Lessons on Truth From a Teenage Mind
"Marketeers know how to create felt need, and they know that, once created, this need is quite irresitable" (David Wells from his book God In The Wasteland)
"We modern Christians are literally capable of winning the world while losing our souls" (Os Guiness from his book Dining With The Devil: The Megachurch Movement Flirts With Modernity)
"I am The Way, The Truth, and the Life........If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disiciple. Then you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free." (Jesus Christ from John 14:6 and John 8:31,32)
In Post Modern Culture the Value of each individual is baptized into a belief system that ascribes this same value to each cultural expression of truth, for each culture is of immense worth, taught and learned by individuals of immense worth, in a world full of people who all have their worthwhile culture expressed through each worthwhile individual living it out. It is the logical extension of the modern ideal. If each person is of immense worth and value, it would only follow that the particular cultural expression which gives birth to each individual would also be of immense worth and value. Truth becomes nothing more than the expression of each individuals cultural heritage and experience. Because of our choice to highly value personal expression, individual rights, autonomous being, and private interpretation, we are left with little choice but to make truth submissive and subservient to the goals and values of human beings. The value of the person over rides and determines the value of truth.
The question for each theologian becomes: How can we continue to embrace a priority to value each individual person created in God’s image, respecting and celebrating the cultural experiences and beliefs of all, while at the same time reclaiming and defending Truth which comes to us transcendent of human belief and culture? In other words, can we honor Truth as a Being, existing independent and transcendent of human understanding and belief? In practice, we already do this. We are committed to the values of progress and growth and health and preservation of life and other expressions of truth which are part of all civilizations and all cultures and all peoples since the beginning of time. We do not have to be taught a baby is precious, for we already know this “some how”. We do not have to be told that it is the responsibility of parents to protect their young; it is a natural and instinctive phenomenon. No one has to train us to fight for life; we begin this journey the first day we reach for our mother’s breast. Our challenge becomes finding the ways and means to educate brothers and sisters, yea, the world itself, on the transcendent and eternal nature of Truth.
I recently had a conversation with my son. It goes without saying that a 19 year old has opinions. It also goes without saying they are usually strong opinions, for few people understand the world and life as expertly as a 19 year old. In our conversation, he was making a case for his understanding, or his way of determining, the concept of truth. He stated that Christianity “makes the most sense” to him, therefore he is a Christian. He believes that whatever religion a person embraces it should make sense, it should be substantiated by fact and substance. He further maintains that we need a place to go when we are deciding right and wrong, for those times when we hold right or wrong in question, there has to be a place to go beyond our own personal views to determine what is right and what is wrong. This creates a genuine crisis when we speak of Truth. IF there is no truth, beyond what the culture embraces and the individual interprets based on their cultural experiences and upbringing, we are left with no place to go outside our own personal point of view. As my son said to me, “if we have no place to go other than ourselves, whose to say the sociopath is not correct, or the Nazi extremist, or the terrorist, or anyone else who believes they have the right to define what is right and what is true?”
What an astute observation, all flowing from a Philosophy course he is taking in college. I found myself rather amazed, as I sat in a front row seat allowed to peek in on a vivid demonstration of one who is grappling with the real issues of Truth and the infiltration of the post modern world-view into the thinking process, where one personally and privately decides that what makes the most sense to him (the Modern Mind) is to believe there must be some place to go to discover Truth (Transcendent Truth), but this Truth is always subject to the filter of my own personal evaluation and point of view (The Post Modern Mind).
Having grown up in a post modern world, these arguments are often housed in verbal displays of truth and untruth, rational and irrational, consistent and contradictory phrases that are held together by the person speaking them rather than the laws of nature, logic, or the universe itself. For example, one is violating the law of non-contradiction when they say: “I believe in Transcendent Truth which applies to everyone, but each individual gets to decide what that truth is based on what makes the most sense to me.” Such a premise becomes a window into the post modern philosopher trying to make sense of what He knows to be true, combining it in his own mind with what he has been taught to think in our culture. On the one hand, the value of personal truth and one’s constitutional (in some cases God given) right to free expression of ideas is held over and above the right to proclaim universal Truth, while at the same time something inside our rational thinking mind knows that some things are just True - for me, for you, for everyone. However, it is more important in our society to have a right to speak than it is to be “right” within our speech. This is what we are taught, this is what is indoctrinated into our souls from birth, and this is what most people in our culture fully embrace. It does not matter whether they are church goers or not, Disciples of Christ or disciples of Marx, Baptist or Catholic, this is the philosophy of our age, and it eventually finds its way to some degree into all thinking minds within our culture. We cannot help but be exposed to the postmodern mind, and exposure will always lead to some type of conformity, if this conformity in fact feeds that which we believe we need or desire. If I need a new church, I find one. If I need a divorce, I get one. If I need to reject your teaching, I will. If I find a new and improved version of Tide sold to me from terrorists from the Planet Zito, and I need clean clothes to impress my clients at work, I buy it. Transcendent Truth which guides my every choice in life is a good theory to talk about, but it makes little sense when evaluating the day to day pragmatic choices that govern our lives. We tend to decide what we need most, then justify our choices with whatever philosophy or Biblical interpretation we can use to support or affirm our choices. In the post modern world Transcendent Truth almost always takes a back seat to what makes the most sense to the individual at any given moment, no matter one’s church involvement or lack there of. It is often very difficult to discern any noticeable difference in the motivations of people in decision making processes in or outside the local church Body. The only real difference is that one person is saying, “Let me tell you what I think”, while the other person is saying, “Let me tell you how I interpret that Scripture”, as both arrive at the same end in choosing to do what best suits their own personal preference and meets their need at the time. Is it not amazing how two different people can say exactly the same thing, “I’m just not being fed as I desire”, one speaking of a Restaurant or a marriage, and the other speaking of their local church?
My son is an example of a mind in conflict. It is a war of worldviews. On the one hand, he is trying to discover a source of truth which lies beyond his scope of understanding about the moral compass that some believe exists in our universe- A cosmic good and bad which can define his life and give purpose to his choices when personal value and wisdom can not take him there. On the other hand, he is throwing himself full force into a post modern philosophical mind set when he states that whatever religion he embraces “needs to make the most sense to me.” On the surface, nothing seems all that wrong with such a statement. Of course our faith should make sense. But sense to who? Me, or you. God, or the devil. Jesus, or Ghandi? Who gets to decide what makes sense and what the criteria is for deciding if a thing is right or wrong, good or bad, true or not true? IN the post modern gathering of the minds the choice is made by the same person every single time. ME. I get to decide. And if it does not make sense to me, I reject it out of hand, and I have every right to do so. Needless to say, if we continue down this path, where truth is defined by the individual who largely makes assessments based on personal need and individual preference, the Church of the future will become nothing more than the place where people gather to have their own personal needs met under the auspice of serving Jesus, who is no longer the Lord of Truth but is relegated to the position of Personal Savior as defined by each indivisual. Peace/Out.
Written on Thursday, 02 June 2011 09:44 by Rick Farmer
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