Modernism and Postmodernism

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00:19
Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist.
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I'm coming to you today with one of my good friends and not yet Calvinist, Matthew Henson.
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Hello, Matthew.
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How are you? Doing great, Keith.
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And that is my favorite.
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That's my favorite title.
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You're not yet Calvinist friend.
00:38
That's right.
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I'm the token and I'm okay with that.
00:40
Well, for those of you who don't know, back when I was doing Coffee with a Calvinist, Matthew and I had a very good interaction on the questions about Calvinism.
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And he was asking me questions about why I'm a Calvinist.
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We were going back and forth about our different perspectives on that theological position.
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And if you did not hear it, I want to encourage you to go back to the archives of Coffee with a Calvinist, find it and listen to it.
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Matthew is a very intelligent young man.
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He is a Bible teacher at his church.
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In fact, if you would, just for those who haven't met you, tell us a little bit about where you are and what you do at your church.
01:19
Sure thing.
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So I've been actually attending my church since I was five years old, which is always a fun thing.
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Went off to college, but maintained a connection while I was there.
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And when I came back from college, married a girl that I met there and brought her down from Georgia.
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And so we now live just a few minutes from our church.
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Our church is a non-denominational church at Switzerland Community Church down in St.
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John's County.
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So we're almost an hour away from where you are.
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I think we're pretty far down there.
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And so when you live in Jacksonville and people are like, well, I live in Jacksonville too.
01:50
Yeah.
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But it's like being in another city or another.
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It is.
01:53
It really is.
01:53
Where do you live? Jacksonville.
01:55
Well, kind of.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
01:58
So anyways, we're a non-denominational church, but that doesn't mean that we're not, we don't have defined beliefs or anything like that.
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I know that can sometimes be a real problem.
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We don't hold to a confession or a creed specifically, but there are certain doctrines and stuff that we would hold definitionally.
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Of course, the reliability of scripture, the deity of Christ, the resurrection, return and judgment, all of these kinds of things.
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My role at the church is, so I'm pursuing eldership and that's a different process for each person.
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But currently I lead a small group discussion, our connect group rather, is what we call them.
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And that has some young adults that come and we go deep into the Bible.
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We're going through Hebrews right now at a glacially slow pace, which is the only way to handle Hebrews, I think.
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And then on Wednesday nights, in fact, tonight I'll be preaching out of Acts chapter 10 to middle schoolers.
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So I get the gamut.
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I get new believers and I get middle schoolers who were churched and not churched and this kid's his first week in a church.
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So it's this huge gamut of what to expect.
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So it's fun.
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I enjoy doing it.
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And I love doing stuff like this too.
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Well, good.
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And I'm, that's great.
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And I'm glad to have you on the program and, and it's good to see a young man who loves the Lord and wants to serve the Lord as an elder.
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And I pray for that to, to move forward smoothly and in God's timing.
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Yes, sir.
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So today what we're going to talk about, this is a conversation you and I had over the last few weeks wanting to do a program together.
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We're going to talk about the subject of modernism and post-modernism.
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And this is so interesting.
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I was just thinking about this from the perspective of the listener.
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Some people have heard this many times and understand this language.
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And some people do not know when we say modern, they think of like, well, technology, that's what they think.
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You know, they think of something like that in the terms of modern versus primitive.
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Modern is, is to be distinguished from something that is old versus new.
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I heard one guy who made a joke about Rocco's modern life was actually a post-modern one.
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And I was like, I don't know how many, I don't know how many people would get that joke because most people are unfamiliar with modernism and post-modernism.
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But how these things influence thinking on a, on a, on even the popular level, not just in the academy and not just in university, but in the, in the homes of people, as parents are dealing with children, as children are dealing with teachers in school or even in church.
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These are concepts and ideas that are functionally formative to how people come to a conclusion about what is and what is not true.
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And so today's program is really just about defining what modernism is, what post-modernism is.
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And when we hear these terms, what do they mean and, and how do these things, how have these things influenced the way people think and they behave.
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So that's, so right away, I'm going to ask you as the guest and the, the resident expert on this subject today, well, between the two of us, you are certainly more knowledgeable I think on this.
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So, so I'm going to, I'm going to make you the expert between the two of us.
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And I would like for you to define modernism and post-modernism as, as you understand them.
05:40
Sure thing.
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So when talking about these two things, the first thing that is worth pointing out is that we live in a culture that is absolutely drowning in post-modernism.
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So out of the two of those things, post-modernism sort of rules the roost nowadays.
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And we're, we're, as Christians, as people who just go out and work every day and interact with everyone, you don't, it's kind of like asking a, it's trying to explain water to a fish.
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I mean, it's just everywhere and, and it's, it's, it pervades everything.
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And so when something's really rare and kind of obscure, it can be hard to define.
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But in another sense, when something is everywhere, it's hard to define because you've never known anything different.
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So what do these words mean? So modernism in, in an epistemological, an epistemology just means the nature of knowledge.
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How do we know what we know? Modernism fits into a lot of other different areas.
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And so there's modernist and post-modernist art, there's modernist and post-modernist philosophy and all these kinds of things.
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But we're talking specifically about the realm of knowledge.
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And so if, in fact, if you go to the Wikipedia articles for modernism and post-modernism, they are profoundly unhelpful at understanding this because they try and cover everything.
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And it just, you read the introductory paragraph three times and you still have no idea what they're talking about.
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So the idea of modernism, it's an outgrowth of the Enlightenment that said in the 16th, 17th century, really, that that the world is, is generally knowable and predictable and that there are definable things we can say about it.
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We can consistently tell you the temperature that water boils and we can observe the planets overhead and we can make conclusions about how they work.
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We can come up with laws of physics and gravity and all of these things.
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So modernism is the idea that we can come to objective truth through observation, experimentation, that truth is applicable in this context and in that context.
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A gallon of water over here is a gallon of water over there.
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It doesn't matter what your opinion of it is.
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So that's modernism.
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Now, it has its benefits.
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Most people would think, yeah, that's just, that's how I would want to live is in a modernist society.
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But it has its challenges in that people who are very devoted to a modernist way of thinking can develop an extreme form of arrogance in the idea that they can know everything and all we have to do is just run enough experiments and eventually we'll figure it out.
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So that's modernism.
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Postmodernism, sort of depending on where you're looking at it, but let's say really in the sense that we know of it as really blew up onto the American culture in the sixties.
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It's not that it didn't exist before then.
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It's not that philosophers back into the 1800s hadn't been talking in these concepts.
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But as far as the the Joe in the town square, when did he first start encountering it was the sixties.
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And the hallmark of postmodernism is a rejection of certainty.
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In fact, the easiest way that you can identify a postmodernist argument or you can take any argument and make it postmodernist is to take a statement and then tack on from your perspective.
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So, for instance, this bottle right here holds 24 ounces from your perspective.
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The postmodernist mindset says that objective truth does not exist, that multi-step logical thinking, if this, then this, if this, then this, if this, then this is not a valid way of thinking of things.
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And that subjective experiences are the proper way to understand things.
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And I don't think I have to go too far to tell you the dangers of that perspective.
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Sure.
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Postmodernism is a rejection of categories.
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It's a rejection of absolutes.
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If I say the word mean, M-E-A-N, then Keith is thinking in multiple categories that can mean mean as a synonym for average.
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It can mean someone who is unpleasant.
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It can mean mean.
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It can mean the definition of a word.
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And so you immediately sort those into categories.
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You say, well, this word could be this, this, this or this.
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It can be used in those ways.
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That's modernist thinking.
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Postmodernist thinking says, get rid of all of that.
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It's just whatever you think it is.
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So that's sort of the layout of the two.
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All right, I'm going to ask a question and I may be coming at this from a wrong way, but I want to just sort of defining in my mind.
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So when we talk about modernism, how would that be compared to empiricism or would that be the same? They're heavily overlapping Venn diagrams is what I would say.
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So the modernist has, and we'll get into this when we talk about the church, especially the extreme modernist would say, especially when it comes to the text of scripture, the extreme modernist would say, we can absolutely know the precise meaning of every passage in the Bible and there is no debate.
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And that is a dangerous place to be, I think.
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Now, there are some passages that just are what they are, but there are some passages where good, sincere brothers can disagree.
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The nature of soteriology and how that sort of works out being an example, children, baptism, all of these things that the church differs on.
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Now, wait a minute.
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As a reformed Baptist, I want to take an issue with both of those because I think there's only one answer to both of those and it's okay.
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No, John MacArthur.
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Like there are five ways to answer this and four of them are wrong.
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Yeah, that's right.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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Notice the right one's always the last one.
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That's right.
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Yeah.
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Anybody ever says there's three views, his view is going to be the last one and that's anybody, not just John MacArthur, but me too.
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If I give you three views, know that mine's probably the last one.
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Right.
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So, and if you were to apply empiricism to the Bible, empiricism would say there are certain exegetical principles that we use.
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We use a historical or historic grammatical hermeneutic.
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We try and figure out what did the original author say? There is a relatively rigid process we can run through and come to a decent understanding of what a passage means.
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But even the most ardent exegete would not say this is an absolute process that will always get you the precise right answer.
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And if he does, then that's an extreme version of modernism.
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And we actually want to avoid that.
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Okay.
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All right.
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So, um, if we look at our world today and I'm kind of going back to postmodernism now, cause you said this is, this is the one that rules the roost.
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I just, when I thought when you mentioned modernism, I was thinking empiricism and how they go together.
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I see now the, like you said, overlapping Venn diagrams, but going back to postmodernism, um, just from my own experience and looking at the world, especially the world of social media, which I understand is like a world within a world and it is a dangerous place to get lost.
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But if you look in that world, you see all kinds of places where it, it does seem as if the world has abandoned all norms, all sense of there just is a, right, I saw an article the other day that says it is impossible.
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And I think it was CNN, but I could be wrong, but basically said it is impossible to determine a child's gender.
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Yes.
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At birth that was CNN.
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And, and honestly, a hundred years ago, that statement would have been so nonsensical as to even have been uttered.
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Somebody would think they were either making a joke or that they had been out, but you know, out of their mind.
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It's a satire.
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I mean, it really does read like a satire.
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Yeah.
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Is, is that an example of, of postmodernism? I mean, the fact that we've gotten to the point where we can't even define gender.
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Yeah.
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So postmodernism, like I said, is an attack on, is a rejection of categories.
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It's a rejection of absolutes.
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It's a rejection of those things.
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And that article that you're referring to was, I mean, spectacularly, it was a particular state.
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I don't know if it was Arkansas.
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I think it was.
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So just to not take too much time on this, but the Arkansas legislature passed a bill that banned experimental surgeries and medications to be used on children as, as young as five, six, seven years old who were gender confused.
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And so the Arkansas legislature passed a law that says you may not in the state of Arkansas, you may not use these drugs on these children.
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And the attack they took from it was because they're not FDA approved.
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This would be experimental.
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Now there's a worldview behind that, that you and I know is going on, but that was the stated thing.
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And so CNN is anyway, that Arkansas is spineless governor vetoed it.
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Um, but then the Arkansas legislature overrode their veto.
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So praise God for that.
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Yeah.
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Amen.
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Um, yeah, I actually, I think, I think I saw your post where you said this is good and it may, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Yeah.
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So they overrode his veto and CNN was extremely upset by this because they're CNN and, um, at the end of, so, so they go through all the ways this is going to hurt transgender youth and all of these nonsensical things like that.
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Um, and then they get to the end and they say, uh, something like, uh, there is no scientifically, uh, understood way of determining gender.
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And that statement is just so shockingly ignorant of, of basic science, because I actually saw, uh, a geneticist from Johns Hopkins responded to that.
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Like he took a picture of it and tweeted it and he said, actually, yes, there is observation of genitalia.
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It is incorrect.
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It is incorrect.
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0.0012% of the time, 99.99.
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Let me do my math here.
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99.9988% of the time.
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It's correct.
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Wow.
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And, and, and so, uh, yeah, for, so from the postmodernist perspective though, that doesn't matter because we don't have absolutes and we don't have certainty.
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That's right.
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You know what's in, and this is, I'm going to share something that, uh, that a little personal, but when I was, you talk about a six-year-old with gender, uh, confusion, you know what I was confused about when I was six years old, whether or not superheroes were real and I thought when I was between the ages of six and eight, I thought that what made a superhero super was his outfit.
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Now I had my grandmother teach me how to sew so that I could sew my own superhero.
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This is before.
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Yeah.
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And I, I'm only telling this story to make a larger point.
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I wore a Superman suit under my clothes to school.
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Now that's crazy.
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And the fact that I'm sharing that publicly may come back, but I, I sewed my own Superman suit.
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I weren't under my clothes because I really thought that what made Clark Kent Superman was the outfit.
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Right.
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And, and, and it wasn't just fantasy for me, it was reality.
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And so, uh, the fact that somebody might have at that time taken me and said, well, you believe superheroes are, are true.
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Therefore you are, you know, superhero, uh, we're going to, we're going to give you this medicine or something, right? That's what we're doing to children.
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And I know that's not the topic of today's conversation, but that's what we have done.
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We have so far gone away from any sense of right and wrong that if a child says, I think I might be a girl, if he's obviously a boy, then, okay, well, we're going to take and give you medicine to change you, right? Yeah.
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You know, I saw this posted by a friend of mine who has a young daughter.
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Um, I think she's five or six or something like that.
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And, um, and she's talking to her dad and she's, she's just, they're just having this really tender, intimate moment between father and daughter.
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And she just says, daddy, I really want to marry you, you know, because she doesn't know what that word means.
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All it's ever meant to her is it's an extreme expression of love.
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You know, exactly.
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That this is just a sweet moment where a young child doesn't know what that means or is a little confused about that.
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And so of course her father being good kind of pats her on the head and says, you know, I love you very much too, but only mommy's married to me.
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And, and as parents, that used to be the default was to work through that confusion and to educate children and to say, you know, at five, you're not supposed to have all this figured out.
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You don't even know what some of these words mean.
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Um, and, and so anyway, uh, a parent who is defining categories for their child to think and is engaging in modernist, um, uh, communication and education, and that's a good thing.
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We need that.
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Um, you know, at the same time, uh, the parent, and I keep giving these examples, cause these can get murky.
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The parent who tries to give their kid a Myers-Briggs test at five years old, because we have an objective standard by which we will just go through and determine which that's an excess of modernism.
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So that's, that's just one little, I guess, example we could look at there.
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Yeah.
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So it's almost, uh, the, the, uh, you have the empiricism on one side and the right and the, uh, relativism on the other side to, to use maybe a different term, because when we talk about post-modernism relativism would be a part of that, right? The idea that everything is subjective, subjective to the individual.
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So if you believe that 24 ounces is not 24 ounces, then that's your truth.
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Post-modernism in its extreme eventually attacks the nature of knowledge itself.
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And we're getting into some very deep meta categories here, but it, it, it bears saying the extreme post-modernist says we cannot know anything.
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Um, and that destroys the ability of humans to interact one with another.
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Uh, because it's a breakdown of language itself.
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If I asked Keith, how are you doing today? And you say I'm doing well.
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And that could mean literally anything.
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Then I don't have a basis for communication, interaction, cooperation, any of those things with you.
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Post-modernism in its extreme destroys societies.
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It really does.
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Yeah.
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If a word means everything, it means nothing.
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Correct.
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Yeah.
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And that's where we're at.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And as, as Christians and even as theists, um, to, to go a layer more watered down, you and I both believe that God has revealed himself.
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And in certain ways, uh, humans are able to comprehend the things that he has revealed about himself.
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And then there's parts of him that are unknowable and, and, and we're called upon to do the best we can to, to raise our minds to his level, knowing we'll never get there.
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Um, but, but God has spoken and with clarity, and that is the basis of our worldview.
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Um, and if you don't have that, then you have to seek that from somewhere else.
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And increasingly what society is saying is we don't have that.
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We're not going to seek it from somewhere else.
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So let's just let the chips fall where they may.
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And that's where we are today.
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Yeah.
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And the danger becomes, uh, you know, as I told you before we started the program, uh, been doing a lot of study and listening to Dr.
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John frame, and he's been going through the different apologists down through the ages, you know, the danger becomes you get to a point where people would say, um, you know, I, I, I don't really know anything.
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I don't know.
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Right.
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I can't know.
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Uh, but, but then you say, well, how do we know something? You know, as, as, you know, uh, how do you know that you, that you existed more than five minutes ago? That was one Dr.
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Frame keeps bringing up.
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How do you know that all of your memories aren't unreal? You know, you don't know in the sense of how do you prove that, but you, but you trust that it is right.
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I trust that I I've lived for 41 years and, you know, I, I, it, and I believe tomorrow water's going to boil at 212 degrees because today water boils at 212 degrees and that's induction, you know, but I have a reason for induction.
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I have a reason for, for believing those things, because I believe the universe is orderly because, because God ordered it.
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I do think CS Lewis was really onto something when he said, and I know not everybody's a fan of CS Lewis.
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We, we can talk.
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Okay.
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Okay.
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Good.
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All right.
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My wife just finished mere Christianity and she and I are going to do a review of that book on a future program.
23:00
Um, but one of, one of the things that he says, and I, and I've used this, I've used this a lot and that is, um, if I did not believe that my mind was created for thinking, then I would have no reason to trust my own thought.
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Yep.
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And, and, and just that, just that little statement has really resonated with me.
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If my mind wasn't created to do what it's doing, right.
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Why should I trust that it's doing it? Right.
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Yeah.
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Good, good point.
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And, and, and, and so there is a certain worldview, epistemology, and understanding of how I know things.
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Well, I know things because I was created to know things.
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Yeah.
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I know things because God has revealed them to me.
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That's where Dr.
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Frame, Dr.
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John frame and his apologetics, he believes everything is ultimately revelation that everything that we know ultimately comes because God has revealed it, whether he's revealed it in nature or whether he has revealed it in scripture, everything that we know ultimately comes by God's revelation.
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Now that's a longer conversation maybe for another time, but that, but that's, that's his perspective, you know, is that, is that, is that we, we really wouldn't know that we know anything if it weren't that, that God has revealed that to us and so that's a, so the pendulum certainly swings.
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I just, and we can go into some of the, some of the other stuff we were talking about earlier in our, in our prep work, but two, just two things I wanted to point out, one of them is the switch from formal academia.
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So it used to be that the academy, academia was the stalwart and protector of modernism and of objective reality and objective thought in a sense.
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And I'm, I'm caricaturing a little bit, but when you have the great Ivy league universities, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, all them they are teaching objective thought over against what all of the superstitious natives are have out there, you know, they've got their rituals and their whatever, and it doesn't map perfectly, but they were the ones saying there is an objective truth, there is a scientific method, there is laws of physics and all that, and it was the religious people who were the, well, we'll just go, I don't know, uh, sacrifice some wheat on a fire and that'll fix things, even though we don't have a standard for why that works.
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But now you have the reverse where Christians are the ones on the front lines of the culture war saying objective reality exists, male and female exists.
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Whereas it's actually the academy that's fighting back against that.
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And on campus, you can go and say, I identify as that's another hallmark of post-modernism is I identify as a whatever, and the academy will welcome you and celebrate you and all of those things, whereas it's Christians who in the culture who are saying, no, that's not how this works.
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The other thing is, as we look at political debates, you'll often see, um, and I, this is one thing that modern American, the right on, uh, conservatism in modern America has really, uh, messed up and I don't, I know this isn't an explicitly political podcast and I don't mean to discuss any specific position, but, but the idea is that, um, there's often this statement of, uh, some, someone will do something, uh, out there in the political realm and the political right.
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We'll say, wow.
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Imagine if this were the case in an attempt to prove hypocrisy, you know? Uh, so in California, the whole, the whole state is locked down, but the governor goes and eats at a nice restaurant or something like that.
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Um, and, and the, the political right says appeals to consistent standards and says, you're being a hypocrite.
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You're being this, you're being postmodern thinkers.
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Don't care.
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They don't care.
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They just, they don't like you can, you cannot appeal to hypocrisy with someone who is steeped in postmodern thought.
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It just doesn't work.
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They'd say, yeah, it is okay for him to do it.
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And it's not okay for you to do it.
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Well, why? What's the difference? I don't have to tell you.
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It just is.
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It's a, it, when, when we appeal to hypocrisy, we are appealing to the image of God and people, because God has set standards and God hates hypocrites.
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And God has taught people this.
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And even in sort of a Romans one general revelation fashion, people instinctively know this.
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But once you are seared to the point where postmodernism has completely overwhelmed all of your thinking faculties and your entire worldview is shaped by it, then the Trump administration doing this thing is bad and the Biden administration doing this thing 10 times more is not bad.
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And okay.
27:44
Well, why is that? That seems contradictory.
27:46
Postmodernism doesn't care.
27:48
It just doesn't care.
27:49
So for instance, when, uh, Trump had children in cages, that's the example I was alluding to.
27:57
Yeah.
27:57
Orange man bad, but now that there's more children in, because of all the people coming across the border and they're being allowed and being put into these places, but, um, you know, you don't see AOC running down her with her white outfit on crying, standing at looking like Sarah Connor holding onto the fence when the, right.
28:19
I don't know if you get that reference.
28:20
That's a terminator reference.
28:22
Okay.
28:23
Well, the irritating thing about it, Keith, is that people on, I'll say our side of, of that issue would then point and say, look, um, it was a thing before that she pointed out and now she doesn't care.
28:36
She's being a hypocrite.
28:37
She doesn't care that they don't.
28:40
They just don't care.
28:42
And I don't like it's, it's a worldview problem.
28:46
It was wrong before, but it's not wrong now.
28:50
And nothing really has changed you or I would say, okay, what's the standard? What's different? Are they being, how, how can this be consistent? The postmodern view simply doesn't care.
28:58
And to my friend, I'm not saying we shouldn't point out hypocrisy.
29:02
We should call on centers to repent.
29:04
We should do all of those things.
29:06
Um, but if you're expecting a logical argument to win the day, increasingly, this culture is not going to accept that.
29:15
And it's better to not be frustrated by that.
29:17
If you can help it.
29:19
Well, how do you, how do you think that this is really having an effect in the church? We we've talked about political and outside the church, even though I understand that that involves Christians and non-Christians, but within the church, especially teaching on the, the, you teach a wide array, you know, from young people to, you know, new Christians, uh, where do you see this coming in the most in your experience in the church? So, uh, the big, the big fault line, I think, in evangelical Christianity has been the issue of human sexuality.
29:55
And specifically it started with homosexuality and then it has sort of moved into transgenderism, even though I think anyone would agree that's an entirely different category.
30:05
If you're willing to still think in categories, then that's an entirely a different category.
30:11
Um, so this, this really moved into the church.
30:17
Um, it has had its waves, um, certain Pentecostal leaning factions and denominations have sort of flirted with this before it's kind of this idea.
30:28
And it's, it's funny, it's kind of this idea that, well, the Holy Spirit told me this.
30:34
Um, now that is, here's the thing.
30:37
They're still falling back on sort of a modernist argument that the Holy Spirit exists, that he can reveal things that are objectively true.
30:43
He just gave it to me and not you.
30:46
Um, so that's not a full forfeiture to postmodernism.
30:50
That's just kind of taking the first couple of steps.
30:53
Um, and then eventually you, you do something like, uh, uh, you know, you're full deconstructionists, uh, where you just say, well, you know, there is no Holy Spirit.
31:02
I just think so.
31:03
And that's enough, you know, and that's kind of the trajectory you go down.
31:07
Um, it has postmodernism has corrupted, uh, the church's ability to even have fellowship.
31:14
Um, and the reason I say that is because this sort of critical race theory that you see moving into the churches, um, sometimes called standpoint epistemology and epistemology means how do we know what we know the nature of knowledge and standpoint is exactly what it sounds like.
31:30
So standpoint epistemology would say that what we know depends on where we stand, that if you stand over there and I stand over here, that our knowledges can be different about the same subject that we're looking at.
31:43
And that's okay.
31:44
It's the whole picture of the six and the nine.
31:46
Have you seen that? Yes.
31:47
I have guys stand.
31:48
And the, and the answer to that is no, it's either a six or a nine.
31:51
And whoever wrote it, wrote a six or a nine.
31:54
It doesn't matter where you're standing.
31:56
Yes.
31:56
Yeah.
31:57
If you're the one that, if you're working for Boeing and the wing is supposed to have a certain angle to it, you want to know, is that a six or a nine? You need an objective answer to that question before you build the plane.
32:07
That's right.
32:08
And so, so in the church specifically postmodernism and I see it, especially in middle schoolers, uh, as they come up because your older people and then by older, I don't mean elderly though.
32:20
Certainly they would as well, but people beyond about the age of 50 or so 40, 50, somewhere around there don't have too much of a problem with this.
32:29
Um, there's people younger than that.
32:31
And especially middle schoolers, it's definitely accelerating.
32:33
Um, and I subconsciously I am downwards, but I mean that it is accelerating downwards.
32:39
You have students who come in and, um, they have been taught that, uh, they go to an English class, for example, and they read a poem and, um, it used to be, what does this stanza mean was the question.
32:59
Um, and there would be an attempt to look at what did the author intend? You would do some things like that.
33:04
And then there was a place, if I can sort of borrow from some exegesis, there was a place for application.
33:13
Like, how does this poem make you feel? And that's always been a valid concern, but that was never binding upon anybody else.
33:20
Um, uh, you know, but now students come in and you tell them something like God exists and has standards for human behavior.
33:30
One of the most basic, not even a Christian specific message, just a bare theistic message.
33:37
And they'll usually agree with that.
33:39
And then it's like, okay.
33:40
And so God has revealed certain parts of his character and how we expect humans to act.
33:46
And, um, then they, they object to that and they say, and again, especially on the issue of homosexuality, they say, why can't they just do what they want to do? It's not hurting anybody.
33:54
And so there's an immediate appeal to, well, it's just for them.
33:58
And it can just be their truth.
34:00
And as long as they're not forcing it on anyone else, then that's fine.
34:03
And, and, you know, where do you start with that? When you, you have no standard.
34:07
It's tough.
34:08
Yeah.
34:09
And that's funny what you just mentioned it's their truth or it's my truth.
34:14
I almost posted something the other day that just, you know, the idea of my truth and your truth is, is so it's so scary to think that that's how people think I I'm living my truth, but what does that mean? Uh, and, and I want to, I don't want to stop you cause I know you were on a roll, but I want to ask you something.
34:38
Cause I know you're, you're, you're quite a bit younger than me.
34:40
You talked about older people being forties and fifties.
34:43
That's me.
34:44
Yeah.
34:45
In comparison with middle schoolers.
34:47
So, you know, my parents are actually quite a bit North of you.
34:50
So that's okay.
34:51
Okay.
34:51
Um, do you remember the emergent church? I was hoping we would get there.
34:58
Brian McLaren.
34:59
Yep.
35:00
Yep.
35:00
I was hoping we would get there because his whole, you know, stick, if I remember it correctly and I, and I could be mixing Brian up with somebody else, but if I remember correctly, Brian McLaren's argument was, um, we can't know what the scripture really says and that's okay.
35:16
Correct.
35:17
That is right.
35:19
So, um, I was actually watching a documentary called American gospel two with my, um, uh, have you seen that? I have.
35:27
Okay.
35:28
So we're watching that last night with my, with my connect group.
35:31
It's three hours long, so we couldn't get through all of it in one night, but, uh, every minute of it is great.
35:36
Yeah.
35:36
Yeah.
35:37
They need to make a mini series instead of one long race.
35:41
Yeah.
35:41
So there's a specific passage, um, where, uh, Exodus 34 that, um, he makes reference to, uh, Paul Washer does as well to describe God's attributes.
35:54
And I'll just read it right quick.
35:56
Um, then the Lord came down on the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord.
36:01
And he passed in front of Moses proclaiming the Lord, the Lord, compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.
36:13
That's great.
36:14
We love that yet.
36:16
He does not leave the guilty unpunished.
36:20
And so then the whole point of the documentary is everyone sits back and goes, how does that work? And of course, not to short circuit it, but we have an answer in the cross, you know, um, but, but to your point, um, uh, McLaren or is that Brian McLaren? He was the one of the big guys in emergent church.
36:38
Yeah.
36:38
He's, he's interviewed and he says, they asked him, what do you think about this? And here's what he says.
36:43
I'm going to paraphrase him, but it's going to be pretty darn close.
36:45
Cause I just saw it last night.
36:46
He goes, I don't think this is a verse for me to figure out.
36:50
I don't think this is a verse for me to understand.
36:54
I think this is a verse for me to just sort of digest and existentially experience the flip.
37:03
Does that mean I don't like what I don't think I need to try to understand this.
37:15
I'm just going to experience it.
37:17
I mean, that is peak post-modernism.
37:21
And again, can you, if you wonder why all the liberal denominations in Christianity evaporate, it's because that's what comes from the pulpit.
37:31
And you're not feeding your sheep.
37:33
If there are any sheep in that congregation, they're all going to die out or find somewhere else to go.
37:38
Um, I mean, you speak every Sunday from the pulpit.
37:42
Can you imagine exegeting Genesis 11 and saying, now this isn't a story for us to understand.
37:48
I just want you all to existentially experience it.
37:53
Yeah.
37:54
Not helpful.
37:55
Yeah.
37:56
So, so some, so dear, dear listener, some touchstones that say you may be drifting into post-modernist thought.
38:02
If you ever say, what does this passage mean to me? Let me challenge you to change your wording.
38:09
First, ask the question, what does this passage mean? And then another question would be, what does God want me to do with this passage in my life? That's the application phase.
38:20
Now that's a different question and that's a very good question to ask.
38:25
Now, I mean, if, if you, if you read some of Paul's epistles and Paul is directly calling out a specific sin, um, what that passage means is a specific meaning.
38:36
Now, if you do not struggle with that sin, then what that passage will do in your life is different from the one who does, but neither of you would disagree about what the meaning is, is what we should be.
38:47
Amen.
38:47
Amen.
38:49
And did you have some other, you said there was a couple of other things, uh, about the things that you wanted to give to the listener or was it, did I misunderstand? Yeah, it was.
38:57
So that's one.
38:58
What does this mean to me? Um, the, the other one is beware worship, uh, that trends towards post-modernism.
39:06
Um, and here's what I mean by that.
39:07
So there is a, uh, we, we tend to be very, I don't want to say very strict.
39:12
We tend to be very discerning about what songs we sing at our church.
39:15
Um, we are not regular principle of worship.
39:17
We're not hymnal only.
39:19
We're not Psalm only.
39:20
We will incorporate all kinds of modern worship songs, but our, our elders, or at least an elder will carefully examine the words of the song to figure out what they mean and to say, is this comport with biblical orthodoxy? Um, and then there's stylistic questions.
39:36
Can this be sung congregationally or is it a performative thing? And you went, uh, be very careful of turning worship into a postmodern experience because the proper Christian should see worship as a time to exalt and elevate who God is and what God has done.
39:52
And if worship is turned into, well, it didn't really do it for me today.
39:57
That is a, that is a dangerous and me centered place to be.
40:01
And you really don't want to spend much time there.
40:04
Amen.
40:05
I, I, uh, I have, I have said this and, and perhaps, perhaps I shouldn't be so blunt.
40:12
Sometimes I can be, uh, uh, uh, uh, that's okay.
40:15
It's just you and me.
40:16
No one will ever hear this.
40:17
Well, yeah, yeah.
40:18
Except for everybody listening.
40:20
I know, I know, but I have said, people have said, well, I didn't get that a lot out of worship today.
40:25
Yeah.
40:25
And I said, well, it's a good thing.
40:26
We weren't worshiping you.
40:28
Basically that's Francis.
40:28
Chan has said that too.
40:30
Oh, okay.
40:30
Yeah.
40:31
Yeah.
40:31
And that's the thing, you know, you know, we, it wasn't for you.
40:34
It was for God.
40:35
And, um, you know, you come to contribute, not to necessarily take, take what you're getting.
40:42
You're you're, you're, we're all contributing to worship together.
40:44
One thing that we, we try to avoid in our church, and I'm not saying this is wrong.
40:48
Um, but we do try to avoid too many special songs and solos that don't involve the congregation, because we do believe the kind that singing is a corporate act.
40:59
You know, I, I remember, I remember growing up just about every church I went to, uh, you know, I mean, I've been in this church, but visiting other churches, it was like, you had three, three congregational songs and then at least one or two, what they call special specials, which were solos.
41:16
And, uh, yeah.
41:18
And again, I, I think there's a place for that at times.
41:21
Um, I, I, I'm not certainly not saying it's sinful.
41:24
I just think it leads to that performance mindset.
41:27
And again, now we could do a whole new podcast on, on worship.
41:32
I'd love to, and, and, you know, are the songs primarily about God or they primarily about me? And that's a good question to ask.
41:40
Um, and because a, a, a postmodern type of worship does make it all about you.
41:49
And it's about how you experience this and how you feel and all that, rather than reflecting on the character of God.
41:55
And listen, worship has profoundly brought me to tears.
41:59
It has convicted me.
42:00
It has caused me to, to feel, and it should, and that's a good and proper thing.
42:06
The question is, was the experience primarily about elevating God or not? And the, the, the postmodernist type of mindset would say, well, let's say you had a song that was blatantly heretical, just, just proclaimed untruths about God.
42:23
The postmodernist would say, well, but it made people feel good.
42:26
So we'll sing it anyway.
42:28
That's right.
42:28
And that again, dear listener, that is a dangerous place to be.
42:32
Yes, I agree.
42:34
I agree a lot.
42:35
All right, brother.
42:36
Well, I think we're going to draw to a close.
42:38
Is there anything that you think, uh, I know you just gave your two points and I think they were very good.
42:42
Let me, let me try to see if I can sum up what you've said.
42:46
Uh, you know, be careful when we go to the Bible post with a postmodern mindset of what does this mean to me? And be careful when we treat worship that way, you know, this is all about me.
42:56
And again, postmodernism, if, if, you know, based on what we've talked about today, really is a very me centered epistemology.
43:03
It's all about me.
43:05
Um, well, if you, do you have anything else you want to add before I draw us to a close? Sure.
43:10
Um, I would just say that as we work through these things, um, and you, you deal with this, this kind of stuff out in culture, one of the most important things to remember is that, um, there are parts of God that we don't understand.
43:24
So don't be drawn into the trap of, of, of ultra modernism.
43:28
Um, God says in Isaiah 55, my ways are not your ways and my ways are higher than yours.
43:34
Uh, and, and as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways.
43:39
There are parts of God that we don't understand and we can't, and that's a good thing.
43:43
We don't want a God we can fully comprehend.
43:46
Yes.
43:46
What we need to do is rest, celebrate, give thanks and, and find our refuge in the parts of God that he has revealed about himself and to find peace there.
43:57
And that's ultimately the story of modernism is, and post-modernism is let's know the things that God has told us.
44:06
And let's leave the things that God has not told us, uh, as, as, uh, something that we may learn in a later life.
44:12
And that's an okay place to be.
44:14
Amen.
44:15
Uh, one of the ways that I've described sort of what you just said is I've talked about the difference between understanding something and comprehending something.
44:22
Um, I understand what it means to be eternal, but I cannot comprehend eternality.
44:28
I understand the doctrine of the Trinity, but I don't comprehend how God can be both one in essence and three in person.
44:36
And those, you know, those, I understand what we're saying and, and I think we should seek to enhance, as you said earlier, enhance our understanding through the study of the word, through proper exegesis, through the meeting with the saints and fellowshipping and learning together and grow in our understanding, grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
44:55
Um, but, uh, but, but as you said in Isaiah 55, understand that God's ways will always be above our ways and our comprehension will always be limited to our being creatures and him being the creator.
45:10
That's true.
45:11
Well, Matthew, thank you again so much for giving another bit of time to our show, and I know we're going to have you back again, so I'll just say until next time, thank you for being with us.
45:21
Absolutely.
45:22
And, and, uh, I'm happy to be your not yet Calvinist friend, and I'm just going to keep it, keep it on the, keep you on the line and just keep the lure being pulled out a little bit longer.
45:30
So amen, amen.
45:32
Well, I'm chipping away.
45:34
I'm chipping away.
45:36
You know, some people who hear this are going to be happy about that.
45:40
Yes.
45:40
Yes.
45:41
Well, again, thank you listener for being with us today.
45:44
I hope this has enlightened you and given you some better understanding about what a post-modernism and modernism are all about.
45:50
And, uh, if you have any questions that you'd like to address, like for us to address in a future program, please send us an email at calvinistpodcastatgmail.com.
46:01
Thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.
46:03
My name is Keith Foskey and I have been your Calvinist.
46:07
May God bless you.
46:09
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46:13
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46:16
And if you have a question you would like us to discuss on our future program, please email us at calvinistpodcastatgmail.com.
46:25
As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
46:31
All who come to him in repentance and faith will find him to be a perfect Savior.
46:36
He is the way, the truth, and the life.
46:39
And no one comes to the father except through him.
46:42
May God be with you.