WHY POSTMODERNISM WON’T WIN

WHY POSTMODERNISM WON’T WIN

Is postmodernism invincible? The postmodern prophets strongest argument why the pastors should listen to them is that Postmodernism is taking over the culture – especially the youth – and if they want to have a future, they have to adapt to the new ‘emerging’ postmodern culture. Postmodern liberalism has taken over most of the Western World – except for a few isolated ‘behind the times’ outposts of conservative Christianity - and will soon take over the rest of the world also. When I debated the Western Cape MEC for Finance on the legalization of gambling and casinos, he didn’t even try to rebut my arguments of negative social impact. Rather he countered: ‘That is the way the whole world is going. We can’t go back’. Even the name ‘Post-modernism’ implies a time frame i.e. that those who don’t follow are out of date. Resistance is therefore pointless. Conservative biblical Christians are painted as an anachronism. As the old saying goes: “If you can’t beat them join them”. Does this logic fit the facts? What does the Bible say about it?

Yes, it is true Postmodernism has taken over much of the Western world. Through dominance of economic resources from Europe and North America, it seeks to colonise the rest of the world also. International financial aid is frequently tied to promoting postmodern liberal policies such as abortion and homosexuality in Africa, while liberal Non-profits are heavily funded by postmodern governments. Small well funded postmodern minority lobby groups are able to dominate our governments social policies.

But firstly for how long? Secondly, does that mean it will eventually dominate the rest of the world also?

HOW DO WE ANSWER THIS ARGUMENT?

* EMPIRES ARE FALLING FASTER: There have been numerous other ideologies and empires that have attempted world domination. Each has in its own time claimed an invincibility lasting long into the future. Very few have lasted long – and in fact the lifecycle of the rise and fall of empires and the ideologies and elites behind them has generally been shortening. Ancient Egyptian dynasties lasted a few hundred years and their empire a few thousand. The Nazi German ‘thousand year Reich lasted just under six years. Communist domination of the Soviet Union lasted about 70 years. Modernist liberalism with its emphasis on science and promoting Christian morals without supernatural faith has lost popularity to Postmodernism with its emphasis on subjectivity and abandonment of scientific reason and Christian morals. Postmodernism will likely also be replaced in a generation with something else. Just as the Western world is changing its clothing fashions and technology faster and faster, so ideologies are rising and falling faster and faster. In Daniel 2:44, God says “In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. So we know that only the kingdom of Christ will endure – all others will die.

* WESTERN RACIAL DOMINANCE: Postmodernist liberals face a crisis of consistency in their global dominance. On the one hand, they want to take the lead in neo-colonial imposition of their policies on the rest of the world. On the other hand, they decry racism and colonial dominance of the West. Reality is they are numerically a minority, but with financial power. An even sharper crisis faces the postmodern Western Church. They are dwindling numerically while the more biblically faithful Church in Africa, Asia and South America is growing rapidly. Recently, for example, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans called for a restructuring of the global Anglican communion away from ‘British empire’ dominance to an elected chairman. Reality is most of the worlds Anglicans will vote for a more biblical leader than will the British. http://www.worldmag.com/articles/19491 More and more international Christian organisations are seeking to include non-Westerners in their top level leadership. This new African and Asian leadership is much less inclined to follow postmodern trends than Christians from North America and Europe. Historically, this has happened before. As an example, the early church in Western Europe helped rescue the Eastern church from the confusion caused by attempts to unite Christianity with ancient Greek culture. The Western European church was not as vulnerable to the heresies that were attractive to the Greek world as the African and Asian churches are not as vulnerable to the deception of Postmodernism.

* CHURCH SHRINK: Even at home in the West, postmodern denominations face a crisis: the more postmodern they are, generally the more their numbers are shrinking – the opposite of what they are telling pastors. Compromise with the culture may draw a few more people for a short while, but eventually these people will become disillusioned with the church if it is much the same as the world.

* DEMOGRAPHIC SHRINK: Demographically, Postmodern mothers are on average having less than two children each. Postmodernism and feminism put low value on children and high value on women’s career success. The divorce rate is higher than other cultures. Many don’t bother to get married at all – and the proportion not marrying in post-modern countries is increasing every year. The more post-modern the country, the fewer are getting married. Children are delayed. Confused gender roles discourage parenting. Postmodernists are murdering millions of their children by abortion.

That may not sound like a big deal now, but that means each generation their numbers are going to shrink. Population shrink happens exponentially, as rapidly as population growth. That means every generation, the rate of shrink is going to get faster unless these women start having more children. But in these same countries, the non-Postmodern communities (very often immigrants) are growing rapidly. To keep their economies going to pay the pensions of the older generation, they need labour to replace those never born, they are forced to open wider the gates of immigration. The result is that in a few generations, unless they can win over the immigrants to Postmodernism (which they are not), these Postmodern nations will become minorities within their own countries. Then they will be out-voted and Post-modern law will be over. In Europe, Moslem immigrants are having lots of children, while postmodern children are below replacement. In America, pro-abortionists are obviously having less children than pro-life Christian Americans.

* LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY: Postmodernism relativism faces core logical internal contradictions:
- Firstly, They call for ‘tolerance’ of their views, but are intolerant of others views. Homosexual activists and liberal denominations are persecuting Christians. For example, numerous biblical congregations have lost their buildings to liberal postmodern denominations.
- Secondly, they argue that nothing is absolute. But having stated this, they have just stated a belief which is their minds is absolute. At some point people will realize the logical inconsistency and thus intellectual bankruptcy of this view.

While this may seem a bit abstract for most people, as an example a postmodern archeology article in New Scientist on the Inca practice of ‘child sacrifice’ stated they could find no logical way to argue from a postmodern perspective that this practice was wrong. The Inca’s believed this was acceptable – so how can we Westerners question them? But inherently from conscience we know it is wrong (Romans 2:15) – but Postmodernism cannot logically explain the conscience.

* THE DAMAGE WILL BE EXPOSED: Most ideologies rely on the circular logic of being taken for granted and not studied objectively from the outside. For example, Karl Marx document on communism was not ‘Das Communism’ but ‘Das Kapital’ i.e. a critique of the evils of ‘Capitalism’. University students were mostly not formally taught the propositions of communism, but implicitly taught it through an attack on the evils of Capitalism using the analytical tools of communism – which included for example the unquestioned assumption that all deserved to be paid an equal amount. Whether this was right and whether it was feasible was never allowed to be questioned in this assault on the Capitalism. After communism had fallen, a group of French former Marxist intellectuals did a similar analysis of the evils produced by Communism. http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Book-Communism-Repression/dp/0674076087
At present, Postmodernists are attacking the evils of Modernism and what they believe is wrong with Christianity. But when the focus turns to actually study the fruit Postmodernism is producing in Europe and America: Dysfunctional families; divorce; abortion of babies; teen sexuality; degradation of women by pornography; spreading homosexuality; elitist arbitrary government by courts displacing democracy; population shrink – and probably it will soon slide into more problems such as legalizing sex with children and infanticide – as did its ancient Greek ancestral ideology.

* LOSS OF INTELLECTUAL MOMENTUM: Postmodernism grew mostly out of the philosophical ideas of French intellectuals such as Jacques Derrida. It has since spread to other western countries where spread through universities and then the mass media into popular culture. Most Western ideologies have followed this pattern: Philosophers to universities to educational and media elites to the masses. The leaders of the ‘Emerging Church’ such as Brian McLaren and Rob Bell are not that original. They are borrowing ideas from secular philosophers and trying to clothe them in Christian language – engaging to in theological gymnastics to try to bend the interpretation of the Bible to fit Postmodern culture. But Derrida is dead and the whole philosophical debate around Postmodernism among the intellectual elite has dried up – they are generating no new ideas. Philosophers have got bored of the idea at just the time it is peaking in popular culture.

* GOD IS JUDGING: Postmodernism is just foolishness dressed up in intellectual language. As stated earlier it is logically inconsistent and produces bad fruit. Romans 1 discusses how God judges those in rebellion against him. When people fail to give glory to God, they become foolish (Romans 1:22) and he hands them over to idolatry and sexual immorality including homosexuality (Romans 1: 26-27) which is so evident with postmodernism. They are ultimately on the pathway of God’s judgment and will continue on that path to destruction unless they repent. Future generations will abhor the postmodern slaughter of the unborn and the lunacy of men ‘marrying’ men. While God may have used Babylon to judge Israel, ultimately he also judged Babylon. God is in control and Postmodernism will die too.

So, the long term chances of survival of Postmodernism are not good. Western ideologies are rising and falling faster; Western racial dominance is being challenged and the new leadership will not be so Postmodern; Generally, the more postmodern the church, in the long term the more they shrink; Demographically, postmodernists have fewer children and will go into exponential decline; Postmodernism is intellectually inconsistent with itself and with conscience and reality; the social damage of postmodernism will be exposed; the leading intellectual philosophers of the world are losing interest in postmodernism; finally, postmodernism itself should be seen as just God judging and handing over people who fail to glorify him to foolishness and degradation. Postmodernists exude an arrogance that they have history on their side as did communists before that. But generally once an empire with the myth of world conquest starts to decline it does so fast. For example, after the Soviet Union lost Afghanistan, soon the rest of its colonies wanted independence too. Once the myth was gone, so did the empire. By exposing these vulnerabilities and destroying the myth of Postmodern invincibility, we can help accelerate its decline.

In short, Postmodernism will die a slow death and biblical Christianity will endure! But probably, the fools currently promoting postmodernism will jump ship to whatever is popular when the ‘next big new idea’ comes along – just as the liberation theologians ‘jumped ship’ to postmodernism after the fall of the Soviet Union. So we should not for a moment accept the argument that Postmodernism is on an invincible path of conquest, which all should join out of a herd mentality but should be confident that biblical Christianity will endure and Postmodernism (and the Emerging Church) will like Communism (and Liberation Theology) relegated to the dustbin of history.