Conclusion

How can truth be known absolutely? How can one make the statement “there is no absolute truth” without it being absolutely true? This is the paradox of modern and postmodern thought. Absolute truth is true absolutely, with no exceptions.

Can someone claim to know God and yet adhere to postmodern thought? The subjective truth of postmodernism makes this a difficult claim. If God can change, then what would He change to? He could either change to be better or worse. If God changes to something better, that would imply that he was not the best previously.[1] This goes against what is said in John 3:31 which states, “(t)he one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all.”

Furthermore, if God cannot change for the better, can He change for the worse? For God to be worse than what he is would imply imperfection or the presence of evil in a being who is wholly good. God does not change. Psalm 102:26-27 says, “They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded. But you remain the same, and your years will never end.”[2]

This unchanging God strikes at the heart of postmodernist thought. How can truth be subjective and malleable if the author of truth, the one who created truth, is not? The answer is that truth does not change, that God holds the absolute truth.

There exists in the world today a war between cultures. This war is not new as it has been raging since the fall of humanity in the Garden of Eden. However, today this war is everywhere, prompting McGough to comment, “(t)o keep up with the ‘culture wars’…one would have to be omniscient, omnipresent, and awake 24 hours a day.”[3] There are so many fronts in this war that one cannot hope to fight on them all.

It is important to take up this battle, but in order to fight it one must first grasp the theology of the Christian faith. Without this knowledge it will be impossible to counter the cultural arguments of those who hold to postmodernism. This doesn’t refer to scholarly knowledge, but to general knowledge. Christians must know why they believe what they believe. I John 3:18-20 says “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”

The second weapon in this fight is knowing what exists in the culture around us. “Those who do not know their opponent’s arguments do not completely understand their own.”[4] This is not to say that Christians should immerse themselves in the world’s culture. Christians are called to be in the world but not of the world. Romans 12:2 speaks, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

Third, when talking about “reaching” the lost in this culture, tactics must not take precedence over strategy. The church cannot focus on ways to bring the lost in to the church through worldly means. Christians must engage the worldview of a person with truth, or else the tactics will be seen as empty. Biblical truth contradicts cultural spirituality, “displaces it, refuses to allow its operating assumptions, declares it to bankruptcy.”[5]

Theology is crucial to the Christian walk. The church must not feel that they know something; they must think about it and know it. R.C. Sproul says, “(w)e live in a period that is allergic to rationality . . . (t)here is a difference between thinking and feeling.”[6] This battle is won by God, but the people of the church are the foot soldiers in the war. Christians must engage the culture without becoming enveloped by it. Knowledge of theology and the ability to apply it to the culture around us is a vital tool to reach the lost people of our contemporary society.

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[1] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1994), 168

[2] Ibid., 163

[3] McGough, A Field Guide to the Culture Wars, xiii

[4] Mitchell Young, Culture Wars (Farmington Hills, Michigan: Greehaven Press, 2008), back cover

[5] John Piper and Justin Taylor, The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2007), 38

[6] Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith, xvi