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A Primer on Post-Modernity: the Need for Christian Hope

A Primer on Post-Modernity: the Need for Christian Hope

Post-Modernity has pulled a rug out from beneath our feet and we no longer know where to stand for safety. Before turning in anger to this practical joker, let us re-asses where we are by asking the questions. Who am I? Where am I? And where am I going? Often the answers will fall into what most Christians would call a world-view. These questions are asked to describe one’s outlook on life—where we stand—and what basic presuppositions we possess. We can then compare different cultures and religions on a seemingly neutral basis to see which more accurately describes reality. Post-Modernity breaks in and destroys the systematizing power of these questions by negating their power to provide any set definition on the world and requiring us to be always asking the questions because the answers are in constant flux.

Post-Modernity, and the post-modern question have been largely misunderstood in recent days, though slowly we are understanding it more and more as our culture is thoroughly imbued with its mentality. Still, what does it mean? So often we simply assume a definition without taking sufficient time to really assess it. For Christians, Post-Modernity is most often thought of as being completely opposed to Christianity in general and Christian Truth in particular. Other Christians think that it is exactly what Christianity needs today to witness in a multicultural society and return to early church practice. Despite all the strong feelings and unkind words, no one actually talks about what Post-Modernity is or is not.

Most often Post-Modernity is seen as the influx of relativism and despair in the 20th Century. Since Western society perceived WWI as being a pointless war in which so many died, they could no longer think that reason and science were making everything unquestionably better. The Modern utopian dreams were shattered as hope was lost in humanity. There also began a lack of security in the unchangeability of the external world with Einstein's Relativity. People then began to extend relativity to moral and cultural norms as well because the ground was no longer stable. By questioning the groundwork in one field we allowed ourselves to question other fields, so now we simply take the question for granted and allow ourselves to question everything. The question Post-Modernity asks in general is, “Could things be different from what they are?” Post-Modernity questions the fixity of our experience and the experiences of others that Modernism sought to bring. By asking the question and not already assuming to know the answer, since everything is subjective, Post-Modernism pulled the rug out from under our feet, prohibiting us from asking if there is anything solid to fall on. It even suggests that there might be no floor at all. Thus we are now suspended in the air unsure of what is or might be below.

The Christian cannot ever fully ally with the Post-Modern because he knows the rock on which he must inevitably stand is Christ Jesus. But first, let us look at where we were standing before the rug was pulled. Looking back on modernity we see that it is only a rug; however, at the time it was a good foundation by which we could accomplish anything with science and reason. The little advances were seen to be only the beginning of making this world better and better with no possibility of any challenge that reason could not conquer. Modernity placed its hope in an eschatological future utopia brought into our present timeline. At the time Christians saw the possibility of bringing about the Kingdom of God; however, looking back on the Modern hope, the Christian sees that it left out fallen humanity and our need for grace.

So, where can the Christian turn, not being able to ally with either of the ideologies that have infected our age? We are rejected by both sides yet we can never fully separate ourselves from them. Without Christianity, modernity could have never built a false hope in the first place. Reality, via the post-modern question, proceeds to smash our false hope only after the realization of our sinfulness. Most often, Christians attempt to separate themselves completely from both Modernity and Post-Modernity by grasping the idea that I have my Bible and that is sufficient. But in doing this they simply fall back in with Modernity by thinking that they can escape through their own power and reason. They dismiss the post-modern question as one of relativity and despair and one to which they are not prone because they have a firm foundation.

Yet, we cannot and should not try to dismiss Post-Modernity. The question has been asked of us and now we must respond. We can only respond by taking the question seriously. Therefore we first recognize that there is still a rug under our feet and always will be. Then we can pull it out ourselves knowing that we will just put another back in its place because of our fallen nature. We must not simply try to prove Modernity and Post-Modernity false, but as Christians must recognize the truth the rugs’ weaknesses are our weaknesses as well. We have a common humanity from which we cannot escape.

For the Christian, it is in our weakness and not our strength that we can overcome the world. One thing Post-Modernity has shown us is that Modernity had the drive to create systems to systematize all realty, but actually would do violence to reality by totalizing and consuming the thing it was trying to describe. By understanding this tendency to totalize from Emmanuel Levinas, Christians can see that they themselves do the same, and create idols of God to worship rather than God himself. Thus we get Jerry Root's summation of C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed “I want God, not my idea of God.” It is only by recognizing our weakness that we can ever break from a systematized view of God and come to see that a God who is greater than all systems has offered himself to us. Post-Modernity has denied the place of the strong, and allowed the weak a voice. So Christians must accept their weak place as opposed to the strong one they have held for the last 1500 years.

We cannot escape the spirit of the age; it permanently indwells us and corrupts our thoughts. We are all entirely modern and post-modern always and at the same time. The moderns were post-modern and the post-moderns are modern. The one implies the other. We are always standing somewhere before we can get anywhere else and we are always moving, with every thought and action we take. The original questions of identity can never lead to a system because once they are asked, they intrinsically change us so that the next time they are asked the answer will always be different because we will have changed. It is the Post-Modern return to Heaclitean flux, in which we cannot step into the same river twice.

It is in this milieu that Christians must make sense of their distinctive hope that does not fit either the Modern world or the Post-Modern world. First, however, we must recognize what is distinctive of Post-Modern hope, which to many seems an oxymoron. For hope in the Post-Modern world must deal with the suffering, pain, and violence in our world, and cannot think that things will just get better given the natural course of human progress. Post-Modern hope cannot be based on the given state of the world at any given time, because otherwise it will always be overwhelmed with despair. To have hope in the Post-Modern world requires us to understand the whole scope of life, all the good and bad, recognizing the range that life brings, and then accepting the range as joy: a joy that will weep at the suffering and rejoice in the good, for both are fully real and present here and now.

The Post-Modern hope cannot see less of the world but it necessarily sees more and responds to more. That is why Modern hope will no longer do. It does not satisfy. This is crucially important in terms of evangelism since it is assumed Christians put forth a Modern hope that does not deal with all the issues at hand. If Christians cling to a modern hope, as we are so often prone to do, we will be shattered by the Post-Modern question that we find ourselves unable to answer. Christian hope is an optimistic pessimism that realizes the fallen state of how things are now and hopes in an eschaton that is outside of our current timeline. The Christian must hold this optimistic pessimism in a unified dance that flows with life and not attempt to define and separate it. Therefore, Christian hope and truth after the Post-Modern question often seem relative, not because the question sees no truth left, but because there is too much truth to fit within any previous system. To be a Christian is not to stand still as the world moves around us. It is as T. S. Eliot says in East Coker, “To be still and still moving/ Into another intensity/ For a further union, a deeper communion/ through the dark and cold and empty desolation/.../ In my end is my beginning.”