Post-modernity
A Global Weather Change?
by Jeff Fountain
the regional leader of Youth With
A Mission in Europe
http://www.hfe.org/resource/articles/postmod.htm
"...a
radical shift in the way young people view reality is bringing permanent
change to Europe's spiritual climate. The global forecast is both
threatening and promising. Post-modernity, as this mood-change is becoming
known, is
not a rational, consistent, philosophy....
It is
a soup of contradictory ideas....
" Modernity
- the sum total of such shapers of today's
society as urbanisation, industrialisation, science and technology - has created a
prevailing climate of unbelief.... Morality and ethics
have been increasingly shaped by personal convenience and self-gratification....
"Post-modernists
today, however,
spurn Modernity's promise of progress.
...All sorts of
irrational and contradictory beliefs
have flooded into the resulting vacuum, creating a
chaos of ideas
in which there is
no ultimate meaning or direction....
"In
contrast to the modern, scientific perspective, it is
open
to the transcendent, to the mysterious, to spirituality and even to the
Spirit. It
emphasizes the
story
rather than the creed
or logical proposition.... the process of
discovery. ...
"But there is an obvious 'down' side
too.
Post-modernity
clashes head on with scriptural revelation by claiming there is no Truth,
only 'truths' for oneself. There are
no criteria outside of oneself.
Objective knowledge is not possible
("everything you know is false").
Sin and evil do not exist. There are
no absolutes - only relativism
and pluralism....
"We are free to choose and create our own
identity, including our sexuality. We can be homosexual, heterosexual,
bisexual. ... There are
no right or wrong lifestyles. ...
" In a relativistic world, the old distinctions of right and
wrong, good and bad, reality and fantasy, truth and error, even past, present and
future, have lost meaning. Truth, capital 'T', does not exist. 'That may be true for
you but it's not true for me' is a typical postmodern response to Christians sharing
their faith. Traditional, rational apologetics may be appropriate for modern people,
but becomes irrelevant for postmodernists. Postmoderns have no problem
mixing and matching elements from various religious belief systems,
however contradictory and illogical that may seem.
What counts is
not Truth, but the 'feel good' factor.
"Evangelistic methods effective among modern audiences leave postmoderns untouched.
Traditional forms of church life no longer appeal to most modern.... Yet Paul said
he wanted to be all things to all people in order the reach some.
Can we be
'postmodern' to the postmoderns, in order to reach some?"
Many say yes, but we say no. We cannot yield our stand on God's absolute truth nor
conform to the world's thinking. A decade ago, we warned that the emphasis of the
consensus process and dialectic thinking in the global education program would
literally immunize children and youth against Biblical Christianity. If we conform
our thinking to the same process, we would join the spreading apostasy."
See
Mind Control
and
Brainwashing in America.
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