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Every few generations, a group of individuals will rise up and say, “God is dead.” “Religion is on its way out.” “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.” I’m sure that one was emblazoned across the cover of Newsweek magazine with a great deal of hope and enthusiasm. But it will never happen – at least the first two. Why? Because human beings are spiritual people.
This pagan, anti-Christian environment which we see developing, growing up around us, also provides us with opportunities. Post-modernism is the term to refer to the mentality, the mind-set, which says there is no objective truth. You can’t know objective truth. Everything is relative and depends on the individual person. It is no accident that the internet and the information age have coincided with the rise of postmodernism. We are bombarded with all types of news and news sources from all over the world. Unfortunately, what often passes as news and facts is really just someone’s opinion. So we have confused “opinion” with “fact.”
Post-modernism arose as a reaction to modernism. Modernism, from the 18th century on, was the age of science. It was the age of Darwinism, who’s Origin of Species was printed in 1859. It was the age of the test tube and the scientific method. But that mentality – modernism – did not address man’s deepest, most spiritual needs. Modernism did not bring us peace, prosperity, and progress. It led us into the nuclear age – two world wars, the Korean War, Vietnam War, Persian Gulf War, nuclear proliferation. Science did not answer man’s deepest longings.
America is, indeed, the wealthiest nation today and the wealthiest man has ever created. We have progressed in technology beyond even what your parents could have imagined. But we still have crime with us. We still have poverty with us. Forty years after President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty, we have more people on food stamps than ever before. Why? Because the problem is not money. The problem is not the wealthy getting wealthier (cf. Mark 14:7). The problem is – as it has always been – a spiritual problem.
Since modernism has not solved America’s problems, post-modernism arose as an alternative. It is, in fact, a deep, spiritual reaction to the glaring, obvious gaping hole in the heart of the human race. Our culture is longing and yearning for stability and something to fill that hole. It did not find it in the atheism of modernity and the test tube. But, it hasn’t yet realized that it won’t find it in the relativism of post-modernism either.
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Christianity has the only answer to man’s deepest problem. Mankind’s fundamental problem is still sin and neither modernism nor postmodernism address that problem. Christianity does. Christianity is about finding fulfillment – not in self-love – but in God-love, in a relationship in Jesus Christ. Read 1 Corinthians 1:18-25, 30-31. We all need to be loved. That is a fundamental need of human nature. If we find love nowhere else and from no one else, we find it from God, in Jesus Christ, in the church of Christ.
Why has Christianity continued to thrive and outlive all of her critics for 2,000 years and will continue to thrive? Because the Gospel is God working in us. Reflect on the words of Gamaliel in Acts 5:35-39. Now look at Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5. Christianity did not originate with man. Humans did not write the Bible. The Gospel is not a figment of man’s imagination. It’s all from God. The resurrection was a work of God and it was verified through eyewitnesses. Therefore, the Gospel is as stable as the God of heaven. If He is unmovable and stable, so is His word.
So your faith does not rest in men but in the power of God. Your faith in Christianity is in the same God who brought the Israelites out of Egypt. The Egyptians thought they were doing something foolish. Your faith is in the same God who brought down the walls of Jericho. The Canaanites, no doubt, thought the Israelites were doing something foolish. Your faith is in the same God who kept Daniel alive in the den of lions. The Babylonian wise men thought Daniel’s behavior was foolish. Consider 2 Thessalonians 1:11. The Gospel that has penetrated your heart is not from men, but from God.
That’s the message we need to take to our post-modern world.
–Post-modernism
