How should we respond to postmodernism?

If you tried to share Christ with me and I responded that I didn’t believe anything you said because I reject any claim on absolute truth or authority, how would you respond?

Basketball season starts this week for our children. Our whole family is very excited! Elizabeth (pictured here playing volleyball) will try for another championship year. Ben as a sophomore wants a spot on the boys varsity team and Savannah will be among the tallest on the middle school girls team.

The response above to evangelism is a classic postmodern viewpoint. Last week I sat in on a series of lectures which were part of my seminary class about postmodernism. It was taught right here in Budapest by Dr. Millard Erickson, perhaps the leading expert on postmodernism in the Christian world.

Pilate and Descarte: Modern day postmodernism can trace its roots all the way back to the Bible when Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). Other forerunners to postmodernism include Descartes. In 1618 while warming himself by a fire in a woodshed Descartes proclaimed, “I think therefore I am.” While perhaps not Descartes' intent, many point to that moment where authority for truth moved from something objective and outside of man (i.e., God) to man himself; man creates his own reality and truth.

Pilate the Postmodern: “What is truth?”

It is also helpful to examine the works of Kierkegaard, Kant, Nietzsche, even Schleiermacher and Tillich in order to better understand the postmodern mindset.

Today this philosophy that denies all absolute truth and authority pontificates its worldview proudly and reigns supreme on our college campuses. (Do you catch the irony there?)

Don’t abandon your posts! Yet ultimately postmodernism is self-refuting and cannot be lived out consistently in our physical world. In class we studied the writings of leading postmodern thinkers such as Michael Foucault, Richard Rorty, Stanley Fish and Jacques Derrida. With every one of these men there was a time that they resorted to non-postmodern tactics when challenged to defend their postmodernism; when the arrows started to fly, they abandoned their postmodern posts.

“Don’t tas (humiliate) me, bro!” For example, Richard Rorty said truth is whatever a particular community says it is (relativism) and that one of the highest expressions of humanity was not to humiliate others. But I guess Rorty felt that his viewpoint did not apply to Christians. While preaching tolerance, Rorty’s world “denies people who have religious sentiments a vehicle for its expression.” (for more on Rorty’s anti-theism see http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2005/72/swartz.html)

Richard Rorty

If you look at Richard Rorty’s biographical entry in Wikipedia.com (see the subtitle, “Rorty and his critics”) you will find that his rant against Christians displays no respect for the Christian community and that he seeks to humiliate us by calling us names that include, “bigots” “homophobic,” “intolerant,” “frightening,” “vicious” and “dangerous.”

As hurtful as those statements are, we as the world-wide Church of Christ must not dismiss postmodernism with a wave of the hand while clutching our Bibles with the other. Postmodernism is a movement that must be reckoned with. I believe that if we as Christians reject the temptation to adopt a fortress mentality and if we seek to humbly serve the postmoderns within our communities, then God’s love will shine through us. Ultimately, postmoderns will be won not by convincing arguments but by genuine humanity and the love of a redeemed heart.

It is a Person, not a philosophy: Christianity is not a philosophy or a psycho-babble fad. Christianity is rooted in history and based on a Person, not an idea or ethic. And our Lord said, “Go! Go into the entire world with the gospel.” Will we as Christians retreat further into our Christian subcultures or will we engage and serve the lost near us?

We had our first snow here in Budapest this past weekend!