The Search for Truth ~ Postmodern America

Postmodernism is best defined as “a reaction to modernism,” so it will be most beneficial to take a moment and explain what modernism was.  Modernism dates all the way back to the Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth century, and by the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, modernism was in full swing.  During the modern era, optimism grew along with the belief that all problems could be solved through science and human reason.  Along with this elevation of human reason and the rejection of the supernatural came a belief that man was the center of all things—the starting point and the ending point of all that is real and true.  It was widely accepted that ultimate truth could be determined through independent human reason and the scientific method. 

Near the end of the twentieth century, modern optimism started to morph into postmodern cynicism.  After two hundred years of optimism based on human autonomy, the nineteenth century brought international military conflicts of incredible proportion, nuclear bombs, an unimaginable magnitude of bloodshed, and ideological conflicts beyond belief.  Science began to be viewed with suspicion, and human reason was often downright rejected.  If reason based on the scientific method brought the human race to the very brink of self-destruction, perhaps it wasn’t so trustworthy after all.  The very notion of “objective” reason began to be severely questioned.  Some postmodern thinkers denied that humans were capable of being completely objective.  Postmodernists asserted that “universal truth” did not even exist.  They saw truth as being something determined by cultural and social contexts.  This produced such statements as, “What is true for you may not be true for me,” and allowed non-Christians to stand up to Christians with responses like, “I’m glad you’ve found the truth that works for you!”  Truth, for the postmodern pessimist, became a matter of personal preference.  All faiths and ideologies were viewed as equally “true.”  The cry of the postmodern era was “tolerance!” However, tolerance not only means allowing others to hold their own set of beliefs while you hold yours; it means accepting that everyone else’s doctrine is just as true as your own. 

Postmodernism turns to human intuition to determine truth.  However, turning to human feelings to find the truth that’s right for you is just as problematic as trying to use the scientific method to determine universal truth.  Does believing that a certain idea is true make it true?  Is there no objective standard of truth by which all claims of truth can be measured?  It naturally follows that, if truth is different for everyone, so is reality.  Reality itself is a human construct.  Liberty is viewed as “the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”  Carrying such reasoning to its logical conclusion, such a definition of liberty could be used to justify abortion, infanticide, euthanasia… what next?

Neither modernism nor postmodernism are dead.  In 21^st-century America, the “prevailing wind” is postmodernism.  It is a climate that allows Eastern occultism and Islamism to thrive right alongside of Atheism and Christianity.  This is the world in which my friends and I are growing up.  This is the world in which we must be prepared to lead, the world in which we must take a stand for what we believe, and discover truth through divine revelation, through God’s Word—the only source of real, ultimate truth.  

*This post is my personal thoughts on chapter 8 of Assumptions that Affect our Lives by Christian Overman, "The Prevailing Wind of Postmodernism."