Albert Mohler: Postmodernism and Society

Summary

This 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

00:00

😀 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.

05:07

🏛 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.

10:15

📚 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.

15:18

🎭 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.

20:20

🛌 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.

25:27

⚖️ 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.

30:28

🔍 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.

35:35

🎨 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.

40:37

🏢 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.

45:37

📚 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.

50:38

🏛️ 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.

Keywords

💡Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a philosophical movement characterized by skepticism, relativism, and a general distrust of grand theories and ideologies. It is central to the video's theme, which critiques postmodernism's impact on various aspects of society. The video discusses postmodernism's assertion that 'truth is made rather than found,' illustrating its influence on contemporary thought and its departure from traditional concepts of absolute truth.

💡Deconstruction

Deconstruction is a critical method that seeks to expose the underlying assumptions and power structures within a text or cultural construct. In the context of the video, deconstruction is presented as a key postmodernist approach, aimed at dismantling established 'truths' and revealing them as constructs designed to maintain power imbalances. The speaker mentions the deconstruction of truth and the text, as postmodernists believe that all claims to truth serve those in power.

💡Meta-narrative

A meta-narrative, or 'grand narrative,' is an overarching story or theory that explains large parts of human experience or history. The video discusses the 'death of the meta-narrative' in postmodernism, suggesting that society has moved away from large-scale explanations towards smaller, individual narratives. The critique extends to Christianity and Marxism as examples of meta-narratives that have been challenged by postmodern thought.

💡Relativism

Relativism is the concept that truth and morality are subjective and may differ among individuals or cultures. The video highlights the postmodernist embrace of radical relativism, where truth is relative to whoever is constructing it. This idea is contrasted with the Christian view of an absolute, eternal, and universal truth established by God.

💡Therapeutic

The term 'therapeutic' in the video refers to the postmodern tendency to reduce all aspects of life to matters of personal well-being or mental health. It critiques the shift from seeking truth to seeking what makes individuals feel good, reflecting a broader societal trend towards valuing personal experience over objective reality.

💡Authority

The concept of 'authority' in the video is discussed in the context of postmodernism's rejection of traditional sources of authority, such as texts, authors, and religious doctrines. The decline of authority is presented as a natural outcome of the postmodernist critique of power structures, leading to a society that is skeptical of any claims to definitive knowledge or moral guidance.

💡Moral Relativism

Moral relativism is the idea that moral judgments are true or false only relative to some particular standpoint. The video describes the displacement of morality in postmodern culture, where traditional moral frameworks are replaced by a subjective, individualistic approach to ethics, often justified by the postmodernist emphasis on liberation from oppression.

💡Pastiche

Pastiche, a French term used in the video, refers to a work of visual art, literature, or music that imitates the style of another work, artist, or period as a form of flattery or parody. In postmodern art, pastiche represents the blending of various styles and elements without a clear narrative or meaning, reflecting the postmodernist distrust of unified styles or grand narratives.

💡Transgressing

Transgressing, as discussed in the video, involves crossing boundaries or violating taboos, often as a form of artistic expression or social critique. The video describes how postmodernism encourages transgression as a means to challenge and subvert established norms, authority, and perceived oppressive structures.

💡Hegemony

Hegemony, in the context of the video, refers to the dominance of one group or idea over others, often in a way that is seen as oppressive or controlling. The speaker critiques postmodernist language that frames claims to truth as hegemonistic, suggesting that any unified claim to truth is an attempt to exert power over others.

💡Sokal Hoax

The Sokal Hoax, mentioned in the video, was an event in which physicist Alan Sokal submitted an intentionally nonsensical article to a postmodern studies journal to expose perceived flaws in postmodern academic discourse. The incident is used in the video to illustrate the perceived absurdity and lack of rigor in some postmodernist scholarship.

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.