“Something old, something new. Something borrowed, something blue.”

The old saying goes like this, “Something old, something new. Something borrowed, something blue.” At least that’s an old wedding tradition that a lot of brides will still use today. To often the Bride of Christ tries to adopt the same theme. In our pursuit as humans we fail sometimes to follow the warning given in the last part of Roman’s 12:9 …”abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.”, and will instead run after something WE KNOW is not good. That is where we find the church on the subject for today: Postmodernism.

Now this term, Postmodernism, didn’t really come about until the 1970s. However the core tenants of this philosophy have been around much, much longer. For example this definition: Postmodernist philosophy rejects traditional concepts of logic, objective truth, and human nature. Postmodernists believe that there are no universal truths or objective realities and all meaning is constructed by each individual. So let’s break this down one at a time because this is important to understand.First, it REJECTS traditional, or universally accepted truths. because as Christians we are to compare everything to scripture and if it doesn’t support it then we have to reject it, and postmodernism in all its forms denys the truths of scripture and its power. It’s necessary to know as Christians today we face an onslaught of voices telling us we are outdated, we can’t be the only voice of truth, or we need to stop being so traditional and patriarchal. Each one on their own can wear you down, but when the whole gambit is thrown at us we find it hard to combat it on the surface. It’s only when we realize there is a deeper level to it do we begin to understand the architecture behind it and it’s motives.

The next part of that definition seeks to create an idea that there are no absolutes, and a person’s reality can be constructed from their own experiences, devoid of any kind of moral anchor or truth. Of course we see that today for example in a simple Google search. Type in “Men can…” and in the top ten results you will find “men can get pregnant”, “men can menstruate”, “men can breastfeed”. Now all of those CAN be true, but only if you tear down the universal truth that science has long supported and Scripture long before that, and it is that men and women are created differently. If you tear that down and say a woman can become a man, and still have her periods well there you go: men can have periods. Ditto on the pregnancy and the rest. So only when you attack and dismantle an absolute, can you replace it with a postmodern construct. The field is wide open with subjects that are currently being dismantled, or my favorite word deconstructed, and actively being replaced. Things like what is a marriage? Certainly not what God instituted in Genesis of one man and one woman which God in the Flesh reiterated from Genesis 2 in Matthew 19:5-9. The issue of abortion, marriage, homosexuality, salvation, definition of church, and evangelism. All are being actively torn down and replaced with a forgery.

The idea of postmodernism really came about as a form of criticism of art and literature when compared to modern styles(modern meaning anything that came from logic or reason out the The Enlightenment period). It has appeared as a philosophy from about the 1970s, and has since grown to encompass thought, and religious studies as well. For sake of definition for this topic we are ignoring the art and music and only talking about Postmodern Philosophy, which was really brought about by one man: Jean-François Lyotard. He grew up studying and learning all he could as a young boy and even wanted to become a Dominican Friar, which is an order of priests in the Catholic church dedicated to studying and preserving truth. As he aged he became heavily influenced by Karl Marx, Fredriech Nietzsche (both devout atheists) , as well as things he witnesses during WW2. Because of that influence He believed basically this: The role of Postmodernist philosophy is to reject traditional concepts of logic, objective truth, and human nature. Postmodernists believe that there are no universal truths or objective realities and all meaning is constructed by each individual, and will argue that truth is always contingent on historical and social context rather than being absolute and universal—and that truth is always partial and “at issue” rather than being complete and certain. Now without getting lost in all the big words we can simplify it this way: my life experiences are devoid of God and moral absolutes. My life is made up of my experiences and that translates into my truth. All of this philosophy is rooted in an atheistic and communist ideology that is being wrapped as some new intellectual thought that is as old as the world. So, you see the end result now? Single parent homes raise children that do not know what a model for marriage is which then society will push to become children raised under a roof with two parents of the same gender who will not know what the biblical model is and will have no problem growing up to a society that will then allow pedophilia and bestiality. And it’s not extremism to think that, it’s using logic and reason to conclude that 1+1=2, or people+no absolute truths, or standards=chaos. When humanity becomes untethered from biblical truths and moral absolutes, we are like a ship with no sail, and anchor hopelessly tossed about (Ephesians 4:14 very clearly shows that concept)

These thoughts are certainly not new, but have been around in various forms for as long as Satan has been roaring about. While we can go to the Old Testament to see where pagan religions were perverting God’s order, we will instead go to the New Testament where we see very eerily similar examples of what we see today. Staring first in Roman’s 1 we see a pattern of people left to themselves and devoid of God going down the path of moral degradation until you finally culminate with God giving you up(Roman’s 1:26), and from there it’s all kinda of evil. But there are two verses that are key to look at in this study. Look at verse 18 first; “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;“. The last phrase “who hold the truth in unrighteousness” according to the original Greek wording means that they twisted the truth in their unrighteousness. So look at the next verses, what is being described is the culmination of the absence of God in their hearts along with their twisting of the truth in their sinful state. Let’s look at the next example in verse 20-21. The evidence of God, or a creator if you will, is clearly seen in the world around us. Even more so that as we study it we begin to see patterns that point to an order to it all. But when people forsake God, they turn the truth of all this into a lie, much like postmodernism attempts to do. These two things are being done today as well in the form of denying absolute truths that are found even in nature and putting emphasis on the creation(man) more than the Creator.

Turning to John 18:37-38 we see Jesus Christ before Pilate and Jesus speaks of truth, to which Pilate so famously asked “what is truth?” and walks away. There are some little nuggets of truth to analyze here. First, much like today, that same question of truth has been asked once before and to God’s son no less! What’s interesting is that it is never recorded that Jesus answered Pilate, at least not personally. However, He did answer that question in another passage in John 17:17 when Jesus is praying for the Disciples of then, and the followers in the future He said this: Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. So we have Jesus answer to Pilates’ question: if we take the time to study John and it’s this, God’s Word is Truth. Not just some of it, or part of it. No, we have the absolute and fulfilling Truth. We can also glean from this that God’s Word has all the answers we need, we don’t need to filter our responses through our life experiences, instead we need to filter them through Jesus Christ and His Word. Lastly we can look at two passages the Holy Spirit gave the Apostle Paul. One being in 1 Timothy 6:20 where Paul encouraged Timothy to shun vain and profane babbling and opposition of science. That wording there of OPPOSITION means anti-, or against. And SCIENCE is the Greek word “gnōsis” where we get our word knowledge. So Paul is telling Timothy to avoid the people who are vain, and are against the knowledge they had. Which included the sciences of the day. The gist: avoid people who won’t accept the accepted. Secondly, Paul talks in Roman’s 12:2 and it’s implied that we have to renew, or renovate our mind from the world’s thinking to what God has said. That’s an interesting thing to think about when comparing that to postmodernism, so we are to reject what the world has to offer and instead go back to what we once knew, or had knowledge of.

We can finish with spending a little time talking about this term deconstruction. That term comes from another philosophy thinker that was a contemporary of Jean Lyotard; Jacques Derrida. In a small nutshell that thinking he popularized is this: Deconstruction seeks to expose, and then to subvert, the various binary oppositions that undergird our dominant ways of thinking. Basically we call into question everything we know and how it effects us. That is not quite the same as what Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:14-17 “14But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; 15And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 16All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: 17That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. We also just looked at the Romans 12:2 passage we see that instead we are to go back to what we have heard, back to what God’s Word has stated. Not deconstruction, but instead renovation. Clean it up, freshen it up! It is when you look at the ideas of deconstruction and postmodernism you begin to see it is the same thing, from the same playbook, from the same architect: that is Satan. As Peter Wrote in 1 Peter 5:8 “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:”, the same is true today. The same tactics he used in the early church of opposing the knowledge they had, or twisting God’s truths are still being used today. And when you see patterns you see a designer, so when you see this chaos in thought, and tearing down of established truths and biblical traditions you can know with certainty that it is something to be avoided and it’s of Satan.