Voddie Baucham on Christian Worldview

Here is the link to the audio of the lecture I mentioned during last evening’s time together:

Christian Worldview with Voddie Baucham

Last night we went through The TruthProject Lesson Three about “Who is Man?”, and I thought some of the content Voddie presents ties in nicely with what we talked about last night. Since we have questions about how to practically apply abstract philosophical ideas to every-day-life, this might help.

One idea is that “we will behave in accordance to what we believe.” This, therefore, is why worldview is so important.

He talks about the four questions every worldview's meta-narrative must answer:

Who am I?

Why am I here?

What is wrong with the world?

How can what is wrong be made right?

He compares the worldview of secular humanism to the worldview of Christianity and answers those questions from within the different meta-narratives.

The Death to Life Dialogs: Speaking of Death

There is a feeling like the clenching of a fist There is a hunger in the center of the chest There is a passage through the darkness and the mist And though the body sleeps the heart will never rest

James Taylor

Shed A Little Light

 

“The stench of death hangs over us from birth to grave,” said the old man.

“And beyond,” said the young skeptic.

“And beyond?” the old man asked.

The skeptic smirked and was silent.

“No, not beyond,” the old man said. “The rarefied air of heaven is clear and clean and sweet.”

The skeptic smirked and remained silent.

“The stench of death cannot invade the heavenly places. It’s not that death is not remembered; it’s that it’s no longer important.”

“No longer important?” The skeptic was aroused from his smirking slumber.  “Why, then do we so strive to ignore it?” The skeptic’s eyes became tinged with anger. “Death is the crime of crimes,” he said, then spat on the ground. “It is most definitely a curse. The stench is simply a reminder, a most morbid reminder. You of all people should know that, as close as you stand to it.”

The old man now smiled. “A curse?” he asked. “I thought you didn’t believe in curses.”

“It’s a figure of speech.”

“But your anger is real?”

“Yes, it is real.”

“And you are affronted by the smell of death?”

“Who isn’t?”

“Then you are most assuredly affected by the very curse in which you don’t believe.” The old man moved closer to the skeptic and spoke in a whisper. “A figure of speech does not arouse such passion.”

“Why do we allow ourselves to speak like this?” asked the skeptic. “There is much beauty to be taken in. Why must I be forced to attend to such ugliness?”

“So you wish once more to ignore it, by attempting to deny death’s importance?”

“Of course,” said the skeptic. “But you are in error old man: It’s by ignoring future ugliness that I attest to its importance now.  It is by attending to beauty now that I laugh in the face of death before that criminal act is perpetrated upon me. I steal beauty from ugliness. I steal life from death.”

The old man laughed. “You, my son, are a fool. There is no escape. Life is given to you. Death takes life. You may choose to ignore death, you may cover the stench of death with roses or lilies, but even the flowers lose their scent and death still overtakes you. You cannot ignore it. That is not allowed!”

“You, old man, are embittered by what you think you’ve lost. I am in no such position!”

“You are hanging on a twisted thread over that position as we speak,” said the old man. “Please remember—as I said before—the stench of death hangs over us from birth to grave.”

The skeptic started then slumped. Despondency crept over him. His face twitched as his skin crawled. The skeptic arose wearily to his feet. “To be aware like this is to be already dead,” he said. He began to limp away.

“Please, stop,” said the old man. “I’ve upset you and for that I am truly sorry. Please oblige me in my old age and sit next to me. Allow me to tell you a story.”

Postmodernism Resources

If you're so inclined to dig into this further, here are some resources for your reading or viewing pleasure:

General Resources

Here is a general explanation of Postmodernism from The Conversation website.

Here is a comparison of Modernism with Postmodernism.

Here is another look at the progression from pre-modern, to modern, to postmodern thought.

Christian Resources

View this lecture on Postmodern Epistemology from the Theology Program at Bible.org.

Is there such a thing as Postmodern Christianity?

There's way more to this line of study and how the church should handle it than we can possibly get into in a week's worth of short posts. I hope this has been helpful.

On Sunday, we talk about Biblical Anthropology and talk about if humans are basically good, then why is there evil?

A Short Introduction to Postmodernism and the Christian Response: Every Day's a Power Play!

Michel Foucault
His major idea: “Power is knowledge.”
His bumper sticker idea: “Every day’s a Power Play!”

The German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, put forward the only thing common to every human being is the “will to power.”

Later, the French Postmodern philosopher, Michel Foucault, riffed on Nietzsche’s idea, taking it to a new and disturbing level. It’s disturbing because, in a world without God, it’s accurate.

Foucault’s work on this subject is first put forward in his book Discipline and Punish. He inverts the Francis Bacon phrase “knowledge is power” changing it to “power is knowledge.”  The inversion removes the emphasis from knowledge being the goal with the power being the result to power being primary and knowledge a consequence and a way for maintaining power. His case study for his theory was the history of modern prisons. Foucault’s central image is the panopticon, a circular prison with cells radiating from the center. In the center of the panopticon is a nondescript station called an inspection house, where all prisoners can be watched and observed. (Think, here, of Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984 or Nurse Ratched in Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.) The observation yields ways that prisoners can be controlled. Although reform of the prisoner is the stated goal, Foucault applies a hermeneutic of suspicion and maintains the goal is to, only, maintain power.

Foucault applied his theory to more than just prisons. Included were hospitals, schools, municipalities, housing projects, anywhere society deemed order was necessary and citizens needed to act in a preordained fashion for society to run smoothly. But, this struggle to maintain power would cascade downward.

I think here of Roger Waters in Pink Floyd’s The Wall as the voice of the abusive school master yelling at a wayward student, “You, yes, you behind the bike sheds, stand still, laddie!” But, as Waters tells us, it was well known that teachers who abused children, “when they got home at night, their fat and psychopathic wives would thrash them within inches of their lives.” Corrupted power becomes an unvirtuous circle.

How we should deal with this: “and overflowing with thankfulness”
Colossians 2:6c

Let’s face it: Foucault makes a point. We see the “will to power” in human history repeatedly. Not only that, correct behavior is important for functioning within society. I will not argue with that.

The Christian’s argument, however, is that we’re being watched (and observed and inspected) by a Creator who is ultimately good, and loving, and merciful. Not only that, when we fail, He’s provided a way for us to be reconciled to Him and set apart for good works. Because of this, we should be “overflowing with thankfulness.”

Gratitude has become a spiritual buzzword within the wider culture. Gratitude for the sake of gratitude is somewhat incoherent. For us to be truly grateful, we need to be grateful to someone for something. We begin our gratitude with being thankful to God for the sacrifice of His son Jesus for our sins. The proof that the sacrifice was accepted is contained within Jesus’s resurrection. Because of our belief in Him and that event, we have access to the Father for eternity. That frees us for gratitude to and for each other and emboldens us for meaningful service in our families, circle of friends, and churches.

A Short Introduction to Postmodernism and the Christian Response: Every Truth is Valid, Until It's Not

Jacques Derrida

His Major Idea: “Nothing exists outside the text.”
His bumper sticker idea: “Every ‘Truth’ is Valid…until it’s not.”

Derrida is, in my opinion, the vaguest of the three Postmodern philosophers.

The major idea quote is a mistranslation of the French, which says, “il n’y a pas de hors-texte.” This can be translated “There’s no outside—text,” but that makes even less sense. He posited that words mean things within their context, but the historical and cultural significance of words can change over time. He called this idea différance. As far as this goes, he’s right.

But where he landed in his explanation of différance is where we encounter the idea that Postmodern interpretation of texts—or just about anything—is purely subjective. He called the aim of assigning meaning to a text deconstruction. A meaning was assigned once, but now, since things have changed, we need to assign meaning again.

Within the “process” of deconstruction the meaning of any text is perpetually postponed: There is never a time when meaning can be understood as being complete. In other words, Paul wrote the letter to the Romans, but when we read the letter to the Romans, we can assign a different meaning to what he wrote than what he intended because our understanding of words has changed over time.

Much of what Derrida says is hard to understand, and every now and then, he says things that are correct. And to be fair, as Christians, we have experienced times reading the Bible when certain passages become more meaningful the more we read them. However, meaning is enhanced only because our understanding of what Paul was saying has deepened, not because it’s meaning has changed because we live in a different time and culture than Paul. And, in most cases, we certainly can ascertain meaning in a text: We don’t need to postpone the meaning.

How we should deal with this: “strengthened in the faith as you were taught”
Colossians 2:6b

Gary Habermas, in an extended transcript of the John Ankerburg special called  Evidence for the Historical Jesus, makes a compelling case that Christian doctrine was systematically taught to new Christians very early within the history of the church. (See especially the transcript for Program 2, pages 17-30.) Habermas makes the case that the teaching was established very early because that’s what the early church needed to ensure its veracity. For example, the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Judas were deemed to be too late and inaccurate to be included in the New Testament canon, even though they put forward a new meaning to the story of Christ.

If you encounter a new meaning to a Biblical text that hasn’t been put forward in the two thousand years since Christianity began, it’s probably wrong.

A Short Introduction to Postmodernism and the Christian Response: Don't Trust Anything I Tell You!

Jean François Lyotard
His major idea: “We should mistrust metanarratives.”
His Bumper Sticker Idea: “Don’t Trust Anything I Tell You!”

If we see Postmodernism as a reaction against Modernism, this makes perfect sense.

To unravel what this means, however, let’s establish that a meta-narrative is a story-within-a-story. Technically, a dictionary definition of meta-narrative is “an overarching account or interpretation of events and circumstances that provides a pattern or structure for people’s beliefs and gives meaning to their experiences.” In other words, the overarching story is the “universal.” The “particulars” are us acting out the overarching story.

The metanarrative of Modernism became: “Science, not God, can provide us all the answers we ever need!” If we encounter a question science can’t answer, we don’t have enough information or data and further science must be done to formulate the answer.

You can see how this can be problematic. How does science, for example, explain love? Compassion? Justice? It can’t, at least in any satisfying way.

So, Lyotard’s reaction was to mistrust the meta-narrative of Modernism, that Science has all the answers. (Hence my thought that this reaction makes perfect sense.) The problem, however, is that Lyotard determined that all meta-narratives should be mistrusted, even meta-narratives that preceded Modernism, like Christianity’s. Further, we should even mistrust meta-narratives we encounter today. The Postmodern person has nothing outside their own self to provide meaning to life.

How we should deal with this: “just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him”
Colossians 2:6a

If I’m right and the meta-narrative can be validated by how we act out the story of redemption, then the only way to convince someone they could trust the narrative of the Bible is to concretely show how that looks in practice. This is what Paul means when he tells the Colossian church to “continue to live your lives in him.” We are nested within an overarching story. Our stories are part of that larger story.

A Short Introduction to Postmodernism and the Christian Response: First Thoughts

When I was in college about 40 years ago (it’s hard to believe it has been that long) I took a three-term series of courses with the unimaginative title ASurvey of Philosophy I, II, & III. The first term covered the ancient world to the middle ages. The second term covered the Enlightenment from the 15^th to 18^th centuries. The third term covered the philosophies of the 19^th and 20^thcenturies and included what is now known as Postmodernism.

I must admit: Postmodernism was unusual and didn’t seem to make much sense: We honestly thought that we’d never hear about it again after that class was finished.

Amazingly enough, though confined to college classrooms in the early 1980’s, postmodern philosophy is now mainstream in culture today. The lesson—if there is a lesson—is not to underestimate the impact philosophy has on the world, no matter how weird or silly it may seem.

As I was researching this post, I noticed that most people in today’s culture—even people who are well educated—don’t have any basis of knowing from where or from whom their ideas originate. This, it seems to me, is a problem.

In the Truth Project Lesson 2 video, Dr. Tackett covered this passage:

“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.” (Colossians 2:6-8)

Postmodernism is a “hollow and deceptive philosophy.” 

Since these ideas are mainstream now, it is important that we have at least a cursory understanding about their impact on people in our culture.

But, when asked to describe what it is, most people would have an incomplete notion of Postmodernism. The only thing most people might get right is that Postmodernism embraces the idea that “all truth is subjective.”

That, in my opinion, is only one-third of Postmodernism’s impact on culture.

I know most of us don’t have the time or the patience to devote a substantial amount of time towards studying Postmodernism in detail.

It’s good to remember that postmodernism is a reaction to modernism. In all of history, there is progression of thought from one school to another: Think here of Socrates to Plato to Aristotle, and on and on and on.

One way we could illustrate this idea visually is to show progression through architectural styles through the ages.

Look at this Victorian house in Michigan:

Notice the ornamentation. It’s pretty elaborate.

In Michigan, that style gave way to the American Craftsman style:

Notice how the lines are cleaner and there is much less decoration.

This is an overly simplistic illustration, but it helps to see the progression of architectural thinking from one style to the other. Philosophy has a similar progression.

In the next three posts, I will identify the three most prominent thinkers of Postmodernism, provide a summary of a major idea they promoted and, if we were so inclined, put that idea on a bumper sticker. I will give a brief sketch as to why we should approach these ideas cautiously and how we might, as Christians, be able to deal with them.

I’m borrowing the answer as to how to deal with it from our passage in Colossians. Our goal is to recognize these ideas as we interact with people we meet or, maybe even, as we think these ideas ourselves.

The next three posts will delve into the three main Postmodern ideas in more detail.