Churches of Christ Should Approach Postmodernism

Postmodernism is regarded as satanic by most Church of Christ members, and I often hear it condemned as an evil force threatening everything we stand for. I accepted this perspective when I was younger, but after doing more personal research I've begun questioning whether many of our leaders really understand postmodernism. Perhaps if they understood it better they'd find some good in it.

"What is modernism?" We can't understand postmodernism if we don't understand what it's attempting to move beyond. Modernism emerged from Enlightenment philosophy in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds. Its founders believed that knowledge about reality could only be obtained through physical senses. This reduction of reality led to a materialism that elevated humans into the central position of reality definers. Nothing can be assumed to exist unless humans discover sensory proof of its existence. It's not difficult to see how this idea almost inevitably leads to some kind of deism or agnosticism, because if humans can't always sense God through replicatable physical experiments then we must assume God doesn't exist. On a side note, there's a reason we can't run an experiment to experience God; if we could run experiments on God we could gain control of him in the same way we've used science to manipulate matter. Modernism has led to the development of various materialist ideologies that seek to explain human existence through mechanical processes. These ideologies include macro-evolution, capitalism (as often expressed by libertarian Republicans), and Marxism. 

Postmodernism attempts to move beyond pseudo-rational materialistic modernism by deconstructing the scientific hubris that humans can know with absolute certainty and define reality through grand narratives. The postmodernist is the one who asks "what is truth?" after a mid-century modernist tells him/her that democratic techno-capitalism will bring humanity into a new secular utopia. Postmodernism is a kind of relativistic humility.

I believe we should move towards postmodernism so as to move beyond it towards a truly Christian worldview. By internalizing the lessons of postmodern critique, the church as a whole might be able to skip over the nihilism inherent in its deconstruction and construct a true postmodernism that looks back to ancient Christianity to remind itself of what it means to be the twenty first century church. We mustn't "go back," we must go through and beyond to a more eternal reality.

Modernism is killing us, and its secularism is emptying our societies as well as our churches. The longer modernism infects our thinking the less spiritual our thinking becomes. Our theology is becoming less spiritual, and we've made too many concessions to secular materialism because our own corrupt thinking has become aligned with it. The Holy Spirit, prayer, and even love are nonsensical from a modernist philosophical perspective, and postmodernism might be our "way of escape" from this trap. 

APPENDIX. It's become clear since publishing the above five paragraphs that most of my audience doesn't understand what I've written. In the following paragraphs I'll attempt a clarification.

Humans perceived reality as religious and enchanted before the so-called "Age of Enlightenment" (1715-1789), and this older perspective is referred to as "premodern" (similar to "postmodern"). Our ancestors believed God and other spiritual forces acted on and sustained the world they lived in. Supernatural beings and forces animated their everyday environment. God defined and centered the average European Christian's world, and wisdom meant aligning one's perception with God's. They would become delusional if they failed to do this. Enlightenment philosophers, however, didn't like the idea of humanity depending on an outside force to understand the world, and they suggested that humans should seize for themselves the arbitration of reality. These philosophers converted to anthropocentrism (man centered) from theocentrism (god centered). Man's reason was reality, and God either wasn't relevant or didn't exist.

Only from an anthropocentric worldview can one create a secular society. If God exists then secular society is absurd because it ignores the original and most important fact about human existence. Christianity, especially, renders secularism ridiculous because humans are fallen creatures incapable of governing themselves properly. God literally had to save us from ourselves by dying on a cross. Establishing entire political units without acknowledging God makes no sense from a God centered worldview, and man centered orders have no metaphysical legitimacy because they're built on relatively nothing in comparison to the "thick reality" of a faith based order grounded on a perfect eternal being.

The Enlightenment philosophers knew that the implications of their functional atheism (often called "deism") was that political society and law would become a joke. Without a god, or sacred meaning outside mankind, social order would collapse into an arbitrary arrangement of oppression: "The government rules because it has more guns than you." No society can function for long without something more inspiring than this animalistic justification. If the king only rules because he has more guns, then it's just a matter of time until the citizens arrive at a very logical conclusion: "Why don't we just kill the king and take all his guns and money?" Therefore, the French Revolution. Before the Enlightenment most people followed the government because it derived its authority from an inescapable reality: God. If you killed God's king, Romans 13:1, then you were going to burn in Hell. Every authority was legitimized by God, and you didn't have the right to change that via revolution. God's reality was all that mattered, and his chosen prince was your leader whether you hated him or not. This religious justification didn't convince everyone to follow the king, there are always ambitious sociopaths in every society who don't have consciences and don't care if they burn in Hell, and that's why the king also had lots of guns. "For he does not bare the gun in vain."

The Enlightenment philosophers realized that creating a humanistic secular society built around man's reason removed the legitimacy of government, so they decided to advance a theory of society based on their own logic. They invented the idea of a "social contract" that allowed for political legitimacy based on the "will of the people" in order to replace governments built on the "will of God" (rule by divine right). According to their theories, man was originally totally free, and then he decided he needed government to protect his freedom, so he signed a social contract to give up some of his freedoms to the government in order to protect his freedom from tyrants who wanted to take it away from him (by the way, no one has ever found the original social contract, it's almost like it never existed). Therefore, democracy is the only legitimate form of government because it alone preserves the social contract by allowing people to choose their leaders. King's have no legitimacy because they're not chosen by sacred human reason to protect the individual's freedom. God might have his own reasons for putting a king into power, but Enlightenment philosophers don't think his ideas are relevant anymore because humans are too smart to listen to him. Additionally, God doesn't have a right to rule because he wasn't elected by popular vote to protect human freedom.

This set of ideas about society became known as liberal modernism. It's built on the basic assumptions of human nature that arose in the Enlightenment: human reason can be trusted, the best society maximizes human freedom by protecting individual rights, and individuals should be able to use their reason to do whatever they want as long as it doesn't violate someone else's rights. It isn't hard to see how this set of ideas leads to things like transgenderism. Because Bruce Jenner can trust his human reason then he should have the right to become Caitlyn Jenner because it's his freedom to do so. There's no ethical justification to stop him because he has the right to do whatever he wants, and God doesn't have the electoral legitimacy to tell society to stop him. So liberal modern secular society basically inevitably leads to transgenderism. If there was a king backed by God then he'd have an incentive to stop Bruce from becoming Caitlyn because his legitimacy as a leader would be based on God putting him in that position, but we killed the king because we wanted his guns and money and he never gave us the option to sign a social contract… so we're stuck applauding Bruce on his new found identity and encouraging our children to exorcise their freedom in the same way he/she/it has done. Bruce & Caitlyn can define their own reality because they live in an anthropocentric society where humanity defines reality. Unfortunately, we're free from God's "tyrannical" unelected version of reality.

The problem with liberal modernity is that "without God all things are permitted," and since liberal modernity sidelines the most important fact of human existence, God, society is built on nothing but what the mob thinks is reasonable. The majority of people are going to Hell, so democracy could almost be redefined as "rule by the damned." This isn't to say that all democracies or non-monarchies lead to anti-Christian social degeneration, but it is to imply that all liberal modernist democracies lead to anti-Christian degeneration because they're secular and rely on false reasoning. As Christians, we know the Enlightenment's anthropocentric worldview is wrong. Humans aren't living in their own reality, they're living in God's reality, and their reason doesn't mean anything when in contradicts God's will. Liberal modernity is the Enlightenment version of "everyone did was right in their own eyes because there was no king in Western Civilization."

Christianity, with its theocentric worldview, has been in decline ever since the Enlightenment's version of human centric reality took over two centuries ago. After exploring its origin and worldview a little in the preceding paragraphs I think most readers will better understand why we should embrace postmodernism; not because it constitutes a better worldview, but because it offers a potential exit from our current disastrous secular social paradigm that encourages humans to live within a fake reality they create for themselves after sidelining God. Postmodernism is the process of moving beyond fake and destructive Enlightenment concepts like "human rights," "social contracts," "will of the people," "tabula rasa," and trust in human reason. Postmodernism deconstructs these things and opens space for ideas beyond liberal modernity's system (which has been so destructive to Christianity's dominance). We can use this void to build a more sacred world.

A quick summary: Enlightenment liberalism = modernism > Modernism is built on anti-Christian assumptions and creates a social order that ignores God > We should launch a postmodern revolution to overthrow modernism and rebuild a "premodern-postmodernism" in order to reorganize society around God.