Globalization and Postmodernism’s Impact on Asian Emigration
-
Have
Affluent Christians Lost their Way in The World?
Chai
Kee Wong
Principal Corporate Psychologist, CPS Consultants Inc,
Published
in Global Missiology, Contextualization, April 2004, www.globalmissiology.net
Rise of Globalization and the
Spiritual Implications of Emigration
Globalization in Collusion
with Postmodernism in Re-Making Emigration
Globalized Emigration – the
“Talent-Hunt” Driver
Globalized Emigration – the Postmodernized Christian’s Dualistic Discipleship
Globalized Emigration – the
“Lifestyle” Driver
Globalization and
Postmodernism’s Marginalization of Mission
Rise of Globalization and the
Spiritual Implications of Emigration
“Christian mission is about going to
a poorer country. Christian migration is
about going to a better country. Being
called and being driven are sending affluent Christians in opposite
directions.”
With this stern indictment by a
Yet we may wonder whether the
deacon’s charge is a tad too harsh.
After all, emigration in itself is an age-old phenomenon – stretching as
far back as the times of Abraham, and spreading for reasons as old as fleeing
from oppression (Moses and company), fleeing from threat of certain death
(Jacob), dreaming for the land of hope and glory (emigrants to America), and
leaving then impoverished early-20th-Century China to start a new
life as a cook in the thriving seaport of Singapore (my father). How can emigration be anything more than a
matter of circumstance? How can it assume
a spiritual dimension?
We posit that the rise of
globalization has turned emigration into a serious spiritual issue - by
changing its face and pace. Nowadays
people are not leaving just because times and tide are bad in their country but
also because fads and fashion are better elsewhere. Emigration now has as much to do with
lifestyle as with economic choice. Even
in the economic realm, people in today’s globalized world emigrate not just to
eke out a living; their feet also march to the hymn of the global battle for talent. In the lifestyle realm, people are being
sucked into the postmodernized search for the elixir
of life. The Christian implications of
these two new developments must be reckoned with.
With the irreversible, if not
irresistible, tide of globalization, 21st-century emigration
confronts Christians with a devotional issue that has discomforting
ramifications. The ease to emigrate
raises soul-searching questions: Shouldn’t and couldn’t Christians rise above
the global trend? Or have Christians
abdicated and thoughtlessly let globalization push and pull them about like it
does everyone else? This article probes
these issues to Asian Christians – a global phenomenon seen in Asian emigration
to the West, especially among the Christian middle-class and professionals in
Asian cities (in particular, my talent-rich affluent city-state
This commentary goes beyond whether
the Christian should savor or savage globalization. Both press and people are hot about it or
hoot against it3. This
is understandable - the growing wave of globalization has swept into everyone’s
life; while some countries have learnt to ride on it, others have felt the
brunt of it. Even without taking sides,
recognizing globalization’s catalytic impact on emigration makes a Christian
response imperative – since Christians are mandated to follow the biblical
calling, “Do not be conformed to this world.” 4
Globalization
in Collusion with Postmodernism in Re-Making Emigration
As depicted by New York Times
journalist Thomas Friedman (1999), globalization has produced a “world without
walls.” So while we still cannot choose
where we were born, we now have a smorgasbord of choices as to where we live
and die. This is especially so for the
professional and the prosperous. As
contemporary Christians, we are far from the cloistered countryside of J.R.R.
Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, to whom the thought of leaving English shores probably
never crossed their minds (though their minds had traveled long and far).
In our globalized world the Christian
professional and middle class could go anywhere their talents lead them. My thesis is that professional and
middle-class Christians have let the borderless world lure them to places
everybody wants to go. This phenomenon
balloons when we find globalization and postmodernism juxtaposed as mutual reinforcers.
In the case of emigration,
postmodernism and globalization form an unholy alliance. We may call this combined potion globalized
postmodernism, for the extended reach that globalization gives to
postmodernism; or postmodernized globalization, for
the hedonistic depth postmodernism extends to economic globalization5.
This potent potion serves a double whammy for Christians – providing a
convenient channel for effecting compromise with no compunction.
With globalization Christians may
unwittingly or unashamedly slide into the cesspool of postmodernism. Globalization is an efficient server of postmodernistic longings – a Trojan-horse giving
postmodernism entry into the Christian psyche still publicly chary of gaining
the whole world and losing its own soul.
Pandering to postmodernistic leanings makes
Christians feel guilty. Giving in to
globalization becomes acceptable because it is deemed inevitable - because it’s
not something the Christian, or for that matter anyone, can do anything about -
so toots the conventional wisdom. With
global talent migration mushrooming, Christians who emigrate can tell
themselves and fellow-believers that they are merely doing the practical, if
not inevitable, thing.
With the overarching reach of
globalization in moving the prosperous and the professional across the
borderless world, postmodernism has finally leeched into Christians in the
openness of daylight. No longer is there
a need for backdoor entry in the stealth of the night. Middle-class and professional Christians
emigrating with no sense of calling can now do so with a diminished sense of
guilt.
Affluent Christians’ implicit
acceptance of postmodernistic consumerism has led
them to uncritically embrace the globalization of emigration. It becomes nothing more than another great
economic opportunity with no grave spiritual consequences. This is an assumption that needs to be
challenged. Christians who side-step the
spiritual side of global emigration do so at their own peril.
We shall now examine how two key
drivers of global emigration have seduced the highly mobile Christian
middle-class professionals. The first is
the global hunt for talents – a hunt that is leaving no stone unturned. The second key driver is the global postmodernistic craving after lifestyle choices – with
emigration merely one, albeit a major one, of the countless lifestyle choices
blasting the Christian in an omni-media world wired
on postmodernistic current.
Globalized
Emigration – the “Talent-Hunt” Driver
In dissecting the power the
“talent-hunt” driver has over Christian professionals in today’s globalized
world, we need to trace how the talent factor has magnified over time. While the talent factor is not new, its past
impact was confined to the visionary few.
At an anniversary dinner for McGill
University in 1882, Professor William Osler, widely lauded as the greatest
physician of his time and perhaps of all time, proposed a toast in global-speak
about the need to hire the ablest men possible.
Eventually enticed to
The difference 120 years make is
that globalization has taken this talent hunt beyond the uncommon foresight of
a 19th-century don to the current frenetic heights worldwide. Top dollars and promise of endless adulation
scramble after top talents and people with promise – be it in the field of
sports, finance or stem-cell research.
The global frenzy for talent gives
emigration a middle-class stamp since the lower classes’ economic contribution
is regarded as labor, not talent.
Developed countries export low-end jobs to countries with cheap labor
(the current emotive issue of global outsourcing), while importing talents for
high-end jobs. With middle-class
Christians being overly represented in the category of professionals, this
contagious frenzy makes an incipient, if not already embedded, inroad into the
very middle-class churches in Asian cities.
Has this global valuation of talent made Christian professionals behave
just like every other professional? And
with globalization, are they becoming like everyone else in the marketplace of
talents faster?
As a major hub in
Our review reveals ominous signs
that migration is preceding mission – even though the Sunday-speak in Singapore
churches is that mission must supercede all our
moves, including migratory move. Instead
of going where we ought to go, my baby-boomer Christian generation in
This postmodernistic
danger for Christians is exemplified by Harold Geneen,
the late all-powerful corporate builder of the once-behemoth ITT. Geneen called
himself a “hired gun.” And he advised
all to behave like hired guns (1997: 49) – if they want to be noticed and be
taken seriously (as he himself was eminently recognized with a TIME magazine
cover of
According to Geneen,
“the hired gun has an independent spirit, born of self-confidence. He disdains waiting games with uncertain
outcomes. He insists on taking charge of
his life, and he knows exactly where he wants to go….the hired gun can move
from company to company” (1997: 49) Transported to the global stage, hired
guns can now move from country to country.
Christian professionals who become such a driven sharp-shooting hired
gun will aim for the next great offer in the global hunt for hired guns –
another instance of the unremitting potency of the globalization-postmodernism
partnership.
What Geneen
advocated has already reared its ugly head in Asian cities: young talents are
posting premium prices as hired guns. A
recent news feature in
Ms Nusantara, a senior advertising
accounts manager in
To complete her global picture of
economic emigration, her parents are in
In a postmodernistic
age characterized by the catch-phrases “every head has its price” and “we are
all just a piece of meat,” at what price would a Christian rent his prized head
and sell his premium “meat”?
Ms Nusantara’s brazen and impish
self-promotion should make Christians re-view how careerism infects
migratory motive: Are Christians merely
another statistic in this global trend in emigration? Should Christians be merely a part, or
marvelously apart from, this globalizing trend in emigration? Is mission the prime mover for leaving or staying? Or is mission merely a follow-up tag to
migration?
Plainly, the crux of Christian
emigration is whether God is marginalized.
Instead of going (or staying) where the Lord wants us to serve, we
choose the location, then ask God how He wants us to
serve. The paradigm has shifted from
“God sends, I go” to “Go for it.” “Your Kingdom come, Your
will be done” is displaced by “The world beckons, where’s the highest bid for
my talent?” This is a clear case of
globalization creating the opportunity and postmodernism fueling the drive.
Globalized
Emigration – the Postmodernized Christian’s Dualistic
Discipleship
It is disturbing if Christian
professionals simply go where the economic pull is strongest. This tragedy is exacerbated when they then
rationalize their decision by calling it a tent-making mission when mission is
only an after-thought and a by-product.
Tom Sine sees this “after-thought
and by-product” mode of decision-making as a consequence of our buying into
what he calls “the dualistic discipleship model.” (1999: 155) He posits that most Western Christians unquestioningly
allow modern culture to arrange the furniture of their lives. First allegiance is reserved for “decisions
about where we work, live, and rear our young; we permit modern culture, as
part of the deal, to define our notions of the good life and better future.”
(1999: 156)
On the other side of this dualism,
“following Christ is too often trivialized to “fifteen minutes in the morning
and two hours on Sunday.” (1999:
155) Postmodernistic
choices are about what the marketplace of jobs, housing, financial security and
children’s education offers. When
Christians allow such postmodernistic cherry-picking
to prevail, they marginalize Christian mission.
The main agenda for the western Christian is, in Sine’s terms, “getting
ahead in the job comes first, getting ahead in our living situations comes
first, getting our economic security comes first, getting our kids off to their
activities comes first,….and (italics mine) Jesus too.” (1999: 156)
The main motivation of the Asian
Christian professional to emigrate is about ensuring that getting into a better
country comes first. For the financially
secure Asian Christian, it’s about ensuring that getting into a country with a
better lifestyle comes first. And then
Jesus comes into the picture – as an after-thought, but perhaps even as an
insurance booster. To paraphrase the
words of Shakespeare, the Christian emigrant may then make assurance
double-sure by asking God to prepare the migratory path before he treads.
Sine’s dualistic discipleship model
would indict Christians engaged in talent-driven or lifestyle-triggered
emigration. As “talent” emigration is to
the younger-set professional, so “lifestyle” emigration is to the retiring
rich. If retirement-planning is a
must-do in this era of longer life and better health for the well-heeled, then
looking for the best options in the global stage makes good if not godly
sense. It’s not narcissistic choice,
just economic sense. This
conscience-soothing form of rationalizing releases the Christian from guilt that
comes with pressing forth self-interest and putting aside Christian mission.
Globalized
Emigration – the “Lifestyle” Driver
“You’ve just come back from
Thinking that I have migrated and
surprised to see me back in
“You won’t get the same VP position
in
“Who says I’m going there for
another corporate climb. Once my
property investments here, unfortunately made at the peak of the boom, break even,
I’ll head straight for the first country that greeted the new millennium. That’s my dream retirement.” He has done his geography homework.
Just when there is a graying of the
West, middle-class and professional Asians are moving to gray in the West. The paradise found of the well-earned
retirement is as tempting to Christians as to non-Christians. When the sought-after
Like the man Jesus reprimanded for
being concerned about burying the dead (Lk. 9:
59-60), we have turned our eyes upon things other than the Cross - on making a
bed of roses for ourselves before we are buried, or on securing the future bed
our children would need after we are buried.
And the things of earth have grown far from strangely dim, indeed becoming
much too close for spiritual comfort.
When we subscribe to the hip line
“Don’t just make a living, have a life,” we are not really seeking the essence
of life, just the elixir of life – balm to soothe our stress, botox jabs to smoothen the wrinkles, a preferred lifestyle
to re-create paradise lost. It is postmodernistic culture of advanced consumer capitalism -
presented as a full spectrum of choices open for us to cherry-pick as a
consumer. Hence we end up enacting postmodernistic emigration, which is about what is “good
for me” or “good for my family.” In
computer language we are making “being driven” the default mode for
decision-making on emigration and disabling the “being called” key.
John Piper (2003: 45-46) bemoans
this manner of living out one’s final years as a tragedy:
“I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider a story from the February 1998
edition of Reader’s Digest, which tells about a couple who ‘took early
retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and
she was 51. Now they live in
Switch from
This global dilation of the American
Dream is postmodernism globalized with no dilution.
Globalization
and Postmodernism’s Marginalization of Mission
Emigration used to be about people
leaving poverty and dire circumstances in their home country for the hope of a
better life in foreign shores. Push
factors compelled people to move abroad.
Globalization has created a new axis to emigration. Pull factors are a new motivation for
emigration. Emigration in a world without walls is now much more about the
economics of talent (the pull of better job prospects and career paths) and
about lifestyle choice (the much-hyped pull of having a life versus the
much-harpooned push of having to make a living).
The globalization of emigration has
changed the complexion of decision-making for Christians. The range of economic and lifestyle choices
has widened phenomenally. The globe is
up for grabs, the spoils are there for the
taking. Unprecedented opportunism
confronts Christians – especially middle-class Christian professionals, who are
not merely upwardly but also outwardly mobile.
The change in complexion must not,
however, be mistaken for any increased complexity in making a Christian
choice. The heart of the matter remains
the same: Does God feature centrally or peripherally in our decision-making? Or do we allay our guilt of self-interest and
take comfort that we bank only with God, only to end up handling all the
transactions? We may say God signs the
check, but we write the check and He may only be the second signatory.
The enticement to emigrate out of
self-interest is a strong and sustained force.
While jobs are increasingly outsourced to low-cost Asian countries,
Asian talents are being globally sourced into developed countries. Christians, hugely represented in the
professional classes, are a good catch.
Modern management avows, “Think
global, act local.” The postmodernistic personal mantra has inverted it to “Think
local, act global.” Local self-interest
being the preloaded software, Christian professionals act
globally – with their feet.
Abraham left the certain comfort of
home for the yet-to-be verified prospect of true greatness. Abraham emigrated because he received a
mission from God to go, and he obeyed.
In a postmodernized world, Christians emigrate
much like everyone else, in tandem with the global tide of opportunities.
We sing the hymn, “All the way my Saviour leads me…” but the migratory direction seems more
westward-ho than global. It is somewhat
strange that God’s leading has taken many Christians from the Asian metropolis
to
Perhaps the second part of that hymnal
line, “…what have I to ask besides?” is not so rhetorical after all. We need to ask whether it is really our Saviour or globalized postmodernism that is leading our
lives and forming our choices. We need
to decide to be launched on a life of mission or to pursue a preferred
lifestyle.
We have seen an emigration set-up
that is given new dimensions and pushed to new heights by globalization. In addition to desperate emigration for economic
survival, the prosperous and the professional can emigrate for a preferred
lifestyle or for a pristine career. In a
pre-globalized world, Christian mission was almost synonymous with leaving
creature comfort for tough terrains. In
today’s globalized world, Christian mission may mean staying put or being sent,
in order to serve God better; while postmodernistic
migration is about going somewhere that’s better, so as we satisfy our craving
to savor lifestyle comforts to the full.
In contrast to the lifestyle of postmodernized dualistic-discipleship Christians, we have
the sterlingly single-minded spirituality of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, Ajith Fernando
and a
There is the larger-than-life
example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who chose to stay in
Nazi-Germany to live out the cost of discipleship and to die a martyr. He could have left, and reasoned that he
would be more effective fighting the German church’s cause as an exile than as
an eventual prisoner. But he obeyed what
was to him the call to stay. He would
have had written more tomes of theology outside
Instead Bonhoeffer
asked “whether it is possible to advance a more exact definition of the place,
the locus, at which responsible life is realized. What is the place and what are the limits of
my responsibility? (pages 221-222)…..the calling is
the place at which the call of Christ is answered, the place at which a man
lives responsibly. Thus the task which
is appointed for me in my calling is a limited one, but at the same time the
responsibility to the call of Christ breaks through all limits? (1955: 223-224)” For Bonhoeffer the place was Hitler’s
For Christians in a globalized
world, it must not be any place nor need it be every place.
There is the stellar steadfastness
of Bible scholar Ajith Fernando, who found the
place in his ethnically divided homeland of
Fernando (2002: 26-27) sees his book
and sermon preparations actually deepened by the day-to-day frustrations of
identifying with the place and the people he serves. His preparation was once punctuated by six
hours at a police station spent in securing the release of two volunteers
mistaken for terrorists. His place was
the police station, reviewing his draft on Galatians while awaiting the
police’s review of his plea for the volunteers’ release. His modus operandi is to identify with
people in one place, consistently and persistently for over 20 years - not
popping in with soothing or challenging messages, only to hop out when trouble
stokes. He is a remarkable example of a
man who has stuck valiantly to his calling.
There is the contrarian exhortation
by a
In the old world, where you were
born was where you would live and die.
In the new world, increasing numbers will reach the cross-road of
deciding where they want to live out the rest of their life. The question is whether the choice is seduced
by postmodernistic nudges or prompted by Christian
calling.
The fundamental flaw with talent and
lifestyle-driven emigration is that other-directed narcissism has supplanted
inner-directed calling. Postmodernistic careerism and consumerism have sanitized
and sanctioned self-interest.
When driven by the talent hunt,
emigration signals that career aborts calling: “I go where the head-hunters pay
me – because it’s my life.” When driven
by lifestyle-craving, emigration signals that retirement terminates calling: “I
go where the pace and pleasures of life please me - because it’s the rest of my
life.” John Piper’s warning how not to
waste one’s life needs to be seriously heeded.
Another trenchant critic of
postmodernism, Os Guinness (1998: 243) asserts that calling neither starts with
self nor ends upon retirement: “As followers of Christ we are called to be
before we are called to do and our calling both to be and to do is fulfilled
only in being called to him.”
A renewed sense of Christian calling
is vital to stem the rising tide of globalized postmodernism. We must not let postmodernism transmute our
career and life decisions into the twin obsession with careerism and lifestyle. Christians need to guard against being transformed
by postmodernistic thought-form: we could so easily
become people who know “the price of everything” and “the value of
nothing.” Transformed by God’s renewal
of our mind, ceaselessly discerning the will of God will constantly keep us
from the push and pull of globalization.
The
Affluent Christians in Asian cities
will need to do a reality-check – on whether emigrating westward-ho shows that
they have lost their way in the world.
Acknowledgement: The author would like to thank
Mr. Kwan Fook Seng for his
spiritual support and substantive suggestions – and for being a kindred spirit
and my intellectual muse.
1. Postmodernism
takes on myriad meanings and forms. In
this critique, we use the
third of three
definitions given by Crouch (2000) – “advanced consumer capitalism.” –
elaborated as follows: “Third, postmodernism
is also used to refer loosely to advanced consumer capitalism, in which the
prevalence of choice has rendered everything level. Western consumers now find themselves in a
sea of options and choices. Everything is relativized
(my italics) in this setting—not so much by the claims of the marginalized or
even by a rigorous epistemological process but by your ability to choose
anything. Everything is open to you as a consumer.”
The “consumer is supreme” philosophy leads to the notion of
“customer satisfaction,” which in turn spawns a lifestyle of
self-gratification. Hence postmodernistic emigration is essentially
self-gratification.
Similarly, according to Fernando (2002: 21), “The postmodern
approach emphasizes the more subjective aspects of life – “my” feelings, “my”
preferences, and “my” instincts…Postmodern people are uncomfortable with
principles outside themselves governing their decisions and behavior.”
Postmodernism finds calling strange, preferring the appealing.
2. On Joseph Stiglitz’s point – see Endnote 3 below - about the extent
of people moving across borders, I take the view that this global phenomenon is
a picture-perfect portrayal of the professional and the prosperous – as
evidenced in Asian cities such as
3. This
veneration-vilification divide – between sustained
praise for globalization by
“the treasury secretary of the
4. Romans 12: 2
(English Standard Version): “Do not be conformed to this world, but be
transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what
is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” This verse urges the Christian to pitch
battle against globalized postmodernism.
5. The
expression “globalized postmodernism” suggests that postmodernism is given a
wider stage through globalization, which takes it across borders and makes
inroads into countries near and far and societies modern and traditional, as
epitomized by the global reach of Coca-Cola and in due time iPod. Much as “globalized postmodernism” is about
the extended reach of postmodernism, “postmodernized
globalization” is about the enhanced depth that postmodernism has given
economic globalization through embedding it in the sinews of individual
consumers. The global opportunities are
thus not merely attractive in themselves but become more subtly seductive
because of postmodernistic motivations.
6. Reported
under the headline “$3.4m price tag for becoming a citizen” in The Sunday
Times,
7. Piper’s
observation is easily verified through an internet search. Just type and click “Places to retire” on the
Google search engine, and you’ll see web-pages upon web-pages of suggestions,
including an article on “Deciding to retire abroad” posted on www.Bankrate.com
by Jenny C. McCune on September 3, 2002.
The website “CNNmoney” (www.money.cnn.com/best/bpretire)
has a regular segment on the best places to retire in.
Bliss, Michael. 1999. William
Osler: A Life in Medicine.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich.
1955. Ethics.
Crouch, Andy. 2000.
What Exactly is Postmodernism? Christianity
Today
(November 13) - as
posted in ChristianityToday.com on
Fernando, Ajith. 2002. Jesus
Driven Ministry.
Friedman, Thomas. 1999. The
Lexus and the Olive Tree.
Geneen, Harold. 1997. The Synergy Myth.
Guinness, Os. 1998. The
Call.
Piper, John. 2003. Don’t
Waste Your Life.
Sine, Tom. 1999. Mustard
Seed versus McWorld.
Stiglitz, Joseph. 2002. Globalization and Its Discontents.