 Tonight if you're I'm assuming most of you are going to be able to be here for this evening be here tomorrow because what I've done there's there's ten sessions two of them are going to be Q&A but the the content sessions believe it or not you may not be able to tell right away they do have inter relationships with each other tonight is going to be more or less some things of an apologetic bent we will get some of that of course tomorrow as well tomorrow be the the really biblical stuff this is going to be you know biblical related tonight because of just issues like worldview and how to think well and I hope again just giving you a little bit of insight as to how kind of how we our culture has found itself in its I want to say it's mess I mean one of its messes is just the the propensity really to think poorly generally and also think poorly about anything that you sort of put in the traditional Judeo Christian bucket okay there are reasons for that and so I want to talk about some of those things broadly and then it kind of steer the discussion into how you know popular culture sort of pedals certain ideas I think the big takeaway that I'd like you to come away with tonight is that what you are you and I are prone to consider harmless entertainment is really more than entertainment to lots of people now I'm not going to say that you can't watch you know Star Wars and the Avengers and things like this and you shouldn't do that as a Christian and what I'm not going to say anything like that because if you think well I mean you know what entertainment is and you can look at something and sort of parse where it's coming from but a lot of people just can't do that and they're they're really they're trained not to do that and when it comes to truth anything again as you put in the Judeo Christian theological bucket they are actually trained to sort of either be apathetic toward that or really hostile and so we want to talk about again this concatenation of ideas as to you know why are people thinking the way they're thinking what makes them prone you know to do this and then how popular culture really sweeps in to reinforce these things and in some cases for those of you who who might have seen on my presentations online from Future Congress a couple years ago about how pop culture sort of pedals the idea of utopia there are some instances where this is quite deliberate there are other instances where it's just not it's sort of unconscious the reason that film and TV and whatnot is what it is is because the people who create the material that's where they are and they're not being militant about it but it just is what it is but in other cases that there is an agenda so I want to try to introduce sort of the spectrum the concatenation of those ideas to you tonight and give you a little insight as to how I think about them and some of what you'll hear you'll sort of be able to plug in mentally to when you might have heard me on the radio there are going to be a few things I think that would help orient you by the way my slides are really not this boring I only have two that like don't have any color and it's these two I am aesthetically challenged but I'm a little bit beyond this but my general approach and what I want to want you to try to go away with is when you get into a conversation with someone who just will not not only won't accept the gospel or won't accept you know truth claims about scripture or some other theological point that's important to the to the core of the faith even even beyond that when they just sort of are prone to not really think that really anything is true at all and they want to either pedal that idea on you or some other really strange idea my approach is look show me the data I want you to be data-driven you're gonna I'm gonna impress that upon you it's about quantifying what it is you're asking me to believe because when you get into these conversations with people at work you know even a church really but just sort of out about in life and they are not accepting what you're saying what what in many cases they want to convert you they want you to be on their side they want to they want to win you over they want you to agree with them and they need to know that in order for that to happen they need to have something to say it's not sufficient that they just believe something you want to know why they believe it so I want to impress again on you that you need to be data-driven I'm big on primary sources don't tell me what somebody said show me if it's an ancient text this usually kills the conversation give me the citation number give me the chapter in verse give me the line of that tablet and I'll go look and if you're right well then we can further the discussion but usually people are just passing on things that they've heard so it's important again to take people back and get them to realize that especially if they can't produce it well maybe this thing I believe is sort of like a vacuum there's just nothing there so that's an important idea context is always important for what they do talk about coherence I'm really big on that what you say needs to make sense the fact that you can say it and present it to me as a worldview doesn't mean that I'm either impressed or even interested because if it doesn't make sense I don't know how you're going to convince me that I should adopt it and hang anything in my life on it and right away again in this culture we're going to talk about you know the whole postmodern mindset well Mike you know you're just operating from you know that elitist white European Western system of logic okay just just trust me on this the best thing to say to that person is well what other system of logic would you like to have a conversation in because if you're opposed to logic you can't have a conversation that makes sense about anything I could just give you the names of my dog and cat for the rest of the afternoon and that qualifies because we're having a conversation hey you need to make sense in what you say how you say it why you're you're saying it it's not adequate just to have something to say and you need to insist upon that and do it nicely okay you also need to play fair if you're going to insist upon these things from other people for what they want you to believe you need to be able to do the same it's just courtesy so with that said let's get into a little bit about postmodernism you know what my whistle here a little bit now this is a term that we've all probably heard and I'm going to suggest to you it really means two different things and I'm going to leave that button postmodern neo-pagan post-Christian these are overlapping but not necessarily synonymous terms and we'll talk about why tonight there are lots of worldviews out there we know this there's secular people people that just don't believe anything about reality beyond the material world as science tells us it exists we know that you have book religions Islam Christianity Judaism again their theology is oriented to a specific book that they hold as sacred then there are spirituality people they don't care about anything written in terms of a book to follow they're more or less about looking inward mystical experience sort of inner knowledge their own experience that sort of thing and there's really no boundaries there's really no rules and then you have NRM's new religious movements and cults now they all compete for space but there's there are certain core ideas that drive them and one of these is pluralism anyone who I think if anybody any of you have been paying popular or attention to popular discourse in the last 20 years okay it has become the mainstream idea that everybody was something to say deserves to be heard and they deserve to be given equal status okay it's just you know it's wrong to insist that someone's wrong and someone over here is right there's this inclination to essentially try to affirm everyone okay didn't used to be that way but it's more and more part of our culture now in Christianity this cultural shift has led to something that again is sort of a little nebulous term the emergent church and I'm not here to pick on the emergent church necessarily there are good aspects of what is called emergent church and there are bad aspects we're going to talk a little bit about specifics tonight but you know the good part of it is we want to think well to this cultural audience to this time period to this wider culture we want to be able to think well and connect with them about truth and about the way we should live without giving up orthodoxy so there's this all you know churches everywhere have this internal turmoil and debate about how to how to reach the next generation how to reach this generation how to reach the young people how to reach anybody under 50 you know that sort of thing and it's because of these cultural shifts so those are good questions to ask they're important because they're real there's another side to this though that really has altered the meaning of Christianity where truth is something that's inward again it's experience oriented we don't really do theology we do social justice that kind of thing I'm not saying hey Mike you know I don't want anybody going away and saying Mike said it's a good idea to treat people badly you know or Mike is just thrilled that we have all these social problems and he just thinks they're great okay that is not the point at all you know that I'm not I'm not a believer that it's a good thing that the church hands over ministry to people to the government that is a huge mistake but that's really where we find ourselves someone else will take care of that problem or that person and our minds immediately go to welfare some government program put a label on it there's something that exists for all of it the church has abandoned its responsibility in the world at that point but that is not an argument for not caring about doctrine okay that is not an argument that we can just sort of set aside because we assume people in our congregation are content intolerant that we're not going to talk about theology we're not going to do theology here we're going to do works where you know why does it have to be either okay well it's not an either or situation or at least it shouldn't be so that's not where I'm going what I want to go to though is again sort of the intellectual side of it how in the world did we have this this mind shift happen and that brings us into this whole thing called postmodernism now I'm going to suggest you that there are two ways to look at this term one is historical the other one is where we're living right now and in the words of the great philosopher Boromir one does not simply define postmodernism see if you haven't seen the movie this is just not effective but who has not seen don't answer okay there's this thing about you can't really define postmodernism I get that I understand it but I'm going to disagree with it a little bit I think you can describe it postmodernism is a reaction against drumroll please modernism you say well what what's modernism well modernism is the modern mind well what what's the modern mind and really what it's reacting to is not only the way modern thought has sort of propelled Western culture Western civilization but also the that Western culture assumed certain certainties about life about knowledge about reality about the way things are so a person today for some reason again we'll see why really objects to the idea of scientific omniscience and human progress these are myths to them science can be wrong science is not about truth it is about discovering things that are real but it it's not omniscient nothing is nothing can be certain human progress is an illusion it's something we talk about that never happens truth propositions there are no such things to the postmodern nothing you can say is universally true it's not true in all times and all circumstances for all people they reject that idea well that that idea is really core to Christianity and Christian ethics and so they reject religious Christian truth claims you know just don't want to hear about it don't want to hear about it at all what they're really shooting at is epistemic certainty epistemology is the study the philosophy of how we know things and so they're saying look nobody can know anything with certainty at any point so don't talk to me about Jesus don't talk to me about anything that will require me to say this is true and this other stuff isn't it just culturally there's been a shift that has led to that point this is not new okay this is actually good news this is not something that just sort of sprang up the term itself coined in 1979 that's new but this has been happening really since I would put it at the 16th century the modern era as we as historians if you want to take a college course in history of civ the modern era begins after the Renaissance why is that it was in the 1500s that we have the age of exploration Europeans getting in boats crossing lots of stretches you know miles of water and discovering what new worlds new people how'd they get there are they really even people okay that whole question the age of exploration wasn't just crossing the Atlantic it was going to places like India China a little bit earlier than this it was only the late 1800s mid to late 1800s where people really got a grasp of what happened in antiquity in Egypt Mesopotamia and that's because the languages were deciphered and translated we get to read what those people thought about creation about how humans got here about how old their own civilization was okay all of these sorts of things that really derive from the simple act of mostly Europeans in China was some part of this as well but getting in boats and just going places and discovering things bringing them back and eventually we uncover here's the point knowledge that isn't in the Bible okay think about you where you are in Europe in the 16th century this of the 1500s you've had a thousand years or more of one institution telling you what is truth the Catholic Church okay now you had a reformation in 1517 and thereabouts and a little later in Geneva Switzerland and Scotland and some of these other places so little few bumps on the road but it's still again oriented around the Bible okay when you start discovering other things and being able to read their own literature their own primary sources all this stuff and this stuff ain't in there you know it creates a bit of a crisis what do we do how do we look at the Bible anymore how do we look at its truth claims its truth assertions how do we think rightly about it now and of course if you didn't like the Bible to begin with this is a great opportunity it's like yeah this is like ammunition I've been waiting for this day now I'm gonna use it to you know go shoot it at the Bible Darwin sort of goes without saying Darwin publishes in the mid 1800s 1859 origin of species okay that again converges with again some of the the expansion the explosion of all this knowledge that isn't in the Bible so that doesn't help again when the Christian person stands up and says this is true this is not okay you also have a little later on in the late 1800s early 20th century I have here in the notes Einstein and relativity versus Newton do you realize this might sound foreign but do you realize that up until Einstein or I mean he's the one that gets credit for it but up until the people working on in theoretical physics associated with Einstein in the in the early 20th century everybody thought that Newton had the the way the universe ran nailed if you think back way way way way back into your history of civ course you might have either in high school or college you might remember the phrase clockwork universe okay that was Newton Newton came up with mathematical formulas that explained everything you know and astronomers were a big deal they were the celebrities of the age because they figured out all sorts of things you know they this is why we were able to do navigation you know centuries prior to this mathematicians astronomers figured out based upon astronomy how to detect your location at any given point on the globe you didn't just go Google hey where's Google Earth here I'm lost in the Atlantic okay you don't do that everything is based upon naked eye observation and math and they were the celebrities of their age and Newton is sort of the capstone of all this and so by the time you get to Newton everything is figured out well not really Einstein comes along and comes up with this crazy idea that things like space and time are relative theory of relativity and when he's right and when other physicists start doing crazy things like proving that you know something happens to this particle over here and a million miles away that it's counterpart particle the distance doesn't matter it's affected by this and they're sort of connected but there's nothing connecting them but yep that's what we see that's just weird in modern cosmology that's spooky distance you wanted to Google that you could look it up all sorts of really strange things that Newton could not explain and really couldn't even imagine now when that happened people are like well what else don't we know what else isn't certain I mean if even things like space and time are like that you know could be this could be that what else is there because you got Darwin in the life sciences now you got theory of relativity and people are just wondering how do we know what's real and and not only that but then they're going back to the Bible and saying look look at all this stuff these guys are digging up you know that they're proving that they're discovering I don't see it by the Bible talking about any of this stuff yeah fascism and nationalism I don't want to say too much about this but basically when you go through a few world wars the phrase human progress doesn't mean a whole lot there was just again this feeling that we're never going to sort of turn the corner on utopia or even really people treating each other the way they ought to be treated and some of that is an outgrowth of Darwin and some of these other things because once you start to lose the idea of the sanctity of life oh well it's a statistic you know for progress lots of people have to die it's just you know it's life is tough survival of the fittest all that kind of thing you know just applied to humanity so there are lots of forces going on from you know within this thing we know is the modern world all the way into the 20th century and the 20th century is when all these all the stuff starts to hit you know critical mass and there's this shift where really if you're living in the mid 20th century and beyond you are post modernity just by being alive your world is not the world of people living a few hundred years ago they were certain about lots of things but now lots of people are not certain about lots of things and you add to it this thing we call the internet where no law you know in the 1950s if somebody had a religious or theological question who would they go ask you know Johnny comes home from school and says hey you know this popped into my head while I was studying and I have this question they're gonna ask mom or dad maybe the grandparents or the pastor okay those are the gatekeepers of knowledge in a bygone era who are the gatekeepers of knowledge now Google YouTube I mean just the these portals where yeah you know you might stumble across something good there go to my white website you of course will but you you find it really a lot of a lot of bad stuff too a lot of just either misinformed nonsense or downright hostile material but those are the gatekeepers of knowledge and so there's this constant exposure and really overexposure to ideas that are very much in the stream of our culture that rejects things like certainties in anything that rejects the idea that there are true statements to make that are really true they're always true people grow up unaccustomed to that idea and you know as Christians I mean we can you know instruct our children try to get you know get the point across that hey there there are some things that really are true and will always be true and you know let's talk about some of those things and our churches and whatnot but I think we've we've all all of us could probably come up with some anecdotal story that in our efforts to try to reach the culture the unchurched culture that we are or we can minimize then that the need to just think well about theology to think well about why we have different worldviews and to really sort of know kind of how to approach you know someone who really just grew up in this if we're not telling our people how to do that or even that they ought to do it that it's important it's not just important that someone come to church and have a good time and meet somebody and form a relationship you know church should not be intentionally boring okay relationships should not be ridiculed and shunned okay I'm not saying any of those things but if that's all that happens then you are forfeiting your status as a gatekeeper of knowledge to the people in your congregation people you know in church people you know outside church you are you are just forfeiting that role and frankly you're just telling them I'll go YouTube it see what you find there it's just not a good thing now what we're used to thinking again is hey postmodernism means things just aren't the way they used to be that's true but it's a lot more complicated than that again people have just they're at the place where they throw off traditional religious ideas they embrace evolution in some form and I'm not saying that's unnecessary evil you know if whatever if what evolutionary theory says is correct well then then it's true because why because this is the way God made the world okay I mean I'm not here to argue about evolution I know Christians really good committed Christians on all sides and there's more than two sides of that debate that's sort of incidental because you can do that and still do theology but again since that's a big part of our culture you need to become conversant into what it says and what it doesn't say and all that sort of thing and again embracing science that's just sort of feeds off uncertainty where it's led is that there's almost a militant skepticism in our culture today and that's really what people get currently if you go off to your college classroom and your philosophy professor or someone else starts talking about postmodernism it's this extreme sort of radicalized skepticism and antipathy toward anyone else who's not skeptical anyone I mean you can talk about truth all you want but if you claim to have discovered any then you're like a target okay so that that's where it's gone people today at least many of them think that only what is discoverable is true so they'll look at science and say science is not synonymous with truth but it it detects truth now and again and so we need to pay attention to what science says because they're busy discovering things that are true and it could be wrong we can't assign omniscience and certainty to it but it's trying to do the job whereas they'll look at theology religion and saying basically everything you people are saying is not discoverable you just have to sort of believe it or not and when the debate is cast and framed in that way don't don't you just feel like you know some some of you you know probably think well yeah maybe there's some truth to that but don't think don't think that don't allow them to frame the debate that way but I'm telling you this is how it's framed only that which is discoverable by the human senses and human procedures the rational mind the tools of science that's the only stuff that's true that in and of itself is a presupposition that is an assumption okay but this is why people are intellectually inclined in that direction because they have been fed this idea it can only be true if it's discoverable by tools that we can actually utilize and use people we call scientists you know we're not going to make them magicians anymore you know we're not going to make them high priests and just say whatever you say is absolutely certain because you could be wrong but you're at least trying to lead us to the right path you're at least trying to do something that's discoverable so when you when you go down that path that means theological ideas ethical ideas that stem from a Judeo-Christian worldview which is really sort of driven by the idea that there is a God and that God has certain expectations of humanity and if God isn't discoverable through science then they're going to say look the bottom just fell out of what you believe because they frame the discussion that way there goes your ethics don't tell me that there's absolutes and ethics because God cares if you do this or this or a or b or x or y what you're saying that I need to believe it is not discoverable again they're continually framing the issue that way and pop culture drives people this way any movie that has the scientist as a hero and the person who believes something that's not discoverable is the you know the doofus okay or the someone who just you know gets shown to be wrong in the end that reinforces the idea now a lot of people are really forced into a decision then is there a reality beyond science some will just say forget it no and they're going to be the atheist materialist kind of person there is no reality beyond the material world and science is trying to figure out how it works it's trying to discover it for us that's it draw the line right there then you have other people that say well I'm not really sure about that and then you have to ask yourself well why aren't you know why isn't that person sure why am I not sure why you know you person I'm talking to why aren't you sure and in the old days it would be something like because the Bible tells me so or because I read this in the Bible or my pastor said this or my this isn't the way my parents taught me well now again in the absence we've had this this cultural shift and this message has been beaten into the minds of so many if you're not an atheist materialist there are multitudes of people around you at work and yes even in your church and in your own family that the only reason they're not that is because of some experience they've had or an experience that someone else has had that they know and trust it has nothing to do with rational theological articulation they want to be spiritual this is what people mean when they talk about spirituality I want to believe that there's something beyond this world but I don't want a pope or any religious authority telling me it is I'm just not interested in any authoritative teaching what I'm interested in is my own experience experience of someone else something anomalous in life that science really doesn't have you know nailed down that convinces me that there's something else out there and I'm going to do what I can maybe through meditation maybe through reading maybe through listening the lectures or podcasts I'm going to do what I can to sort of learn about the mystery that's out there and that's within so in other words it gets what fills the gap is not the notion of biblical authority it's not the notion of any authority the authority becomes me you again driven by experience and things that you can't explain and don't know that anyone else can and so that that keeps you going and for some people it drives them and compels them to all sorts of really strange beliefs you know later on tonight you know we'll get into some of those just what people sort of replace God with what they replace biblical authority with because they don't want to just bag the whole thing they don't want to think that when they die that is just totally it they want to think that when they die some there's something else out there there is an afterlife but they they reject the idea that the truth about this afterlife is in a book somewhere or is in a religious authority because their culture has told them to reject that idea and history and the transition out of the modern world into the post modern world has trained them to reject that idea but they still want it if I could if I can rabbit trail here in biblical speak it's the God shaped void in every human heart that Paul talks about in Romans 1 that's what that is there's a sense even if you can't define it and you don't know what to fill it with there's a sense that you know it's there you know something's missing again the culture has sort of beaten one answer out of you and this is what people are left with again and when you when you turn inward then what's right and wrong is really determined by you and your circumstances and you may have the best of motives but you know maybe it's maybe it's just time to end my marriage maybe it's just time to do this or that maybe it's okay if I steal a little bit here from the company and you know I I don't really have any alternative and I'll put it back and I'll do this and I'll do that I mean there's all sorts of ways to rationalize decisions and maybe I'm doing it to give to somebody else or I'm doing this thing that someone would call evil so that someone over here will benefit again your ethics just sort of gets contorted and that's pretty much what you're left with you want the feeling of knowing God whatever that is or whoever that is but you don't want any sort of discipline disciplining of your thoughts and your thought processes with this crazy notion of biblical authority that's you know that bugs you and truth to the postmodern is individual and internal there's an appeal to experience into it sounds like Oprah doesn't it you know Oprah Oprah the systematic theologian this is this is from her textbook on theology it's from Eckhart tolls textbook theology was big in Oprah's book club but this is where they're at I mean how many times have you heard this stuff I mean these are catchphrases now they're buzzwords you hear them everywhere and don't you know when you hear them don't think boy this person is really a flake or man this person just is like one brick short of a load you know don't think that what you should think is they're looking there's a void there and they're searching they're trying to fill it I know what the void is and that's actually like it should be a signal to you that this person is ripe for discussion even though they're you know they're going to resist they're going to fight you the whole way all that's we all know that that's true but that person is ready for a discussion because they know something is missing you know you this is just people are trapped in this so for the postmodern the postmodern is someone not troubled by ambiguities why because they don't think anything is ever really true for sure you will not be able to convince someone that their thought processes are incorrect and yours what you're trying to tell them is you have to lead them in such a way so that they draw their own conclusion okay this is why I say you must insist on coherence okay new age postmodern guy I mean I do this all the time on the radio if anyone ever heard me do a radio interview I do this all the time with people who ask questions well Mike you know I think this I read this thing on you know here's the next slide you might have two degrees but I read something on Wikipedia you know and and I get these questions and and what I like to do is say what's kind of interesting and I so you know you know what I would need for me to abandon my position and adopt what you're saying I need this and I need this and I need this and I need this and I need this if you can give me coherent reasons for why this makes sense to you why this orders your world well hey why this is coherent in your life and would make the world a better place and it would just make sense to everybody if they just discovered this thing you want me to believe if you can give me the grocery list of the five or six things I need to come to your side then you got me and if people really do that you know what they what usually happens and again in my experiences most of them won't do that because they'll get about one question in and they'll know like oh boy I have no idea why I think that and then they're either that either scares them and it's like I don't want to talk to that guy anymore you know who's who's George Norrie having on next you know tomorrow night I don't want to talk to that guy anymore or it'll click and it might take more it might take 10 15 20 100 conversations but you just keep coming back to them well I mean I want to believe that you're a nice guy you're a nice girl you know I don't think there's anything sinister going on here I'd love to believe that but you know what here here's where I stumble I don't understand it for this reason this reason this reason this reason this reason this reason can you clear that up for me if you can I'm with you I know that the five or six things that I gave them have no basis in rational thought I know that that's the dirty little secret I know that what they believe cannot be proven through any real data they believe it because it sounds good they heard it somewhere and it helped them feel good at a certain point in their life that is why they believe it they don't believe it for any objective reason and so what I'm trying to get them to stumble across is that fact I don't know why I believe that just somebody said it on TV and if you have a conversation with people and they tell you that it's like well I you know don't take this wrong but do you believe everything you hear on TV I mean do you believe everything that guy says like you know does that work over here and over there and I mean I'm not trying I'm not suggesting you do this in a surreptitious deceptive way okay because when I when I try to do this to people I'm being totally honest if you really can do this you can really provide the data for that and answers all these well that yeah you win you know I want to know what I'm suggesting to you is that don't shy away from people who oppose what you believe engage them in conversation you will discover a lot about why people believe the stuff they believe don't consider it a threat it is not a threat it is a step in the right direction they want to have the conversation now so don't get scared by post-modernism you know now in our culture what comes next well if we're like the post-moderns now then what's going to happen next well it's already happening we're living in a post Christian era whether we like to admit it or not that pretty much is where we're at we have lots of doctrine less religion even in our churches we have lots of faith talk but we have very little doctrine and when I think of doctrine I think of people being able to explain why they believe what they believe with scripture it's all doctrine is I am convinced and not just because I got nearly 200 people looking at me here which is I mean I'll be honest I didn't expect to get 200 people so I consider this a rebuke to me I do I do but but I will tell you this even though even though I didn't expect a big audience I am convinced that the average person in the pew is dramatically underestimated by pastors we assume that people have a low tolerance for content okay a lot of them do I'll admit that but a lot of them don't a lot of them they can tell you the last time they got hit by content they might not ever they might not know what it feels like but then when they when they do get hit by it a lot of people don't reject it a lot of people don't say well that was a waste of time Sunday morning a lot of people think like wow I never saw that before that's really interesting there's something here to think about what do you know that's what I mean again by doctrine just being able to to coherently explain why it is you believe what you believe and yet it goes back to the Bible and your question is well why do you believe that well that you know we'll talk about some of the the presumptions the presuppositions that go with it but what I see in Christianity is basically you got you have three things happening there's a resistance to the modern world as we know it which is really the postmodern you know culture and that's where you I would put something like fundamentalism in there sort of just a resistance to really engaging any of this stuff and a lot of proof texting you know as much as I think that's a flawed approach I'm appreciative of it because they're trying to hold on to something rather than just bagging it so I can appreciate that some want to challenge modernity again the culture and this is a also a good thing even though it creates turmoil within churches you know to try to you know what's the best way to to build bridges to people who come and visit our church or people out there that are you know our church members meet what's the best way to do that we want to do that we might have to change the way we do certain things but we're not giving up the identity of the faith we're not going to do that we're drawn a line there but we need to think creatively about how to do what we do and also how to articulate what it is we believe maybe do a better job of that that's good but then you have another group that basically they acquiesce and they they pardon the pun they have a facade of Christianity about them but it's unrecognizable when you could get to talking about what it is they really believe I want to focus on these two and really mostly the last one in what's left of this session and as we we keep going both strategies let me go back both those who want to challenge modernity and keep orthodoxy and those who have abandoned orthodoxy they both use the term emergent and that that's again a problem for lots of people because you go and visit churches you talk to other Christians you don't quite know where they're at again the bad part of it is you define the faith out of existence and what you're left with is you're left with what I would call evangelical paganism I don't mean paganism like we all dress up in roads look you know robes like druids and we you know lay look is this you know is is this the year that the church is going to start that annual trip to Stonehenge and we all get to dance around and I'm not talking about paganism like that I'm talking about paganism in the sense that truth is now something that is internal truth is found by connecting ourselves and appreciating nature truth is found in relationships and appreciating the synchronicities of life I hate that term by the way synchronicities because you know what it did you know what it is it's a replacement for providence okay I hate that term okay that's out of my system now but but this is what it is it's it's all this sort of relational mumbo jumbo stuff and then we we have to throw in the name of Jesus here and there so that people like don't don't conclude that we're not really Christians anymore and that's what you're left with I see too much of that happening as well yeah we replace again activism with doctrine now I want to say before we wrap up I want to see a couple things I don't want to leave you hanging about just addressing the criticisms of postmodernism and the way it sort of attacks really thinking the way it sort of attacks yes traditional Judeo-Christianity but also some of its claims now I wouldn't try to make this little little practical I'll just jump in you I might have to pardon myself with a few illustrations here but I think they're good I would say first of all that the whole notion that you're gonna meet many people out there again don't tell me that something is true and other things are not true that's just not fair it's not good it's not politically correct whatever you want to call it the idea that everything is uncertain the denial of certainty is self-defeating in life it's unlivable no one lives like that that I can't believe what I'm hearing I can't believe what you're saying because there's no such thing as certainty no one believes that no one really lives it communication is impossible if that's where you're coming from I would say illustration show me the postmodernist who walks into the hairdresser and doesn't assume that what they're asking for you to do to their hair is understood okay when you go into the hairdresser and say hey I want this and that and the other thing you assume that your communication to that person is just fine and you assume that they hear it and you feel certain that they hear it and you're okay with that how many people walk into their urologist okay and say hey you know doctor you know what I'm what I'm here for procedurally they never I would doubt that you could find anyone that thinks that they're gonna come out with something other than what they get one in with okay but if you're a postmodernist is what you're asked to believe you're asked to believe that communication successful communication accurate communication is just impossible or it's so hopelessly uncertain and and I can't successfully interpret anything you know I'm not omniscient so I'm just gonna throw it all out you don't live that way you don't live that way when you go to a restaurant you don't live that way when you discipline your kids you don't live that way when you fill out your tax form you don't live that way when you when you call the helpline and you know some appliance you know that doesn't work nobody lives this way but it sounds so good you know why because no one no one will admit they're omniscient because you're not we all know that we're not omniscient so well he's right I can't really know everything so I guess I shouldn't believe anything that's what postmodernism asks you to believe it's insane it just doesn't conform to reality as every person knows it to be so the whole assumption is just dumb now I wouldn't say that to a postmodern person I try to find a better way to say that but the whole thing is just dumb it's unlivable so imperfect interpretation is livable hey requiring omniscience or total certainty is just not I I think it's the either or fallacy on steroids you know that again without omniscience I can't know anything and I shouldn't act like I can know anything for sure and I should just say whatever anybody says is equally good really I mean to get ever go through not even 24 hours you ever go through like two hours of your day think really living that out you don't no one does so I would put it this way just because we don't know everything doesn't mean that we don't know anything to conclude otherwise again I would if it's bad Mike he would say go ahead and show me that you know I want to see you live that out for just an hour but if I'm in a better mood it's like look have you really thought about what this asks you to believe and how it asks you to live it it just doesn't work and not only that it's just not necessary when you when you go home and your spouse tells you that he or she loves you do you quake with fear because you're a post-modern person do you sit there and think I can't just can't know I can't know maybe I should just divorce you know go live on an island somewhere where it's just me it's just absurd but this is really what the whole approach asks you to accept because you can't know everything and you can't know anything it's unlivable it's really what it comes down to so as far as religious claims go I would say that religious claims pick any any anyone from any religion they can be tested okay they're not discoverable with the tools of science we didn't dig that up we didn't put it under a microscope but they can be tested for coherence so let's test yours let's test mine we're gonna play fair here which one makes more sense you know you get theism and very specific ideas that extend from it what we believe is actually really simple we believe things like okay what makes more sense that there's a God or not and we're not talking about oh is it 24-hour day creation is it day-age create who cares okay does it make more sense to have a God or not well you know I would say of course that it does and I have reasons for saying that it does things that can be tested ideas that can be tested but you could do something like this you know the person you're talking to says well I just I think it makes more sense that we don't have a God well why well look at look at science this is all always where the conversation is gonna go look at science well can you explain to me and this is a real question I'm not again I'm not poking people in the eye it's a serious question can you explain to me why there are thousands today maybe even tens of thousands of scientists who went to the same universities as the scientists you like that don't believe any of this don't believe in God they went to the same universities they had the same professors they have the same degrees they write for the same journals they belong to the same academic societies and yet they draw a different conclusion can you explain why that is I mean think about the limited number of answers that person has now well I just don't believe that well you know walk them down to a Christian university and introduce them to the physics faculty okay I mean there's any number of places you can go and yeah there are that many because if you go to the American scientific affiliation or the council of Christian colleges and universities and look up all the schools that belong to that and there's a few hundred of them and let's say they each have you know I don't know 10 scientists in all the fields of the sciences do the math okay it really is that many it really is it's easy for me to quantify my assertion well I just don't believe that I just well that isn't really an answer I already know what you believe and don't believe but what I want you to do is explain why this is the case well they're all lying can you show me the study that verifies that can you provide me empirical hint scientific proof for that show me your work show me the data it is not adequate for you to just tell me you believe something the fact that you can articulate it does not make it true I want to know why you are parked on this idea can you show me that you know it another question why is it that we've been discussing this question you know for millennia but even in the modern era and the postmodern era and you still have lots of people that believe that it makes more sense that there's a God than not why is that see the point is if you can't empirically explain that then you either have to be honest or dishonest the honest answer is well the alternative the view that I want them to embrace might be true it's on the table the dishonest answer is just to walk away once you believe there's a God well can can God like do anything I mean if we believe in a God and we talk about creation and there's lots of scientists that believe God is Creator again regardless of evolution or whatever there's they're there you know some really famous ones too so we have to assume that this God can do stuff and that he's like actually interested in doing stuff so is it possible that he could like look at humanity and sort of influence somebody to write something down today or prepare them for their lie you know throughout their lives for a moment when he can use another person or the spirit to prompt them to write something down I'd like it preserved for posterity it may sound kind of squirrely to somebody living 2000 years from now that's okay get it down can kind of God do that I mean I can do that okay I can influence somebody to write something down these are really simple ideas could a Creator God become incarnate if he has power over creation could he resurrect someone who's dead even if it's him incarnate while he exists somewhere else could he do these things again it's a simple set of ideas and until you can topple the first one you really don't have anything so again this I mean postmodernism when you go through it it sounds kind of impressive like they've really got you you know and the only reason that they feel that way is because you know that you you don't know everything so you feel like you got to go along for the ride you don't the fact that you don't know everything doesn't mean that you don't know anything no one lives that way ask people to show you their work ask people to tell you how they live out what they believe and again don't don't be nasty about it you're not trying to poke them in the eye get them to explain it to you and probe them a little bit ask them questions have a conversation I have to confess I have no idea what time it is so I'm gonna end there