On A Glasslike Sea (standard:other, 2886 words)
Author: Eutychus	Added: Dec 24 2012	Views/Reads: 2899/2192	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A small group examining competing worldviews

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

turns a deaf ear to the idea of objective truth, yet it embraces a 
fuzzy, barely defined spirituality.” 

“How can you have a form of spirituality that isn't based on truth?” the
church secretary asked. 

“Well, first we need to look at why the notion of truth has fallen out
of favor with Postmodernists. Modernists conquered the globe and 
subjugated nature in the name of progress but oppressed and 
marginalized people have responded, ‘Progress toward what?' The modern 
truth that reason could lead to happiness was proved to be false. The 
hope of ‘progress' ended up in a nightmare of violence. So statements 
of truth, based on past experience with what others claim as truth, are 
not to be trusted, making all truth claims suspect. So now the only 
truth is that truth which is established by the individual. What might 
be true for me might not be true for you, and we are to respect each 
other's version of ‘truth'. Since there is no absolute truth, we have 
to hang on to the little bits of truth that we are personally familiar 
with.” 

“Isn't that just a little contradictory, claiming that there is no
absolute truth?” Maddie wondered out loud. 

“Yes, a British journalist named Steve Turner covered this in his
satirical poem Creed many years ago. One line goes: ‘We believe that 
there is no absolute truth excepting the truth that there is no 
absolute truth'.  He nails the contradiction but postmodern types seem 
able to live with it comfortably. 

“Postmodernists think that holding to the notion of objective truth
always does violence to someone. When you make any truth claim, you are 
necessarily regarding other world views as invalid and marginalize 
anyone who doesn't hold to your truth. Truth claims, then, are viewed 
as tools to exert power over others. That's why in postmodern culture 
the person to be most feared is the one who believes that we can 
discover ultimate truth. Such a person is not only naïve by not 
realizing that truth cannot be determined but they are dangerous 
because their end game is to hold sway over the minds and lives of 
people who simply want to live life according to their own version of 
truth.” 

Jerry chuckled loudly enough for the pastor to become curious and he
asked what seemed so funny. 

“If anyone here is old enough to remember Jay Ward and his cartoons, he
did one as a companion to Rocky and Bullwinkle called Dudley Do Right 
of the Mounties. On more than one occasion Nell, Dudley's love 
interest, would flee from Snidely Whiplash, the ubiquitous ‘villain' 
character, by leaping from ice chunk to ice chunk as she crossed a 
raging river in the middle of winter. I picture people leaping from one 
chunk of ice to the next in constant search of a more comfortable 
version of truth. It may give consolation for a moment, but the harder 
you try to steady it, the wobblier it becomes so that you have to leap 
to the next chunk of ice so as not to fall into the freezing water.” 

As the rest of the congregation appreciated the humor of the image, Kyle
pondered the picture his father-in-law had painted and considered an 
image he had encountered earlier in the week on The History Channel. 

“So how are these versions of truth arrived at?” 

“Experience, of all things. Life experience is the criteria used to
arrive at the truth that works for you. So each culture can have an 
entirely different set of truths that it holds as important because 
experiences vary from culture to culture. I mean, in one culture it may 
be acceptable behavior to marry at the age of fifteen while in another 
twenty-five might prove more acceptable. Because experience has shown 
in both cultures that there are advantages to each point of view, one 
cannot be given the moral high ground over the other because each works 
in its respective situation. Would someone read for me the last verse 
in Judges?” Pastor Douglas asked. 

“Judges 21:25- ‘In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did
what was right in his own eyes'.” 

“So some ways of looking at the world are in fact more ancient than
modern or even post-modern. We need not regard this line of thinking as 
anything new and different. Old Solomon had it right. There really is 
nothing new under the sun. This has been around forever. It just has a 
new label on it. Can you see why postmodernism might come off as 
frightening to people who hold to absolute truth?” 

“Yes, how do we argue with them about truth when the word means
something very different to each of us? For example, if we say, ‘The 
truth shall make you free,' it means one thing to us, namely Truth, in 
the person of Christ, makes us free from sin and death. But to the 
postmodern ear, it means ‘my preference' will make me free to do 
whatever I want. How do you argue against something that permits you to 
be your own source of truth?” 

“I'm not sure the situation is as dire as it sounds. Would someone read
John 18:37 and 38?” 

“Pilate therefore said to Him, ‘Are you a king then?' Jesus answered,
‘You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born and for 
this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to 
the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.' Pilate said to 
Him, ‘What is truth?' And when he had said this, he went out again to 
the Jews, and said to them, ‘I find no fault in Him at all.'” 

“Thank you Elsbeth. So, from Pilate's reply to Jesus' statement, does he
sound like a postmodern sort of thinker? If Pilate is any indication, 
the early church was dealing with the same situation we see before us. 
People were doing what seemed right in their own eyes and questioned 
everything. Think about the folks Paul talked to on Mars Hill. They 
liked to discuss ideas just to discuss ideas, not to glean any truth 
from them. So the situation today is the same as then only with a new 
crop of people asking Pilate's ‘what is truth?' question loudly and 
aggressively. Realistically, that means we face the same challenges the 
early Church did, and look how God grew the movement in the first 
century with a few faithful followers.” 

“So how do we effectively engage people to whom objective truth is a
foreign concept?” 

“Pastor, I've been thinking about that for a while. May I address this
concern?” Kyle asked. 

“Certainly, have at it.” 

“Has anyone ever heard of a man named Frederick Fleet? No? All right,
Mr. Fleet sounded the initial alarm on the RMS Titanic and let the 
bridge know that the ship was heading directly for an iceberg. I would 
like to suggest that we, the Church, are in a figurative sense living 
at that moment when Mr. Fleet saw the iceberg. We are on the Titanic as 
a culture, but there are some amazing things about what happened on 
that evening a hundred years ago that a lot of people don't know about, 
and those things are reason for hope. 

“Some people know if the lookouts had spotted the iceberg as little as
five seconds earlier Titanic would have missed the iceberg by a few 
feet and made it safely to New York. But it is also the case that if 
they had spotted it five seconds later the ship wouldn't have sunk. She 
would have hit the iceberg head on. This would have crumpled the bow 
and a lot of folks would have been killed in the collision, but not 
enough of the ship would have taken on water to cause it to sink. It 
would have limped its way to New York, been repaired, and remained in 
service for many years. 

“Many people misinterpret this to mean there were only a few seconds
during which Titanic might have been saved, but the truth of the matter 
is there were only a few seconds during which Titanic might have been 
sunk. By reacting as they did when they did, the iceberg ended up 
tearing down nearly the full length of the ship, opening enough of the 
ship's watertight compartments to the sea to doom the Titanic. 

“Postmodernism has been doing the same thing to our culture for a long
time now, operating much like an iceberg, doing the damage beneath the 
surface. Out of view, it has been flooding social institutions like 
marriage with no fault divorce to treat the husband and wife in 
question in a way that has room for the ‘truth they experienced' in 
their marriage rather than the truth God intends for marriage. It has 
also inserted the implied ‘truth' that there is nothing distinctive or 
special about traditional marriage. Academia foundered a long time ago 
while the entertainment industry subtly feeds us a postmodern worldview 
in such a way that we don't even notice what's happening. 

“It is too late for us to avoid this iceberg of thought. We are going to
have to deal with it, and we dare not try to accommodate it by 
appealing to something as unreliable as feelings or as subjective as 
experience. We have to confront this iceberg head on by lovingly 
explaining that truth not only exists in an objective sense but that it 
can be known in the person of Jesus. We may end up having to learn a 
new language like foreign missionaries right here at home to 
communicate these thoughts, but we have a distinct advantage over 
postmodernism because this wall of ice that seems so intimidating, this 
iceberg that threatens to sink our culture, is hollow. It has no anchor 
points in reality and exists only on wishful thinking. So the most 
sensible thing to do is play the part of an icebreaker. We ram the 
iceberg with all we've got, and when ‘all we've got' is God's truth, 
the iceberg doesn't stand a chance. If we just get people to think 
about things they will have to see the emptiness of their worldview, 
which would be our opening to point them toward Jesus, the only real 
source of Truth. But in order to do this well, we have to be equally 
willing to find an effective way to articulate our reasons for the hope 
that is within us.” 

“Kyle, don't you think a big part of the problem with our defense of
what we hold to be objective truth is the way in which we portray that 
truth? For example, we might say that Jesus is Lord of the universe, 
which in our redeemed minds is a statement of absolute truth, but which 
means next to nothing to the unregenerate world. Is there a better way 
we can communicate truth?” Elsbeth asked. 

“In that particular instance, I suppose we could be more specific with
what we mean by defining our terms with our answer. What if we said 
‘Jesus of Nazareth, a first century Jew, is the Messiah whom God 
promised would come to earth to establish a kingdom over which he 
continues to rule, even though one must have eyes that have been 
liberated from the effects of sin to see it'”? 

“That does put a finer point on it, but the ‘liberated from the effects
of sin' eyes sounds like a bit of a dodge, like we are trying to get 
around a point we can't reasonably defend,” Pastor Douglas observed. 
“What would best illustrate the truth of the claim you make about 
Jesus, Kyle?” 

“Well, if Jesus has come to establish a kingdom which he continues to
rule, this would imply that he has subjects in that kingdom. I mean, I 
could claim to be the emperor of inland Antarctica, but because the 
farther from the coast you go the quicker the population of Antarctica 
reaches zero, the less my title means. What is an emperor without folks 
to rule?” 

“So who populates the kingdom Jesus established?” 

“We do, and we do so as the latest generation of a concrete historical
community who by our actions live out Jesus' story in a way that bears 
witness to the truth of His story. So in a sense, our faith is not 
borne from age to age by statements of objective truth, but through 
communities of human beings filled with the Holy Spirit.” 

“Yes, Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard, who served in France in the first half
of the twentieth century, once said that, ‘To be a witness does not 
consist of engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but 
in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one's 
life would not make sense if God did not exist.' Are our neighbors 
confused enough by us to wonder about us? Are we mysteries to the 
people we come in contact with?” 

“You'll have to give me a reference for that quote later, Pastor.
Earlier I referenced 1Peter 3:15 in a kind of off-handed way. We lean 
on that verse a lot as evangelicals. We think it is really important 
that we be ‘prepared to give a defense for the hope that is within' us. 
But how do we answer questions no one is asking? The most challenging 
task we face as the Church is to be people who live out our faith in a 
way that draws the world to us to ask questions about the hope we have 
in Christ.” 


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