that such a sacrifice would be made for her.

No analogy can ever begin to capture the true Jesus, but I do think that even evangelicals need to think, not only about other, clearly problematic predilections, but also their own reconfigurations of Christ.

“A Prayer for Owen Meany” — “The Angel”

September 17, 2014 / Trent / 0 Comments

“The Angel,” chapter 3 of A Prayer for Owen Meany, is one example of the pattern of rebirth built into the structure of the novel. Tabitha Wheelwright’s death is recounted in the first chapter, but in the following chapters we meet and get to know the living Tabby; after her death in chapter one, she is, in effect, brought back to life in chapters 2 and 3.

The episode when Owen saw an Angel illustrates the essential difference between Owen, with his incarnational view of reality, and Johnny, who sees the immanent and the transcendent as radically separate.

Enchanted Objects

‘THAT’S SO CATHOLIC . . . TO GET VERY RELIGIOUS ABOUT OBJECTS.’

This was a theme of Owen’s–the Catholics and their adoration of OBJECTS. Yet Owen’s habit of collecting objects that he made (in his own way) RELIGIOUS was well known” (270).

Owen’s understanding of objects is definitely incarnational rather than secular. In the secular worldview, the meanings and values of an object are only those that are attributed to it by a human subject. In Owen’s incarnational view, meanings and values are inherent in the objects without the help of any human subject.

The Dressmaker’s Dummy

We might say that, in the eyes of Owen Meany, some objects are subjects. The armadillo and his baseball card connection for example–perhaps even Hester’s panties. The dressmaker’s dummy is certainly an object that Owen sees as subject. The boys use Tabitha Wheelwright’s dressmaker’s dummy as an object of entertainment, but it seems to have special meaning for Owen. After Tabitha’s death, Owen commandeers it from Dan and takes it to his house, bedecked in the mysterious red dress. Although he provides the excuse, “YOU’RE NOT GOING TO STARE AT THIS DUMMY AND MAKE YOURSELF MORE UNHAPPY” (140), he takes it because of the meaning that is inherent in it. The narrator suggests “that it had a purpose” (142) which only Owen could see.

The dummy, and other objects, possess significant meaning for Owen. Johnny observes Owen’s obsessions with them, but does not understand them, for he views these objects from a secular framework where the only meaning in an object is that which the individual human subject attributes to it. Regarding Owen’s engagement and use of these objects, we might go so far as to suggest that meanings include or perhaps penetrate Owen. In other words, for Owen, the boundary between nature and supernature is porous. The transcendent isn’t way off somewhere, but within the physical world of objects and persons and actions.

Secular or Incarnational

How one interprets events is influenced by how one understands the relationship between the transcendent and the immanent. With his secular view, Johnny interprets Owen’s sighting of the angel much differently than does Owen. Owen was sleeping over at 80 Front Street and was feeling sick, so Johnny told Owen to go tell his mother. Anticipating a reaction from Owen, as he is bound to be startled by the dressmaker’s dummy which stands near Tabitha’s bed, Johnny is not surprised when Owen returns saying, “YOUR MOTHER IS NOT ALONE . . . I THINK IT’S AN ANGEL” (101). It soon becomes apparent that Owen was not reacting to the dummy because the angel was standing on the other side of the bed. The secular Johnny is very quick to touch Owen’s forehead, and conclude that because he has a fever, the entire incident was imagined. Owen never accepts this explanation; he lives in an enchanted world where such visitations are possible. Later he concludes that he had interrupted the Angel of Death at its work, and in so doing, received responsibility to complete the task himself.

Here is the analysis of chapter 4, “The Little Lord Jesus.”

A Prayer for Owen Meany — “The Armadillo”

September 13, 2014 / Trent / 0 Comments

The second chapter of the novel A Prayer for Owen Meany presents a clash of worldviews. Owen sees and understands the world in a much different way than do the young Johnny and the other characters in the novel. The key difference is that Owen is not as strongly influenced by modern secularism as are the rest.

Modern secularism is the dominant worldview of the West. One of the fundamental features of modern secularism (perhaps the fundamental feature) is the radical separation of the material world from the nonmaterial or spiritual realm. Importantly, modern secularism isn’t just out there in “the world”–it has shaped the church to a large degree.

Modern secularism finds its roots in the Enlightenment. Before the Enlightenment, and in those cultures less affected by the Enlightenment, it is not so easy to separate the spiritual from the material. For the pre-modern mind, a tree or a person or even an act have both spiritual and material dimensions that are inseparable. Where the modern mind believes this separation is essential, the pre-Modern mind rejects such boundaries. This latter view, because the transcendent indwells the immanent, can be called the incarnational view of reality.

In the novel, it is Owen Meany who sees the world incarnationally.

Enchantment

In A Secular Age, Charles Taylor explains the features of the pre-modern understanding of the world that makes it different from that of the modern. Pre-modern societies live in an “enchanted” world where the supernatural is recognized as a very real presence in the world. The presence of the spiritual enchants the physical and gives the world meaning–meaning is in the world. Meaning, then, does not come from within our individual minds, but from outside of us–the meaning is already there in the object, person or event. It is not something we attribute to it; it is there quite independently of the subject, us, and it would be there even if there were no human mind to engage it. This is not the modern view where meaning is simply an operation of our minds.

The framework in which Owen Meany lives is one where the immanent is infused with the transcendent. He lives in a world of filled with enchanted objects–a world full of meaning. Perhaps this is the reason behind his surname.

The events surrounding the stuffed armadillo illustrates Owen’s vision of the world. The stuffed armadillo is an object, infused with meaning. Johnny loves the thing because it is a gift from Dan, but for Owen the armadillo holds far more significance. The narrator recounts the careful arrangement of the armadillo on the nightstand between their beds when Owen slept over. It is always placed so that its profile was perfect, but in the morning, it is turned more toward Owen. On one occasion, Johnny wakes up and found Owen awake, staring at the armadillo and smiling (62). Eventually, Owen would tell John, “IT’S HARD TO GO TO SLEEP WITHOUT IT ONCE YOU GET USED TO IT” (79). It is never articulated what meaning Owen has discovered in the armadillo, but his behavior indicates he has found something.

Because of what he sees in the armadillo, Owen uses it in an elaborate ritual of exchange to communicate his feelings of complicity in the death of Johnny’s mother. Owen has “no other way to articulate the way [he] felt” (84) about “the foul ball” than giving Johnny his most prized possession—his baseball card collection (another enchanted object). Johnny does not understand this gesture, but Dan Needham explains and coaches him to give something in return. Johnny chooses to give Owen the armadillo and Owen returns the armadillo with its front claws removed. Johnny is indignant at this act of violence and puzzled, for Owen loved the armadillo more than he did.

Armlessness

Johnny realizes that Owen has connected this act of amputation to Watahantowet’s armless totem. Watahantowet was the Indian leader who sold the land where Gravesend is situated. Both the armless armadillo and the Indian totem speak from a frame of reference where “everything had its own souls, its own spirit” (86). For Watahantowet, the land was full of spirits so that when he sold it to the white men, he understood the terrible cost. According to the narrator, his armless totem said, “Here take my land. There go my arms!” (87). This might be true for Wheelwright who comes across as impotent in many ways, but Watahantowet is also associated with Owen Meany who is the opposite of impotent. Owen had already formed the idea that he would later share with Johnny: “GOD HAS TAKEN YOUR MOTHER. MY HANDS WERE THE INSTRUMENT. GOD HAS TAKEN MY HANDS. I AM GOD’S INSTRUMENT” (87). Owen sees his physical hands in the context of divine purpose and armlessness in symbolic of his, indeed all mankind’s, inability to resist the will of God. In this one event, we see that Owen lives out of a world that Charles Taylor calls the enchanted world.

Owen Meany’s world is enchanted, but Johnny Wheelwright’s is not. He lives in a secular world. These characters function as foils in Irving’s exploration of faith and doubt. Owen represents an incarnational view where the transcendent lies within the immanent; Johnny represents the secular view where the transcendent is so far separated from the immanent that it is irrelevant, if it exists at all. In this secular view, says Charles Taylor, “all thought, feeling and purpose, all features we normally can ascribe to agents, must be in minds, which are distinct from the ‘outer’ world” (Taylor 539). As a representative of the secular view, Johnny cannot understand a world where objects have meaning in themselves, that events may be meaningfully guided by a higher purpose.

Enjoy chapter 3 and then return to trentdejong.com and read the post on “The Angel.”

A Prayer for Owen Meany — Introduction

August 27, 2014 / Trent / 2 Comments

My favourite book is A Prayer for Owen Meany. It’s really funny. It is one of those books that can’t be read in bed because your unsuccessfully-stifled laughter will make it impossible for your spouse to sleep. It offers the full range of humour, from ridiculous situations through extraordinary characters to profound ironies. And the more times you read it, the funnier it gets.

I also like it because it is very well-crafted. It’s full of the things that students of literature get excited about: comparison and contrast, patterns and parallels, foil characters and motifs. It’s filled with symbolism, irony, and juxtaposition.

It doesn’t just make you think about literature stuff, though. It also makes you think about life which is what great art always does.

Faith in the Modern World

This novel is about doubt, but mostly about belief in God. The novel opens with “I am a Christian because of Owen Meany” (1).

This is an important book because it is exploration of faith. Specifically, it reveals some very important things about faith in a modern context. By modern, I don’t mean that we have smartphones and smart cars. To be Modern means we have a certain way of looking at the world, the other and ourselves. The novel doesn’t just reveal the difficulty of faith in the modern world, but the nature of that faith. The influence of Modernism can easily produce an anemic faith. As you read the novel, you will see this limited faith held by the adult narrator of the story.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”All North American Christians need to very aware of the power of the Modern worldview to produce this anemic faith and significantly distort all relationships, including that which we have with God. #OwenMeany” quote=”All North American Christians need to very aware of the power of the Modern worldview to produce this anemic faith and significantly distort all relationships, including that which we have with God.”]

This all sounds rather serious, and it is, but, don’t forgot–this book is the funniest and most entertaining book I’ve ever read.

I invite you go get yourself a copy of A Prayer for Owen Meany, and read it with me.

I’ve written a post for each chapter commenting on how the novel might be useful to help us understand our own struggle with faith in our world today.

The Epigraphs

Be sure to read the three epigraphs that precede the narrative. These little gems help us focus on the key ideas in the novel.

Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

The Letter of Paul to the Philippians

The first epigraph emphasizes the nearness of God; he’s close enough we can talk to him and ask things of him. It also suggests that awareness of God’s presence alleviates our anxiety.

The second epigraph:

Not the least of my problems is that I can hardly even imagine what kind of an experience a genuine, self-authenticating religious experience would be. Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.

Frederick Buechner

Buechner points out that in the face of absolutely certain evidence about God’s existence, the individual believer would be annihilated. Irving takes this idea very seriously; he continuously undercuts religious certainty in the story. Or does he?

The third epigraph:

Any Christian who is not a hero is a pig. –Leon Bloy

As you read, attend to the connection between Christian faith and heroism.

The next post is on Chapter 1: “The Foul Ball.”

Christian Modernism? Modern Christianism?

October 9, 2013 / Trent / 0 Comments

We just can’t escape the modern worldview. The term “worldview” is itself a product of the modern worldview.

The modern worldview sees the world in terms of clear boundaries between categories. Well, one of the most cherished categorical distinctions is between subject and object. Implicit in the term worldview is the division between the object, the world, and the subject, the viewer.

But it all evens out because a person who deliberately rejects the Christian worldview can’t escape it either.

Judeo-Christian Roots of Secular Modernism

Those who claim they have a secular-Modern worldview, don’t really. Their understanding of the world and themselves is unavoidably infused with the Judeo-Christian worldview out of which it grew.

The concept of “secular” is itself rooted in the Judeo-Christian past. A linear understanding of history, the importance of human rights and freedoms, are two tenets of Modernism that are basic to Judeo-Christianity. Science flourished in the west because the universe was understood to be ordered–“In the beginning was the Logos. Ordered means predictable and this is the basis of the scientific method.

These are just a few of many examples where the modern “secular” worldview is not truly secular.

Just as the secular worldview isn’t purely secular, the so-called “Christian worldview” of our day has been influenced by modern secular ideas.

The Influence of Modern Secularism on Western Christianity

First, there are many Christians that accept the modern reductionist understanding of “truth.” They are trapped within this syllogism: Truth is rational and empirical; The Bible is true; therefore, the Bible is rational and empirical. At a popular level, this idea leads to two common errors: that the Bible is true like an encyclopedia is true, or that it’s not true at all. Since this reductionist view of truth is so recent and so limited, it is neither appropriate nor useful to hold the Bible to this narrow understanding of truth.
Another way the modern worldview has infiltrated our churches is the valuing of reason over emotion. This is the one I need to own up to. I like the rational bits of the worship service–the sermon–far more than the more emotional components–the singing. And you notice that even by classifying the elements of the church service as emotional and rational I am being very modern.
Third, we have a tendency to be individualistic and we put more emphasis on the individual autonomy than in preceding centuries. We speak of having a “personal relationship with Jesus” and we sing songs like “I have decided to follow Jesus.” OK, we don’t sing that song anymore, but we sing a lot of songs that are essentially personal reflections. There is, obviously, an important personal or individual dimension to Christian faith, but modernism has lead us to put an unbalanced emphasis on the importance of the individual.
Modernism considers faith a private affair that ought to be kept out of the public arena. Some in the church find it handy to live within this false dichotomy. In these cases, one’s public life has nothing to do with one’s religious life. This makes it possible to not claim some income on your tax forms, or to underpay employees, or cheat customers, or pollute the environment, or fail to adequately tip servers in restaurants, etc. These behaviors do not really touch upon one’s conscience because “business is business.” In other words, the demands of the Bible are separated from one’s public activity.
A related dichotomy, equally false, divides the world into sacred and secular spheres. There are many examples of this kind of thinking. When I was a teenager, there was much debate as to whether or not Christian young people ought to listen to “secular” music. For many, it was clear that Christians ought not to do so, and no consideration was given to whether or not the “Christian” music was true, or even good. Some Christian schools are based on the sacred/secular dichotomy. The problem with the idea of the secular, as we understand it today, is it suggests there are areas of creation over which Jesus is not Lord. This idea is completely incompatible with scripture.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Five ways that the Modern Secular worldview has influenced Western Christianity #ModernFaith #Christianty” quote=”Five ways that the Modern Secular worldview has influenced Western Christianity”]

It is no easy thing, purging modernism from our minds and if we could ever completely succeed in doing so, we’d then have to purge our minds of post-modernism. I really don’t believe we can ever avoid being a product of our times. But reading the Bible helps a lot. It also helps a great deal to read history and non-western literature–the Bible nicely fits into these categories as well. These help us to provide a context for the idolatrous worldviews out of which we live.

The Modern Worldview

September 21, 2013 / Trent / 0 Comments

Lesslie Newbigin’s book, Foolishness to the Greeks, changed my life. I don’t remember a lot of the specifics, but by reading this book I came to realize that I was looking at the world through some very thick and tinted lenses. Everyone looks at the world through the metaphorical spectacles of a worldview.

Competing Worldviews

There are competing worldviews in the West, by which I mean Europe and North America. One of the dominant ones has been around for a while–the Modern story. This may be in the process of being replaced by the newer “Post-Modern” story. Another worldview that has been around much longer is derived from the Bible. Although very different, we in the West look at the world through a weird blend of all three.

If you are going to understand the glasses through which you are view yourself and the world, you need to begin by understanding the basic characteristics of each worldview which is tinting the lenses by which you look at everything.

In our culture, all our glasses are being strongly tinted by modernism. The roots of the Modern worldview are in the 18th century, the Enlightenment. While it took some pretty big hits in the 20th century, many of the ideas which characterize this perspective are with us today.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”To understand the glasses through which you are view yourself and the world, you need to begin by understanding the basic characteristics of each worldview which is tinting the lenses by which you look at everything. #worldview ModernWorldview” quote=”To understand the glasses through which you are view yourself and the world, you need to begin by understanding the basic characteristics of each worldview which is tinting the lenses by which you look at everything.”]

The Main Ideas in the Modern Worldview:

1. Human reason is the source of truth; the light, in Enlightenment, is Reason. Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes really got this idea going and it has stuck with us. They trusted in reason to be the arbiter of truth (Read “Fact versus Truth“) albeit from different starting points. Bacon used reason to take him from observation of particular phenomenon to universal principles, and Descartes saw the human mind as the final authority in understanding reality. Although they approached it from different angles, both trusted reason to lead to the truth.
2. Reality is material. There is nothing that transcends the material world, or, if there is, it has no relevance to one’s life. In other words, there is no such thing as the supernatural, only the natural. This idea is called materialism or naturalism. If human reason is the source of truth, then Bacon’s approach, called empiricism, will help us to discover the truth. This only works in the natural world, but since nothing else is real, there is no problem.
3. The individual is of primary importance. In the modern worldview, human reason is autonomous. So also is the individual whose motto has become, “You’re not the boss of me!” Our history is one of emancipation from those who would curb our independence: kings and queens, God and the church, communism and socialism, and tradition and social conventions. Our free economies and liberal democracies are testaments to our individual autonomy. One source of this idea is Rene Descartes whose “I think therefore I am” not only grounded truth in the reason but in the reason of the individual.
4. Faith in Progress. Humanity is on an upward trajectory. Because of human reason and its offspring, science and technology, Modernity places a lot of faith in progress. It has long believed that we need to get rid of silly superstitions and religious beliefs. Reason rather than religion will allow the human race to continue up the road toward perfection and science and technology will solve the problems that we face.
5. Categories and more categories. Because human reason is only autonomous if the world is only material, the modern mind establishes and defends boundaries between categories. There are many. Here are a few: mind/body, natural/supernatural, material/spiritual, immanent/transcendent, public/private, rational/emotional, fact/value, reason/faith, knowledge/belief, sacred/secular and objective/subjective.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”5 ways in which the Christian Worldview is different than the Modern Worldview. #Worldview #ChristianWorldview #Modern Worldview” quote=”5 ways in which the Christian Worldview is different than the Modern Worldview.”]

Main Differences between the Modern and Christian Worldviews

The Biblical worldview differs significantly with the Modern worldview on each of these points.

Human reason is part of God’s good creation, but it has also been distorted by sin, so it cannot be completely trusted.
Obviously, the Biblical worldview is not materialist or naturalist because it proclaims a transcendent God who is the source of objective realities like The Good, The True and The Beautiful.
The communal nature of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit challenges the idea that those created in the image of the triune God ought to be understood first as an autonomous individual.
God’s Grace and not man’s ability will be the cause of any progress we experience in this world, and that’s only if we surrender to Christ because he’s the only one that can deal with our real problem–SIN.
Christ, who is wholly God, became wholly human and yet did not surrender any of his divinity; this alone presents a challenge to the clean categories so loved by the Modern mind. An honest reading of the Bible will blur many of the other boundaries between the other categories held so dear by modernism.

The problem is, the Biblical worldview and the modern worldview are not kept distinct. Our glasses are tinted by both of these (and other) contradictory worldviews.