[Gottesblog] A Postmodern Society That Won’t Consider Evidence, Burnell Eckardt

A Postmodern Society That Won't Consider Evidence

by Burnell Eckardt

 

There is in my view a strong connection between the philosophical characteristics of what is called postmodernism and the rather mind-boggling things that have been foisted upon our society in the past several months.

Maybe it began when Jean-François Lyotard brought the term “postmodern” into the philosophical lexicon when he published La Condition Postmoderne in 1979, but then again maybe it was when Ludwig Wittgenstein delved into language games and other nonsense back in 1953. Lyotard saw philosophy as seeking to legitimize new narratives for science in the form of “the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth” (Lyotard 1984 [1979], xxiii), whatever that means. But maybe such language games are really the product of Wittgenstein. Honestly I don’t have the patience to delve much into it (if you really want to, have at it). Playing with language wearies me, probably because pastors must deal with truth and objective reality.

In short, when I think of postmodernism, I think of the scuttling of objective truth, and that is something our society has become very good at. So, for instance, we have people thinking they can be whatever gender they choose, without regard for the physical plumbing they were born with. Or people who prefer to ignore that fact that, biologically, babies are really people, both inside and outside of the womb. And that willful ignorance was writ large already in 1973, as we all know.

What was once a new thought, not to say ridiculous, is now a somewhat old adage: What’s true for you is true for you and what’s true for me is true for me. That is, simply put, postmodernism in a word.

So I can’t help thinking that the societal and political climate of 2020 is an outgrowth of this madness, and it has produced more madness. The media are culpable, routinely providing unsustainable opinion as newscasting.

So for instance, what we could easily see and recognize as riots and violence last summer they didn’t see, or didn’t choose to see. They called it peaceful, or largely peaceful. And we saw the obvious mayhem everywhere and we said, What? How in the world? What are you smoking? But they didn’t care, because of the permission postmodern had given them to do so.

And they think the idea of defunding the police might even have merit. Why? Because, well, why not? It’s all relative; it’s all what we want to call our truth.

And so on.

And so also—here’s where I may be venturing in, I know, where angels fear to tread—there is this election business. I simply can’t help wondering, and being stunned, really, by the mountains of evidence of fraud which I have heard and seen for myself, hundreds of sworn affidavits, numbers that don’t add up, etc. It’s right there for anyone to see. But there are so many who refuse to look. The only response I ever hear from the other side is that it’s been looked at and set aside by the courts, by legislatures, by politicians, by a great host of people. But will someone, any one of these people look at the evidence themselves? and respond to that? or are thousands making this all up? was there really some miracle by which somehow a few key regions in the country suddenly came up with just enough votes to push Biden alone, without any coattails, over the top? They won’t explain this, or even acknowledge the possibility of there being evidence to the contrary. And I wonder, why not? Whether a person is Republican or Democrat, whether he voted for Trump or Biden, or didn’t vote at all, it shouldn’t matter, because there’s something there that needs investigation, right? But no. Heavens, not even the Wall Street Journal wants to look. I note that at least The Federalist has been looking deeply into all this, beginning with this eye-opener right after the election (go ahead, read it if you don’t believe me), and the refusal of people to look at the evidence, for anyone who wants to see. Recently they wrote on it again. Why don’t people look?

Yes, why not? Well, maybe, I can’t help wondering, it’s postmodernism, or at least, in the case of people who should know better, the deleterious effects of its influence on unsuspecting minds.

The consequences are not merely political, either. For how can we preach the Gospel to a people who don’t want to acknowledge the existence of evidence, or proof, or truth? We find ourselves, like Jeremiah, needing to warn people about the prophets who prophesy lies. Yes, there are liars, and they lie. And there are, sadly, people who just believe the lies. We cannot settle for the true-for-you kind of mushy thinking, because there are lies, and there is truth. And ultimately, it is true-objectively true— that Jesus is the incarnate God, that he came down from heaven, that he gave his life into death, and that he rose from the dead, and that hundreds of people saw this and bore witness to it. And there is, objectively, sin and righteousness, right and wrong, and finally, heaven and hell.

And there is still one thing that the postmodernist cannot deny, though he will try. There is death. Play with words all you want, but you cannot play with the graveyard, though you can whistle in it. So you can call funerals “celebrations of life,” and you can speak in platitudes of death as a beautiful passing, a circle of life. But you can’t get around it. Who knows, maybe that’s even at least partly why the fear of COVID is so irrationally gripping for so many people, to the extent that they are willing to give up freedom and everything else just to ensure somehow that they don’t die. But people die every day, some days more than others, as it has been since the beginning of the world, and when you must look at the numbers it can be frightening. We are going to die. And there is really only one vaccination against that, and only the Church has it.

I don’t really think that what I am posting here is political commentary. It’s about what kind of madness the Church is faced with. Because people who are not interested in evidence won’t be too interested in even beginning to consider the words that God has to say to them either, the words they really need to hear, alas. Because they have come to the point that they’re really not too interested in anyone else’s words at all. And so the world slouches toward Gomorrah.