The Effects of Postmodernity on Christianity

We live in one of the most excit­ing times in all of human his­tory. We are wit­nesses to a his­tor­i­cal shift unlike the world has ever known. The cul­ture around us is rais­ing seri­ous ques­tions about the valid­ity of any absolute epis­te­mol­ogy, moral­ity, and sense of truth. In fact, we are wit­ness­ing the final shift from decid­ing which divine belief is true (pre­moder­nity), to accept­ing that no divine belief is true (moder­nity), and now many are decid­ing that no one can know aboslutely than any spe­cific divine belief is true (post­moder­nity). The ques­tion that Christ asked Peter: “Who do you say I am?” is a ques­tion that is prov­ing its rel­e­vancy to each of our lives.

Exam­ples abound of this influ­ence, but here are a few tan­gi­ble examples.

Why Only One Way?

The belief in the exclu­siv­ity of the Gospel in that Jesus Christ is the only name under that one might be saved (Acts 4:12; Joh 14:6) is com­ing under increas­ing scrutiny from both within and out­side of the Chris­t­ian com­mu­nity. Most Chris­tians sim­ply don’t know how to rec­og­nize when post­moder­nity is influ­enc­ing their world view, and increas­ingly Chris­tians are becom­ing more and more influ­enced by worldly phi­los­o­phy and not the Scriptures.

What Does It Mean To You?

Have you ever been in a Bible study where a pas­sage is read, and the ques­tion is asked: “What do you think this pas­sage means?” Often times, after going around the group, we are told by the leader to accept them as all valid (in one way or another). Too often unity is inter­preted in a sense that leads to doc­tri­nal indif­fer­ence. When God reveals him­self it is not left to the agent to decide how he will inter­pret the rev­e­la­tion; God reveals him­self in a spe­cific way that is most glo­ri­fy­ing to him­self. We must approach the Scrip­tures as con­tain­ing foun­da­tional, inerrant, and suf­fi­cient truth in which to build our entire epis­te­mol­ogy and world view. Any­thing less than that falls short of giv­ing God his due glory.

What Is God’s Will For My Life?

Cer­tainly one thing we all strug­gle with is under­stand­ing where God would have us, but the great truth is that this ques­tion shouldn’t be a ques­tion. I’ve heard all to often from believ­ers that they feel that God would have them have a cer­tain voca­tion, fam­ily struc­ture, etc. How many times in the Scrip­tures do the peo­ple of God sit around strug­gling with what God would have them do? Cer­tainly they strug­gle with dis­be­lief (such as Abra­ham not hav­ing off­spring), but they never ques­tion the sub­stance of what God is doing in their lives for his glory.

I believe the great­est impe­tus to this prob­lem is try­ing to con­jure a view of God’s “call­ing” is influ­enced by our indi­vid­u­al­is­tic and human­is­tic cul­ture. We can often get into a trap of view­ing God’s call­ing as a democ­racy; the major­ity does not decide what God will and will not have done. It comes from his mind alone.

Recap­tur­ing God’s Word

The time is now more impor­tant than ever to redis­cover the eter­nal truths con­tained within God’s eter­nal word his son Jesus, and his writ­ten word given for our instruc­tion. When we start devel­op­ing our world view’s on the Scrip­tures then we see with increas­ing clar­ity that real­ity is not in the eye of the beholder but of the creator.