POSTMODERNISM

Dr. Rick C. Shrader

Pastor, Bethel Baptist Church
Ft. Collins, Colorado
When Charles Dickens wrote The Tale of Two Cities depicting the French Revolution, he began with the
words, It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Now at the end of that modern period, we may again
repeat the words of Dickens. We are glad for the decline in modern and atheistic thought, but a greater foe is ap-
proaching on the horizon. While defending the doctrine of faith to our generation, James R. White asks, Now a
new tidal wave, called by the scholars postmodernity, is sweeping across Western thought, undermining the very
idea of absolute truth. What should be the response of the Christian church in the face of these waves of philoso-
phical attack?
1

This paper is an attempt to answer that question as well as define Postmodernism in our generation. In an i n-
terview, Dennis McCallum responded, A simple definition of postmodernism is the belief that truth is not discov-
ered, but created . . . No one has more to lose from postmodernism epistemology than Christians.
2
By the very
nature of postmodernism, Christian churches may be falling into this mode without even realizing it. If the modern
era has indeed ended, as most think, then we are now postmoderns and the question only remains as to whether we
will be postmodernists.
The story is told of three umpires representing the three ages of human history. The first, representing the pre-
modern age says, Three strikes and youre out and I call em the way they are. The second umpire, representing
the modern age says, Three strikes and youre out and I call em the way I see em. The third umpire, represent-
ing the postmodern age says, Three strikes and youre out, and they aint nothin til I call em. As we look at the
approach of postmodernism, this outlook will become all too clear. Truth does not exist except as the individual
wants it to exist. As a matter of fact, he can create his own truth.
From the classroom to the television and even to the churches, institutions are asking the audience what they
think truth should be and what it should look like, and then marketing their products to the whims of the world.
This is the first time in Western Civilization that people are asking not to know and are being obliged by their
society. The symbol of this age could easily be the bungee cord. It is a free-fall into nothingness just for the sake of
doing it. We had better stop and check if the cord is really hooked to anything solid.
THE HISTORY OF POSTMODERNISM
The Pre-Modern Era
The Time Frame
What most of us learned as Western Civilization is the study of the western world before and including the
advent of modernism. Since modernism began in the 16
th
century with the Enlightenment, brought on by the French
Revolution, pre-modernism is that long period of history that led through the Dark Ages, the Reformation and up to
the 1700s.

1
James R. White, The Roman Catholic Controversy (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1996), 9.
2
An Interview with Dennis McCallum by Focal Point Magazine, Spring 1997, 5.

The Philosophical Foundation
This pre-modern or classical era was a mixed bag of beliefs and cultures. Gene Edward Veith, Jr. has included
three elements:
3

Mythological Paganism was the belief in the supernatural, although it was usually polytheistic. Most of the
mythological traditions contained moralistic stories about the battles of good versus evil. The good, as defined in
the story, almost always triumphed.
Classical Rationalismwas the extension of Greek thought and philosophy. Socrates drank the hemlock as a pro-
test against the mythological worldview. He reasoned that there must be one supreme God behind all of history.
Plato developed his classical idealism, that the worlds particulars come from the transcendent ideals in the mind of
God. Aristotle argued for first causes and that all causes must be traced back to one supreme First Cause.
Though this era fell far short of Christian belief, it allowed the mind to investigate the world without ruling out
the possibility of God. On Mars Hill, Paul began at this point and introduced them to the truth about God that only
divine revelation could bring (Acts 17:22-31).
Biblical Theismwas the influence of Christianity on the rational mind of the pre-modern era. Sometimes Christi-
anity brought classical rationalism to its logical conclusion and sometimes Rationalism influenced Christianity too
much. Augustine may have drawn too much on Plato, Aquinas too much on Aristotle. During the Middle Ages
there was a mixture of European pagan culture with Christianity that obscured the gospel message of Gods revela-
tion. It was not until the 15
th
and 16
th
centuries that Christianity returned to its roots. Whereas Renaissance human-
ism rediscovered and reasserted the Greeks; the Reformation rediscovered and reasserted the Bible.
4

Basic Assumptions
For all of their faults, the Classical Era and Middle Ages carried with them certain assumptions that were rarely
challenged:
1. There is a God (even if it is the god of paganism).
2. Good and evil exist as present realities which affect our lives.
3. Man is a sinful creature and sin must be accounted for.
4. Nature was created by a Creator.
5. Man is autonomous in the created world.

The Modern Era
The Beginning
Since the terms modern and postmodern refer to time, it is necessary to set some sort of start and stop for
each period.
Thomas Oden says, By postmodern, we mean the course of actual history following the death of modernity. By
modernity we mean the period, the ideology, and the malaise of the time from 1789 to 1989, from the Bastille to the
Berlin Wall.
5
Veith adds,
The French Revolution exemplifies the triumph of the Enlightenment. With the destruction of the Bastille, the
prison in which the monarchy jailed its political prisoners, the pre-modern world with its feudal loyalties and
spiritual hierarchies was guillotined. The revolutionaries exalted the Rights of Man. They dismissed Christianity

3
Gene Edward Veith, Jr., Postmodern Times (Wheaton: Crossway, 1994), 29.
4
Ibid., 31.
5
Thomas Oden, The Death Of Modernity, in The Challenge of Postmodernism (Wheaton: BridgePoint, 1995),
20.

as a relic of the past. During the course of the revolution, they installed the Goddess of Reason in Notre Dame
Cathedral. In the modern period, human reason would take the place of God, solving all human problems and re-
making society along the line of scientific, rational truth.
6

The French Revolution and the Enlightenment meant the beginning of the age of reason. All supernatural now
became superstition. Man became the highest rational being and the master of his own fate.
The Progression
English Deism became prominent in the 1600s. Deism denied the possibility of the supernatural. They did not
deny the existence of God but believed rather that God had begun all that exists and then stepped back and let it run
without the intrusion of the miraculous.
French Skepticism grew out of the Enlightenment in the 1700s. As men such as Voltaire turned science into a
god, the supernatural was no longer needed. Science could explain everything and there were no limits as to how far
scientific man could lift himself. The world could now be explained totally by rational laws.
German Rationalism took over the Reformation country in the 1800s. The German contribution to modernism was
to relegate the scriptures to the level of human writings. The Bible became a totally human book and all supernatural
elements were discovered to be human manipulations and compilations of various authors (e.g. JEDP documentary
theory).
American Liberalism came across the ocean in the 1900s. The Enlightenment had come to America as full-blown
liberalism. The existence of God was denied outright, the Bible was not believed to be a divine book, and the possi-
bility of miracles was ridiculed.
Basic Assumptions
The assumptions of the old pre-modern age became exactly
reversed:
1. The world as a closed systemAll could be explained from cause and effect within the system.
2. Utilitarian moralityStealing is wrong but only because it interferes with the balance of economics
Slavery is right because it has economic benefits.
3. Evolution and natural selectionNature is self-contained, and man is the highest product of the survival of
the fittest.
4. Rationalism and materialismOnly the senses contain reality. Logical positivism becomes the law of
scientific investigation: If we cannot see God, he does not
exist.
5. Social sciences and socialismMarxs dialectical materialism eradicated individual rights for the sake of the
community.
The Postmodern Era
The Beginnings
Carl Henry wrote, The intensity of anti-modern sentiment is seen in the widening use of the term postmo dern
to signal a sweeping move beyond all the intellectual pastancient, medieval, or moderninto a supposedly new
era.
7
The sweeping changes, however, have not come overnight. Veith presents two precursors from within mo d-
ernism that have been protesting and setting the stage for a hundred years.
8

6
Veith, Postmodern Times, 27.
7
Carl F. H. Henry, The Challenge of Postmodernism (Wheaton: BridgePoint, 1995), 34.
8
Veith, Postmodern Times, 35.

First, in reaction to the anti-spiritual and mathematical attitude of the Enlightenment humanism, Romanticism
brought back an appreciation for the human and spiritual. Although God is usually only seen as a life force and
man is often seen as one with nature, the romantics believed that God is close at hand and intimately involved in
the physical world.
9
Romanticism, however, paved the way for todays postmodern view of life and the world.
Some evangelical believers challenged the romantic worldview, especially in the field of art and literature. Fran-
cis Schaeffer was the best known voice. In 1968 he wrote Escape From Reason and The God Who Is There. In 1970
he first published The Church at the End of the 20th Century. In 1974 he wrote How Should We Then Live? His
friend and colleague, H. R. Rookmaaker of the Free University of Amsterdam, in 1970 wrote Modern Art and the
Death of a Culture. Even then Rookmaaker wrote, Perhaps a new culture is growing that can come into being only
when the old civilization is completely destroyed. But if things continue the way they do the new culture will be
neither humanist nor Christian.
10

Second, in reaction to the Enlightenment materialism with its cold humanism and calculating evolution, Existen-
tialism proposed that perhaps there really is no meaning to life. Individuals create their own meaning for themselves
through relativism (wrongly supposed to come from Einstein) that made truth to be truth only if it is relative to ones
situation (situation ethics is todays result). Todays Pro-Choice movement capitalizes on this now entrenched
belief. Schaeffer wrote, The only accurate way to describe this [post-Christian] view is that it is a form of neo-
orthodox existential theology.
11
Gene Veith proposes, Existentialism is the philosophical basis for postmo dern-
ism.
12

The Predictions
By the end of WW II and with the prosperity of the 1950s, t he stage was set for full-blown rebellion against the
old modernism. Though the winds of change had been blowing for quite a while, a new generation (raised on Freu-
dian psychology, television and Dr. Spock) was ready to have its way. In the 1940s Sir Arnold Toynbee suggested
that societies, sooner or later, suffer a certain schism of the soul.
13

In 1949, George Orwell wrote 1984, in which he predicted America would be taken over by a Big Brother from
without who would set up a totalitarian oppression. It did not happen. In fact, the only Big Brother candidate (Rus-
sia) collapsed a few years after 1984. In 1932, Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World, in which he predicted that the
day would come when no totalitarian regime would be necessary because we would collapse from within, in apathetic
stupor. Truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Huxley is proving to be right.
In a commencement address, John Silber, President of Boston University, referred to a 75-year-old speech by
Lord Moulton, an English Judge, entitled Law and Manners.
14
Moulton divided human actions into three domains.
On one side is law, where we are forced to act a certain way. On the other side is free choice, where we have com-
plete freedom to act as we please. In the middle is the domain he called manners. When the middle ground shrinks
into nonexistence, either law will take over or chaos. Silber was proposing that law lost out in the 1960s and chaos
began its reign.
In 1947, C. S. Lewis objected to new textbooks that were being introduced into English schools. His response to
the new direction of education became his book, The Abolition Of Man. The first chapter is called, Men Wit hout
Chests. He could foresee the day when we would train students with powerful heads, full of information. We would
also develop students with visceral appetites beyond our comprehension. What is missing is the area in between

9
Ibid.
10
H. R. Rookmaaker, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture (Wheaton: Crossway, 1994), 170.
11
Francis Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster (Wheaton: Crossway, 1992), 49.
12
Veith, Postmodern Times, 38.
13
Toynbee, A Study Of History, quoted by Veith, Postmodern Times, 44.
14
John Silber, Will Our Media Moguls Do The Right Thing? AFA Journal (September 1995): 16.

the chest! He says, The head rules the belly through the chest. . . . In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the
organ and demand the function.
15
Postmodern man is truly a man with a powerful supply of information, an enor-
mous appetite for lust and selfishness, but possessing no heart, no moral compass to direct the head or stomach.
The Starting Date
Since the postmodern era refers primarily to time, there must have been a starting point where modernism died
and postmodernism began. All would agree that the 1960s era was a great catalyst, if not the turning point itself.
Students began questioning the fruits of modernism; social constructions had not brought internal happiness; the
Vietnam War epitomized the evils of capitalism, technology and American democracy. 1968 was known as the year
of the student revolution when many universities were shut down due to student takeovers.
Veith says,
According to Charles Jencks, the end of modernism and the beginning of postmodernism took place at 3:32
P.M. on July 15, 1972. At that moment the Pruitt-Igoe housing development in St. Louis, a pinnacle of modernis t
architecture, was blown up. Though a prize-winning exemplar of high technology, modernistic aesthetics, and
functional design, the project was so impersonal and depressing, so crime -ridden and impossible to patrol, that it
was uninhabitable.
The demolition of the Pruitt-Igloe development is a paradigm for postmodernism. The modern worldview
constructs rationally designed systems in which human beings find it impossible to live. This paradigm applies
not so much to housing projects as to philosophical systems and ways of life.
16

We have already noted that Thomas Oden places the beginning of postmodernism at the fall of Communism in
1989, a neat 200 years after the Fall of Bastille, beginning the French Revolution in 1789. He says, If modernity is a
period characterized by a worldview which is now concluding, then whatever it is that comes next in time can plausi-
bly be called postmodernity. We are pointing not to an ideological program, but rather to a simple successionwhat
comes next after modernity.
17

Basic Assumptions
1. Truth and error are no longer relevant terms. Truth has only been constructed by what someone wrote. We
create our own truth in our own situation.
2. Culture has become the garden for growing truth. Whereas culture used to conform to accepted standards
of truth, now truth conforms to accepted group culture.
3. Language must be deconstructed from its oppressive cultural overtones to a non-standard flow of amoral
values.
4. Western Civilization, with its Christian culture, must be discarded and multi-culturalism must be affirmed.
5. History has become unknowable since language is meaningless. The present and the future, both virtual
worlds, are the only realities there are.
Conclusion
Whatever time we set for the beginning of postmodernism, it is evident that we are living in a different world
from modernism. All around we see the erosion of truth, morality, commitment, accountability and even realism. The
arts have come to the point of the ridiculous; television deconstructs historical fact and then reconstructs it in the
way we want it to be; music has become nonsensical and violent; science is no longer based on evidence but on

15
C .S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: MacMillan, 1955), 34-35.
16
Veith, Postmodern Times, 39.
17
Oden, The Death Of Modernity, The Challenge Of Postmodernism, 25.

fantasy; and worst of all, churches are capitulating to a market-driven mentality that mirrors the truth is what you
want it to be mentality.
Os Guinness concludes,
Yet vague, slippery, and confusing though the term may be, postmodernism is too important to be discarded
casually. For what it gropes to describe is central to the character of our time. Postmodernis m, whatever it is, is
a term reaching out to describe the outline of a vanishing modern, whatever it is. Both terms are critical for fol-
lowers of Christ who seek to act, think, and know the world in which we live.
18

THE EXPRESSIONS OF POSTMODERNISM
The Postmodern Culture
If we understand where postmodernism is coming from and where it is going, we will begin to see its expressions
in every area of our culture. In 1984, the year of Orwells prediction, Francis Schaeffer stated, Finally, we must not
forget that the world is on fire. We are not only losing the church, but our entire culture as well. We live in a post-
Christian world which is under the judgment of God.
19
Ravi Zacharias, himself Indian born, observed, Whats
happening in the West with t he emergence of postmodernism is only what has been in much of Asia for centuries but
under different banners.
20
It is the postmodernist himself who wants to convince us that culture is neutral and has
no moral connotations. But that is because a non-Christian culture does not believe in morality, at least to the extent
that anything we do, think, say or observe has anything to do with right and wrong. Morality is relegated to the
spiritual level which can only be highly personal and certainly not judged by our actions. Gene Veith comments, For
all its talk about culture, postmodernism lacks culture since the traditions, beliefs and mo rals that define culture are all
disabled.
21

An Attack on Truth
Perhaps the most identifying mark of postmodernism is it s flat denial of the possibility of truth. With its roots in
existentialism, postmodernism maintains that truth is created by a social group for its own purposes and then forced
on others in order to manipulate and suppress them. Postmodernisms main objective, therefore, is to deconstruct
this buildup of language and society (i.e. culture) and liberate the oppressed from the oppressors. Tim Keller
writes, In this view, all truths and facts are now in quotation marks. Claims of objective truth are really just a
cover-up for a power play. Those who claim to have a story true for all are really just trying to get power for their
group over other groups.
22

The modernist attack on Christianity was to try to prove that the claims of Christianity were false by verifiable
(usually scientific) standards. The postmodernist attack is quite different. David Dockery explains:
Postmodernists would critique Christianity by claiming that Christians think they have the only truth. The claims
of Christianity are rejected because of the appeal to absolute truth. Absolute truth claims will be dismissed by

18
Os Guinness, Fit Bodies, Fat Minds (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), 102.
19
Francis Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster, 90.
20
Interview with Ravi Zacharias, Reaching the Happy Thinking Pagan: How Can We Present the Christian Mes-
sage to Postmodern People? Leadership Magazine (Spring 1995): 23.
21
Veith, Postmodern Times, 86.
22
Tim Keller, Preaching Morality in an Amoral Age, in Christianity Today, Inc./Leadership Journal (1996).
Downloaded from AOL, 1/24/96.

the postmodernist for being intolerant trying to force ones beliefs onto other people. Postmodernists have
genuinely given up on the idea of absolute truth.
23
Of course, the age-old response to such skewed thinking is, How can you say absolutely that there is no abso-
lute truth? Postmodernists do not care about the apparent contradiction. The oppressive attitude has been dis-
abled and that is all that matters. A typical statement by a Repressed Memory Therapist reveals this agenda, I
dont care if its true. What actually happened is irrelevant to me.
24
One wonders how such therapy could ever
help anyone.
The Loss of Identity
If modernism proclaimed the death of God, postmodernism proclaims the death of self. As strange as that may
sound to the remnants of a modernistic society who were born and bred on rugged individualism and humanism, this
must be understood if postmodernism is to be understood.
Gene Veith describes the progression of thinking that leads to this loss.
The postmodern mind-set can have a devastating impact on the human personality. If there are no absolutes, if
truth is relative, then there can be no stability, no meaning in life. If reality is socially constructed, then moral
guidelines are only masks for oppressive power and individual identity is an illusion.
25

The role-models for such culture become the homeless who choose to live on the streets instead of in shelters,
the cyberpunks who live inside a computer in a virtual world where they really do not exist, the city gangs where
identity is lost and rules of society are discarded, or the grunge kids who (while coming from wealthy enough families
to afford nice clothing) wear the uniform of the group and lose their individual identity.
Francis Schaeffer describes this phenomenon taking place years ago:
This rather reminds me of young people whom we worked with at Berkeley and other universities, including cer-
tain Christian colleges, and those who came to us in large numbers with packs on their backs at LAbri in the
1960s. They were rebels. They knew they were, for they wore the rebels markthe worn-out blue jeans. But
they did not seem to notice that the blue jeans had become the mark of accommodationthat indeed, everyone
was in blue jeans.
26

As we will see, the postmodern person tears away at every foundation that would give him identity. He would
even object to my using him in the previous sentence as a preconceived way of oppressing and manipulating
women. The genders are therefore removed and another layer of identity is gone from their world.
The Loss of Centrality
The loss of identity leads to, and goes hand in hand with, the loss of mans place in the universe. Modernism
took God from His place as the center of the universe and replaced Him with man himself. But postmodernism will not
allow man to be in that place either. Zacharias notes, To the secularist, the Bible cannot be the Word of God, for to
grant even that theoretical possibility would be an admission of the supernatural. That concession by the postmo d-
ern person sold out to a naturalistic view of reality would be tantamount to the surrender of his or her world-view of a

23
David Dockery, Preface, The Challenge of Postmodernism, 14.
24
Quoted by John Leo, True Lies vs. Total Recall, U.S. News & World Report, 7 August 1995, 16.
25
Veith, Postmodern Times, 72.
26
Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster, 98-99.

voiceless universe.
27
Man is rather seen as existing for no designed reason, floating on the third rock from the
sun, himself a collection of atoms that has no more right to exist than the rock itself.
As a matter of fact, the rock has more right to exist. Veith, in reviewing Charles Olsons 1950s new non-
anthropocentric poetry (that man is like any other object in the universe), points out that this loss of centrality in
the world has given rise to both environmentalism and political radicalism.
28
Animal rights activists continue to
insist that animals have as much right, if not more (because they are void of oppressive agendas), to space on this
rock as humans. Political activists work to destroy western capitalism which has been responsible for social manipu-
lation and class warfare.
Os Guinness uses Madonna as an example:
[Madonna exemplifies] cultural cannibalism practiced today in the name of postmodernism . . . She is the ultimate
spin doctor to her own PR, the consummate orchestrator of her own controlled, ever-changing, ever-commercial
images. Call her shameless, call her cheap, call her what you like. There is no limit to what she will say, do, wear,
mock, promote, degradeall to draw attention to herself and sell her soul along with her latest image and prod-
uct.
29

This type of meaningless, amoral display is characteristic of a person who sees no sense or meaning to the uni-
verse. She is merely part of aimless existence. It is all nonsense. That is why a born and bred postmodernist has no
standard of conduct except what is expedient. Cal Thomas relates that R. C. Sproul said to him that the Presidents
view of law echoes the definition of pornographythe test is contemporary community standards, not a transcen-
dent, objective standard.
30
When there is no center and purpose to the world in which we live, there is no standard
reason for any behavior.
The Rise of Metafiction
Postmodernists and postmodern critics use the prefix meta to describe postmodernisms use of cultural tools.
Metanarratives are narratives about narratives, or modern mens ability to write history by building their own ideas
on their own previous ideas. Metafiction is the postmodern cultural phenomenon of image being everything.
Fiction is built upon fiction, image upon image, until no one can tell the real from the unreal, which is precisely what
postmodern writers and producers want.
Television and theater are the supreme postmodern art forms using metafiction. Beer commercials begin with a
dying man on an island but end with a lively party of dancing girls and cold beer. A movie begins in an Iowa corn
field but eventually has the viewer believing that baseball players from long ago can walk from unreality into reality
and play ball. Your television screen begins with a serious drama but is interrupted by a pink bunny crossing the
screen while the narrator says, still going. Michael Jordan actually plays basketball with the Loony Tunes charac-
ters while they teach him the advantages of stretch moves impossible in the people world. These are sometimes
called magical realism or super realism. In either case, they blur the distinction between real and unreal.
The rise of docudramas carries this trend over into news, history and biography. The film can claim to be based
on a real life story but create the details to be what we suppose they might be, or exactly what the audience wants to
see. Did Kennedy really have an affair with Marilyn Monroe? The audience wants to believe he did, and that is the
way the movie portrays it . The fact of the matter may be forever lost in obscurity. The point is, however, that post-
moderns do not care to know beyond the surface. It does not matter to them what really happened. Building fiction
upon fiction fits into their worldview much better than fact.

27
Zacharias, Deliver Us From Evil (Dallas: Word, 1996), 53.
28
Veith, Postmodern Times, 74.
29
Guinness, Fit Bodies, Fat Minds, 102-103.
30
Thomas, The Gospel According to Bill Should Not Fool Anyone, Ft. Collins Coloradoan, n. d.

The Postmodern Language
Language is a most important tool to the postmodern person. Reality resides on the surface of things, and lan-
guage is a surface tool that spins the events in a way that will be best suited for the situation. For example, in
chapter 6 of Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll revealed the philosophical acumen of Humpty Dumpty when
he wrote:
When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to mean
neither more nor less.
The question is, said Alice, whether you can make words mean so many different things. The question is,
said Humpty Dumpty, which is to be the masterthats all . . . When I make a word do a lot of work . . . I always
pay it extra.
31

Deconstructionism
To the postmodern, all meaning is socially constructed and must be deconstructed. Hidden in the text is the
agenda of the author. This agenda has been forced upon society throughout the modern and pre-modern ages.
People today think and act t he way they do because of this manipulation of the language by oppressors.
In an interesting book on the comparisons of Nazi fascism to fascism today, Gene Veith writes,
A common theme in postmodernist criticism is the dissolution of the selfclaiming that the individual is a fic-
tion, a creation of bourgeois ideology. Postmodernists deconstruct the subject by attempting to show that
human consciousness itself is constituted by social forces and structures of power as embodied in language.
The self cannot escape the prison-house of language, through which the culture encodes itself and determines
the very structure of what one is able to think.
32

Though postmodernists believe that the world is a text, and that all of our cultural norms have been designed
for us by oppressors, written language is especially suspect. Your vocabulary has been taught to you by someone
else. The meanings of the words you use have been given to those words by societal forces. When you write them
down on paper, you are writing current meaning upon previous meaning upon older meaning and thus creating
metanarratives. Carl Henry notes, Not only is all meaning held to be subjectively bound up with the knower rather
than with text, but words are declared to have still other words as their only referent. Texts are declared to be intrin-
sically incapable of conveying truth about some objective reality.
33
It is the postmodernists purpose, therefore, not
to read the language for dictionary meanings, but to discover the biases and oppressive purposes of the writer.
The Hermeneutics of Suspicion
Since metanarratives are full of overtures, deconstructing language takes a specially purposed hermeneutic. We
have heard it so long that we have become too used to it. If the Declaration of Independence declares all men to be
created equal, it thus excludes women and, since Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, it is no doubt a white, European
male power play over the rest of society. Since the Bible uses the masculine pronoun in referring to God the Father,
the Bible is merely a history of a male-dominated religion that must be rejected if we care anything about women.
Veith adds some more specifics,
Deconstructionists even analyze the metaphors inherent in scientific language. To speak of natural laws is to
use a political metaphor; scientists who formulate laws are attempting to impose human political power on the
natural order. Even technical theories, such as the master molecule theory of DNA functioning, contain a gen-

31
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, 256.
32
Gene Edward Veith, Jr., Modern Fascism (St. Louis: Concordia, 1993), 37.
33
Carl F. H. Henry, Postmodernism: The New Spectre? The Challenge Of Postmodernism, 36.

der bias (master is a male term). When scientists speak of unveiling the mystery of the ocean or penetrating
the secrets of nature, they are using sexual metaphors undressing and raping the natural order, which is al-
ways conceived in feminine terms. The so-called scientific objectivity and all of Western sciences technological
achievements are texts that mask the male desire to subjugate, exploit, and sexually abuse Mother Nature.
34

In the words of Roger Lundin, Words are indeed in the saddle and ride mankind. You pick up the language of
contemporary pragmatism, thinking of it as a net to cast across the waters for a great catch; you find, instead, that
you get hopelessly entangled in its never-ending web of words.
35

Using Postmodern Literature
Pragmatists such as George Barna merely go with the flow of postmodern language and literature. In an article
advocating leaving expository preaching for story-telling, Barna says, Busters are non-linear, comfortable with con-
tradiction, and inclined to view all religions as equally valid. The nice thing about telling stories is that no one can
say your story isnt true.
36
Of course, then neither can anyone say your story is true!
Postmodern evangelical literature has flooded the Christian bookstore shelves. Christian Fiction is another
way of saying that the story is constructed in a way that the audience will like. Stories about angels and demons
abound in the area of magical realism. Commenting on Latin American authors, Veith notes, This style, heavily
indebted to the popular spirituality of Latin American Catholicism, can be exhilarating in the hands of a master story-
teller such as Marquez. It may well be a method of raising spiritual issues. Its effect, though, is to blur the distinction
between truth and fictionality.
37
Albert Mohler comments, Thus, the hermeneutics of suspicion is now fully in
this evangelical tent.
38
It may be standing in the pulpit of fundamental churches as well.
Postmodern Art and Architecture
In 1970, Francis Schaeffer wrote, In art museums throughout the world, the viewers are at the mercy of the art-
ists. People, even children, who go through the art galleries are being manipulated whether they know it or not.
39

The modern art of 1970 cannot compare to the postmodern art of the 90s. If Dantes seventh circle of Hell is reserved
for those who have sinned against art, surely the postmo dern artist will find a place there.
Pre-modern Art
During the Middle Ages, most art was representational art. The picture it self was the important thing. The art-
ist was concerned that the picture on the canvas represented what he saw with the naked eye. In a fascinating book
on art, Veith writes, At its best, the Middle Ages produced great Christian art, reconciling form and content, inte-

34
Veith, Postmodern Times, 56.
35
Roger Lundin, The Pragmatics of Postmodernism, in Christian Apologetics in the Postmodern World, ed.
Timothy R. Phillip and Dennis L. Okholm (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1995), 32.
36
Quoted by Steve Rabey, This Is Not Your Boomers Generation, Leadership (Fall 1996): 17.
37
Veith, Postmodern Times, 132.
38
Albert Mohler, Evangelical: Whats in a Name? The Coming Evangelical Crisis, ed. John H. Armstrong
(Chicago: Moody, 1996), 38.
39
Francis Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the 20
th
Century (Reprint, Wheaton: Crossway, 1994), 91.

grating artistry and faith.
40
Of Rembrandts portrait, Family Group, Veith says, Rembrandt has drawn a Christian
family, not only in its appearance but in its meaning.
41
Such was the purpose of real art.
Modern Art
During the modern period, art became impressionistic and abstract. Rather than the picture being the impor-
tant thing, the artist became the important thing. In a humanist frame of mind, the artist must find the true art within
himself. Art is not what the naked eye sees out there, but it is what the artist feels inside himself as he expresses
his genius on canvas. No longer can the artist be bound to the rules of the natural world, staying within the lines and
matching colors. The rules must be broken and the mo dern artist broke all of them. Schaeffer makes the same case
for modern music and literature.
42

In 1970, H. R. Rookmaaker wrote, Modern art in its more consistent forms puts a question-mark against all val-
ues and principles. Its anarchist aims of achieving complete human freedom turn all laws and norms into frustrating
and deadening prison walls; the only way to deal with them is to destroy them.
43
In destroying the walls (rules) of
the pre-modern era, modern art left man to himself and the coming of postmodernism.
Postmodern Art
Whereas pre-modern art was representational and modern art was abstract, postmodern art intends to shock.
Rather than the picture or the artist being important, the audience becomes the important factor. Because the world is
a text and we create our own reality, the only value of an artists work is the reaction created in the audience.
Veith says,
The implication is revealingthe standard of shock replaces the standard of beauty. Concepts such as beauty,
order, and meaning are being challenged by the new aesthetic theories in favor of ugliness, randomness, and ir-
rationalism. The purpose is not to give the audience pleasure, but to assault them with a decentering experi-
ence. Art becomes defined as whatever an artist does. As a result, the work of art becomes less important
than the artist, a view which encourages posturing, egotism, and self-indulgence instead of artistic excellence.
44

In the name of art, we have endured cows being spray-painted so that when they walk about, art is created; King
Kong Balloons tied to the Empire State Building; toilets on display in the middle of a stage. The National Endowment
for the Arts (NEA) once awarded $20,000 for a work called The Kiss in which a pathologist sawed a human head in
half, turned the two halves facing each other to resemble a kiss. And, of course, it gets worse and more vulgar from
here.
Performance Art is designed to reduce the human to the lowest level and to strip him of any dignity and de-
sign. The more dehumanizing the experience is for the audience, the more successful postmodern art has become.
MTV-style productions are intended to be ugly, violent and nonsensical. The technological production is far more
important than the music. Rap music is disjointed, animalistic and violent as well. George Will wrote, There is an
abundance of fine art if you declare that fine art is anything that anyone calling himself an artist calls fine art. . . . If I

40
Gene Edward Veith, Jr. State of the Arts (Wheaton: Crossway, 1991), 54.
41
Ibid., 60.
42
In his book, The God Who Is There (Downers Gr ove: InterVarsity P, 1968), Schaeffer shows how all of the fine
arts drop below the line of despair. Just as modern art broke all of the rules of representation on canvas, modern
music broke all of the rules of structure and composition. This was modern man expressing himself as the highest
form of evolution, not able to be bound by any laws.
43
Rookmaaker, Modern Art, 161.
44
Veith, The State Of The Arts, 21.

call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog got? Five? No, because calling a tail a leg doesnt make it a leg.
45
And that
is what the postmodernist rejects.
Postmodern Architecture
The pre-modern age was an age of representation, as we have said. John Stackhouse writes, Christians
throughout history, therefore, have wisely paid attention to the erection of structures that would convey a particular
message to the community. Medieval cathedrals spoke eloquently of the devotion of princes, clergy and townspeo-
ple to Godand to civic and personal pride.
46
This was not only true of high church traditions but even Baptists
[constructed] church buildings that asserted the moral status of Christianity in an increasingly materialistic culture.
47

Just as modernism changed other areas of art, modern man was typified also by his architecture of steel, glass,
skyscrapers, order, and industrial looks. Americas cities at this time are a testimony to modernism as sleek, efficient
buildings stretch to the sky and overshadow older, more ornate buildings representing an older age. Even Christian
structures have used modern architecture to find their place in society. Stackhouse says, Oral Roberts University
and Robert Schullers Crystal Cathedral dramatically exemplify a different approach, declaring in their space-age
architecture of sharp-angled steel, concrete and glass that they are at Americas sophisticated cutting edge.
48

The postmodernist rejects the architecture both of pre-modernism and modernism. He sees both expressions as
those of power and oppression. As Schaeffer wrote, He is the man who, about 1960, gave birth to the happenings,
and then beyond this the environments. . . . In the happenings you are put as it were within the picture.
49
By our
time, Schaeffer has proved to be right. Postmodernists bring man into the building and surround him with facades.
Theme Parks are typical places where we are surrounded by something that looks like another time and place, and yet
it is untrue, we are not really there. Shopping malls often create a certain theme and invite us to walk within this
miniature virtual world for a short time. Even restaurants now must bring us into Mexico to eat Mexican food or into
Italy to eat Italian food. We enjoy the escape and the attention given to detail, but most of all we enjoy playing with
the unrealistic situation.
Postmodern architecture also attacks the patron by exposing contradictions. By walking inside a building you
are likely to see trees, shrubs, gardens and those things that should be outside. This is a purposed promotion of the
environment as the better place to be.
Just as the atrium brings the outside inside, many postmodernist buildings bring the inside outside. Structural
framework such as beams and ventilation ducts may appear on the surface for everyone to see. An example is
the Pompideau Center in Paris, built in 1977. Support beams, tie rods, and the plumbing appear to be on the out-
side of the building, painted in bright, garish colors. The inner workings of the building are visible behind a thin
skin of transparent glass. An escalator snakes along the exterior of the building. It is as if the building were
turned inside out. The effect is unsettling, like looking at a man but seeing only his insides his lungs, blood
vessels, and red guts.
50
This is precisely the postmodern point. The world is a contradiction and there is no truth, pattern or law that
must be followed. In fact, to follow a pattern is to submit to the manipulation of societal programmers. Therefore,
man is brought into a contradictory, confusing world that is designed to destroy old myths.

45
George Will, The Shocking Bourgeoisie, The Morning After (New York: Macmillan, 1986), 55.
46
John G. Stackhouse, Jr., From Architecture To Argument, Christian Apologetics in a Postmodern World, 40.
47
Ibid., 41.
48
Ibid.
49
Schaeffer, The God Who Is There, 35.
50
Gene Veith, Postmodern Times, 117.

Interestingly, postmoderns enjoy refurbishing old structures. Many older sections of town are revitalized into
efficiently working structures. Old barns, churches, and warehouses are kept intact on the outside and brought up to
date on the inside. Of course, the bathrooms and kitchens are not restored but rather are modernized. Eclecticism
works well for the postmodern because it shows the randomness of mans life and the lack of priority for any given
ethic.
Churches are having to ask themselves how far they can go to accommodate the postmodern thinkers. Many
progressive churches purposely avoid structures that look like traditional churches. Some take surveys of people to
see what they want and what they would like if they came inside. This is far removed from the older, pre-modern
structures purposely designed in the shape of a cross with its nave crossed by its transept. When sinners came
in, like it or not, they were brought into the cross for worship. Windows were often elevated so the worshiper had
to look up for light. In the postmodern world of art and architecture, there is no meaning and therefore form which
implies meaning is discouraged.
As believers we know that the church is not the structure. But are we gaining or losing by giving up on good art
and architecture? God commanded the tabernacle to be built for glory and beauty (Exod 28:2). We ought to
strive to have the best of both meaning that honors the truth of God, as well as form that lifts our thoughts to the
Creator.
Postmodern Technology
Orwell predicted that by 1984 we would be controlled by computers as a child is controlled by his Big Brother.
In 1996 a computer called Big Blue tried to control world champion chess player, Garry Kasparov. Kasparov said
that he was playing to help defend our dignity.
51
Kasparov may have won the chess match (because he could
think and the computer could not), but the computer may be winning the war!
Definition
Technological wonders such as television, movie theaters, videos and computers have become realities, and no
state of existence typifies postmodernism better than virtual reality. It is a state of being informed but discon-
nected, of power without the difficulties of confronting others face to face. Leonard Payton wrote of technological
wonders that they are made by people who tend not to know one another for people they do not know at all and will
probably never meet.
52
Indeed, to a postmodernist, all reality is virtual reality.
53
Since our existence has no mean-
ing and we are not connected to history or its values by any binding truths, no one can be quite certain where reality
and non-reality start and stop. Francis Schaeffer wrote, If one has no basis on which to judge, then reality falls
apart, fantasy is indistinguishable from reality; there is no value for the human individual, and right and wrong have
no meaning.
54
Technology can be a blessing or a curse. In this regard it is becoming a curse.
Neil Postman has called this technological control, TechnopolyThe submission of all forms of cultural life to
the sovereignty of technique and technology.
55
Groothuis, in the same vein as Postman, laments the takeover of our
society by such a valueless medium, When information is conveyed through cyberspace, the medium shapes the
message, the messenger, and the receiver. It shapes the entire culture.
56
A key ingredient is not only the blurring of
the fact with the fiction, but the participation by the computer user in this virtual world. Today, one can actually

51
Quoted by Robert Wright, Can Machines Think? Time Magazine, 25 March 1996, 50.
52
Leonard Payton, How Shall We Then Sing, The Coming Evangelical Crisis, 198.
53
Veith, Postmodern Times, 61.
54
Francis Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century, 50.
55
Neil Postman, Technopoly (New York: Vintage, 1992), 52.
56
Douglas Groothuis, The Soul In Cyberspace (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997), 53.

participate (of course, only virtually) in sporting events, world-wide field trips, and even in virtual eroticism. In such
a world, the viewer is at the mercy of a world created by a technician who probably has only your pocket book in his
own mind. This sort of power wielded over the helpless souls of society has not seemed to alarm postmo dern
activists.
The End of Writing
Throughout the pre-modern and the modern eras, the print medium was the standard tool for conveying ideas.
God gave us his Bible in print because print is permanent and precise and because it is a type of communication that
allows one the time and contemplation to grasp its meaning. Sven Birkerts noted, Print communication requires the
active engagement of the readers attention, for reading is fundamentally an act of translation. . . . The physical ar-
rangements of print are in accord with our traditional sense of history.
57
This typographical mind has been the
medium that educated us, allowed us communication with God, gave us the great classic literature of the world, and
taught the postmo derns to think.
The 20
th
century, however, has seen the print medium give way to faster, more titillating and easier forms of
communication. When Samuel Morse first sent a message by electrical impulse from Washington to Baltimore, the
information age was born. Postman says, The telegraph removed space as an inevitable constraint on the move-
ment of information, and, for the first time, transportation and communication were disengaged from each other.
58

From that point on, information has been removed from its context, and the observer no longer has to be a partaker of
the events. Our real world is isolated and separated from the world over there.
Technology has played into the hands of postmodernism. Vi rtual reality deconstructs the text not only of
written history but also of life itself. Groothuis writes, The character of the computer screen, the strange powers of
word processing, and the almost ubiquitous Internet tend to reinforce certain postmodernist themes that may under-
mine Christian sensibilities and a biblical worldview.
59

Virtual Community
We all lament the loss of community as our world moves from the rural life of our grandparents to the urban life
of our kids. We live inside fences, automobiles, garages with electric openers (and closers), cubed work areas, and
many other cocooning influences. We are told that the information super highway is our ticket out. But is it?
David Wells observes, Our computers are starting to talk to us while our neighbors are becoming more distant and
anonymous.
60
Groothuis says, The notion of community tends to erode under the conditions of postmodernity. A
common social practice called cocooning isolates individuals from others by keeping them safe and snug in front of
their home entertainment centers and computer screens.
61

Within the computer, on the internet, these individuals who have withdrawn from the real world are exploring vir-
tual worlds where they can be someone else, do not have to live by anyones rules, and can experience realms that
are otherwise forbidden to them. Chat rooms become excuses for conversation. Of course, none of the rules of face-
to-face manners and deportment apply, and one can walk away with anonymity and without consequence. For all of
its hype, the community created by technology is no community at all.

57
Quoted by Groothuis, ibid., 54.
58
Postman, Technopoly, 67.
59
Groothuis, The Soul In Cyberspace, 65.
60
Quoted by Groothuis, ibid., 125.
61
Ibid., 122.

The Christian Challenge
Believers have always tried to use the medium available to reach the lost world. Whether radio, television or the
computer, we have tried to proclaim a message. In the postmodernists virtual world of technology, certain obvious
cautions must be taken.
J. Gresham Machen, in the early fight against Liberalism, reminded us that Christianity must remain based on some-
thing that really happened.
It must certainly be admitted, then, that Christianity does depend upon something that happened; our religion
must be abandoned alt ogether unless at a definite point in history Jesus died as a propitiation for the sins of
men. Christianity is certainly dependent upon history.
62

We cannot present Christ and His atoning work as if it were one of many virtual options. The postmodernist
can accept Christianity or reject it without ever considering its reality. To him, there would be no contradiction
in accepting more than one if not many religions. Today, we hear of many faiths, any one of which becomes truth
for the one accepting it.
The questions of reaching postmodernists with technology are more serious than simple questions of methodol-
ogy. Postman, a believer who teaches at New York University among a postmodern culture, writes,
This is serious business, which is why we learn nothing when educators ask, Will students learn mathematics
better by computers than by textbooks? Or when businessmen ask, Through which medium can we sell more
products? Or when preachers ask, Can we reach more people through television than through radio? Or when
politicians as k, How effective are messages sent through different media? Such questions have an immediate,
practical value to those who ask them, but they are diversionary. They direct our attention away from the s eri-
ous social, intellectual, and institutional crises that new media foster.
63

A. W. Tozer, years ago, sounded a similar warning when he saw the beginnings of postmodern thinking in a
technological age,
Failure to see this is the cause of a very serious breakdown in modern evangelicalism. . . . We now demand glam-
our and fast flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic ma-
chines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply ma-
chine-age methods to our relations with God. . . . The tragic results of this spirit are all about us.
64

If we are to become all things to all men, it will take more than keeping up with the postmodern Jones. It will
take asking ourselves how they think about what they see. It will take a willingness on our part to present the gospel
as true, regardless of how that disturbs a comfortable, unrealistic, virtual world.
The challenge to Christians living in postmodern times is enormous. If ever we face the danger of the frog in the
slowly boiling pot, it is today. Gene Veith warns, The end of the modern era opens up genuine opportunities for
Biblical Christianity. However, instead of squarely facing the postmodern condition, many Christians succumb to the
postmodernism plaguing the rest of the culture.
65
The pragmatism of the new age is more accessible than ever be-
fore. With people demanding technological marvel, it is easier than ever before for the church to deliver. And the
rewards are immediate and congratulatory. But as we look at 20
th
(and 21
st
) century Christianity, we must ask our-
selves if we are holding our link in the historical chain of our faith. Is our life-changing message still changing lives?
Os Guinness summarizes well,

62
J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 121.
63
Postman, Technopoly, 18-19.
64
A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God (Harrisburg: Christian, 1958), 69.
65
Veith, Postmodern Times, 209.

But perhaps postmodernisms main challenge to the church is to our central mission as Christians: following
Christ and making him Lord in all of life. The church cannot become simply another customer center that offers
designer religion and catalogue spirituality to the hoppers and shoppers of the modern world. Followers of
Christ are custodians of the faith passed on down the running centuries. Never must we allow anyone outside
or inside the church to become cannibals who devour the truth and meaning of this priceless heritage of faith.
Letting the church be the church and the gospel be the gospel is integral to letting God be God.
66

THE APOLOGETICS FOR POSTMODERNISM
The most important question for any Christian to face is how to reach his own generation. We understand that
the only really important question is the eternal question and that understanding our culture has always been a key
to reaching the culture. Douglas Groothuis wrote, Our souls reflect our worlds and our worlds reflect our souls.
One who aspires to understand the nature of the soul ought, then, to be an auditor of culture.
67
But there have
always been disagreements over the appropriate ways to reach each generation in its own culture.
It is easy to ignore the changes in culture and refuse to become all things to all men, but it is also easy to be-
come what the culture is in order to reach it. Franky Schaeffer, in 1981, lamented the over-reaction by the new Chris-
tian left in reaching this new generation:
Today, we still have this kind of utilitarianism. However, to complicate matters there is a new breed of utilitarian-
ism, which has come about largely through those who (often for correct reasons) have rebelled against the mate-
rialistic consumer-oriented utilitarian activity for activitys sake position of the church. Unfortunately, those
who have rebelled have latched on to another nineteenth-century phenomenon and have been infiltrated by it
and just as damaged as those they have rebelled against.
68
It seems to this author that either extreme is wrong. Nothing is compromis ed by learning about the culture in
which one lives, nor by trying to think as they think. We cannot retreat out of the world to win the world. But while
learning about our culture, we must not adopt the philosophy and life-style that is contrary to God. Retreat is wrong
and capitulation is wrong, but infiltration with confrontation must be accomplished.
There are four areas in which the Christian must keep the right balance in a postmodern age.
Truth and Reality
The Apostle Paul tells us that we must have our loins girt about with truth (Eph 6:14). Gods Word is filled
with the importance of standing for truth as a testimony to God in the world. We are to buy the truth and sell it not
(Prov 23:23); that is, we must give everything we have to get it and, once we have it, we must not give it up for any
price. The reason for this emphasis on truth in Gods Word is that lying, or being contrary to what is true, is a denial
of Gods reality. We are told that God cannot lie (Titus 1:2), and in fact it would be impossible for such a thing to
happen (Heb 6:18). Gods very nature is truth and our very ministry is For the truths sake, which dwelleth in us,
and shall be with us for ever
(2 John 2). Gods world was a perfectly truthful world until Satan introduced an element that is contrary to Gods
naturea lie (John 8:44). Mans selfish nature is inclined to agree with the lies of Satan in opposition to the truth of
God. This opposition may manifest itself in false claims, actions that are contrary to Gods will, thoughts that arise
out of a selfish heart, immoral actions contrary to Gods holy character, breaking the laws of the land or any number
of lies. The believer simply cannot agree with a lie, whether by word or deed. Such a thing is sin for him because it
is contrary to God and the way He made the world.
As our study has shown, never in the history of Christianity has truth been more under attack, not just the truth-
fulness of certain biblical propositions, but the very existence of truth as a possibility. Without the possibility of

66
Guinness, Fit Bodies, Fat Minds, 110.
67
Groothuis, The Soul In CyberSpace, 23.
68
Franky Schaeffer, Addicted To Mediocrity (Wheaton: Crossway, 1993), 69.

truth, the postmodern man sees no reality in history or science. Francis Schaeffer some years ago wrote, History as
history has always presented problems, but as the concept of the possibility of true truth has been lost, the erosion
of the line between history and the fantasy the writer wishes to use as history for his own purposes is more and more
successful as a tool of manipulation.
69
Believers must not give in to this same manipulation. Ron Mayers points
out, The individual who says he is a Christian, but does not live like a Christian, actually gives the lie to his own
testimony. Unfortunately, unbelievers interpret this contradiction as an indication of the absence of truth in the
claims of Christianity.
70

In reaching the postmodern, whether by words and actions or by worship styles and homiletics, Christians must
show the reality of God and His hand in this world by displaying an unswerving loyalty to truth. One recent article
lamented, in the onslaught of attacks on truth, that the church in North America is not answering postmodernists
effectively, and we are losing ground so rapidly that many church leaders are ready to join the new postmodern con-
sensus.
71
Such capitulation must never take place.
We must be careful of evangelistic stealth ministries. If we are trying to draw the postmodern into our churches
by presenting the things he likes (music, style, language, technology) while at the same time hiding fundamental
Christian practices (prayer, communion, baptism, self-denial, piety), it will backfire on us. It is not that the postmo d-
ern will be turned off by this. That is the bedrock of his world. There is no absolute truth and all practices are to be
individually selected according to each persons likes and dislikes. In an ironic way, Christian ministries that cater to
the postmo derns likes and dislikes are actually agreeing that Christianity can be taken or left as each individual (or
generation) pleases. These people will stay around as long as it benefits them to do so.
Worship and Immanence
To the postmodern, worship is mere technological symbolism over substance. We have discovered that in his
world the symbols are the substance. Groothuis writes, The image is everything because the essence has become
unknown and unknowable.
72
Because he sees reality and truth as being constructed at the moment, worship need
not go beyond the worship act. This amounts to worshiping worship. The more real the worship service seems,
the less a postmodern person needs or wants anything beyond that. Some years ago, Vance Havner quoted Newton
D. Baker as saying, The effect of modern inventions has been to immeasurably increase the difficulty of deliberation
and contemplation about large and important issues.
73

We must proclaim God as transcendentbut not too transcendent. His ways are not our ways and He is above
the limitations of the world. But He is not so far away that we cannot know Him. And we must proclaim God as im-
manentbut not just immanent. He condescends to men of low estate. But He is not the world itself, nor the music,
nor the emotion of a worship service. We are not converted by getting in touch with the immanent. C. S. Lewis
wrote, Until a certain spiritual level has been reached, the promise of immortality will always operate as a bribe which
vitiates the whole religion and infinitely inflames those very self-regards which religion must cut down and uproot.
74

We must be very careful not to give the sinner what he wants, but rather what he needs. And usually, in the spiritual
realm, what a sinner needs is not at all what he wants. Pascal wrote centuries ago, They imagine that such a conver-
sion consists in a worship of God conducted, as they picture it, like some exc hange or conversation.
75


69
Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century, 89.
70
Ron Mayers, Balanced Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1984), 58.
71
Jim Leffel and Dennis McCallum, The Postmodern Challenge: Facing the Spirit of the Age, Christian Re-
search Journal (Fall 1996): 35.
72
Groothuis, The Soul in Cyberspace, 16.
73
Quoted by Vance Havner, Rest Awhile (New York: Revell, 1941), 11.
74
C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 130.
75
Blaise Pascal, Pensees (New York: Penquin, 1966) 27:378.

Perhaps no word has grown up in our worship services like the word community. Active churches are seeking
community among attendees in order to draw them into the group and thereby seek a commitment from them. The
fellowship of believers cannot be minimized in the New Testament nor in our churches. But, understanding the
postmodern man, we must be careful how the newcomer sees the group relationship. Francis Schaeffer, a sage of
sorts concerning the coming postmodern era, in 1971 warned:
Now we are ready to start talking about the community. I would stress again, however, that a person does not
come into relationship with God when he enters the Christian community, whether it is a local church or any
other form of community. As I have said, the liberals have gone on to promote other concepts of community.
They teach that the only way you can be in relationship to God is when you are in a group. The modern concept
is that you enter into community; in this community there is horizontal relationship; in these small I-Thou rela-
tionships you can hope that there is a big I-Thou relationship. This is not the Christian teaching. There is no
such thing as a Christian community unless it is made up of individuals who are already Christians through the
work of Christ. One can talk about Christian community until one is green, but there will be no Christian commu-
nity except on the basis of a personal relationship with the personal God through Christ.76
It would be abnormal if Christians did not want to reach the present generation in any way they could. But be-
cause we are also of this postmodern age, we must ask the sobering question: Are we changing our worship style
because it is what will reach the lost? Or are we changing our worship style because it is what we like? The early
church reached the lost by doing what God wanted them to do in order to worship Him.
Culture and Moral Law
We are coming dangerously close to believing that culture is morally neutral. Most definitions, however, will
necessarily include some word like expression or achievement to describe the thing called culture. We ought to
remember that the root of culture is cult. It is a society, or at least the norms of a society, formulated by the mem-
bers of that cult. That is why John Leo can decry the absence of truth by saying, This casualness in popular culture
is reinforced by trends in the intellectual world which hold that truth is socially constructed and does not exist in the
real world.
77
That is why gangs develop strict codes concerning the clothing they wear, language they use and
attitudes they must have, because their cult has necessarily created its own culture. The moral value of such culture
is abundantly expressed in the mores developed by the people of that culture.
Culture is the spirit of the age. It can be a healthy spirit expressed by believers, but because it is the expression
of human beings, it is usually a sinful spirit. The New Testament combines the word world (kosmos) with the word
age (aion) to give us this picture. We are not to be conformed to the aion (Rom 12:2); when we were lost, we
walked according to the aion of this world (Eph 2:2); Demas forsook Paul, having loved this present aion or
actually, this now age (2 Tim 4:10). We walk in this world, the kosmos, because we are creatures here, but we do
not walk by its spirit, the aion. Peter said we should not be fashioning ourselves (1 Pet 1:14) to this world by our
selfish desires.
Many secular culture-watchers have argued for postmodernisms effect on the culture in a moral way. Steven
Connor, professor of English at Birkbeck College, London University, writes, In popular culture as elsewhere, the
postmodern condition is not a set of symptoms that are simply present in a body of sociological and textual evidence,
but a complex effect of the relationship between social practice and the theory that organizes, interprets and legit i-
mates its forms.
78
Edward O. Wilson writes, If these premises are correct, it follows that one culture is as good as
any other in the expression of truth and morality, each in its own special way.
79


76
Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century, 54-55.
77
John Leo, This Column is Mostly True, U.S. News & World Report, 16 December 1996, 17.
78
Steven Connor, Postmodernist Culture (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1997), 205.
79
Edward O. Wilson, Back From Chaos, The Atlantic Monthly, March 1998, 58.

Sadly, it is the churches that have been slow to realize and admit that current culture cannot be adapted and
used in any way it chooses. While church leaders have ignored the moral implications of popular culture, other
Christian leaders have had to sound the warning. Ravi Zacharias writes, History is replete with examples of unscru-
tinized cultural trends that were uncritically accepted yet brought about dramatic changes of national import. . . .
Cultures have a purpose, and in the whirlwind of possibilities that confront society, reason dictates that we find
justification for the way we think and why we think, beyond chance exi stence.
80
David Wells writes, Culture, then,
is the outward discipline in which inherited meanings and morality, beliefs and ways of behaving are preserved. It is
that collectively assumed scheme of understanding that defines both what is normal and what meanings we should
attach to public behavior.
81
David Chilton, writing about liberal Christian revolutionaries, says, Revolution is a
religious faith. All men, created in the image of God, are fundamentally religious: all cultural activity is essentially an
outgrowth of mans religious position; for our life and thought are exercised either in obedience to, or rebellion
against, God.
82

Though culture is often ignored by unwary believers as having moral significance, the postmodern attaches
meaning to almost everything he does as well as to what the church does. Veith reminds us, Every cultural art ifact
is thus construed as a text. That is, every human creation is analogous to language. To use a postmodernist slo-
gan, The world is a text. Governments, worldviews, technologies, histories, scientific theories, social customs, and
religions are all essentially linguistic constructs.
83
We were better instructed by Robinson Crusoe, watching the
cannibals devour their comrades and saying, whose barbarous customs, were their own disaster, being in them a
token indeed of Gods having left them, with the other nations of that part of the world, to such stupidity and to such
inhuman courses.
84
We should be so observant of the spirit of our own age.
Normally we react to the situation which we have observed firsthand, especially if we have grown uncomfortable
with obvious inconsistencies. Douglas McLachlan responds to cultural abuses from conservatives:
Fundamentalists have tended to limit the application of Christian truth to personal life styles while failing to see
its application to the great cultural issues of our day. There are occasions when we will have to turn our atten-
tion away from such things as hem lines and hair lengths (and there is a place for dealing with modesty in both
dress and groomingPaul and Peter did!) and to focus on such issues as encroaching secularism, avaricious
materialism, pervasive evolutionism and defiant feminism.
85

In the conservative church-growth scene, however, many are sounding alarms against those who see no diffi-
culty in bringing todays culture into the church. William H. Willimon says, In leaning over to speak to the mo dern
world, I fear we may have fallen in.
86
John MacArthur writes, The culture around us has declared war on all stan-
dards, and the church is unwittingly following suit. . . . It is, once again, a capitulation to the relativism of an existen-
tial culture.
87
Francis Schaeffer wrote, Furthermore, if we acquiesce, we will no longer be the redeeming salt for our
culturea culture which is committed to the concept that both morals and laws are only a matter of cultural orienta-
tion, of statistical averages. . . . If our reflex action is always accommodation regardless of the centrality of the truth

80
Zacharias, Deliver Us From Evil, 17.
81
Quoted by David Doran, Market-Driven Ministry: Blessing or Curse? Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal (Fall
1996): 212.
82
David Chilton, Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators (Tyler: ICE, 1985), 3.
83
Veith, Postmodern Times, 52.
84
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (Chicago: Moody n. d.), 209.
85
Douglas McLachlan, Reclaiming Authentic Fundamentalism (Independence, MO: AACS, 1993) 18.
86
William H. Willimon, This Culture Is Overrated, Christianity Today, 19 May 1997, 27.
87
John MacArthur, Reckless Faith (Wheaton: Crossway, 1994), 45.

involved, there is something wrong.
88
Groothuis adds, It is no coincidence that those churches that most readily
incorporate elements of contemporary culture into their worship services are also least likely to appreciate the need to
confront and to transform contemporary culture according to biblical truth.
89

William Bennett, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and Secretary of Education, as
well as the author of many books dealing with culture, writes, My worry is that people are not unsettled enough; I
dont think we are angry enough. We have become inured to the cultural rot that is settling in. Like Paulina, we are
getting used to it, even though it is not a good thing to get used to.
90
Perhaps we have lost our zeal for God and
gained a zeal for the success that cultural relationships brings.
In 1941, Vance Havner wrote these timely words:
There was Demas, who forsook Paul, having loved this present world. Doubtless he had started out in dead ear-
nest, maybe with plenty of fire, but the pull of the old life and the charm of the world were too much for him.
Think not, however, of Demas merely as the sort lured away today by dances and movies. Certainly all that be-
longs to this present world, but we are in danger of re stricting worldliness to a few pet evils, forgetting that
what is in mind here is the age in which Demas lived. The spirit of the times got him, and he got into the tempo
of it, was carried away with the surge of it .
91

Repentance and Faith
A. W. Tozer wrote, To the question, What must I do to be saved? we must learn the correct answer. To fail
here is not to gamble with our souls; it is to guarantee eternal banishment from the face of God. Here we must be
right or be finally lost.
92
This must be our bottom line with the postmodern man. Here we cannot be content to have
learned what it takes to gather people together week after week, to have been culturally savvy enough to attract
attention, or to have been well-liked and accepted by our generation. The postmodern man can follow every demand
we make of him, even pray whatever we ask him to pray, and in his mind simply be adding Christianity to the file of
other practical self-helps.
If we are truly interested in being culturally relevant in the most important thing, we will study our generation
to find out how we can bring them to repentance and faith. If all we are doing is winning their approval, we have
failed. It is not success for a Christian simply to build a church or gather a crowd. Years ago J. Gresham Ma-
chen wrote:
Faith is being exalted so high today that men are being satisfied with any kind of faith, just so it is faith. It makes
no difference what is believed, we are told, just so the blessed attitude of faith is there. The undogmatic faith, it
is said, is better than the dogmatic, because it is purer faithfaith less weakened by the alloy of knowledge.
93

The postmodernist may be the easiest sinner to invite to faith that we have seen in two hundred years! The
problem will be whether we can know if that faith is the biblical faith of the New Testament.
To begin with, we must remember that the postmodern man does not regard history as having actually taken
place. As Craig says, Indeed, it is not clear whether there really is such a thing as the past on a thoroughgoing

88
Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster, 64.
89
Douglas Groothuis, Christianity That Counts (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), 81.
90
William Bennett, Redeeming Our Time, Imprimis, Hillsdale College (November 1995): 3.
91
Havner, Rest Awhile, 46.
92
A. W. Tozer, The Best of A.W. Tozer (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991), 100.
93
Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 141.

post-modernist view.
94
Or as Benjamin Woolley writes, Artificial reality is the authentic postmodern condition, and
virtual reality its definitive technological expression. . . . The artificial is the authentic.
95
This is the reason why we
are evangelizing on thin ice when we turn our church services into technological playlands for the postmoderns
sake, and then ask him to respond to a real, historical message. It is existentialism, not Christianity, that t alks much
about faith but admits we cannot know the historical facts behind the faith.
Connor, in a chapter on postmodern performance, argues that the medium is what is real to a postmodernist, and
the message behind the medium has no urgency or reality after the medium is finished. He writes:
Sound and image are simultaneous with the real music that is being performed (although, of course, in the case
of most contemporary music the original sound is usually itself only an amplified derivation from an initiating
signal), even if it remains obvious that what is most real about the event is precisely the fact that it is being pro-
jected as mass experience. . . . In the case of the live performance, the desire for originality is a secondary effect
of various forms of reproduction. The intense reality of the performance is not something that lies behind the
particulars of the setting, the technology and the audience; its reality consists in all of that apparatus of repre-
sentation.
96

The critical point for the presentation of Christianity is that the message of salvation must be believed as histori-
cally true regardless of the quality of the medium. If Adam and Eve did not live, then perhaps we have no real sin for
which to repent. If Jesus Christ did not live, die and resurrect as the Bible says, then there is no Christian message.
Of all the worlds religions, Christianity is the only one that depends solely on a historical miracle being a fact! Ma-
chen wrote, Salvation does depend upon what happened long ago, but the event of long ago has effects that con-
tinue until today.
97
The postmodern man is in a precarious position of denying, or at least doubting, everything in
the past and yet still claiming to have faith. He tells the Christian to get real but has bought into the notion (i.e.
Minimalism) that nothing is real outside of his own mind.
For this man, everything is a text which tells him the usability of what he is seeing. To dress like him, talk like
him, play his music and recreate his world inside the church (or even inside the individual Christian life), may well be
telling him that the churchs message is no more real than his own, individualized message. This does not mean he
wont like it or commit to it: it means that he never buys it as really real.
John Knox wrote, The man, I say, that understands and knows his own corrupt nature and Gods severe judg-
ment, most gladly will receive the free redemption offered by Christ Jesus, which is the only victory that overthrows
Satan and his power.
98
We have to trust the power of the gospel message and the work of the Holy Spirit enough to
believe that when a man is uncomfortable and feels out of place in church, though he may be far from his world, he is
close to the kingdom of God. This is the path of conviction down which everyone must come if he is to come to
Christ. Yet, to feel uncomfortable is the epitome of wrong for the postmo dern man. Truth does not matter, but pro-
tecting ones space matters most. The gospel appeal, therefore, is a delicate moment for the postmo dernist.
When Machen wrote in 1923, he was writing to the modern man and his social and liberal tendencies. This ex-
cerpt, however, may still be exactly our problem reaching the postmodern man.
The fundamental fault of the modern Church is that she is busily e ngaged in an absolutely impossible taskshe
is busily engaged in calling the righteous to repentance. Modern preachers are trying to bring men into the
Church without requiring them to relinquish their pride; they are trying to help men avoid the conviction of sin.
The preacher gets up into the pulpit, opens the Bible, and addresses the congregation somewhat as follows:
You people are very good, he says; you respond to every appeal that looks toward the welfare of the commu-

94
William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith (Wheaton: Crossway, 1994), 167.
95
Quoted by Groothuis, The Soul In CyberSpace, 27.
96
Connor, Postmodernist Culture, 174-75.
97
Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 71.
98
John Knox, On t he First Temptation of Christ, Orations, Mayo Hazeltine, Ed., 1349.

nity. Now we have in the Bibleespecially in the life of Jesussomething so good that we believe it is good
enough even for you good people. Such is modern preaching. But it is entirely futile. Even our Lord did not
call the righteous to repentance, and probably we shall be no more successful than He.
99

We must not find ourselves agreeing with the postmodern man. Our stewardship is to preach the wonderful
grace of God through the gospel of Jesus Christ. No generation has been promised that such a task would be easy or
popular. But the call to ministry is a call to the proclamation of truth and to believe that what God asks us to give is
exactly what our generation needs.
Conclusion
Believers are asked to be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope
that is in you with meekness and fear (1 Pet 3:15). It may be easier to recognize error than to find a way to combat it.
The churches of Jesus Christ must search the Scriptures for truth and then give it out without violating sacred prin-
ciples. There will always be room for variation as we take the gospel to the people where we live. The concern in this
section has been that we do not think we are reaching the postmo dern man just because we attract him. With this
generation the success syndrome may be harder to fight than ever before simply because this generation can and will
follow anything with little or no real commitment. There must be a telling reason why churches are as large and active
as any time in recent history and yet the commitment levels of those making professions of faith are so low.
When we stand before Christ, we will be asked to give account of how we built on the foundation, not how
much. Our stewardship is to proclaim what our King has given us to proclaim. It is an awesome task and sometimes
we feel inadequate. But the rewards for faithful service will be worth it all.
The apologist, C.S. Lewis, once finished an argument this way:
One last word. I have found that nothing is more dangerous to ones own faith than the work of an apologist.
No doctrine of that Faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a
public debate. For a moment, you see, it has seemed to rest on oneself: as a result, when you go away from that
debate, it seems no stronger than that weak pillar. That is why we apologists take our lives in our hands and can
be saved only by falling back continually from the web of our own arguments, as from our intellectual counters,
into the Realityfrom Christian apologetics into Christ Himself. That also is why we need one anothers contin-
ual helporemus pro invicem (Let us pray for each other).
100


99
Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 68.
100
Lewis, God in the Dock , 103.