What are the dangers of postmodernism?

In our culture it has become generally accepted that truth and morals are relative, that there are no objective or absolute truths and morals. All questions of right and wrong are seen as relative to the situation or to the culture or to each individual personal opinion. Since no one's opinion is more valuable than anyone else's, each of us must personally decide what is right and wrong - for us. To claim there are absolute truths about right and wrong is viewed as being intolerant, bigoted or judgmental - the three great "sins" of our postmodern secular culture.

Interestingly enough, those who take the "all truth is relative" approach, constantly find themselves having to make judgments about what is true, what is right and what is good. As they do this, they cannot help but judge other people with whom they disagree. With no absolute measuring stick about right and wrong, the ultimate result is moral chaos. (For where postmodernisrn is leading us, see chapter 12.)

But the Scripture speaks of, "them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth" (Rom. 2:8). Many such are to be found, who are by no means disposed to acknowledge their guilt, but rather challenge the foundations on which rests the very idea of being guilty before God. They assert on the contrary the innate goodness of all men, who are, so they say, always struggling upwards. Some of these contentious folk go so far as to deny all fixed standards of right and wrong. Good and evil are words of only relative force, since to them "good" is that which is approved by the most enlightened sections of humanity in any given age, and "evil" is that which their mind repudiates. It therefore follows that "right" and "wrong" are values which fluctuate according to the fashions of the age in matters of morality. The human mind is left the whole arbiter of such questions, and consequently the only guilt they know is that which may be incurred before men as the result of flouting the standards erected by the most enlightened and advanced amongst them. The utmost verdict that they can approve of is therefore, guilty before men.

Strange things have happened to truth over the last 100 years. This rebellious Western world has in general lost its belief in an absolute God, and hand-in-hand with this there has been a loss of belief in absolute truth. Truth has become relative - as man today sees everything: what is a truth for you may not be a truth for me. Not only does modern man not believe the same things as we do, but his whole way of thinking is different. We could have had an intelligent debate with a Victorian about an issue of spiritual importance and we may not have agreed, but at least we would have understood each other. But for many this is no longer the case - to many, truth itself no longer exists in any absolute sense.

Concerning right and wrong, the Christian does not cave in to secular humanist or postmodernist claims that there are no absolutes and that all truth is "relative" - that is, whatever is good for you is fine, and whatever is good for me is fine, too. Moral truth, in particular, is absolute because God has pronounced it so. The Ten Commandments are not the "ten suggestions." Not only do we need to learn God's commandments, but we also need His constant reminders of what is right and wrong because of our innate human capacity to be deceived, not only by other people but by Satan, who "masquerades as an angel of light" (2 Cor. 11: 14; see also Eph. 6:12).

A fourth category is reserved for those who are reluctant to commit to any particular worldview. They would prefer to pick and choose what they like about different worldviews and aren't much bothered if the ideas contradict each other. The only thing that counts is "what works for you." These people will say things like, "I don't believe any one system contains all truth." Whatever else this worldview is, it is relativistic, and it is often a big part of the thinking found in secular humanism and postmodernism, as well as the New Age movement.

Today Christians face many nonbiblical worldviews, which can be broken down into several categories: naturalism, pantheism, polytheism and a possible fourth category, relativism, which in a characteristically postmodern way wants to avoid the straitjacket of categories.

On this subject the speculations of men's minds are numerous in these days, but for the most part all such seem to me to proceed on principles which are exactly the reverse of the truth. There are in the main two distinct directions in which these speculations are found to run. In pursuance of the first of these men seek to lessen the importance of conscience by trying to make out that the knowledge of right and wrong is in us a mere matter of thought, because our judgment of what is right and what is wrong is entirely the result of education or of prejudice. This, when examined, resolves itself plainly into a denial that there is morality, or an abstract moral standard, and as a necessary consequence denies an absolute standard of morals, that is, denies God. It is well to look the full result in the face, and it would be far better for all if men in general did so, and spoke plainly out, so that all might know what is the true issue before them. Concealment is certainly not of "the truth," whether it is voluntary or involuntary, as far as man is concerned. If we are to deny God and morals, then we know what is before us, and must prepare to see the world deluged in violence and corruption, such as have in degree prevailed wherever the "reason" which teaches these doctrines has held sway, and that even of late years.

This for them means now doubt and enquiry, and a mixture of philosophy and knowledge with faith, that is, with Christ's word, which is the truth. Hence, as they have liberty for themselves, they must have it for others, that is, indifference. Hence, they say, a change is observable in the manner in which doctrines are stated and defended; it is no longer held sufficient to rest them on texts of scripture, one, two, or more, which contain or appear to contain similar words or ideas. That is, this divine standard of truth, "the inspired source of truth," to use their own words, has lost its authority. "They are connected more closely with our moral nature," i.e., we judge for ourselves of their truth and fitness — "extreme consequences are shunned, large allowances are made for the ignorance of mankind." They are wise, they suffer fools gladly.

355 Now I do not dispute this. But for him therefore, as "opposite parties existed in the apostolic Church," Protestants are no better than Roman Catholics; Calvinists, and Arminians, holders of eternal punishments and deniers of it, may equally find texts which seem to favour their respective tenets; truth is all a fancy, and no one "will impose any narrow rule of religious opinion on the ever varying rule of the human mind and Christian society." Now that this is going on no one with his eyes open can deny. But a more absolute negation of truth, indifference to it, or rather unconsciousness that there is a Christ in Christianity, or truth in scripture or anywhere else, it is impossible to believe. It is not indeed astonishing in one who holds that the use of scripture in the New Testament, sanctioned by our Lord and the apostles, is in probably no instance based on the original sense or context, and liable to error and perversion; so that, as to them it is true, that, "if we are permitted to apply scripture under the pretence of interpreting it, the language of scripture becomes only a mode of expressing the public feeling or opinion of our own day;" so that what Christ and the apostles taught is only such a public opinion of their day, for they, Mr. Jowett declares, did so apply scripture; yet declaring that "we have only to enlarge the meaning of scripture to apply it to the novelties and peculiarities of our own times," and that our Saviour would not refuse, if He were to come again now, thus to extend them, and that it is not unfair to use St. Paul's statements thus, and sanction the views of our day — it is not astonishing, I say, that one who blames the Lord and His apostles, so as to make their use of scripture no kind of guide to its meaning or purpose, but assumes full right to get at the truth by giving his own application, and to get freedom promised by Christ through it, that he should put Christ and all truth out of sight in a Christian world, look to politics governing it, and take indifference and no truth as his standard and his hope.

Every word in all he says is a blunder, not only as to Paul's meaning, but as to intellectual apprehension of moral truths. He has no idea of any such thing as truth. Hence Anselm has one set of ideas, the Schoolmen another, the Fathers another, Paul another, arising from his age, from which ours is different; so that our views of truth, i.e., what is truth for us must be different from what was truth for Paul, and Mr. Jowett clears it all up thus: "We acknowledge that there is a difference between the meaning of justification by faith to St. Paul and to ourselves. Eighteen hundred years cannot have passed away, leaving the world and the mind of man, or the use of language, the same it was." And the truth of God — the truth of this matter itself, if you please? It does not even occur to him there is or can be such a thing. The ideas of the day are really, for Mr. Jowett, the Christianity of the day. They are all that he can see. Not that he does not admit that other ages have clothed it in their own garb, but that he holds he is entitled to think Paul, in every respect, did so too. And this age? and these philosophical men, are capable of divesting it of mediaeval and scholastic forms, and Pauline forms arising from his habits of thinking and apostolic conflicts with Judaism, and give It to us purified by modern philosophy.