Postmodernism
The prevailing worldview of the day among those who lead our society is clearly secular humanism. They view man as the greatest result of billions of years of evolution and random chance and all knowledge is based in what man can reason in his own mind or observe scientifically. This is what leads to a breakdown of Western culture in areas like sexual immorality, belief in God, treatment of our fellow man, and other similar moral issues. However, not everyone buys into secular humanism completely. No, what the secular humanists need (and what they have developed) is an army of people defending them from questioning. These people are the postmodernists.
Postmodern thought is based in three key principles:
- A commitment to relativism (all truth is relative to the individual)
- An opposition to rationalism (we can’t know anything)
- The promotion of culturally created realities (experience trumps fact)
Basically, postmodernism is the belief that truth is up to each individual. It is this worldview that has spawned the tolerance movement. You don’t have to be homosexual to defend homosexuality; you just have to buy into the idea that if two people feel like they love each other, that’s all the moral justification they need (so long as those two people aren’t an adult and a child according to most postmodernists, but that inconsistency is beside the point). You don’t have to be an atheist to stand with them, you just need to see why it’s important that Christians don’t spread their “hate” on other people. You see, it’s postmodernism that is doing the most damage among young people in the church. They might still cling to their faith, but they’re not going to do anything about it because, after all, it’s just their own personal truth.
Aside from the fact that there is no explanation for the existence of confirmed absolute truths, the biggest problem with postmodernism is that it is cowardly. It refuses to answer questions by pretending they don’t matter, even though their assertions demand that those questions be asked. Here are a few examples of what I’m talking about.
Postmodernists say, “It doesn’t matter if you believe in a god or not, it’s about what makes you feel a spiritual connection.” This simple side-step of the greatest question man will ever face is one that millions of people in America buy into. Some people believe in God and that makes them feel good, but others don’t so the two groups shouldn’t be confrontational about it, they say. Unfortunately, they’re forgetting one fact: it can’t be both ways. There is no possible way that an all-powerful Creator exists because one person believes He does and doesn’t exist because the next guy doesn’t believe in Him. So, the first question they’re dodging is simply, “Is there a God?”
Second, postmodernists like to point out that Christians Muslims, Judaists, and adherents of various Eastern religions all have different gods, so there’s no point in being dogmatic about doctrine. Sure, the Muslim and the Christian have opposing worldviews, but both believe in some kind of god so that should be enough, right? Wrong (as you might have guessed). It’s entirely possible (theoretically speaking) that every religion is wrong and not worthy of our debate and dogmatism. Therefore, it’s possible for every religion to be equally invalid. What’s not possible in any sense is for every religion to be equally valid. Only one can be true. Postmodernists don’t care about this, they only care about maintaining non-confrontation between confrontational beliefs. They refuse to answer this question: “If there is a God, has He spoken to us in any specific form, or can we interpret His will in our own ways?”
Finally, postmodernists would have you believe that morals are subject to cultural or even regional interpretation and that there are no set morals. This is why you hear people fighting against homosexuality with the argument “It’s 2014, we have to learn to accept this now.” If something is morally acceptable, the date on the calendar should have nothing to do with whether or not we approve of it. Sadly, they even use the same argument for racism. “There’s no place for that in this day and age.” There’s never been any place for discrimination based on skin color… unless you’re a postmodernist. It’s this view of morality that leads them to defending homosexuality on the grounds of arguments like “love is love” and “who are we to say it’s wrong for two people to marry each other?” Abortion is accepted because “Even though I would never do it, it’s her body and her choice to make.” What postmodernists refuse to answer about morality is this: “If morals come from individual interpretation, who are we to say that any action is morally wrong?”
When you peel away all of the self-assurance of postmodernism and get down to the core, what the worldview really says is that what you believe doesn’t matter. That’s where the secular humanists come back into the picture. They use postmodernists to defend every immoral thing they do by making them recite the old “Who are we to say…” line, but at the same time they use them to only tolerate allowable opinion. “You want to believe in God? Fine, but you’re scientifically backward. You want to believe in the Bible? Ok, but don’t ever bring up the parts that actually teach that we need to change.” Postmodernism was born out of contradiction and logical impossibilities, but the postmodernists developed by modern education and the godless culture around us refuse to see that.
In their efforts to position themselves as more loving, tolerant, accepting, and even as smarter than those around them, postmodernists have only made themselves a pawn in the game for secular humanists, and that’s exactly how the morality of our country and the Western world are being brought down. It’s time we as the church challenge them and make them answer these questions. Jesus never backed down from asking the hard questions people needed to hear in order to see the inconsistencies in their lives. It’s time we remind people that there is truth, you can know it, and no matter how hard you try you can’t ignore it. We live in a Romans 1 world of immorality, and so we would do well to keep the reminder of Romans 1:16 ever before us: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation…”