“So, I’ll crunch and I’ll dip and I’ll dance round and round, ‘Cause the pew was fine, but it’s more fun on the ground! So I’ll jump like a pogo stick, then fall on the floor, ‘Cause the Holy Ghost is moving, and I just want MORE!”
- ‘New Winos Drinking Song Number One’, Kathryn Riss
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” – Rom. 12:2, emph. added
The Christian apologist Greg Koukl, in an article about how homosexuality is typically popularized, writes: “The problem we face with 21st century culture in a post-modern era is that people are not influenced by arguments, they are influenced by images and story telling. That’s what matters, so the image-maker is the one who wins, not the guy with the good argument.” He goes on to comment, “People don’t listen. They don’t understand. They don’t even know how arguments work. They wouldn’t know a good argument if they heard one.” I can guess Koukl’s views on the issue from this exerpt, but what I want to focus on is both how we ought to approach the issue of adapting truth (i.e. the Gospel, at least for Christians) to a post-modern mindset, and what we ought to think about it. Koukl hints at a problem with post-modern culture in his Paulish retort to these truths, but I want to show part of the reason why I think he is correct in responding the way he does.
Imagine a culture in which people were mostly illiterate. Imagine too that illteracy is actually harmful in various ways. It isn’t difficult to imagine. From this we would conclude that literacy, rather than illteracy, is actually perferable. In this hypothetical situation, knowing what we know, would we conclude that because the culture is this way, that it ought to be that way, and in turn that it ought to stay that way? Of course not. Not only do we know this to be false because our knowledge of the harmful effects of illiteracy in our hypothetical situation (and in our own society), but to make this kind of blanket statement about the way things should be from the way things are is actually fallacious. It committs something logicians call the naturalistic fallacy, that whatever is the case ought to be the case. The fallacy reveals that just because something is, doesn’t mean it ought to be that way. Go back to the 1940’s. Just because Hitler is in power doesn’t mean he ought to be in power. Back to the present, just because there is sometimes unfair preferential treatment in job hiring doesn’t mean this ought to be the case. And likewise, just because our culture thinks and acts in a post-modern way, doesn’t mean it ought to think and act that way. This is the first point that needs to be made.
Naturally, the next question that arises is: ‘granted that we should think for ourselves on issues rather than just go with the flow, is the post-modern mindset actually harmful?’ I think that it is, and I am going to focus on one reason why, what could be called ‘the argument from human nature’.
Although human beings may approach the world differently than in past generations, this isn’t because our human nature has evolved. People in different cultures still often approach the world in different ways, for better or for worse, but we still all share the same fundamental human nature as our parents and their parents before them. Because we share that same human nature, we have the same internal structure. I’m not talking about our liver and lungs. If we peek under the hood, so to speak, of a human being’s soul, we will see that God designed us as primarily rational beings. I’m not saying that to the extent we lose our rationality, we lose our identity. That is a separate issue. I am also not saying that a rational being is all that we are. A human being has a capacity for emotion, aesthetic judgment, and is willfull, all to one degree or another. But, if we were to ask what drives a human being the answer would be: beliefs. Beliefs, in turn, are fueled by reasons. Reasons and beliefs exist in that rational compartment of our souls called: the intellect. We do not and cannot live our lives in conceptual vacumes. We believe things for reasons. We disbelieve other things for reasons or lack of reasons. We cannot do otherwise. We weren’t designed to. Try for yourself to believe something you have no reason to believe or even something you have reasons not to believe. To use J.P. Moreland’s example, try to believe there is a pink elephant existing in the room with you. You can’t do it. You can say you have acheived it and you can feel like you have, but you won’t wager even $10 that you are right in your belief. Why? Because you don’t really believe it. Now, even if you think this negative point can’t be proven, namely, that we can’t believe things except on the basis of reasons, the positive side of the argument is that we do believe things on the basis of reasons; and it’s easy to show this to be true.
A brother hits his sister while the mother is absent. What does the mother ask the child? She says ‘Johnny, why did you do that?’ In other words, she doesn’t just want to know what caused her daughter to scream, an elbow or a foot, but wants to know ‘what was your reason for doing this?’ If, as many children do, he responds with ‘there wasn’t a reason’, usally in the form of ‘I don’t know’, this just won’t fly. Ask any parent. Likewise, consider a man who goes into court for any crime. What is one of the first issues that needs to be addressed? ‘What was your motive in this crime? What were your reasons behind it?’ If there were no reasons, it was either by accident or some unknown cause. If it wasn’t by accident, we can probably rule out some mysterious uknown cause. This is close to William Dembski’s approach in his book ‘the Design Inference’, though he is arguing for an intelligent designer of the universe.
Think about the scientist who is trying to determine the cause behind the un-explained side-effects of a drug that was previously thought to be safe. Imagine he presents some controversial findings on the issue to a committy and they respond ‘OK, I understand your conclusion, but what reason do we have to believe you are correct?’ and he replies ‘no reason, none at all’. Would anyone respond ‘that’s good enough for me!’? Even if we would say this COULD we really believe him if we wanted to? The human mind was created to reason and it runs on beliefs fueled by reasons. To be even more philosophical here, this is probably because the universe as a whole is a rational one. Things in the world happen for reasons. But back to the issue at hand, if a person has no good reason to believe something, she shouldn’t believe it. And if a person thinks she believes something without any reason, she doesn’t really believe it. As just mentioned, I am using ‘reason’ here in two different ways with reference to the way the world is and the way the human mind is, but surely these are reasonable statements on all accounts. To say the world is structured otherwise or that we function otherwise would be, again, to say that there is some unknown cause (e.g. blind willpower? or fate?) or that events in the world including our beliefs are the product of pure accident.
So, going back to the question of whether we ought to adapt, as Christians, to the post-modern culture, it shouldn’t be as hard as it seems. If it is true that the post-modern mindset is harmful to human beings, then it is true by-in-large because “images and storytelling” don’t impact us where it counts. Don’t get me wrong. Images and storytelling can be powerful. But, they are often more powerful emotionally than they are intellectually. And because beliefs are intellectual and not emotional creatures, our image-making and story-telling just can’t equip us theologically for all the challenges a Christian faces in the world today. Likewise, it will never lead us through the kind of growth that a solid dose of well-reasoned Biblical theology is capable of. That is why God gave us the Bible, not just to tell us stories of things that already happened, but primarily to impart information that is good: good news. This after all is what the word ‘gospel’ means. Biblical theology, made palatable, impacts us directly. Images and storytelling impact us indirectly. This is why the Bible says the Truth of God (i.e. God’s Word), not prayer, not Bible study, nor Christian community is:
“… living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. ” (Heb 4:12)
This is also why Paul says that transformation is primarily through information (not trivia, but integrated beliefs), a renewing of the mind (Rom. 12:2), not a change in behavior nor a life full of a variety of experiences, nor even through loving community. (Jesus told stories to engage, but the reason for this is different: to allow others to draw their own conclusions and to hide the truth from the insincere). This is primarily why the post-modern mindset is unhealthy. For those Christians that don’t like this theology and are fearful of equating the Christian life with a life of learning, dare we forget that we live in the shadow of a God who is not only all-powerful and all-good, but who is all-knowing (omni-scient) and all-wise (omni-sapient). Should we be surprised? He modelled us in his own image! As Dallas Willard has commented: Jesus Christ was actually a pretty intelligent guy to say the least. Jesus Christ ought to be our model in all areas of life, not the shifting sands of culture.
We always have to adapt to our audience and be sensitive in our approach. Jesus did so. Paul did so. We should always season our approach with salt (Col. 4:6). But, we never want to leave people where they are. The Christian and the Christian apologist (one and the same?) should always strive to leave people better off than they were, not the same, and never worse.
WPF
