Faith.In.Life
#Deconstruction
Post-Post Modernism
When I was in college, my philosophy classes introduced us to the cultural shift and philosophical concept of post-modernism. The Encyclopedia Brittanica defines Post Modernism as:
Postmodernism, in Western philosophy, a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and
economic power.
In that movement, you largely saw the question of “What is true?” Founded in the idea of what can be truly known? You heard expressions like you do you and you only live once that encouraged exploration by removing socially constructed boundaries. Yet, many now agree that we have now moved beyond Post-Modernism to Post-Post Modernism. The terminology is new enough that the Encyclopedia Brittanica doesn’t offer a definition yet, but one will find a few pervading definitions for this newest cultural shift we are a part of and currently experiencing. They include:
A rejection of absolute truth which begs a need to reconstruct our entire reality.
Exploration of a polarity of truths moving beyond subjectivism to an emphasis on the individual. One phrase that summarizes this idea well is moving from the classic Golden Rule, “Treat others as you would want to be treated,” to a ‘new’ Golden Rule, “Treat others as they want to be treated.
Another name for the current culture can be called Pseudo-Modernism. In this culture, the emphasis of the forward movement of culture falls on the individual to somehow challenge and change ongoing problem areas.
Critical Theory becomes an emphasis of post-post modernism. Critical Theory seeks to confront the social, historical, and ideological forces and structures that produce and constrain it
These cultural shifts and philosophical concepts help inform how a person will deconstruct their Christian belief system. There is even a shift to seeing Christianity so negatively that many have suggested that Christianity specifically needs to be done away with entirely. Philosphers and politicians alike in recent years have sought to do away with the Christian worldview only to desire to increase the visibility and practice of other religions. Some philosophers will couple all religions together akin to Karl Marx who called religion the opiate of the people, but in the West I have seen a shift to attacking Christianity apart from the other religions. The mindset has become so prevalent that I have seen a t-shirt that compares Jesus to Adolf Hitler suggesting they did the same types of things years apart from one another with the slogan “Same sh*t, different day.”
If, in fact, Christianity and specifically Evangelism is the problem, then people who might claim to practice the religion have an even bigger issue: They either have to reform their faith or deny it. I have spoken already at some length about what a healthy reformation might look like. Unfortunately, the reformation that is happening is going as far to say that not only are theological interpretations wrong, but the Bible (at certain parts) got it wrong. In this mindset set a person will state that the Bible does teach certain things like complementarianism, racism, or a certain type of sexuality. The argument then continues to say that the Bible did not teach what is true. Or, the other type of reformation that has happened more in Progressive Christian circles is to break down the meaning of words or phrases so that exceptions can be found to the rule. One sermon I heard from a Progressive Christian Pastor was around Jesus saying “I am the way, the truth, and the light, no one comes to the Father except through me” to mean “I am a way, a truth, and a light, and simply one option amongst many to God.”
With people who deny and deconstruct their faith, they will reject Christianity and then exchange it for another belief system. They will look to their systems to answer the main life questions. Oftentimes, though, the person who reforms and the person who deconstructs are a lot alike in allowing culture to define where they are going. Such a perspective though is constantly changing and trying to keep up with cultural shifts and what is popular.
Ultimately, we are asking the same question Pontius did to Jesus: “What is truth?” In our relativism and subjectivism leading to other people’s feelings determining how they will be treated, we create an infantile culture without any adult oversight. If we assume that something like Christianity / Evangelism is somehow the root of the problem, we deconstruct the faith based on a false premise. The false premise is that we assume that the purest form of Christianity / Evangelism is the reason we have arrived where we have which removes some of the simplest answers off the table. Just as I have said before, we tend to throw the baby (Christianity / Evangelism) with the bath water (the soiled version of them).
We must return to the Bible itself. When you look at what the Reformation did in the 1600s you see a large audience discontent with the way the Catholic Church had gone. I imagine that many lay people would have left the Catholic Church if it was not so associated with the state at that time, but we do not have many examples of true deconstructionists. We, do have the Reformers. The Reformers could have used the cultural construct of the time to challenge the Church, but they didn’t. They returned to the very words and truth of Scripture for the Bible to do the reforming. You might then say that from that we have far too many denominations of Christianity to count, so then you might ask which one is true? John Calvin simplified this idea, though, ever lifting up what he called the Essentials of the faith versus secondary matters. Or, to put it another way, sometimes you will hear that there are different lenses through which we interpret Scripture - but the Reformers went to Scripture to shape their lens. We must be willing to do the same.
Paul is very clear in his first letter to the Corinthian church when he says “I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by who you are being saved if you hold fast to the word I preached you - unless you believed in vain (1 Cor. 15:1-2).” The Gospel Paul preached “is not man’s gospel” and he didn’t “receive it from any man.” (Gal 1:11-12). Thus Paul could boldly proclaim “Eve if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed” (Gal 1:8) because “all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness…” (1st Tim 3:16).
I am convinced that the culture shift is not different from shifts in culture throughout history. The first one happened when Satan as the serpent deceived Adam and Eve asking “Did God truly say…” or, another way to put it, “What is truth?” The serpent said Adam and Eve could truly be God if they just ate of the forbidden fruit. In post-post modernism everything we have done to question the truth is very similar, and ultimately we place ourselves in the seat only God can fill. We lift ourselves to God's status telling everyone around us they must live by our rules or else. While my heart breaks over this current reality, it truly is a tale as old as time. Yet, what is equally true, is some time soon, very soon, God will make all things right and new. God will show us His truth and we will have to come face to face with the consequences we rightly deserve. And before you scream your truth and say that is unjust, well you have just done the very thing I am suggesting we do not do - take the place of God.