An excerpt from, "The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World," author - David F. Wells

In this chapter I am going to explore the fate of God.  That, perhaps, sounds more dramatic than I intend.  I am not actually worried about God.  Not at all.  The fate I am really talking about is in ourselves.  What has happened to him in our minds?  In our souls?  In our society?  That is rather different from asking what has happened to God himself. 

Postmodern writers have been saying that the universe is empty.  They say it has no center.  It therefore has no overarching meaning(s).  That is the world we inhabit, and this is part of what is fed daily into our experience.  What happens to our understanding about God when we are constantly experiencing a world that seems centerless and chaotic?

Biblical writers, by contrast, declare that the only reason there is life and hope is that there is a center.  It is in the triune God, the maker and sustainer of all things and the one in whom we find reconciliation through the Son.  When we know him, life fits back into a meaningful pattern and we are filled with hope about its end.

It is these two perspectives that I explore in this chapter.  However, in thinking about this, it is important to remember  that culture does not give the church its agenda.  All it gives the church is its context.  The church’s belief and mission come from the Word of God.  They do not come from the culture either through attraction to it or in alienation from it.  It is not the culture that determines the church’s priorities.  It is not the (post)modern culture that should be telling it what to think.  The principle here is sola Scriptura, not sola cultura.

At least, that is what should be the case.  But as I have been arguing, the church’s practice has often departed from this principle.  Too often what we see is sola cultura in place of sola Scriptura.

We see churches, particularly those of a marketing and emergent kind, that are rather blatantly adapting themselves to their own generational culture.  They are taking it as a given that they cannot communicate to a (post) modern generation unless they adopt (post) modern ways of thinking.  Yes, even in regard to God.  Perhaps especially in regard to God.

I beg to differ.

What is of the first importance to the church is not that it learn to mimic the culture but that it learn to think God’s thoughts after him.  The people of God are here on earth to learn how to recenter him, as it were, to see him in the place that he actually occupies, to worship him accordingly, and to live before him day after day.  To live before him, not as we want to think about him because we are post moderns, but before him as he really is.  This is the way – indeed, the only way-the church can be faithful to him in its own time and context.

(pages 97-98)