There is no clear-cut definition for postmodernism, but it does seem to encompass two general facets of philosophy—1) that all ‘truth’ is relative to the individual, that it is, essentially, whatever you make of it, and 2) a strong focus on relationship, both to people and to the world and nature in general.  Listening to another political talk-show on the way back from New York last night, a connection clicked into place.

Politicians today are expert post-modernists in action.  To them all truth is relative, subject to the whims of whoever is strong enough to sculpt it and make their message heard to the populace.  Every single event is open for interpretation, and so the focus is not on finding out what happened but on putting a spin on the event that provides an advantage to one’s own party/organization/lobby group, etc.  The only real truth in politics is power—how to attain it, and how to keep it.  All else is relative to that.  There is no such thing as truth or lies—only political advantage gained from remaking events and history so that they favor oneself.  There is no such thing as good or evil—only people who serve as pawns to cast the politician in a favorable light.  There are no good or bad ethics—except where it serves the politician to point out one’s own good ethics and the poor ethics of one’s opponent.  Popularity is power, and politicians will do anything to gain that power and maintain it, whatever the cost.  There is no concern for the people supposedly being served.  There is only concern for one’s own political status.

This is the reason why we see so much mud-slinging on the political front.  Since the truth does not matter, the only important thing is to make sure that when the dust settles, your opponent looks worse than you do.  This is why so much of the information coming from Washington and other government sources is always cast with so much doubt—who can believe anything that comes from a politician when the only important thing to them is twisting the facts to cast themselves in the best possible light?  This is why so many people are so cynical about politicians—they know they are being manipulated, and so the only thing they can hope to do is to choose the ‘best’ of all the manipulators.  This is why so few politicians actually have plans for governing, and why those that do have plans cannot gain the cooperation to get them implemented—everyone is too busy playing the game of telling events as they want them to appear to actually make good and wise laws.  This is the game that is played with our government and with our country.  This is why we always feel have to choose the lesser of all evils when election day rolls around again.  Truth is whatever the politicians can make of it for their own advantage, only that advantage has left the rest of us with the messes they don’t want to admit to because it would sully their reputations and whatever political power they have gained.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to isolate this phenomenon to just one political party or another—they are all guilty of post-modernistic politics.  There are notable exceptions on both sides, of course, and we can only hope that those who approach politics with genuine honesty and integrity can have some influence on the rest.  I fear, though, that it is a losing battle, that all politicians will ultimately end up being dirty, rotten liars, that ultimately our nation will fall because our leaders are too busy twisting the facts to recognize real danger when it rears its ugly head.  The irony of all this is that in a democratic society such as ours, we are the ones who give the politicians power.  We are the ones who keep electing the same liars and manipulators to office, the ones who twist facts and events to suit their purposes.  What is more frustrating is that we can elect politicians who seem honest, only to find out they are no better than their counterparts.  The world of politics today is fraught with dishonest men, and finding the honest ones is becoming harder and harder to do.

This is why I believe we need more Christians in politics, not to push their religious agendas, but to restore a measure of honesty and integrity to the positions of power that guide our nation.  It’s not an easy job, but I have a deep respect for those few who can gain those seats, maintain their integrity, and wield power with wisdom, despite the overwhelming force of dishonesty that they face.  Pray for our leaders on a regular basis.  It’s a tough job they choose, and it is made at least somewhat easier by the support of people who care about bringing politics to a place of truth and integrity.

Truth. Well, sort of. Honestly, I think that all truth is actually very much black and white, and if it seems to be more of a gray issue, it is simply a demonstration of the limitations of human
knowledge and understanding. Some truths are really very basic, very cut-and-dried, things like, “Gravity is what holds me down,” and “If I touch this hot stove, I’ll get burned.” Others often seem to be purely black and white and end up looking more gray the closer the individual looks. The trouble is that so many things in life involve levels of complexity that quickly overwhelm the capacity of the human mind to process. Human behaviors may seem relatively
straightforward, and we may think we understand the motivation for why one does something, only to find out upon breaking the issue down that we really don’t understand it at all (or, at least, as much as we thought we did). Even the person involved in the behavior itself may not fully understand everything that goes into their own motivation, which is often, I believe, why there is so much confusion in so many people’s lives.

It is so very easy to fall into the trap of using stereotypes and generalizations as definitive answers for any topic or issue. The trouble is that they are only ever just guidelines, general statements of human behavior. People do A because of B. This group will react in such-and-such a way because of such-and-such motivations. There’s your black and white. The gray is examining individual motivations in said groups. Ultimately you will (typcially) find that every individual acted in a similar way for similar, yet different, reasons. And that is where you find that the strength of stereotypes and generalizations to describe behavior breaks down. The irony is that the generalization doesn’t actually generalize all that well. Every individual within the group proves to be the exception to the rule. People will judge an entire group based solely on a stereotype (e.g. “Christians are horrible people because they are so judgmental.”) without ever taking the time to learn and understand that so often the stereotype doesn’t
apply to nearly as many individuals as one might think. Stereotypes and generalizations do an adequate, though ultimately very limited, job of describing group behavior (though perhaps not the motivations behind said behavior) but do a less than adequate job of describing individual
behavior within said group (duh, right?). Clearly, the complexities of the human psyche make it seem as though the truth of the issue is an issue of grayness.

Limitations of knowledge and understanding can gray-out truth. Deliberate action to gray-out truth is an additional factor. There are some who feel threatened by truth. These are individuals who wish to live their lives in their own way and are only free to do so because the ‘truth’ of their lives is appropriately gray enough to let them interpret it however they see fit. These are
the sort who, as soon as an individual begins to try to make sense out of the grayness and move it more toward black-and-whiteness, are quick to try to discredit the individual or to introduce a new level of complexity to the issue in an effort to keep the issue within a
comfortable level of gray. In other words, they deliberately sabotage the effort to achieve understanding. In doing so, they are able to remain within their own comfort zone and continue living life as they see fit because, for them, truth is whatever you make of it.

Is it any wonder that our society is in the place in which we find it? Religion and politics are topics in which it seems nearly impossible to know what is true because such things as debates about semantics, character defamations, complex contributors to situations and behaviors get in the way of making sense out of the gray. Science, as well, often ends up in the realm of the gray, with one study proving a finding where another study disproves the same finding. And in all places, personal and political motivations muddy the waters appropriately so that it seems that the truth can never be truly known, only guessed at, only interpreted, only approximated. Postmodernism, political correctness, and ‘tolerance’ are the results, a dwelling in the land of the gray with black-and-white, clear-cut truth little more than a pipe dream to those who wish to know it.

Well, Liz requested my thoughts on knowing when to speak up for your beliefs in a post-modern world, so here goes. (Liz, let me know if I’ve addressed your comment adequately.)

It’s true. It really is hard sometimes to know when to speak up in a post-modern world and when to just keep your mouth shut. So much of our culture today is driven by a philosophy of
non-offensiveness that squarely speaking your mind can often put you in a position of scorn and ridicule by your peers.

In addressing the post-modern culture, there are a couple of things we always have to be aware of, things that we recognize and with which we have to deal. We have to understand that, in general, there are two separate groups of post-moderns—the group that is composed of professing Christians and the group that is composed of unbelievers. Knowing to which group the individual or individuals with which you are conversing belongs greatly affects the approach you want to take in declaring and defending your beliefs. With the Christian group, you are able to cut a few more corners, take a more direct route to your personal statements of faith, and speak from a greater pool of common ground and understanding. With the unbelieving group, you will typically have to take more time to lay out the basic tenets of your beliefs before you can talk about the beliefs themselves, to clarify the assumptions and presuppositions that are
generally taken for granted in the Christian faith, to establish a level playing field where (hopefully) everyone understands the logical and philosophical starting point of everyone else. Of course, as I have entered in many more conversations recently with believer and unbeliever alike, I have come to understand that this simplistic demarcation is much more blurred than it once was. We are required to explicitly define our terms so that, even if we disagree with the other’s starting point, we at least understand where the other begins his logical and philosophical train of thought.  And even so, it is not always appropriate to speak one’s mind.

Allow me to lay out my personal approach to speaking up and to speaking out about my beliefs. This has come from many experiences, both good and bad, and I am constantly checking myself to make sure I am acting in a way that is beneficial, uplifting, and constructive to all. The rule by which I live is this—I simply wait for the appropriate opportunity to speak. Sometimes I succeed at this; sometimes I do not. As I said before, sometimes it really is difficult to know when to speak up for what you believe in. There are many factors that I take into consideration when determining if the time is right for me to say my bit. A large portion of this consideration is in determining the frame of mind of my target audience. Some topics, just by the mere mention, will fire up certain individuals into a blind rage and passion of debate that makes a lot of noise but ultimately ends up going nowhere. Those are the sorts of discussions that I try to avoid because no matter what I say or how well I phrase my own arguments, ultimately it will amount
to little more than an itch that, once scratched, goes away and is immediately forgotten. The sorts of people with whom I am really most interested in conversing are those who are genuinely open to honest discussion, who have their own opinions and stances but who are
receptive to other opinions and who are willing to recognize that they, too, are human and fallible and who desire to correct any flaws in their own logic that may exist. Those are people to whom I am most willing to open my own heart and mind, to share what I believe and why, from whom I am most willing to accept constructive criticism and challenge of my beliefs and to whom I am most willing to reciprocate in kind. Those are the sorts of people who have helped me grow the most over the years. We may end up still disagreeing on what we believe and why, but in the process we have had an exchange of ideas and of relationship that leaves everyone changed, often for the better.

It’s difficult to converse with the post-modern who holds certain core values and beliefs to be in flux due to a lack of absolutes, but it is indeed possible through the clear explanation of personal values and beliefs and through humble and open dialogue between peers. When do I choose to speak my mind? When I feel my audience is open and receptive to my ideas. Sometimes I
end up in a debate that ends in a waste of time, but sometimes I don’t, and I leave the discourse feeling as though something truly great has happened.

[Why is it that I always come up with my best thoughts when I’m driving down the road, listening to jazz, away from any venue where I could possibly actually record my thoughts as they come to me? I really ought to find my mini-recorder and keep it in the Explorer with me….]

I recently just finished up a CD series of Donald Carson, who spoke this past winter at Cedarville University during the annual Staley Lectureship Series. He spoke on the emergent church movement and integration of postmodernism into that movement. Something that he said really stuck out to me—postmodernism holds as one of its primary foundations the establishment of personal experience to determine truth. This method of finding ‘truth’ has crept into the church and influenced it in ways that I, personally, find somewhat alarming.

Something that has stuck in my craw for a few years now has finally been revealed to me, based upon this ‘revelation’. The worship times at Cedarville (during my five-year tenure there), especially the student-led times, often had a feeling of wrongness to them. A good friend of mine described it like this: “It was like they were ‘forcing’ us to worship, like they were saying, ‘Worship, dang it!’” This was in response to the call to worship, where the congregation was called to think on God, to think on all He has done for us, and to worship him with your heart, essentially with your feelings, your emotions. On the surface, this all sounded very good, but something still stuck out as being wrong about it. In reflection now, I see that this call to worship focused almost exclusively on the experience of God, little on the knowledge of Him and on His revealed truth through His Word. And the songs we sang, the worship choruses, were fantastic for building up emotion and describing the experience of God in our lives, but they also left me feeling theologically destitute, frequently neglecting words of Scripture, words of absolute truth to put all my experiences as a Christian, as a follower of Jehovah, into perspective in light of the Almighty One of Heaven, instead paving over them with poetic niceties. (Don’t get me wrong; I believe there is a place for this sort of worship, just not to exclusivity.) This is the wrongness that I perceived there, this almost single-minded focus on the experience, to the near-exclusion of the absolute and powerfully revealed truth of the Bible.

The weakness of this is that each individual interprets the same experience in a slightly different way, thereby gleaning a different version of the ‘truth’ than all the others. Truth suddenly becomes relative to the individual, based upon their own analysis of the experience in question. Multiple psychological studies have shown that people often define reality by their experiences, much more so in today’s world than in any other time in history. Their ideas of what is true and what is not is flavored by the circumstances they encounter each and every day. The trouble is, every single person encounters a different version of the ‘truth’ because of this approach. Of course, a postmodernist would probably now say that this all the more justification for their worldview, that nothing can ever be truly known because every person’s perspective is slightly different, that reality is constantly shifting for everyone because the only basis they have for ‘truth’ is their own experience of the world around them. They would even say that individual interpretation of the Bible as a standard for absolute truth is perpetually flawed and relative to personal experience because everyone is going to interpret the Bible according to the ways in which they perceive and experience the world. And yet, this is a flawed premise, in and of itself, for the Bible can be interpreted according to an unchanging standard and often be applied to a wide variety of circumstances and settings. All this is not to belittle the practicality of experience in determining truth. Paul himself, in many of his epistles to the early church, specifically encouraged the saints to test their faith against their own experiences and knowledge. But he also pointed them to Scripture, pointing out their sins and flaws, pointing them back to the path that leads to Christ. So, while experience is valuable for the testing of our faith and the working of our salvation, it cannot be held up exclusively as the only means for establishing truth because our own interpretations of experiences are frequently flawed and tainted by our finite sensory and cognitive capacities. The one source of truth that I am aware of that never changes (and has never changed over the centuries) is the Holy Scriptures, and while my own experiences help me understand this God that I love a little better and relate to my fellow man, they fall short of the true understanding of Him who I serve. Can I ever hope to know God and His truth fully? No. Not ever, for I am limited in my understanding, and I always, ever will be. But it is not enough to stop me from trying to learn more and understand more, from the only Source of true knowledge, for all the rest of my days. And I expect that I will often be wrong in my understanding. But I can frame my daily experiences within the context of the Word of God, and thereby gain truth and sanity and direction for my life.

So how does one live a holy and moral life when our society is so absolutely immersed in the immorality that the media so blatantly promotes?  It’s tough being a Christian in the midst of this, let alone a Christian married man, when every other TV commercial or show is all about half-naked (or even mostly naked) women (and latetly, even guys).  It’s on the TV, on the radio, on the Internet, and even in our email.  The message is being sent this is all ok, and since truth is such a relative or non-existent thing in our society, there’s really no base for a stance.  And it is our youth who are so vulnerable to this.  They are being brainwashed right out from under us.  It’s no wonder that they think so much differently than we do.

Now, we can fight against this at every avenue, and it is our Christian responsibility to do so and to promote biblical morals (old-fashioned as they may sound sometimes), but with all honesty, we probably are not going to do a whole lot to change things.  We are woefully outnumbered by the moderns and postmoderns who are submerged in their own despair.  As unrewarding and unsatisfying as it feels, the main area where we can find success in waging war against relativity and immorality is by training up the younger generation to think differently than the majority of their peers.  I thank God for His grace and my parents for their training that I think “old school,” with a sense of absolutes.  I can’t imagine just how confused I would be right now if the only truth I knew was the one I made for myself.  It would be so fluid and changing.  And so it is up to us to mold and train the younger generation to continue the battle with us and after us.