How do we know that our culture is postmodern? Current examples can be found in art, music, literature, and all other areas of culture. Modernism is the lament of the brokenness of life; postmodernism is the celebration of that brokenness.
II Timothy 3:1-5 states that those without Christ will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, ungrateful, abusive, arrogant and this list goes on and on. Matthew Henry states that they will be "lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God - that is a carnal mind and it is full of enmity, against Him, which prefers anything before Him." This is our current culture regardless of what we call it.
Stanley Grenz in his book, A Primer on Postmodernism, describes five presuppositions inherent and believed in the postmodern world.
1. The quest for truth is a lost cause - postmodernists argue that objective knowable truth is mythical.
2. A person's identity is constructed by forces of the surrounding culture.
3. Languages of our culture literally construct what we think of as real.
4. Reality is created by those who have power.
5. All language is made of beliefs opposite of all made statements. In other words, there is no right or wrong.
If one looks at a postmodern culture one will see three distinct traits. First, a postmodern culture is one that is in a dilemma of reproductability with a lack of original thought and creativity. Second, there is a consumerist aura that extends to anything and everything nostalgic in a way that reduces things first, to past tense and next, to insignificance. And third, image consumerism takes the place of reality and replaces it as hyper - reality: if you say it enough it will become true and real.
What are the consequences to this postmodern shift? First, it is a major shift away from the ideas of the mind and heart and a movement towards the ideas of language in which thinking is expressed by sheer volume and quantity instead of substance. Language then comes under attack and semantics are manipulated and used to promote self and relativity.
What is next? Frances Fukuyama, an American historian, paints a clear picture for us. He believes we have come to the end of history as we know it. History, in which Marxism played the major role, is all but gone. The supreme goal of liberal democracy, according to Fukuyama, has been reached. It is the Good News which is this alliance of liberal democracy with a free market economy; it has occurred in other parts of the world, but will it continue in this country is the real question. Why is this alliance a good thing: it allows for a natural progression of causation - cause and effect without man manipulating the effects in ways he has done in the past. As a Christian, this is a good thing.
What are we to do with all of this?
We are to be Matthew 22:37 Christians! Love the Lord with our hearts, souls, minds, and strengths. What does this mean? We are called to live a consistent Christian life! May God give us strength to do so always!
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