A Node in the Web of the Emerging Church

Kobayashi Maru and Mythical Relevance - Part 1

Posted Jan 28, 07:30 AM | 3 comments | by Editor | Link

Star Trek Movie 2009

By Virgil Vaduva:

“But we want to go to hell, if it is a hot place,” the Bano’o people of the French Camerouns assured the first Christian missionaries, for the Bano’o idea of a proper place after death is one which is always hot—never subject to chilling winds with accompanying sickness and suffering.¹ This kind of reaction from the Bano’o illustrates the near-impossible scenarios Christians encounter frequently when trying to be relevant in an ever-changing, and now a post-modern culture.

The Kobayashi Maru was such an impossible scenario in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan when Star Trek cadets were placed on the Kobayashi Maru test starship and were being presented with a no-win scenario, which would always result in an unwinnable situation or death.

This kind of a scenario particularly came to my mind during the recent conversation here regarding “the end of myth,” which can be problematic for this venue since “myth” (story or narrative) is often used by emergent Christians as a vehicle to bridge different cultures and generations.

One of my favorite books in my library is Eugene A. Nida’s Customs and Cultures, a very exciting read which every Christian should consider reading. Working through Nida’s book helped me put into perspective many of the things I have been pondering regarding the apparent inability of modern Christianity to be socially and culturally relevant. This new journey into Anthropology has helped me understand even more the need for conversation and openness especially between those who do not share the same skin color or religion.

Shame and Ontology

Struggles for social and cultural relevance in the lives of Christians are no doubt a more common occurrence today, especially since various modern means of communication allow myths to be exchanges and propagated more easily. We all want to have meaningful lives and struggle to be and matter and make a difference, yet we (or at least I) often find ourselves in no-win situations, unable to communicate, speak, share, listen and learn from others. Furthermore, the post-industrialized world is providing yet more and new challenges, leaving old ones unsolved and filling up our lives with the overwhelming sense that we are simply just happening; and with lives that are just happening, one is hard pressed to find coherence and some ontological relevance to our existence. Yes, yes, as Christians we know that God cares about us, we are aware of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, we profess faith (most of the time) yet essentially we are letting culture and society define us in the ontological sense, and as Alan Mann suggested, this leads directly to the “inability to maintain interpersonal relationships … and is linked to the post-industrialized phenomenon of chronic shame.”²

This brings to my mind another example given by Nida, where an elder in the Ngbaka church in northern Congo, who when confronted by American missionaries regarding the bare breasted women attending church, told missionaries that “we are not going to have our wives dressed like prostitutes.”³ You see, in the context of life in Congo at that time, only prostitutes would wear blouses because only they had the money to spend on fancy clothes to cover their breasts. It seems then, as Nida later suggests, that the tribes who wear little or no clothing “have no such sense of shame, but on the other hand, regard the wearing of clothes as being exceedingly peculiar.”⁴

Nida readily recognizes that when such people become Christians they do tend to put on clothing for instance, but they do not do so out of a sense of shame, rather out of obligation and respect for the foreign missionaries influencing their thinking; in essence they are rejecting the mythical narrative, their story, for the sake of acceptance: “Clothing provides social acceptance and a feeling of identification with the prestige-laden foreign culture, but it may or may not be a response to spiritual convictions.”⁵

Shame therefore gives birth to one’s new ontological sense while killing the old. In a Christian framework this is somewhat a positive thing, however modern Christianity has gradually grown out of touch with society and culture in that shame is hardly a motivator for change; instead it will often silence those in need of help rather than opening avenues for genuine help and conversation. Specifically those shamed by sin and error are instead often belittled by the more righteous members of the community, the majority. We have seen Jesus condemning this behavior and embracing the shame presented unabatedly by some of his followers: awareness and self-identification with their shame brought about their healing; it brought them further into Christ’s presence and embrace.

Now I do realize that this may be an overly simplistic approach to the problem of social and cultural relevance, however I am hoping it provides a good start and some insight and new possibilities for post-modern Christians seeking to repaint and reframe Christianity today, not by rejecting myth, but rather by embracing it.

This is part one of a three-part article:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

¹ Eugene A. Nida, Customs and Cultures, Harper & Row Publishers, New York and Evanston, p. 24
² Alam Mann, Atonement for a ‘sinless’ society, J. H. Haynes & Co. Ltd., Sparkford, p. 40
³ Eugene A. Nida, Customs and Cultures, Harper & Row Publishers, New York and Evanston, p. 1
⁴ Ibid. p. 90
⁵ Ibid. p. 91

Virgil Vaduva is the Dayton, Ohio, cohort coordinator. Originally from Romania, he grew up in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

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Welcome to the Reader's Forum

1Tom Sramek, Jr. 01/28/2009 11:38 PM

Just to be clear: the Kobayashi Maru was the name of the ship to be rescued (and the name of the scenario) NOT the name of the starship on whose simulated bridge the cadets were standing. Lets get our cultural references right…

2Virgil Vaduva 01/29/2009 12:51 AM

Tom, thanks for the correction. I am referring to the scenario which was hacked by Kirk (which will show up again in part 3 of the article), not to the test bridge there the exam actually took place.

The point is really about the impossibility of what we face as Christians when encountering various cultures and myths, and your comment makes a small but important distinction. :)

3Tom Sramek, Jr. 01/31/2009 05:38 AM

Virgil: Thanks. I was a little confused when you wrote (in the original post “cadets were placed on the Kobayashi Maru test starship”. My point was that the “test starship” was named, but it wasn’t the Kobayashi Maru.

In any case, your point is well taken: the choices we face as Christians in a multicultural world are never black and white (or good and evil).