The Death of Post-Modernism.

(This post is a long time coming.  Since the National Religious Broadcaster's convention, my brain has buzzed with thoughts of modernism and post-modernism, cyncism and localism, and many other great -isms.  Here are my armchair philosopher thoughts.  They might be scattered or difficult to understand.  A friendly comment saying so would be helpful as I refine both my writing style and my thoughts...)

Let's start with a definition of post-modernism.  The term itself is shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding (it's sort of ironic, really).  The Oxford English Dictionary calls it, "a style and concept in the arts characterized by distrust of theories and ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions."  One of Merriam-Webster's defintions is "of, relating to, or being a theory that involves a radical reappraisal of modern assumptions about culutre, identity, history, or language."  The definition that I have been working from since hearing it in my undergraduate philosophy class is attributed to a French philosopher called Jean-Francois Lyotard: "incredulity toward metanarratives."

I mean, think about it.  The 20th century wasn't that great in many ways.  We had recently(ish) come off the enlightenment, a time when all promise lay before man.  Indeed, I think most of the 20th century was spent pursuing the promises of the Enlightenment and Modernism.  Radio took off, closely followed by telephones, television, cable, computers, and, by the end, the internet.  People trusted the power structures of the world to deliver them out of their problems.  Technology will make me lose weight, keep the peace, do the chores, feed me, entertain me, connect me to others, anything.  Our lives would get easier and easier.  Or, at least, that was what the metanarrative of modernism offered.

But what did it deliver?  More war (perhaps) than ever before in history.  A fundamental rift between people and government as leaders fell to corruption and greed.  The disintegration of family life as central to human experience as divorce rates skyrocketted.  Corporations rising and falling, crushing the wallets and souls of people who no longer had the self-discipline to spend less than they earned.  Is it any wonder people began to be skeptical about grand visions of universal truth-claims?

I think at its heart, post-modernism is this fundamental distrust of anything.  You can't trust the government's claims that through big/small government, you will be helped/free to do whatever you want.  You can't trust the advertiser's claims that this product actually works.  You can't trust your parents to know what is good for you.  Twentieth century psychoanlytic theory even undermined the trust in self that people could fall back on.  When you are a teeming cauldron of subconscious, evolutionary urges conditioned by a lifetime of experiences, how can you know that you truly believe what you believe?

This has produced a very tolerant culture.  What works for me is great.  What works for you is great.  If those are completely opposite, that's fine.  Ultimately, I'm forced to trust myself and my experience.  And I expect the same of you.  So that's fine.  We can get along with our completely opposite worldviews because both of us accept that we can't tell anyone else that what I've experienced is more true that what you've experienced.

Deconstruction, the first tool the post-modern reaches for, can only go so far by itself.  We have taken apart everything from science to government to religion to social structures, but what has it left us with?  Nothing but a pile of broken pieces.  We finally figured out that modernism was a lie, but we never found the truth to replace it.

I think we're starting to figure something else out, too.  We're all into sustainablity, right?  (Those nasty moderns in their imperialistic, dogmatic, self-centered, earth-destorying ways made us a little bit... not those things.)  Post-modernism - this incredulity toward metanarrative - is unsustainable.  We can't do it much longer.  It's killing our spirits and we know it.  So we're reaching out.

At first, it's small.  It's our friends.  In my generation, there was a turn towards peer tribes among adolescents.  Instead of caring for and listening to our families, we allied ourselves with our friends - the people closest to our daily experience.  We trust our tribes.  We love our tribes.  To sin against the tribe (through breaking whatever internal rules it has) is worse than Judas' betrayal of Jesus or Brutus' betrayal of Caesar.  The millenials are growing up now and taking their tribes with them.  Most of them are going online.  Social networking, I think, is a direct result of our desire to connect with the only people in the world who we can trust.  We can't trust advertisers to tell us what products work (despite the inundation of custom-made advertisements... thanks Google...).  We can trust our friends.  If they say a product works, then we flock to it and buy it en masse (You're welcome, Steve Jobs.).

So where is all this going?  What am I rambling towards?

I think everything is going to keep going local.  There are apps that tell you who is tweeting near you.  Farmer's markets are rising in popularity and use.  There is a general distaste for all things mass-produced in the mouths (literal and metaphorical) of millenials.

With each step outside of the self, with each snarky comment held in, with each belief firmly and lovingly stated as true, we build trust.  And with that trust, I think comes hope.  I have little hope in the super-structures of society that have been so poisoned with greed and self-interest, but I do have hope that local communities will rise again and people will love their neighbors a little better than they used to.  Now that everything has been deconstructed, we can start constructing again.

Executive Series Luncheon.

I was asked to give a three minute speech at an event we have at Cornerstone called the Executive Series Luncheon. They invite a bunch of local business owners to CU to have lunch and hear another executive speak on some topic or another. This time, they wanted to hear a student's voice as well. They were pretty strict on the three minute thing, though, so I had to write it out. Here's what I wrote/spoke (Sorry the formatting is a little funny...):

It’s a privilege to be representing the students of Cornerstone University and welcome you to our campus. I was asked to share some thoughts, but I only have 3 minutes, so it’ll just have to be one: sort of an intersection between the tools Cornerstone has given me and what God has been working in me lately. I hope it will be encouraging to you.

To be honest, I feel slightly out of place here. I am not a business man, but a story teller. My hope is to one day become a writer for video games. Just this past week, I was in San Francisco for the Game Developer’s Conference. Over 17,000 members of the video game community gathered to sharpen each other and improve our industry.

One of the topics that comes up over and over again at these conferences is the question, “Can video games be art?” Often, this comes to a false dichotomy between designers – the people that make the systems – and writers.

Designers want a completely open space for players to explore. They take pride in giving players ultimate choice.

Writers want to craft a perfectly structured story for players to experience. They want every interaction, every choice to perfectly fall in line with their beautiful thematic argument.

You can imagine, then, that there is some conflict in this process.

As a hopeful writer, I have naturally fallen on the side of structure. I have often compared game design to being god – not in a sacrilegious way, of course. We create this world, populate it with characters, and design a perfect way for them to go through it (the story).

Designers, kind of like the serpent, want to give the players ultimate choice. To let the players do what they want.

Do what they want? You mean allow them to rebel against my beautifully sculpted creation and my design for what they should do?

Yes.

Sounds familiar, right? I viewed the task of the writer to be similar to the task of our God: to slowly and gently lead player from their meaningless, headstrong ways back into the story I had designed for them.

One of the writers at one of the sessions humbled me, though: It isn’t about me.

It isn’t about the designers. It isn’t about the animators or the writers or the programmers. It is about the player. Video games are about giving the player a great experience, not about the messages that a writer or a designer is trying to propagate.

When we have artistic disputes, the only question we should be asking is “Which choice would make a better player experience? Which choice would serve the player best?” It cannot be a matter of what I want or what is easiest for the programmers. Ego cannot factor into our design decisions at all. Only the other. Nothing but serving the player.

And isn’t this what Jesus asks of us? To love our neighbor as ourselves. To serve each other.

I was ashamed. I went to the gardens above the conference center and journaled for 15 minutes. How dare I, as a Christian, compare my role in the creative process to God! And here was this writer – who was not a Christian – reminding me that my job is to serve. Even at the expense of my agenda.

I think businesses that are a little less artistic in nature get service more than any artist ever will. No matter what your job is in the company, ultimately the company exists to serve someone. The ego of an artist – with our themes, characters, and messages – falls before the customer. “The customer is always right.”

As I continue to reshape my theology of writing, if you will, I wanted to encourage all of you to continue loving people more than your agenda. May you always remember that your jobs are not about the messages that you send or the profit you earn. Your job is to love and to serve. I pray that you continue to serve Jesus in every interaction with client and customer, that you would always think first of the other.

With that, join me in welcoming Mr. Bob Israels.

Chew on this.

I've been reading Leviticus lately. It's a fun book... And by fun, I mean somewhat difficult to get through. It's a lot more interesting when you consider the historical context of the book, but still, it's hard to read about wave offerings when that has little to do with the lives we lead now.

One verse caught my attention, though. Leviticus 19:9-10:

When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.

What does this mean in a modern context? For the ancient Jews, it was meant to provide a small amount of sustenance for the poor. By leaving the edges of the field unreaped and not being too thorough in harvesting, those with no fields would still be able to harvest. But what about us?

My sister does strange things. This shouldn't surprise people who know her. When she gets change after buying something at a store, she goes out in the parking lot and drops it. Sometimes all at once, sometimes one coin at a time. She figures that finding a penny cheers her up, so why not cheer others up? Is this a modern day application of this verse?

Or does it suggest that followers of the Lord should not always seek efficiency. Surely planting crops and then purposefully not harvesting them is inefficient. Maybe it means that we should even financially invest in ventures that we know will not yield a financial return (or, at least, not shy away from doing so).

I've been reading a book for our mission trip to Memphis called Theirs Is the Kingdom. (You should read this book.) It's written by a man who has been a missionary to inner city Atlanta for 15+ years. Our investment could produce jobs for those who don't have them and countless opportunities to share the message of Christ.

I can't really claim to know how to apply this these verses to our lives, but it's worth considering. What does this verse say about our God and the way we are to interact with the fruits of our labors?

The Jetsons and Post-modernism.

My biggest concern about American life as we know it is not gay marriage, the economy, our dependence on foreign oil, or the apathy that has spread across our political institutions.

It's our imagination.

Look at the products our imagination has produced in the past 20 years, especially with regards to our future. There's Blade Runner, the father of modern cyberpunk (and hardly a happy look into what will be...), the Mad Max movies, Terminator, Children of Men, Babylon A.D... The list could go on.

What about our video games? Video games have thrived on sci-fi and fantasy tropes. Post-apocalypse is what we do. From Fallout to the Metal Gear Solid series, video games hardly have a positive vision of the future. It almost seems as though humanity knows and/or fears that we are nearing the end, that we're not going to make it without some serious cataclysm.

What happened to the Jetsons, cheesy as they were? Or Star Trek? These shows captured our imaginations and showed us that the future, despite what the present seemed to indicate, will be bright.

Which brings me to my fear: if we cannot even imagine a solution to the multitude of problems our generation faces, how will we overcome them? Without even an unrealistic solution, how can we begin to work towards anything?

In part, I think the problem lies with post-modernism. (No, I am not a post-modernism hater. Actually, I am sort of post-modern to post-modernity.) Post-modernism has (justifiably) rejected the hope that modernism had in the progress of man. But at what cost? When will we allow ourselves to have hope in anything again?

This thought has become somewhat of a conviction. I've mostly stopped working on one of my favorite story ideas because it is more post-apocalyptic than I'd like it to be. I believe it is the task of the storytellers and artists to craft a more positive vision of the future, giving us, if nothing else, the hope that we can go on.

Christian Culture != Following Jesus.

Going to a Christian university is a unique experience. Never before have I been so fully immersed in the Christian Protestant subculture. Like any subculture, it comes with its own rules and expectations, taboos and holidays, media and attitudes about that media.

For example, as a 20something year old college student, here are a smattering of beliefs that are (sort of) expected of me:

• I must read my Bible every day, at least a chapter. If I read more, I am more spiritual.
• Pray every day, usually in the morning.
  
• I should probably go into ministry. Full time would be preferable.
• Play the guitar.
• Talk about God a lot. Relate everything I experience to God. Tell everyone I know what I experienced and how it relates to God.
  
• More recently, I must strive to "greenify" my life (after all, God is green), listen to high quality, not-so-obviously-Christian music, and study the traditions of other denominations to gain insight into my own.
  

These are some of the more obvious ones, at least. I'm sure you can think of more, whether you belong to this particular subculture or not.

The question, of course, is where do these expectations come from? Do I have to read my Bible to be a follower of Jesus? Do I have to subscribe to the philosophy that God is Green? If I don't do these things, am I a terrible Christian?

I think that oftentimes in the church, we confuse conforming to these expectations with following Jesus. We think that by learning to play guitar, by listening to the right music, by using the right words at the right time, we can grow closer to God.

But God didn't create me to conform to the culture of the church (contrary to what my IDS 200 professor thought...). He didn't necessarily create me to be the worship leader. He didn't create me to listen to trendy Christian bands and take care of the earth and be an advocate for every cause ever.

He created me to follow Jesus. He created me to follow Jesus.

It's a freeing thought to realize that he did not create me to be the pinnacle of Christian culture. He created me to be me. I'm supposed to be an agent of change, a lover of people, a creative person, and the scores of other things that I feel called to be.

But I am not called to be the trendy pastor with thick rimmed glasses. I am called to follow Jesus. Not the new trendy worship leader. Not the new trendy cause. Not the new trendy band or lingo or interpretation of Scripture. Jesus.

I want to be the guy that is outside of Christian culture, but totally into Jesus. I want to follow him in and out of it as he leads, but I do not want to keep him (or me) trapped in the entirely cultural and temporary expectations of our modern Christendom.

(P.S. About the title... In programming languages, an exclamation point means "the opposite of," therefore it reads "Christian Culture does not equal following Jesus." The end.)

TheKempest.

I've written about my name before, but I was thinking about it some more tonight (as I was laying in bed, unable to sleep. Again.).

It all started last week when I (finally) got my Xbox 360 hooked up to Xbox Live, their internet service. On the console, you can choose a Gamertag. I chose TheKemp. The idea is that you then connect to Xbox Live and you can use the same name. Of course, when I chose TheKemp, I thought, "No one else in the world is named Kemp. There's no way this one will be taken."

It was.

Microsoft would not let me be "TheKemp" because there already was a "TheKemp" out there somewhere.

So I had to one up this "TheKemp." I would not allow him (or her. Who knows?) to take my name! My new Gamertag? TheKempest. I am much more Kemp than any other Kemp in the world. (Unfortunately, it looks like I'm trying to wordplay both my name and "tempest" like some middle schooler who acts like he's really good at Halo but really is quite mediocre.)

Which got me thinking: what does that mean? What does it mean to be more Kemp than anyone else in the world? Do I associate certain qualities as being Kemp and certain qualities as being unKemp (or unkempt. ha.)?

I know that my name does mean a lot to me. I'm glad that I can't easily find any other person on Facebook with the name of Kemp. I'm glad that when I meet people, I am the only way they can define the word. They have never known a Kemp before me and chances are that they will never know a Kemp after me. My self will never be separated from the word "Kemp" by other Kemps out there as the expecations of Michaels and Johns are.

(Side notes: I just wrote my name more than I ever have in my life. What a weird name! An M and a P right next to each other? Who decided to name their child that? What the heck...)

All this slightly disassociated narcissistic talk to come down to this point: God has a name. In Exodus 3, Moses is sent on a mission by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses falters several times in the conversation, but eventually asks, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?"

In the religions of the ancient near east, knowing a name gave you power over that person or force. Knowing my name gives you some power over me even still. At work, I freak out all the time when people pick my name off my name tag. I am immediately more friendly (mostly because I'm not sure if I really do know them or not). When people shout your name from across a crowded room, no matter how likely it is that there are others that share your name, you turn in that direction. Moses is sort of asking for that kind of power, only much more intense.

And the Creator of the Universe, Elohim, responds: "I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.'"

God's name is I Am. His very name speaks of existence. Pure, unadulterated, independent, noncontingent existence.

There is none of Descartes' famous, "I think..." before it. He just is.

Two thoughts out of this (both more or less half baked):
1. When we say "I am," are we using the Lord's name in vain? Are we willing ourselves into existence, as if that were possible? Are we, through the very nature of our own language, calling God from across the room every time we say something about ourselves? Does God turn his head attentively only to find out we were talking to the other "I Am" in the room? (P.S. There is no other I Am.)

2. (This one's even less baked...) Does our existence cry the name of God? If he is existence and being, then we, through our contingent being constantly call attention back to the one without whom we would not exist. Through this (obnoxiously deep, convoluted, and) philosophical lens, it makes sense that the purpose of human life is to glorify God. We are, after all, merely borrowing from his existence...

3. (I know I said two, but then I reread the top and this point has to be made at least a little...) What attributes are distinctly God's? As I was reflecting on what made me the "Kempest" of all the Kemps, what makes I AM the most I AMest of all the I ams?

This question is, of course, answereable (at least a little) through a good theology book, but it does merit more thought.

Later.

P.S. Fun idea to try with your friends! Take the ideas from my reflection on my name earlier in this entry and think about how God feels in the same situation. Good times.

Why I'm not all about player agency.

I have a problem.

I want to be a video game designer, but I don't always agree with how the industry and culture is moving, behaving, and expecting, especially when it comes to story and narrative design.

You see, 0ne of the fancy shmancy terms tossed around by game designers from time to time is "player agency." It is the idea that the player is in control of the story. Games like Oblivion or Grand Theft Auto put quite a lot of agency into the hands of the player - their stories are mostly optional, discovered through what missions the player chooses and how they complete them. These games take pride in the agency of the player - the ability for the player to determine the course of the story. These games stand in stark contrast to many role playing games like the Final Fantasy series, where the story unfolds in a linear fashion and the player makes limited decisions that don't really affect the outcome of the characters' actions.

Popular opinion in the video game industry is to put more and more power in the hands of the players - let them make their own stories. In this camp, the role of the designer is to create an interesting world and starting conditions for the player's own creative expression. The player is free to participate in the telling of the story by telling it how they want it told. They determine protagonist, antagonist, conflict, desire, obstacle - everything. Through this, players can compare notes (stories) revolving around the question, "What did you do?" or "How did you get past that boss?"

But are players ever going to really interact with the game in a meaningful way? Will they be changed by the stories they tell in the same way that an audience is changed in other media?

I don't think so. I tend to think that players, when left to their own devices, are highly unlikely to tell a story of nuance, meaning, and thematic significance, no matter the tools they are given.

So why the obsession with player agency? Why do we buck so much the hand of a good designer/storyteller?

More personally, why am I so comfortable with it? My favorite games are ones in which I am a participant in a larger story - games where I assume the role of a character, rather than creating one myself. These games, through their gameplay (to a small extent) and their story, create meaning, thought, and, ultimately, change in how I view the world. (Drop everything you're doing and play Final Fantasy Tactics all the way through - you'll understand what I mean.)

Perhaps it all comes down to theology.

I think a large part of my struggle is that I have little problem trusting someone else to tell my story. I submit myself daily to the story that God is telling, to following his son with my life, and to the wonderful power of his themes and signficance. I have no problem believing that someone behind the scenes knows more than I do and has something to teach me.

Maybe running to player agency is really just a small part of the rebellion coming out in a new way - people trying to control their own lives and tell their own stories, and meaning nothing in the process.

Now before anyone reads this and gets all upitty about some judgmental Christian banter and blah-blah-blah, I'm not writing this to condemn the idea of player agency or to suggest that those who hold to that narrative theory are rebels, sinners, and godless fools. Rather, I write it to defend my own instinct toward authorial control.

If video games can be (and are) a powerful and somewhat accurate metaphor for life, then just as I believe there is a Designer of the world who arranges things for meaning and purpose for our good, so too I believe a human designer can inject some of that meaning and purpose for the good of his characters and players. Just as we as humans find life most fulfilling while following Jesus, I think it can be apt that players will find a well designed game most fulfilling when they follow the plan (or story or whatever) of the designer.

As with so many of my ideas, I'm not sure if everything came through effectively, so I'll summarize as simply as I can: If life has a designer who has a plan that we should follow, why shouldn't video games?

(Inspiration for this post brought to you by The Brainy Gamer. Read the comments and follow links. There's good times in there.)

Dreams.

It's 3:00 am. I can't sleep. But I can't stop dreaming.

One thing that I haven't (but at the same time, have) been doing a lot of is dreaming. I've spent the past few years dreaming of who I want to become, but not much dreaming about what I want to do - specific things that I want to accomplish at some point in my life.

As I'm laying here, trying every way I know how to get to sleep, ideas of "doings" have come into my brainplaces and I might as well write them down. Some of these are definites, some are maybes, some are "it'd be kinda cool if's," but they're all dreams of things I want to do in my life.

• Live of off 60% of my income. That would leave 10% to church, 10% to short term, emergency fund type savings, 10% to long term type savings (retirement, kids college, etc.), and 10% just to give away at some point (in small or large doses, depending on God).
• Lead a small group of middle school or high school boys.
  
• Be a part of a professional video game - enough to get me on the credits.
• To be credited as a writer on some sort of art, be it film, TV, novel, video game, etc...
• At some point, to work with my wife in the sense of a job.
• To own my own small company for side projects (works well with the previous idea).
  
• Write a book (about what, I haven't the foggiest, but it'd be cool).
  
• Live the somewhat urban life.
• Live a somewhat rural life.
• Have a spiritual retreat weekend.
• Get married to the love of my life.
• Sing a solo in a musical. Maybe not a lead part, but that one character who shows up in Act 2 as being really important who gets a song or two to themselves.
  
• Institute some non-cheesy rites of passage for my son.
• Write a story that gets adapted to multiple media.
• Have best friends and hang out with them frequently as I have a family and as my children grow up.
• Assemble a team of some of the best people I know to accomplish something. (In other words, to have an excuse to bring together the talented people I've known over the years (and will continue to meet) for one (or two, or three) awesome project.)
• Build a dream house someday on some property with a good deal of woods.
• Own two dogs. At the same time.
  
• Have a Japanese themed kitchen, complete with tea set, bamboo placemats, chop sticks, and plates.
• Give away a car.
• Speak at a camp. (Like church camp.)
  
• Speak at a conference. (Like GDC.)
• Take a homeless man out to dinner.
• Write a certain number of words per day. (Starting small...)
  
• Meet with someone further behind me in their journey once a week. Buy them coffee.
• Meet with someone further ahead of me in their journey once a week. Let them buy me coffee sometimes.
• Be an above average dancer. Especially with my wife.
  
• Be an okay swordsman (i.e. learn to fence; not the creepy-foam-swords-in-a-park-on-Thursdays kind of swordsman.)
• 
  

I might edit this in the next few minutes as I get more ideas, but I'm gonna go ahead and post now anyway.

Man, I wish I could sleep.

God is really heavy.

So I'm reading Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. It's been on my reading list for a full year and I've finally gotten to it. It's like Rob Bell's basic theology book.

Here's a thought that's getting to me.

In Movement (chapter) 3, he talks a bit about missions. So often, when we talk about missions, we say that we are "bringing Jesus to" China or Africa or Chicago or the film industry.

But Bell reminds his readers that God is, in fact, everywhere. There is no place that he is not present. It is the awareness of his presence that changes from place to place and person to person.

The duty of the missionary then, is not to force Jesus onto a people, but to show them where he is already active and moving. What are the true things that are happening in the place? Are people laughing? Are there crops growing? Is there, in a word, goodness? If so, then God is there. He must merely be seen more clearly. He must be named. Just as Paul does at the Areopagus (a way cooler name than Mars Hill, in my opinion...), we can point to things already around us (like poets, philosophers, prophets) and say that they have it somewhat right. But there is a higher reality. It all comes from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - the God who revealed himself through Jesus the Messiah and the Bible.

So, Bell suggests, a missionary is perhaps better called a tour guide - one who can see God in the everyday. Someone who can see the Lord working in the most unlikely places.

In my own life, I am finally at a place where I am not surrounded by Christians - my job. It's not as hostile of an environment as I expect in the game industry, but I do not see people coming to work with their Bibles... How do I show them Jesus? How do I make disciples?

The suggestion that our job as "missionaries" (or evangelists or Jesus-networkers [I just made that one up]) is merely to see God already at work, point to it, and call it out appeals to me.

But it is a challenge. A change in how I look at the world. Sadly, even as a believer, I don't have the eyes to see God's movement in any but the most obvious and powerful places.

But Rob Bell might be right. If we see ourselves carrying God from one place (Cornerstone/my life/my church) to another (my job/my career/the streets/the bar down the road), we will undoubtably get exhausted.

God is really heavy.