Albert Mohler: Postmodernism and Society
Summary
TLDRThis script explores the impact of postmodernism on society, discussing its core tenets such as the deconstruction of truth, the death of meta-narratives, and the rise of moral relativism. It critiques postmodernism's infiltration into various aspects of culture, including academia, art, and law, while highlighting the inconsistencies of applying postmodern theories to practical fields like engineering and banking. The speaker calls for Christians to understand and subvert postmodern subversion, pointing to the need for absolute truth and rationality in a world increasingly shaped by subjective interpretations.
Takeaways
- 🔍 The script discusses the concept of postmodernism and its impact on various aspects of society, suggesting that we are living in a time of significant cultural and philosophical shifts.
- 👮 The story of the elderly ladies on the interstate highway illustrates the confusion that can arise from misunderstanding the context of societal norms and labels, like 'postmodern'.
- 🏛️ Postmodernism is characterized by the deconstruction of truth, suggesting that truth is socially constructed and relative, which challenges traditional Christian views of absolute truth.
- 📚 The 'death of the meta-narrative' reflects the postmodern distrust of overarching stories or explanations for life, leading to a focus on individual or smaller-scale narratives.
- ✂️ The 'death of the text' implies that the meaning of written works is not fixed by the author's intent but is open to the reader's interpretation, which can lead to subjective and diverse understandings.
- 🛠️ Postmodernism critiques the idea of absolute authority, advocating for the overthrow of traditional authorities in favor of a more liberated and relative approach to knowledge and ethics.
- 🎭 The influence of postmodernism is seen in various cultural domains, including art, cinema, literature, music, and architecture, often marked by a lack of clear meaning or narrative.
- 💊 The 'dominion of therapy' highlights the postmodern focus on personal well-being and feelings, often at the expense of objective truth and rational discourse.
- 👪 Postmodernism's influence has led to the breakdown of traditional family structures and roles, with the state and other institutions taking on roles previously held by families.
- 💼 The business world has also been affected, with marketing reflecting postmodernism's creation of new 'needs' and the promotion of consumerism tied to identity and personal fulfillment.
- 🕊️ The script calls for Christians to understand and engage with postmodernism, to subvert its subversions, and to offer a clear and rational alternative in line with Christian apologetics.
Q & A
What is the main theme of the transcript discussing?
-The main theme of the transcript is the exploration of postmodernism, its characteristics, and its impact on various aspects of society, including art, law, education, and family.
What is the humorous anecdote used in the script to illustrate a point about society's misunderstanding of speed limits?
-The anecdote is about two elderly ladies pulled over by a police officer for driving too slowly on the interstate highway. The passenger, thinking they were adhering to a 'twenty miles an hour' limit, is shocked to learn they were actually on 'Interstate twenty'.
How does the speaker describe the concept of 'postmodernism'?
-The speaker describes postmodernism as a complex and somewhat ill-defined concept that follows modernism, characterized by the deconstruction of truth, the death of the meta-narrative, and a general skepticism towards overarching theories or grand narratives.
What does the speaker suggest about the idea of truth in a postmodern context?
-The speaker suggests that in a postmodern context, truth is considered socially constructed, relative, and made rather than found, which is a departure from the traditional understanding of truth as eternal, fixed, and universal.
What is the 'death of the meta-narrative' according to the speaker?
-The 'death of the meta-narrative' refers to the postmodernist belief that there are no longer any overarching stories or theories that can explain everything, such as Marxism or the Western confidence in progress, which have been rejected or discredited.
How does the speaker relate the concept of 'deconstruction' to the idea of liberation in postmodern thought?
-The speaker relates deconstruction to liberation by suggesting that if truth is constructed to oppress people, then liberation comes through deconstructing those truth claims, challenging the established narratives and authorities.
What is the 'death of the author' as mentioned in the script?
-The 'death of the author' is a postmodern concept proposed by Jacques Derrida, suggesting that the reader, rather than the author, establishes the meaning of a text, implying that the author's intent is less important than the reader's interpretation.
What role does the speaker assign to the concept of 'therapy' in postmodern society?
-The speaker assigns a dominant role to therapy in postmodern society, suggesting that with the denial of absolute truth, everything is reduced to the therapeutic, focusing on how individuals feel rather than on what is objectively true.
How does the speaker view the impact of postmodernism on the family unit?
-The speaker views the impact of postmodernism on the family unit as detrimental, suggesting that the family has been stripped of its authority and functions, with the state and other institutions taking over roles that were traditionally familial.
What is the 'Sokal hoax' mentioned in the script, and what does it signify?
-The 'Sokal hoax' refers to an incident where physicist Alan Sokal submitted an intentionally nonsensical article to a postmodern academic journal, which was accepted and published. It signifies the perceived lack of intellectual rigor in some postmodern academic circles and raises questions about the validity of postmodern theories.
What does the speaker suggest as a Christian response to postmodernism?
-The speaker suggests that Christians should subvert subversion, understand postmodernism in its pure form, and be equipped to point out the inconsistencies and downfalls of postmodern thought, using it as an opportunity for Christian apologetics and evangelism.
Outlines
😀 The Intersection of Postmodernism and Daily Life
The speaker humorously introduces the concept of postmodernism by recounting a story about two elderly ladies who misunderstand the speed limits on an interstate highway. This anecdote serves as a metaphor for how people are grappling with the seismic shifts in society and the challenges of understanding postmodern conditions. The speaker reflects on the disillusionment with modernity and the shift away from the confidence in progress, science, and logic that characterized the Enlightenment. They also touch on the awkwardness of defining postmodernism and its impact on our perceptions of truth and reality.
🏛 Deconstruction of Truth and the Rise of Relativism
This paragraph delves into the postmodernist idea of truth as a social construct, positing that truth is not discovered but made, which contrasts sharply with the Christian view of truth as eternal and universal. The speaker mentions postmodern philosophers like Richard Rorty and Michel Foucault, who argue that truth claims are tools of power used by the dominant to oppress the marginalized. The concept of deconstruction as a means of liberation is introduced, along with the idea that all narratives, including Christianity, are now under scrutiny and subject to deconstruction in the postmodern academic environment.
📚 The Death of the Meta-Narrative and the Emergence of Small Stories
The speaker discusses the postmodern rejection of meta-narratives, or overarching stories that explain everything, which includes ideologies like Marxism and the Christian faith. Jean-François Lyotard is cited as defining postmodernism as the 'incredulity towards meta-narratives.' The death of the big story leads to the rise of small, personal narratives, where truth is relative and individual. This poses a significant challenge to Christianity, which offers a comprehensive narrative of the world and human existence.
🎭 The Demise of the Authorial Text and the Rise of Reader Interpretation
In this paragraph, the speaker addresses the postmodern view of text, where the author's intent is considered irrelevant, and the reader's interpretation becomes paramount. This concept, known as the 'death of the author,' is attributed to Jacques Derrida and leads to a subjective understanding of texts. The speaker critiques this approach, suggesting that it undermines the objective meaning of texts, including the Bible, and reflects on how this perspective has influenced even evangelical Bible studies.
🛌 The Dominion of Therapy and the Shift from Truth to Feeling
The speaker describes the postmodern shift towards a therapeutic worldview where everything is about personal well-being and feeling good. This shift has led to the decline of truth-seeking in favor of therapy and self-expression. The speaker uses Philip Rife's metaphor of architecture to illustrate how different epochs are defined by their most significant buildings, suggesting that the modern era is defined by hospitals, reflecting our society's preoccupation with sickness and therapy.
⚖️ The Decline of Authority and the Postmodern Anarchists
This paragraph discusses the postmodern distrust and overthrow of all forms of authority, including texts, authors, traditions, and even God. The speaker notes the irony that while postmodernism claims to reject all authority, it still enforces its own version of acceptable authority, which is aligned with its liberationist worldview. The paragraph highlights the inconsistency and hypocrisy of postmodernism in practice.
🔍 The Displacement of Morality and the Rise of Moral Relativism
The speaker explores the postmodern dismissal of objective morality, which is seen as oppressive and totalitarian. In the absence of truth and authority, morality becomes relative, leading to a cultural landscape marked by moral relativism. The speaker warns that this shift has profound implications for society, as it undermines the fundamental values and norms that hold a culture together.
🎨 The Impact of Postmodernism on Art, Cinema, and Architecture
In this paragraph, the speaker examines the influence of postmodernism on various cultural domains, including art, cinema, and architecture. Postmodern art is described as jarring and disassociative, lacking a coherent narrative or meaning. The speaker critiques postmodern cinema for its lack of point or conclusion and its embrace of pastiche. Architecture is portrayed as a field where postmodernism's inconsistencies are most evident, with buildings that defy traditional styles and functions.
🏢 The Hypocrisy of Postmodernism in Academia and Professional Life
The speaker discusses the hypocrisy of postmodernism, noting that while it is prevalent in the academy and the arts, it is not applied in fields that require objective truth, such as engineering or medicine. The 'Sokal hoax' is mentioned as an example of the absurdity that can be published in postmodern academic journals. The speaker calls for Christians to 'subvert subversion' and to live out their faith in a way that challenges postmodern assumptions.
📚 The Postmodern Influence on Curriculum and Student Life
This paragraph focuses on the impact of postmodernism on university curriculums and student life. The speaker notes the rapid growth of sex and gender studies, reflecting postmodernism's emphasis on deconstructing traditional understandings of sex and gender. The paragraph also touches on the rise of student-produced sex magazines and the normalization of sexual experimentation on campuses as manifestations of postmodern values.
🏛️ The Infiltration of Postmodernism into Law, Politics, Business, and Family
The speaker describes how postmodernism has permeated various aspects of society, including law, politics, business, and family life. In law, postmodernism manifests as 'critical legal theory,' which seeks to deconstruct traditional legal authorities. Politics is characterized by the marketing and packaging of candidates, while business capitalizes on creating new 'needs' that were previously unknown. The family is depicted as losing its authority and roles to the state and other institutions, reflecting the postmodern rejection of traditional structures.
🚷 The Cultural Consequences and Christian Response to Postmodernism
In the final paragraph, the speaker reflects on the broader cultural consequences of postmodernism, such as the breakdown of the family and the rise of litigation in society. The speaker calls for Christians to understand and engage with postmodernism, to subvert its subversion, and to point people to the truth. The paragraph concludes with a call to action for Christians to be evangelistic and apologetic in a postmodern world, emphasizing the importance of truth and rationality.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Postmodernism
💡Deconstruction
💡Meta-narrative
💡Relativism
💡Therapeutic
💡Authority
💡Moral Relativism
💡Pastiche
💡Transgressing
💡Hegemony
💡Sokal Hoax
Highlights
The humorous anecdote of elderly ladies driving too slowly on the interstate, illustrating the concept of living in unfamiliar times.
The explanation of postmodernism as 'after the modern' and its ill-defined nature.
The discussion on the disillusionment with technology and the end of the idea of progress due to World War I.
The assertion that truth is socially constructed and the contrast with the Christian view of truth as eternal and fixed.
The concept of deconstruction of truth as a means to liberate from oppressive power structures.
The idea of the 'death of the meta-narrative' and the shift away from grand explanatory stories.
The critique of Christianity and Western civilization as part of the postmodern project of deconstruction.
The impact of postmodernism on the perception of the text and the 'death of the author' concept.
The shift in Bible studies to a more postmodern, individualistic interpretation of scripture.
The dominance of therapy in postmodern society and the shift from truth to personal feelings.
The decline of authority in postmodernism and the rejection of traditional sources of knowledge and power.
The displacement of morality and the rise of moral relativism in postmodern culture.
The influence of postmodernism on various cultural domains, including art, cinema, and music.
The critique of postmodern architecture and its departure from traditional design principles.
The Sokal hoax and its implications for the credibility of postmodern academic discourse.
The impact of postmodernism on the curriculum and the rise of sex and gender studies.
The call to subvert postmodern subversion and the importance of Christian apologetics in the current cultural climate.
Transcripts
We are living in strange times. Let's just admit it. You may have heard about the two
elderly ladies. Excuse me, I realize in these post-modern times, and postmodern sensitivities
you can't say that. You may have heard of the two chronologically advanced females who
were driving along on a highway and they were pulled over by a police officer. The state
trooper went up to the window and started speaking to the chronologically advanced female
driver. He said "Ma'am do you have any idea how fast you have been going?" She said "Yes
sir. I'm very fastidious about these things. I was going twenty miles an hour." He said
"Yes, I know you were going twenty miles an hour, that's why I pulled you over. This is
the interstate highway system. On the interstate highway system the minimum speed is thirty-five
miles an hour, forty-five in most places. You have failed by driving too slowly." Just
then he looked in and saw the other chronologically advantaged female who was the passenger. Her
eyes were wide open like saucers. Her hair was sticking out on end. Her fingers were
embedded in the dashboard of the car. She didn't even appear to be breathing. The officer
said "What's wrong with her?" The lady said "This is an interstate highway?" "Yes ma'am."
"I distinctly saw the sign twenty - twenty miles an hour." He said “No ma'am. This
is interstate twenty." He said. "But what's wrong with your sister?" She said "Well I
guess the best way to explain this is; we must have gotten on Interstate twenty off
of SR 136." Now, that's where a lot of us live. We're living at 136 not at 20. We're
living in one of these hinge points in human history where we know that big things are
changing. Seismic shifts are taking place all around us that are changing the landscape,
the terrain of what is known, and what is familiar. And we have labels we try to use
for this such as "postmodern." You know the very fact that we use that label requires
some kind of definition, and it is helpful for us to try to put some fabric to the texture
of what we're talking about here. It means "after the modern." Now that solves it. Postmodernism
is one of these awkward topics and frameworks of discussion because it is so ill defined.
There is a sense in which modernity associated with the enlightenment, with the rise of industrialization,
the rise of science and the rise of logic and the gestalt of human control and huge
theory. We understand that there was such a time and we understand that there is now
disillusionment about that time. We understand that we no longer have the confidence that
people as a culture once had in technology. But then again we really do still have much
of that confidence. And we understand that there was the death of the idea of progress
early in the twentieth century. If nothing else, the killing fields of World War I brought
to an end the kind of unrealistic optimism that was at the heart of the early phase of
modernity. We understand that the Enlightenment in terms of its massive philosophical shifts
did not bring about the kind of human liberation that it had promised. And yet we still want
modern medicine, not postmodern medicine. Most of us want decidedly modernist bankers,
not postmodern bankers. We're going to talk about why that is so. I want to talk about
several features of whatever postmodernism is. The first feature is the deconstruction
of truth. Throughout most of human history people argued about the nature of truth and
which proposition was true, not whether truth can be known. The Christian tradition understands
truth as established by God and revealed through the self revelation of God in scripture. Truth
is eternal, fixed, and universal. Our responsibility as Christians, we understand, is to align
our minds with the truth revealed by a self-existent God. That is so foreign to the concept of
postmodernism. As postmodernist philosopher Richard Rorty asserts "Truth is made rather
than found." You think about that equation for a few moments and it begins to make sense
when you consider much of the entertainment, much of the conversation, much of what we
hear around us. Truth is made not found. The idea that truth is socially constructed is
at the very heart of postmodernism. That truth claims are disguised claims to power. That
claims to truth are actually exercises in the majority seeking to suppress the minority,
in the empire seeking to suppress the colony. It's the majority seeking to isolate, subjugate,
to oppress, and that’s why you come across all the jargon of postmodernism with its totalitarian
claims of oppression, with its hegemonistic language. Michel Foucault one of the most
significant post-modern theorists argued that all claims to truth are constructed in order
to serve those in power. Then you understand why the great project of liberation will be
deconstruction. If what is presented as truth is constructed in order to oppress people,
then liberation comes in deconstructing those truth claims. And so in the west, especially
in the universities and the academy, we've seen this project of trying to deconstruct
the big issues, the big frameworks, the big claims of western civilization. Christianity
is very much at the heart of that. If all truth is socially constructed then all truth
is necessarily relative to whoever is doing that construction. Whatever society does the
constructing, whatever unit or sub-group of society does the constructing, it's merely
a relative claim. Little imagination is needed to see that this radical relativism is a direct
challenge to the Christian gospel. Secondly, the death of the meta-narrative. Now this
is take-home stuff. This is the kind of stuff I'm sure you're talking about around your
dinner table every night. “What are you concerned about sweetheart?” “The death
of the meta-narrative striking at the very core of my existence.” Well, it would if
you understood it. If you understood the claims being made here. Post-modernists accuse the
oppressors of using a specific mechanism of oppression which is the meta-narrative. That's
the explanatory theory of virtually everything. It's the big story. Examples of meta-narratives
would include Marxism. Marxism was perhaps the greatest intellectual and spiritual challenge
to Christianity as a meta-narrative for about a hundred years. Marxism has everything. It
has a complete worldview. It has an explanation of what we would call sin. It's oppression.
It has an explanation of why inequity exists. It's because of the oppression of the proletariat.
It has an explanation for eschatology. What is it looking forward to - the emergence of
the new communist man. It had everything. Christianity of course is a meta-narrative.
It explains why anything exists. Christianity has an answer for what it means. Christianity
has an explanation for what is broken. Christianity has an explanation for how it can be fixed.
Christianity has an eschatology. Meta-narratives would include the western confidence in progress
that did die early in the twentieth century. Technology is itself in its own form a meta-narrative
that all things can be solved by technology or by modern science. What we have according
to the postmodernist now is the death of all the meta-narratives. Jean-François Lyotard,
one of the most prominent of the postmodern theorists, explains postmodernism as simply
this. He says "I define postmodern as incredulity towards meta-narratives." The big story is
dead. Now again as an apologetic challenge for Christianity it's hard to find one more
significant that this. If the meta-narrative is dead, then all we're left with rather than
the big story of the Christian gospel is little stories. These little stories have to do with
"Well, here is my truth, and you have your truth.” This group has its truth. Another
group has another truth. The third hallmark is the demise of the text. There has been
a lot of work done recently on Christianity and the book. Three or four excellent monographs,
books that have come out just in the last several months on Christianity and the book
indicating that again the very emergence of the book as we know it, as a text, a codex
between covers was very much due to the Christian love of learning, and to the Christian desire
to communicate in rational form, in literary form. The kind of conversation that would
go on not only between individuals, but between centuries. And you know that we believe that
the text is an objective thing. But postmodernists suggest that the text is actually there to
be dissected. The text itself is dead because the author is dead. The reader now establishes
the meaning and no controls limit the meaning of the reading. Jacques Derrida the leading
literary deconstructionist describes this move in terms in what he called the “death
of the author.” So, we look at a text now and we say "It doesn't really matter what
the author meant, it only matters what now I mean, what I read out of this text." Now
before we start looking at the academic left and start saying "Oh how prone to postmodernism
you are." Let's look a little closer to home. How many evangelical bible studies are postmodern
in this sense? You get a bunch of evangelicals and they are sitting in a home, and they each
have a Bible in their lap, and they are sitting around in a circle. "Bill why don't you read
this verse?” Bill reads the verse. “Alright Bill, what does this mean to you?" "Well what
this verses means to me is..." Having absolutely nothing to do with the text. "Well let's go
around the circle and see what it means. Shelia - what does it mean to you?" Have you ever
been to one of those things and you just want to stand up, rip your clothes, and say "I
love you, I care about you, but I don't care what this text means to you. I care what this
text means.” See we're living a lot closer to this than we'd like to admit. The text
according to the postmodernist reveal a sub-text of oppression. And again what must be done
is deconstruction. You have to deconstruct the text. So you have to find things there
that were never there. If you want tenure in a major university, do not write your dissertation
on Romeo and Juliet in terms of actually trying to deal with the text. Write about Romeo and
Juliet as a hegemonistic attempt by Shakespeare to unveil the anti-transvestitism of Elizabethan
England, and you've got tenure. The fourth issue is the dominion of therapy. Everything
in postmodernism is reduced to the therapeutic. This worldview infects the entire society.
It's all about therapy. When truth is denied all that remains is therapy. The crucial questions
shifts from what is true to what makes me feel good. Philip Rife, one of the most insightful
prophets of our time described this as the triumph of the therapeutic. He used a metaphor
we can all understand. He said "At every great epoch of civilization, there is a form of
architecture that symbolizes the age." He said "If you look into times of old, you will
see that the most important building was a temple, indicating that the community, the
society saw that as what was most important - worship. Even in the medieval era if you
looked for the building that would symbolize the entire civilization, it would be the cathedral
with its gothic arches reaching up, testifying to the transcendence of God." He said "In
the modern era, the great building that would represent the time would be the United States
Capitol Building, the place of legislative assembly, the place of democratic deliberation.
That would define in so many ways the modern era." He said "If there was any one building
that represents our era now, it is a hospital, because the only thing that we know about
ourselves is that we know that we are sick." In the postmodern world everything is reduced
to therapy, and everybody is sick. The diagnostic statistical manual which is the official guideline
to all psychiatric and psychological diseases now includes you and me and all of us. If
we say it doesn't, that's just another disease you'll find in there. Everyone is either in
therapy or in denial. And the specific form of denial – it’s a new disease all the
time. I was reading on the airplane yesterday, a serious article about pseudo Attention Deficient
Syndrome. There are people who think the have ADD or ADHD or ASPCA or whatever, but really
don't have it, but have convinced themselves that they do have it. And soon there will
be some kind of illness in the DSM for pseudo pseudo Attention Deficient Disorder. It's
inevitable. Fifth, the decline of authority. Now, this really follows when you think about
logical progression. If the text is robbed of its authority, the author of the text is
robbed of his authority. It's the whole issue of authority. It is the root meaning of the
word authority. Since postmodern culture is committed to a radical vision of liberation,
all authorities must be overthrown. Among the de-throned authorities are text, authors,
traditions, meta-narratives, the Bible, God, and all powers in heaven and on earth. I know
this is generational. But one of the great philosophers of our time, Archie Bunker, once
said to Meathead "Why is it all you non-conformists dress alike?" And one of the problems with
anarchists groups is that they all need leaders. The decline of authority runs against the
grain of human existence. And that is what is interesting; we've now reached the point
in postmodernism where they say "Okay well, you can't do without all authority, because
after all, we have to decide who gets tenure. So we just have to make sure it's the right
kind of authority. It's a liberationist authority. It's an authority committed to a certain worldview.
It's the kind of issue that comes down when you have a Supreme Court nominee. This last
time, an interesting discussion, I won't name names, but a prominent United States Senator
said "I will not settle for anyone to sit in that seat who is not committed to a progressive
understanding of the unfolding of human rights in our times." Again what they are doing is
they are deconstructing authority but they are actually not deconstructing all authority.
They are just stipulating what kind of authority they will accept. They are not going to accept
an authority for instance that dictates sex lives, rules about sex. Rules about issues
that the postmodern world is convinced are absolutely personal and off limits. Next the
displacement of morality. If you do deconstruct truth, if you are successful in your worldview
in creating a system in which truth is made relative, in which authority is overthrown,
in which the text is dead, and thus all morality is relative; you're left with a situation
of near total anarchy. Morality is after all one of the fundaments of culture. But, in
the postmodern world, it is discarded as oppressive and totalitarian and invasive moral relativism
marks post modern culture. Now that is not to say that the postmodernists eschew all
moral language. They use moral language, but its moral language which they champion, which
is again liberation from oppression. The only morality that the hard line post-modernists
will recognize is the morality of absolute liberation from oppression. Someone once defined
modernity as rationalized sexual misbehavior. In many ways that is absolutely true. One
of the things that would be fascinating to trace would be the actual lives of these postmodern
theorists. Michel Foucault, one of the men I mentioned, perhaps the most influential
postmodernist in American academic circles, especially during the 1990's died of AIDS.
One of the absolute principles of his morality was what he called polymorphous perversity,
picking up from Freud. And what he called the absolute mandate of transgression. You
have to transgress moral norms in order to prove that they are false moral norms. And
he got involved in the worse and most grotesque and unthinkable forms of homosexual misbehavior
and died of AIDS. Postmodernism and the society. I have good news and bad new. The good news
is that hard line absolute uncut postmodern theory is not something you are likely to
encounter in your fifteen year old. It is more or less isolated in the academy and in
the intellectual elites. But here is the bad news. It is filtering down. It's filtering
down, now it the hard line form. There aren't very many people sitting at the dinner table
quoting Derrida Lyotard, and Foucault. But their ideas are filtering down throughout
the entire society and the civilization around us. I just want to mention some signs of this.
In the academy we have the absolute reign of theory. The filter down process comes when
the academic elites exert their influence on the formative institutions of the culture.
Let's just speak about what those are: the cinema, movies, architecture, art, entertainment,
and of course education and the professions. What about art? Well, art was one of the first
places that postmodernism showed up. It was one of the first places where the label was
actually attached to something. Modernism, you will remember, was associated with people
like Picasso or Paul Klee. Modernism was an attempt to take a absolute posture of rebellion
against Christianity, against the established order, against monarchy, against what was
understood as pre-modern. And so the modernist artists used cubes and dark hues and sometimes
very jarring images in order to make their point. Picasso's painting Guernica about an
atrocity during the Spanish Civil war, it may be one the most famous modernist paintings.
But you know what, you look at that painting and you can still recognize, even in Picasso’s
style that this picture is telling a story. You can still see a man, his arms out stretched
as he is about to be executed by firing squad. You can still understand that picture. It
is a subversive picture. It was intended to subvert the authority of the establishment,
the authority indeed of the Roman Catholic Church. But it is still telling a story, and
you can still understand that story. Postmodern art is not telling a story. It is not intended
to be viewed in order to enter into a narrative or to enter into the understanding of what
the artist intended. Instead it is intended to be jarring. It is intended to be disassociative.
That is one of their favorite words because it means you have no ability to connect the
parts, because the artist didn't actually connect the parts. Postmodernist art doesn't
have meaning. It just makes suggestion. You see this if you walk into art galleries. And
if you haven’t done this, let me suggest a great missiological opportunity is to go
into some of the great art galleries, and especially go into the art galleries that
are selling stuff, not just showing it. Go into the premier art galleries in Manhattan
and look around. And you will see the most amazing thing. You will see people staring
at pieces of canvas and at artifacts and suggesting how transgressive it is, and oftentimes transgressive
is the only word that would come to mind. Sexual organs, atrocity, just excrement, all
celebrated as art. It shows up in the theatre where plays have no point and have no meaning.
There is no conclusion. There characters are not even speaking to one another. It's like
a Harold Pinter play in which everyone just shows up on one stage. The cinema, this is
also a place where postmodernism began first to show itself. People began looking at films
and asking the question "What is the point?" Well there wasn't a point. There isn't a point.
Now, here's good news and bad news. The good news is that most of the films that are again
pretty much uncut postmodernism; you're never going to see. They're never going to make
it down to your neighborhood cinema. They're going to be in the art houses and their going
to be shown on the university campuses. But the bad news is that if you want to be a producer
or director that gets attention, with the artistic community you've got to import this
kind of thing. And what you must see as your mission is to subvert. The director of Brokeback
Mountain said his purpose in making the film was to subvert. And, of course, that was apparent
in the telling of the story. You have art and cinema, theatre, visual art and sculpture.
I mean, just go in our nation's capitol and you'll see the transition from traditional
art to postmodern art. You go to some of these things and you look at them and say "this
means nothing." And the art community says "Exactly! It's worth four million dollars.
Because this man or this woman, this artist is the absolute representative of postmodern
art."
One of the hallmarks of postmodern art is what is called pastiche. It is a French word
which means you paste things together. And you know, that's understandable if you are
five. But postmodernism basically makes every artist; the five year old is actually the
quintessential artist. We're living in very, very strange times.
Photography; if you every want a very interesting exercise, go to a good library, especially
a big university library, and look at the English edition of the Soviet Encyclopedia.
It goes by different titles because they're always coming out with a new one, so there
is the Soviet Encyclopedia, then there is the New Soviet Encyclopedia, and the Updated
New Soviet Encyclopedia; there are no more Soviet Encyclopedias. But the reason you want
to look at it is for the pictures. Just look at the photographs. You'll notice between
successive editions people appear and disappear in the photographs. It's really pretty crude
stuff. But when you became a non-person in the Soviet Union, you had to have your picture
excised from the encyclopedia, and that's rather awkward if you're pictured shaking
Stalin's hand. And you know the Soviet photo-re-touchers weren’t too good at it. My favorite one
is one that I actually photocopied because it’s just perfect. There's a hand in the
picture that's not connected to a person. They're having one of these great Soviet multiple
handshakes and there are more hands than there are people. And you look at that and you say
"Well, we can recognize that this photographer, this re-toucher, this publisher, this Soviet
agent, in charge of this, has taken some one out." Well, you see with photography now you
don't have to take someone out so crudely. In postmodern photography you’re not attempting
to tell, through representational film, what happened. You're now seeking to make a statement
about what is possible; and so postmodern photography is another one of these things
that again is supposed to transgress. And it can be done with such manipulation especially
in the digital age, that it can make things appear as if they are real when we know that
they are not. We can make things happen so that it appears someone is present when they
are actually absent and absent when they are present. We can change the scenery, we can
change the perspective. And all of that plays into the very field of postmodern art. In
music, postmodernism has filtered down, especially through the atonality of postmodern music
through composers such as Philip Glass. Daniel Albright describes, and you're going to love
this, describes postmodern music as marked by three things; you're going to love this,
bricolage, polystylism, and randomness. Now bricolage is like pastiche, it just means
you add all the stuff in. It means you no longer have to play by the rules. You can
take a little bit of classical, you can take a little of baroque, you can take a little
bit of this; and by the way there's not much of classical and baroque that they add in,
but you can take a little of this and a little of that, you can add it all together, and
you have the postmodern symphony. It is made only more perfect if you can add a bellowing
cow or something like that that's supposed to be disjarring again in order to make the
postmodern point. In literature, the novel has been completely transformed. Literature
has been nearly completely transformed by the postmodern turn. Just look at the shift
from someone like Dostoyevsky to Philip Roth. Just look at the postmodern writers and narrativists
of our time who write stories that have no particular meaning, except to subvert the
existing morality, except to subvert the claim that there is a metanarrative, except to subvert
the idea that there is meaning in life, except to subvert the idea that there is anything
more transcendent than sex. Modernist literature, that which is before whatever postmodernism
comes, was a literature that specifically sought to subvert Victorian values and Victorian
morality. And so you had figures such as well Virginia Wolff, being the great example. By
the way, if someone asks "Whose afraid of Virginia Wolff?" you should say "I am." We
as Christians should be very concerned about that worldview because it was a worldview
written as A. N. Wilson historian says, "After God's funerals, after the intellectual elites
in Britain had lost confidence in the very existence of God." And thus they saw morality
as now again a form of oppression, they saw Victorian morality, they saw conventional
Christian morality, as something to be subverted. And so they sought intentionally to do that
through the story line of their characters. But in a postmodern novel you don't even have
to directly subvert it. And there is no particular story line that necessarily matters. And at
the end of the great modernist novel there was either an absolute reconciliation or a
suicide. But at the end of the postmodern novel there is nothing but sheer confusion
anarchy and despair. Nothing good is resolved; nothing either comes to an absolute conclusion
of good or of evil, and thus the postmodern novel. The other thing that marks postmodern
literature is playing with language, because the language itself is understood as oppressive.
And so you play with language and you use a lot of hyphens. You start putting hyphens
in words and you start putting words together with hyphens and before long you begin to
sound like a postmodern theorist in the academy. You just put all this stuff together. You
play with words. You have disjunctive conversations. You have characters that aren't even talking
to each other, thus the postmodern novel. One of my favorite places to show the impact
of postmodernism is in architecture. This is something, more people perhaps can understand.
Postmodern architecture is often very attractive to people. They like it. They often confuse
it with something else. Postmodern architecture is just like the music. You remember bricolage?
You just add everything together. Polystylism you mix all the styles. You remember what
I said about postmodern art, visual art, Pastiche. You just paste it all together. Well welcome
to our world. Welcome to what's going on in modern architecture. Look at what is happening.
The first great postmodernist building in the United States was probably the AT&T building
in Manhattan, designed by Phillip Johnson of Johnson Burgee and Associates. That firm
was known for modernist architecture. In the mid point of the twentieth century, if you
wanted to build a great modernist building, these great steel and glass towers, you called
Johnson Burgee and Associates. But they developed this building. Philip Johnson developed this
AT&T building in 1986 in New York City. In 1984 it was started in 1986 it was completed.
It's a great modernist tower until you get to the top. Some of you have no doubt seen
it. And at the top he put a Chippendale crown. Now it's very interesting. In other words,
you have this great steel, concrete and glass tower, nearly a hundred stories tall, and
at the very top you have a cornice, a Chippendale artifact. It just looks like it was kind of
placed there. Like it started out being a building and ended up being a grandfather
clock. People started looking at that and going. "That is absolutely phenomenal. That's
amazing. Who would have thought of putting that up top?" Of course most people at the
beginning were going "yeah who would have thought!" But what happens in the art world
is when people coalesce around the idea that this is the trend, all of the sudden they
go from "Who would have thought!" to "Who would have thought? This is genius. This is
sheer genius at work." So you ended up with all of this. Michael Graves the next great
post-modernist architect began building the Seattle Public Library and the Humana Headquarters
and other buildings and he would build one side of the building in Classical architecture,
another side of the building in modern architecture, and another side of the building. Until you
walk around and you realize this building isn't a thing, it's all kinds of things. Perhaps
you've landed at an airport or you've been at a great public building, and you walk in
and here is a Corinthian column standing all by itself, looking rather lonely. We're not
in Corinth. There is no structure, no portico. It's not accompanied by other Corinthian columns.
It doesn't look like a Greek ruin. Then right next to the Corinthian column is a great concrete
red ball that looked like a child had left it, this would weigh several tons. It is sitting
there by the Corinthian column. Then you notice the building isn't straight. The building
is leaning. And you notice that it is leaning on one side in this direction, and on the
other side it's leaning in another direction. And then you go into the foyer of the building
and there is a piece of Greek statuary from Athens in the second century BC. And you look
at that and you say "Well, what does that have to do with this?" And then on the wall
there is a modernist painting. And then there is a waterfall you notice that is running
under your feet, because you are actually standing on glass. There is water running
underneath. Let's just add everything. Robert Venturi, one of the great post-modernist,
I say great in terms of influence, one of the great post-modernist architects, had the
motto "Less is bore." Less is bore. Let’s just add everything. You can break all the
conventions. You can throw away the seven books of architecture of ancient Rome. You
can throw away the guidebooks of Palladio. You can do away with all of this and just
have everything all at once. One of the reasons why I like to point to architecture is because
architecture demonstrates where postmodernism shows up and it also demonstrates conclusively
where postmodernism is a lie. Everybody building one of these major buildings wants a postmodern
architect. But follow me closely. No one wants a postmodern engineer. You see, you want absolute
truth when you get to engineering. You want somebody who is able to add and use a slide
rule. You want somebody with thick glasses and a pocket protector who believes in absolute
truth. You want them working the numbers. You want them coming up with the lines. You
want all this happening. Why? Because you don't want it to come down on your head. Because
you can lie with the way the building looks, but you can't lie with whether or not it stands
up. About three years ago a major terminal building at Orly Airport in Paris fell. You
know why it fell? It fell and it killed some people when it fell. You know why it fell?
It fell because the post modern architect didn't like where the engineers wanted to
put a column. So he removed it. So guess what? Gravity is a very determined opponent of postmodernism.
Gravity exists in order to prove the imbecility of postmodern architecture. Gravity says "You
can tilt your building, but you better have a counter weight on the other side, or you're
going to be looking at a lot of pavement real quick." You see the lie of postmodernism is
that you can't consistently apply it. No one wants a postmodern cardiologist. You know
with postmodern art you kind of hold it up and you can move it this way or that way and
all you do is multiply the possibilities of interpretation. But you don't want your cardiologist
going "I like the X-ray this way. You read the CAT scan to say four blockages, but I
read it to say it's the heart of a fifteen year old runner." No one wants that. No one
wants a postmodern banker. No one wants a banker who says "Hey, you think two plus two
equals four, but that's hegemonistic. I'm not going to play that totalitarian game.
We've been oppressing people for too long with that kind of math. From now on in my
bank, when it's your money two plus two equals three."
The hypocrisy of postmodernism shows up with the fact that postmodern theorist can't live
with their theories. In the academy, of course, postmodernism has had far more to do with
the soft disciplines, than with the hard disciplines, far more to do with the humanities that with
physics. Alan Sokal, a few years a go, a physics professor at New York University decided he
would do a little experiment. He wrote an article filled with abject nonsense - absolute
nonsense. It now goes down in history of academic life in America as the great Sokal hoax. He
wrote an article filled with such nonsense as in his words he said "liberally salted
with nonsense." He sent it to the postmodern journal published by Duke University known
as "Social Text." The title of his article, you're going to love this, is "Transgressing
the Boundaries Toward a Transgressive Hermeneutic of Quantum Gravity." Let me just tell you,
it doesn't mean anything. There is no such thing as quantum gravity. But the people at
Social Text did not know that. He wrote thousands of words on transgressing the boundaries through
a hermeneutic of quantum gravity. He illustrated that hermeneutic, and hermeneutics is everything.
Interpretation is everything. When the text is dead you're left with nothing but hermeneutics,
the process of interpretation. He toppled democracy. He overthrew morality. He led a
complete political and social revolution in his article about transgressing hermeneutics,
or transgressing the boundaries through hermeneutics of quantum gravity. After the article was
published he wrote an open letter to the academy to the effect that he wrote nonsense. He said
"I am a physicist. I know nonsense when I see it. More importantly I know nonsense when
I write it." And you know what the great moral debate was in the academy? It wasn't over
whether or not there was any consistent view of truth here. It wasn't over whether or not
the editors of an academic journal - a peer reviewed academic journal should have considered
whether there was any validity to this postmodern mash. It was over the fact that he subverted
subversion, by writing the article and getting it published. I think we need to come up with
a brand new slogan. In fact I think actually, Ligonier Ministries pretty much lives up to
this slogan. "Subverting Subversion to the Glory of God." We need to be about that. Postmodernism
comes down to the academy in the form of the curriculum. Just look at the curriculum. Look
at the growth in the curriculum. You know the fastest growing part of the curriculum
of the American university? It is the sex and gender studies. You will not find this
at Harvard in 1641. You will not find it at Harvard in 1941. You will not even find it
at Harvard in 1981. But by 1991 everything has changed. Postmodernism brings in the idea
that even physicality, even gender, even the understanding of sex and all the rest becomes
the major issues of oppression and thus the goal of every right minded institution of
progressive intellectual power and commitment is to deconstruct these truth claims. Again
you look at these departments and I can't even mention to you, I couldn't possibly from
this place, read to you the course titles that you encounter in the American university
catalogue. Everything comes down to sex. It all has to be now more and more complex. You
can't have an office in your university of gay advocacy or homosexual advocacy. Now it
has to be gay/lesbian/by-sexual/trans-sexual/trans-gender/by-sexual and whatever comes after that. You have to
leave space on your door for additional words to be added later because there are no boundaries.
You transgress, you committed transgression. If that's your mode of life, there are no
outer limits. What about the students? Campus life comes down to this; a New York Times
article last Sunday on the fact that the fastest growing form of publication on the university
campus is the sex magazine. And they are produced by students, written by students. Yale University
used to get into controversy over what is known as "sex week." The campus is given over
to sexual experimentation in ways that again could never be mentioned here, with the support
of the university and with funding from its student activities budget. But it is not even
a matter of controversy anymore. Postmodernism comes down to this. You must transgress all
boundaries. While we're in the university we should talk about law. Postmodernism has
infected legal studies. It specifically is now known as "critical legal theory." And
critical legal theory just like all other forms of postmodernism suggests that what
must done is the deconstruction of existing legal authorities. The law being an authority.
The courts being an authority. Legislators and governments being an authority. Police
officers being an authority. We must subvert all this - the critical legal theory. Again
the fastest growing movement in law schools in America. But it is all tied to that over-arching
world view. For example the demise of the text. One of the texts that is now nothing
but matter for interpretation is the U.S. Constitution. And the roots of a postmodern
interpretation of the U.S. Constitution go all the way back to the 1960's. And it was
perhaps best articulated by Associate Justice William L. Douglas. When dealing with a case
on the fourteenth amendment he found that the fourteenth amendment didn't actually speak
to the issue of his concern. So instead he said that he would rule this way claiming
a, now get this, a penumbra of rights found within the fourteenth amendment. Now the interesting
thing is that the word penumbra until William L. Douglas used it in his Supreme Court opinion,
it had to do with astronomy, not law. But none the less, he picked it up. And now, it
is the goal of every professor in a postmodern law school to find a right that hasn't been
found in that penumbra of rights before. You see the logic of what is going on. You take
the debate over abortion in America. You take even the debate that is very current in our
society over same-sex marriage, and what you hear, especially in the abortion debate is
this "We can't take back a right." Just follow that logic. That again falls into critical
legal theory. In other words, the right wasn't there. No one with a straight face believes
that the framers of the U.S. Constitution meant to put it there. But if was found there,
articulated by Justice Blackman in 1973 in the Roe v. Wade decision. And once that right
has been found, it can never be forfeited. Why? Because that would be sheer oppression.
If you don't understand that logic, you don't understand the culture cleavage in this country.
You don't understand why the people teaching in the law schools in America do not understand
who we are, why we believe as we do, and think as we do. We must be interested in how they
think even if they are uninterested in how we think. The break down of a shared consensus
means that even as the break down of morality and social convention leaves nothing but therapy,
the break down of a legal consensus leaves nothing but litigation. The litigation explosion
in this country is almost entirely traced to the fact that this society has subverted
the moral norms that would have led to the resolution of these claims before they ever
would get to court. Or the social conventions that would have led to the resolution of these
claims, or the social institutions that would have aided the resolution of these claims
before they ever would have gotten to court. Now, everything is litigation. In politics
we no longer expect to deal with what is real. We no longer expect that the candidates are
being presented to us as who they really are. We understand that there is now such a process
of marketing and packaging, and there is such a reality of research and polling and of word
massaging and all the rest. We no longer expect that we are actually dealing with a candidate
and his character. This leads to disillusionment in the political sphere and again it leads
to nothing more than the break down of the larger society. In business postmodernism
is also entered. But again it doesn't enter in contract level, and it doesn't enter in
the transaction level. In business it is more about marketing. In our consumer society business
has caught on to the fact that one of the appetites of a postmodern age, is for needs
that were never known to be needs before. And so we now fuel this creation of needs
the way that we fuel the creation of rights. And now every kid needs an IPOD and a cell
phone. Where as most children throughout human history manage to reach adulthood without
an IPOD and a cell phone. It's almost impossible to believe it could happen now, because we
need this. A study was done by marketing age just last week indicating that Americans are
absolutely certain that among the basic needs for human existence are a dishwasher, a washing
machine, a television, and a personal computer. That's base level human existence. You can't
possibly live without those things, wouldn't know what to do without those things, having
never met the modernist artifact of running water in the sink, and the pre-modern artifacts
of a rock and running water. This is now a need. We create needs the way we create rights.
The impact on the family of this postmodern shift is absolutely huge. The family has been
shorn of its authority, shorn of its functions. The government has now stepped in. Christopher
Lasch a late-theorist demonstrated this perhaps more prophetically than anyone else. "The
family has been stripped naked by the society. The father has been robbed of his authority.”
Why? Because we have to over throw the totalitarian oppression of patriarchy. The parents have
been robbed of their authority writ large across the culture because after all who are
they to say how their children should live. Remember one of the big movements in the 1970s
was children’s rights litigation. It hasn't disappeared. It has just gone into the larger
sea of critical legal theory and it is coming out in court cases all over the place. The
family has been shorn of its educational role as the state has come in to take on the role
of teacher. The family has been shorn of its culture shaping role as other institutions
come in to teach children how they should be good citizens. The family has been stripped
of its spiritual role. We see the debris of all of this. What does it mean that in Manhattan
Public Schools right now six out of ten boys are on Ritalin? Something has gone desperately
wrong with a society that medicates boys in most cases for being boys. But of course we
couldn't even have this discussion because that too is a misconstruction of gender, an
entirely social constructed concept. And thus you see common sense denied. I mean such things
as articles demonstrating that boys learn better in the company of single sex education.
And yet you have people coming back saying "That can't be true. Not only can it not be
true, but it is unfair to girls that they can't be apart of the boys improving." The
fact that the boys are now out numbered on college campuses by girls, and it’s not
that there are just more women going to college. It’s that there are fewer men in absolute
numbers right now going to four year college than twenty years ago. And, we can't even
have a rational discussion about why it would be so. We look at family break down in America.
We can't even have a rational discussion of why is it might be so. We look at the phenomenon
of AIDS and we can't even have a rational discussion of why it is so. I mentioned subverting
subversion as one of the Christian responsibilities of our time. And I believe it with all of
my heart. I believe that the time is short because the reality is that this filter down
process is affecting our children. They are watching the movies. They are seeing the advertising.
So many of them are in schools where this kind of post-modern world view is being basically
mainlined into them almost as if it is an IV going right into their bodies. They are
getting this from the culture. They're getting it from the music. They're getting it from
their peers. James Davidson Hunter, now fifteen years ago, wrote an amazing book in which
he indicated that evangelical young people, and these would now be in their early 30's,
were in terms of a belief system, radically different than their parents without their
parents recognizing it. That was true fifteen years ago. I would suggest to you it is far
more true and far more urgently and emphatically important than even then. It's important that
we understand postmodernism. And quite frankly it’s important that we understand post-modernism
in its uncut form in the academy, because if you don't understand the source, you can't
possibly understand the fountain. But we need to people who with keen eyes and with apologetic
sense of mission can look at the world and say "I know where that comes from." We need
to be the kind of people who in evangelistic conversation with our neighbors understand
when they talk about morality as oppressive and they start using this language. We know
where it comes from. One of the most important things we can do is show an honest postmodernist
where postmodernism lands with a thud. Again you can have a postmodern architect, but not
a postmodern engineer. You can have a postmodern artist, but you don't want a postmodern banker.
And as Richard Rorty, himself a post-modern theorist said, "I'm a modernist at thirty-three
thousand feet." You want a pilot who believes in absolute truth, and rationality and order
and predictability. It's a great apologetic challenge to live in the time the Lord has
given us. It's a great opportunity. It's a great opportunity to subvert subversion to
the glory of God. To help people to see where postmodernism shapes the culture and where
post-modernism collapses on itself. Sometimes one of the most important ministries of the
Christian is to stand amidst the debris, point to the cause of the fall, and to the only
hope for recovery. That's what we are here about. It's the very heart of Christian apologetics.
Let's tell the truth to the glory of God. God bless you.
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