Star Trek, Christ, and The True Transcultural Story

Today's podcast is also available in video format at:https://youtu.be/XsZRjC-EOLwWould a corporate ethics or emotional intelligence employee training course from a healthy American company work aboard a Klingon "Bird of Prey" ship in Star Trek? Probably not. (Don't worry, you don't have to be a Trekkie to understand the thought experiment in today's video!) That's because, whether we are aware of it or not, there is an assumed narrative structure in our culture that informs our ethical norms. But we bump up against a real problem in postmodernism with the claim that any transcultural, overarching guiding story is an attempt to colonize other cultures and that ethics can only be relativistic cultural guidelines . If this is true, would we every be able to say that particular ethical norms in the fictional Klingon or the ancient Spartan culture are wrong?In my last conversation with John Vervaeke and Paul VanderKlay, John brought up a sincere concern about Christianity as a force of cultural assimilation. To use Star Trek lingo, does Christianity function like the Borg? Or do we need to distinguish between Christendom and The Way of Jesus? #culturaltheology #theologyofculture #startrek #scienceandfaith If you find this podcast to be helpful and you want to see it continue ad-free, would you consider becoming a supporter on Patreon? Members of the Deep Talks Patreon Community receive bonus Q & A Episodes, articles, charts, discussion forums and more. We even have a MONTHLY Group Hangout on Zoom so you can build relationships with others across the world and practice theology and meaning-making together. Help us reach our first goal of 300 patrons in order to sustain weekly, ad-free theological and philosophical education to anyone with an internet connection! https://www.patreon.com/deeptalkstheologypodcast To Subscribe & Review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deep-talks-exploring-theology-and-meaning-making/id1401730159   Connect with Paul Anleitner on Twitter at:https://twitter.com/PaulAnleitner