Get Real
The Godlet Phenomenon

The godlet phenomenon of postmodern culture: the misguided notion that we are gods, or we can be as gods.

Postmodern culture is a sucker for the serpent’s lie: "You will be like God"
(Gen. 3:5).

Now every commercial pays homage to every person’s divinity. And every one of us is increasingly believing the goddifying messages that come down the Madison Avenue pike:

It is you who are running the show.
You are the one calling the shots.
You are the most important person in the world.
What you want, you get -- anytime, anywhere, anyplace.
Have it your way.

Here is a print commercial for a Hummer

You Are Invincible.
You Are All-Powerful
You Are Unstoppable
You Are On Your Way to the Grocery Store.

The digital world empowers the individual to be more than captains of our ship; we can become masters of the multiverse, gods of self-made galaxies.

Even in church we are prone not to worship someone other than ourselves. When we go to worship, we mostly go to feel good about ourselves. We want every sermon to be a self-hug. We want every worship experience to pump us up and make us happy. We have created a Sunday supplement of what scholar Paul Heelas calls "the Self Religions."

"A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none."

"A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all."

Martin Luther

The new economy is focused on the individual, not on the masses. In post-modern culture everyone is a free-agent.

In our lifetimes we have moved from mass markets to regional markets, then to niche markets, and now to demassed customers.

"I couldn’t have done it without me." Bumper Sticker

This is the first time in history that people can (or at least believe they can) design their own lives according to their preferences. Never before have people been able to live designer lives, to customize their preferred lifestyles.

Postmoderns resent the "boss mentality of traditional management. But they truly welcome mentoring.

What if our churches were to form something like Coach University, founded in 1992 to work with families, companies, business teams, etc. to help them train the skill of coaching.

In fact, one of the great needs of the postmodern church is for Barnabas Ministries (Barnabas: "The Encourage"), Cheerleaders, and Mentors. A 21st century leader has been defined as someone who stands on the sidelines with a Bible in one hand and pom-poms in the other. In spite of what the modern world taught us, criticism is not one of the gifts of the Spirit.

The distinction between critics and mentors is this: critics give advice to detract; mentors give advice to care and nurture and wish you well.

People don’t want to "fit in" anywhere. They want to fit together.

Postmodern systems staff the process, not the position.

In the postmodern church, "spirit descriptions" will be so basic to the body of Christ that people will be hired for ministry solely on the basis of their spiritual energies. "I have no idea how we are going to use you, but I know this church can’t be without you. Why don’t you join us as the ‘Minister of I-don’t-know-what’?"

Do we care enough about postmoderns to even ask why they like and dislike? I’ve never seen this question on a hotel guest response card: "How well did you sleep?" How rare is this question in the church: "How well are you growing spiritually?"

A godlet culture prizes self-fulfillment over self-sacrifice. Instead of choosing a church on the cross-free basis of "Does this church meet my needs?" or "What’s in this church for?" we must train ourselves to ask the cross-friendly question "What’s in this church for God?" or "Does this church meet God’s purposes for this world?"

Our churches must be mission-driven rather than ministry-driven. The old distinction between ministry and mission -- ministry is service to me, while mission is service through me -- is as good today as when it was introduced.

The church of Jesus Christ exists today in four forms, in descending order of integrity and faithfulness:

Mission churches
Ministry churches
Maintenance churches
Museum/Monument churches
(deadpan and bedpan ministries)

Now What? Net Notes

1. For an experience of the goddification of the self, check out http://www.islandnet.com/~luree/contest.html. Here is "the Great God Contest," where your deity can engage in immortal combat with other divine beings. The three challenges that qualify you for godhead are impregnating a virgin, raising a corpse, and either healing a sick person or feeding the multitudes.

2. Leadership Network is a network of networks that exists to connect "new paradigm" churches to each other and to the most creative and cutting edges of the church. Log-on to their Web site http://www.leadnet.org and discuss how denominations might find a future for themselves if they began to regulate less and resource more.

3. Visit one of the countless Web sites with instantly available "stereo sound clips" and links to more rock videos than MTV could show in a year.

4. Visit http://www.musicmaker.com, a site where kids are paying to make their own CD compilations.

Are these technological advances in do-it-yourself album-making marking an end to the way music has been developed and distributed? The whole concept of an "album of music" is that it was an exercise in "giving yourself over to someone else’s choices," with the someone else being the composer or songwriter or musical group. What does it mean that you can pick what you want right now and have the music arranged in the order you want and put your own name on the disk—all for about the same price you’d pay for a store-bought CD?

5. Visit your favorite artists’ Web site. Does he/she/they release any "advance tracks" on their Web sites?

6. Get some of the kids in church to play for you the best-selling CD-ROM in history, the computer game Myst. The one critique of this game is that its characters are "thin, undeveloped" with an "empty mental life."

Is this a danger of electronic culture—that the self is becoming more stick-figurish, even cartoonish?

7. There are well over 25 commercial Web sites that customize. See the example My CDNOW http://www.cdnow.com. What would it mean for your church to begin customizing its ministries?

8. Visit the Web sites of some of the privately held companies now leading the biotech subindustry of pharmacogenics, including Ontogency (Cambridge, MA), Lexicon Genetics (Woodlands, TX), and Exelexis Pharmaceuticals (Alameda, CA).