Postmodernism finally hit The Christian Standard full-force in a rambling three-part essay by Rick Chromey of Saint Louis Christian College in the issues of April 6, 13, & 20, 2003. We were warned, cajoled, and sometimes even threatened a little. The author compared the church of today to the Titanic. Man the lifeboats! The ship is going down! The water is rising! Sink or swim! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE! (You get the idea.)

Unless -ah, there IS hope - we get ourselves "postmodernized." Yet there are at least two, yes even three, little mistakes brother Chromey has made in his untoward haste to sound the "abandon ship!"

Confusing Postmodernism with "Just Being Kids"

I’m not a kid anymore, but I can still remember - though a little vaguely now - what it was like to be young. Way back in the 1960s, long before we even knew postmodernism would be coming to "eat us alive" in the late twentieth century, many of us thought and did things that young people do.

Chromey likes to call postmodernism the "whatever" world. It’s the world of no rules, the world of whatever works for you. It’s the world that wants images and relationships. These are the people who love to play with technology. It is people who want try everything and experience everything.

None of this is new; none of it is distinctively postmodern. Way back when we were young "baby-boomers" in the plain, old "modern" world of the 1960s, many of us wanted the world to be like this and imagined ourselves living this way someday when we could do whatever we wanted. We wanted "no rules" and sometimes pretended like there were none. We had a song that said, "It’s your thing, do what you wanna do. I can’t tell ya, who to sock it to."

Then we started to grow up. Some of us didn’t want to grow up (I still try to resist it a little) but we had to do so. When some of us got a dose of Christianity, we too became "wildly religious."  What were the Jesus People if not "wildly religious"?  Even the drug culture of the 1960s had a religious side to it - and brother was it wild! With some people, at least, all that gave way to Christianity. As Someone once said. "Many are invited, but few are chosen." Some accepted that invitation.

To give Chromey his due, I’m glad he is watching the culture for us. It is easy to miss if you don’t pay careful attention. Some, however, of what he calls the "whatever world" is just kids being kids. They will discover some of the rules, because many of those rules are "just there" - parts of reality waiting to "slap you in the face" if you try to ignore them. Most of the kids will grow up, at least to some extent. Give them a little time.

But don’t mistake some of the foolishness of youth for a worldview shift.

Missing Key Elements of Postmodernism

One reason postmodernism is really not new is that, at its heart, it is a new expression of relativism. Modernism took a severe turn toward relativism in the twentieth century. In spite of all the talk by postmodernists about rejecting modernism, postmodernism is relativism taken to the extreme. Some have even called it "hyper-modernism" just for this reason.

One observer describes postmodernism as "A Declaration of Bankruptcy" and characterizes it as non-sense, contradiction, freedom from responsibility, dementia, and relative pluralism.¹ The point is that postmodernism is relativism "in spades."

Chromey seems to recognize this even though he never says it. The not-so-subtle hints are peppered throughout his three articles. Postmoderns follow creeds like "No Rules, Just Rights." Arguments and reason have no place in postmodern thought. Everything is relative - it’s just "your story."

Chromey reminds us that postmodernism is all about images; it is "image driven." He asks, "Can a single image replace each point in the preacher’s sermon? Possibly."

It is no accident that images and postmodernism go together "like a horse and carriage." Images are vague; they can be interpreted and re-interpreted without rules and without reason. Languages are rule-filled. While sentences and paragraphs can be misunderstood, there are rules for writing them and reading them that make understanding possible.

Postmodernism revels in its relativity to the point that, since we can never discover the meaning of life, we are each forced to invent our own. This being the case, how do we approach those Chromey says are postmoderns?

Don’t Overlook the Incompatibilities

While it is true, as Chromey says, that "The Scripture is filled with images" we must not overlook the fact that those images are conveyed to us in words, sentences, and paragraphs of language!

The church cannot approach postmodernism without looking at its heart, and that heart is conceptual and moral relativism. As one writer says

Christianity is completely incompatible with both conceptual relativism and moral relativism.

Much of what Chromey says is quirky and even a little cute. He says he "traveled to the back rows" when he preaches. He preaches "without shoes" to show his "humanness" and to "affirm this is ‘holy ground.’" (I hope he also regularly practices foot-washing!) He is obviously a "hip" guy. He can write in one-word sentences. Really.

Some of what he says flirts with disrespect for scriptural precedent. He claims, "Postmoderns no longer view Sunday morning as sacred. Every hour is holy" in a way that makes one think he approves of the idea. While every hour should be holy, the first day of the week always had and always should have great significance for the Christian faith. Those who don’t think so need to reexamine the scriptures.

But all this pales into insignificance compared to the fact the Chromey never acknowledges, and does not seem to understand, that postmodernism and the Christian faith cannot be mixed without destroying one or the other. Our deluded brother claims, "Postmodern Christians are those who have discovered Christianity to be the supreme truth, carved not from reason as much as personal experience."

The problem is that once you realize that there even could be "the supreme truth" you have crossed the city limits of Postmodernville. You can’t have your postmodern cake and eat "the supreme truth" too! The two cannot co-exist. Don’t take my word for it, go ask the real postmodernists, not just the Christian hipsters who think they can and have postmodernized the faith. Of the real postmodernists, Roger Lundin says

With Postmodernists All Around, What's A Christian to Do?

Chromey’s strategy for reaching the postmodern world is to make the church postmodern. As mentioned earlier, this is not an option, given the nature of postmodernism and the nature of the Christian faith.

Perhaps Chromey just wants the church to pretend to be postmodern by adopting some of the non-essential trappings of postmodernism. However, using more images, focusing on personal relationships, and the like, does not a postmodern church make. To be significantly and essentially postmodern, the church would need to give up the truth, the scriptures, and the whole idea that the One God sent His One and Only Son to be the only way to God. Real postmodernists cannot buy into any of that. Once they do, they are no longer postmodern.

Instead, the church needs to invite postmodernists to leave postmodernism behind and move on and into the Christian faith. When Christians of the fourth century encountered the Goths, they invented a way to write their language and then translated the scriptures into that language.⁴ The church of the twenty-first century will need to do something similar. We will have to give back to postmoderns certain categories they have rejected, things like truth, in words, that transcends individuals, societies, times and places.

As hip, and even as cute, as it might seem to some, it is time to stop pandering to postmodernism. Understand it we must. Approach it we will, not to appease but to challenge. Leaving postmodernists in the essence of postmodernism will necessarily leave them outside the church. Trying to take the church into the essence of postmodernism will necessarily empty the church of the Christian faith, were that possible. As Lundin, who was quoted earlier, remarks

At the conclusion of his articles, Chromey tells us, "It’s time to reinvent." Of course the church must understand and address all the cultures it encounters. But we can’t reinvent the church because we did not invent the church; Someone else did. We can only translate the ancient truth, entrusted to that church, into new languages and categories. There is always a danger in such translation, however, for that ancient truth cannot be translated into the languages of those who assume that truth cannot exist.

1.    Kathryn R. Ludwigson, "Postmodernism: A Declaration of Bankruptcy" in The Challenge of Postmodernism, David S. Dockery, editor (Baker Books, 1997). Pp. 288-289.

2.    Gary Phillips, "Religious Pluralism in a Postmodern World" in The Challenge of Postmodernism, p. 254.

3.    Roger Lundin, "The Pragmatics of Postmodernity" in Christian Apologetics in the Postmodern World, edited by Timothy R. Phillips & Dennis L. Okholm (InterVarsity Press, 1995), pp. 27-28.

4.    Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, Volume 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation (Prince Press: 1984), p. 218.

5.    Lundin, op. cit., p. 38.