The Fight Against Mediocrity

I believe we live in a very shallow culture, and I believe I am shallow as well. As I read through the short biographies of philosophers living a few centuries ago, I find that they were all multi-talented. Not only were they great philosophers, they were at the same time playwrights, poets, musicians, artists, scientists, mathematicians! Then I look at the people and myself in our culture. To have a distinguished profession is hard enough, not to mention a few! Those were the true intellectuals. And for myself, I don't even dare to take Double Degree! If I could survive in the academic field I would be fortunate enough. This only goes to show how shallow I am!

Haiz. Of course people nowadays would say, 'That's because they last time don't have technology and leisure what, that's why they only know how to study.' I don't think that's a bad thing at all! Today, kids only know how to play computer games, party, LAN-gaming, nintendo-DS'ing, nintendo wii'ing, PSP'ing, para-para dancing ....and have some sort of aversion to books. Not that playing games are wrong, but like OCH said, the postmodern culture have lost the appetite for words, and books.

Then I was wondering about my church. It's called a 'Presbyterian' church. When I heard that my church may be changing name, my first violent reaction was, "They gonna take out the 'Presbyterian'?!?" (as I don't really care about the TC in TCPC.) Thankfully no, but I guess most people wouldn't care anyway. A glance at our church shows that nothing much in it is actually 'Reformed' in the true sense. Sure, we have elder governance. Sure we have a nice pulpit in the centre. But we have largely forgotten our roots and reformed tradition. The more important aspects like Scripture Alone and Reformed Theology are never taught and defended agressively except by a minority (thank God OCH is part of this minority, and I can't wait for Elder Yong to come back again). We don't know what the Westminster Confession of Faith is, nor do we know existence of the Shorter Catechism. Great Christian authors who could be easily recognised by their last names (eg. Edwards, Owen, Calvin, Baxter, Packer, Boice, MacArthur, Grudem, Ryle, Lewis, Ryken, Carson etc) are largely unrecognizable by our youths. As I told someone in my church, we've been in TCPC for so long, but does that mean we are 'Presbyterians'? I would be ashamed to say I am. Then look at the Puritans' way of teaching and catechising the children and adults. Be very ashamed. The church has a love for mediocrity. We prefer pleasing maxims to hard, sound doctrine.

Of course I do not think that we must identify legalistically with the tradition of our church. But looking at it another way, the "un-presbyterising" of our modern Presbyterian church is only part of the whole postmodern movement. It is the other extreme. That's why we must teach the young to read, and read extensively. D.A. Carson remarks that the English-speaking world is blessed with the greatest library of Christian literature, but sadly few are reading them.

Can we stop the shallowness of this culture? I think we must spend less time with our PSPs and more time reading books. X suggested that I send an email of the Daily Bread for him to read online, as he has no mood to physically hold the book (which he has) and read it physically. I wanted to kill him.

Pick up your books, ladies and gentlemen, and join the fight against mediocrity.