Tom Lyberg, Nirvana and U2

In Tom Lyberg's excellent last podcast he muses over “Why post moderns don’t seem to be coming to church anymore. He suggests that the classic evangelism formula is based on the question “if you were to die tonight do you know where you would spend eternity?” and that concern for eternity made sense to modern people but post moderns really just don’t care or would say “that’s a really stupid question”. Which is perhaps why the Bill Hybels summary of the Xn message as substitutional atonement (SA) got to me so badly. At it's core substitutional atonement is all about making sure you're going to the right place when you die.

Lyberg suggests a more pressing question for post moderns is “If God is real does he (she) give a crap about me?” Where as SA is about making sure we're ok Lyberg suggests post moderns would think “none of us are ok, we’re all screwed up” or “we do know we’re not ok and that’s the way it is”. So why is it that some Xns get this and others don't. I'm wondering if we can make the distinction as simple as this: Those who get this way of thinking liked the band Nirvana those who don't didn't.

Whilst many Xns are wetting themselves with excitement that U2 are touring Australia I am reminded that while I still like U2. It'd seemed that most of the Xns I knew were still raving about U2's Joshua Tree while me and a select few thought we had found a new kind of art in Nirvana. But too my U2 worhsiping friends Nirvana were just noise.

To me Nirvana was about knowing that you're not ok and not trying to fix it but to understand it. To me U2 were about polished perfection but Nirvana was about brokeness. Rather than wanting a God to rescue them I ssuspect post moderns are looking for a God to join with them, even in the brokness.

Rather than banging on about SA Tom suggests that “There is a God who really cares about living among broken people and giving them hope right now heaven and hell business, not on the radar. This world that’s busted up that’s where God lives”.