Over the eight years that I served as a Domestic Relations Judge (2008-2016), I occupied a front row seat to the decline of America's national morality. Although every preceding generation has committed its share of sin, the unique thing about our current generation is that the shame that once accompanied immoral conduct is rapidly diminishing.
In our American culture, as well as many other western societies, sin is no longer recognized for what it is. In fact, it is now often considered a virtue. For example, abandoning one’s family may now be characterized as “following your heart”, having an abortion comes under the noble heading of exercising one’s constitutional rights, and the seriousness of lying has been diluted by a culture that increasingly uses such terms as “my truth” and “your truth”.
Over time, I came to learn that this relative approach to morals is a feature of a rambling, unwieldy philosophy known as Postmodernism. While difficult to define, postmodernism is re-shaping our national morality at light-speed. The cornerstone of postmodernism is the idea that there is no such thing as absolute moral truth. People with postmodern leanings (quite often the young people we refer to as millennials) are suspicious of all past political, scientific or religious institutions that claimed to hold the answers to the problems that beset mankind. Being disillusioned by those who have claimed to possess the truth, the postmodern person throws up his hands in frustration and embraces the illogical proposition that “there is no truth”. The pervasiveness of this type of thinking was highlighted by a survey conducted in 2016 by the Barna Group which reported that 74% of millennials agreed with the statement “Whatever is right for your life or works best for you is the only truth you can know”.
Whereas most opposing philosophies (Atheism, Islam, etc.) tend to launch frontal assaults against the Christian faith, the subtle and often attractive messages of postmodernism flow casually from our computers, our television screens, and the pages of familiar magazines. Postmodernism engulfs us all and is so pervasive that its precepts even seep into the worldviews of Christians. I recently had a member of a large, mainstream, Christian church situated in the heart of America’s Bible Belt confess to me that he has come to the conclusion that all religions are basically true. I gently responded “If Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the father but by me’ yet a Hindu considers Jesus to be merely one in a pantheon of 330,000,000 gods, how can both of those propositions be true”? He immediately conceded my point which demonstrates that this professing Christian had adopted a decidedly non-Christian position without really thinking it through.
Once you begin to understand postmodernism you start to see traces of it throughout our society. Every time you hear an individual say “that may be true for you but it is not true for me” you are experiencing the effects of postmodernism. Every time the statement is made that an individual “identifies” as a member of a particular ethnic group or gender category, postmodern thinking is being applied.
Postmodernism is not only unbiblical and illogical, it is also undeniably unlivable. In order for a society to function there must be a common understanding that certain moral truths are timeless and non-negotiable. For a society to attempt to live out the postmodern worldview would unquestionably lead to chaos.
In the 14th Chapter of the book of 1st Corinthians we read that God is not the author of confusion. From the microscopic human cell to the vast reaches of the known universe, God’s supreme order is brilliantly displayed and his written word is the only reliable source of order, truth, and morality for the human race.
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