How Practical Really is Postmodernism?

So is truth all relative? Does truth change as one moves between cultures and subsets of cultures? The answer is yes according to Postmodernists. They think there is no objective truth, no truth which stands alone out of context. Read the brief synopsis of Postmodernism at the left, which was taken from a book by Stanley Grenz.

If one had the guts, the best statement one could make about a class in postmodernism is to not show up for the final exam. After all, if the final exam grade the professor would have given you is only his version of the truth, it's not automatically valid for you. His version of the truth shouldn't really matter to you. It is only his opinion of your performance. Therefore, a bad grade from the professor is not valid in your construction of reality! After all, you define yourself as a member of a different local community: that of college students. Since truth and reality only extend to the borders of local communities, he/she is outside your local construct.

So if you are that sort of gutsy person, then later show up at your professor's office and insist that you deserve an "A" because you clearly understand that the grade on your final exam does not matter one bit as it only represents their opinion of the true value of your final exam paper. Hey, we're not supposed to be making truth claims here are we? How can a professor teach that there are no truth statements one minute and then turn around and hand over the grades to the dean the next minute declaring them to be a true analysis of your performance? Having shown then that postmodernism is not practical, you also deserve an "A" just for listening to the nonsensical prattling of Post World War II French philosophers all semester. After all, you continue "I'm paying a lot of money to be educated! Give me something I can use! Stop wasting my time and my money!"

Unfortunately, you can't actually do that, although it is philosophically sound in principle. The 21st century university in America vehemently teaches Postmodernism as a valid philosophy, yet they hypocritically do not live out its values. If you decided to make a statement and not show up at your final, you would fail the final, regardless of the validity of your point. The professor's grade is an opinion of your performance but it is a truth claim to the administration of the university. Hence, the actual living out of postmodern values is not practical, even in an environment where it is an accepted belief! So go to your final, but at least you can quote me on your final exam regarding their inconsistencies.

The bottom line is that the grading system of a college does not function according to postmodern belief. They would have no grades at all if they were truly postmodern. Why? Well postmodernism doesn't go hand in hand with rationality, analysis, and objective truth. The college insists on being able to analyze and determine, through the use of reason, rational and universally meaningful grades for all of your important classes. How else would they know if you could graduate? As long as universities grant degrees, they must be able to determine who has earned a degree and who has not. So they must make an evaluation of your performance. Why? Well for one thing, employers want to know who to hire. Employers want to know if you can perform since they will be spending money on you. If there were no grades and no degrees, how would a company know if they wanted to hire you? Hey, reason and analysis aren't so bad after all - at least they are practical.

Now for another case in point. If you ever see the cockpit of a commercial air liner, you might be shown "George" which is a nickname for the autopilot that they use to fly the plane. After all why should they bother to pilot the plane when they can drink coffee, eat pretzels and tell jokes? When they take off they type in the destination airport's coordinates to "George" who takes then them almost exactly to the point where they should land.

But what if one day "George", the autopilot computer, had enough artificial intelligence built in to suddenly turn into a postmodernist and assert that the coordinates they gave him were not knowable truth or in any way valid for George? The computer decides it can and should fly anywhere it wants because many destinations seem valid to him. So George makes his own determination of what is right for him. George decides to go to Arizona because he is tired of having his wings covered with ice. George is so happy about his decision to fly south for the winter that he tells the other planes like him that they should do the same thing. Now just try running Chicago's O'Hare airport with a bunch of postmodernist autopilots. Another plane decides to go to the beach instead of Chicago. The result is part chaos and part paralysis.

Now let's move that scenario to the world of men. Since there is no universal truth, each man does that which is right in his own eyes. If he doesn't like his wife and kids anymore, he leaves them with out any child support, and moves to Tahiti. If you have a society of postmodernist people, you end up with a lot of selfish people. How is that progress for mankind? What about the children?

The same principle applies to how you live your life. If you want to get somewhere safely, postmodernism will not help you in the real world. It is not a reliable philosophy. It does not care if you crash. In sharp contrast, the practical living out of Christian principles in your life is a mandate from God. Christians are to be servants. It's not always fun but it's better than being selfish or abandoned.

God is intensely concerned with where your life is headed. He doesn't want you to crash. He knows what makes a person happy in the long run and that's why He has rules. God's rules do not keep you from experiencing pleasure, they preserve you so you can experience joy.

Just like the airports have a complex system of air traffic controllers and FAA rules, God also has a complex structure of law, justice, judgment, and grace or punishment. To implement the grace part and nullify the need for punishment which is demanded by holiness, He provided for a Savior. Christ had to die on the cross so the whole system had integrity. Once you understand the mechanics of God's plan and the nature of mankind, salvation by Christ's death on a cross makes a lot of sense. To someone unfamiliar with the mechanics of it, the plan of salvation at first seem to be a pile of irrelevant crap.

A holy God demands justice if a law is broken. No man is capable of keeping all of God's laws. So to be just, when a law is broken, God has to punish the guilty party. Some one has to pay the penalty. Sounds pretty harsh doesn't it? So God makes up the shortfall with Christ. Our acceptance of Christ's death on the cross as an acceptable and just payment for our error is the function of grace and result is our salvation. Oh and by the way, we all make mistakes, nobody is perfect enough to stand uncondemned in front of God at the end of their life.

So where did postmodernism come from?

In modernist thinking, our rational selves were supposed to gain knowledge of an ordered knowable universe and achieve, theoretically, a utopia of consensus and peace. But when that utopia didn't happen, people finally admitted that something was wrong. Knowledge of a rational ordered universe wasn't getting them anywhere, so they blamed the nature of the universe. Post World War II France was not a pretty picture. Neither was Germany or England. World War II was not suposed to ever happenbecause World War I was the war to end all wars. But as is often the case, things tend to not live up to their advertising claims. World War I was no exception. Where is the Utopia we were suposed to achieve with our rationality? Let's throw out rationality if this is what it gets us. So anti-rationality was born.

Christianity clearly teaches that human nature is the problem, not the nature of the universe. Most people do not understand that sin is the real problem in the world. The postmodern movement was initiated because of a total lack of understanding of sin and a complete rejection of Jesus as being the way (the road), the truth, and the life as He claimed to be (John 14:6). Christianity also teaches that there is a unifying center to reality in Jesus.

Pride keeps people from admitting that they did something that was wrong. They blame anybody or anything except for themselves. Postmodernists even try to do away with the very concept of right and wrong in a pitiful attempt to shift the blame to the nature of reality. The trouble with their thinking is that they do not understand that man's sin is the problem with reality.

But just try convincing a postmodernist that the constructs and consensus of Hitler's Germany is just as valid as any other societal consensus. Even they will cringe at that. Or what if, since there is no right and wrong, a community decides that killing postmodernists is fun? You will find them running for cover to save their hides. Nobody wants to die for a metaphysical theory. Suddenly postmodernists all over the world will reach a consensus that the irrational killing of postmodernists is "wrong". Oh my, their fuzzy unknowable reality suddenly comes into focus! They must declare that something is universally wrong which violates their beliefs. God had the ten commandments there all along. Murder is wrong. The puzzle is why people are offended by the ten commandments when they are there for their own protection. God's law deserves a huge amount of respect for its foresight.