David Anguish
In the July 1997 U. S. News and World Report, John Leo reported that "ten to twenty percent of the students in many college classes would not say that the holocaust was morally wrong even though they would personally find it despicable." In a different sample, Jim Leffel reported a series of twenty interviews on a university campus in which all but one of those interviewed responded negatively to the question whether there is such a thing as absolute truth, "truth that is true across all times for all people" (in Dennis McCallum, ed., The Death of Truth, 31).
While perhaps not as alert to the changes in culture as we could have been, it is probably correct to observe that few in the church are totally surprised by reports that the world doesn't believe in absolutes. But another poll casts a different light on the situation. According to George Barna, in 1994, 62% of Evangelicals said they did not believe in absolute truth, up from 52% just three years earlier (reported in Ravi Zacharias, "Appendix" to Deliver Us From Evil). Think about that. Nearly two-thirds of those considered to be conservative Bible-believers do not believe that there is "truth that is true across all times for all people."
Such facts are vital for understanding the "strange things [which] are happening in churches of Christ." From about 1970 to the present, the worldview which has come to undergird our culture is postmodernism. The popularization of the work of some philosophers from earlier in this century, postmodernism "'abandons the quest for a unified grasp of objective reality. It asserts that the world has no center, only differing viewpoints and perspectives'" (Stanley J. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, in Tom Alexander, "Postmodernism: A Change in Interpreting the Bible," At His Coming: 1998 Freed-Hardeman University Lectureship, 1-6). What matters to the postmodernist is not any objective truth or set of truths, but an individual's perspectives. Applied to documents - including the Bible - postmodernism asserts that no text has any one, objective meaning, but can mean many things depending on the interpretations of the people reading it.
In day-to-day terms, postmodernism is worked out in several ways. If there are no absolutes, then there is no reason to esteem those institutions and objects associated with absolutes. So, postmodernism seeks to tear down sacred social objects. If knowledge is only relative, then anyone who is certain is really dogmatic and therefore not to be trusted. Certainly, there is no reason to accept any one interpretation of a Bible passage over any others. Indeed, postmodernists reject the very idea that there are "old paths" (cf. Jeremiah 6:16; 18:15) which should be esteemed as the standard for church doctrine and practice. Furthermore, if truth varies from person to person, there is no reason not to change from this view or practice to that one. Postmodernists value change, which they feel propels the system, and the insecurity which goes along with it. (For a more complete, but still brief, discussion of the definitions and traits of postmodernism summarized here, see the article by Ralph Gilmore in At His Coming: 1998 Freed-Hardeman University Lectureship, 139ff..; note also Gilmore's article, "A Place in God's Kingdom," Gospel Advocate, February 1996, 20-21.)
Postmodernism's influence has resulted in a cultural shift which erodes the foundations of why we believe what we do. It is simplistic to say that the "strange things" which are happening today are merely the result of a lack of respect for Scripture or a desire to abandon "the faith once for all delivered" (Jude 3). The problem runs deeper than that. Our best defense against these things is to prepare ourselves with an understanding of God's Word and the modern world which equips us with the wisdom we need to successfully apply divine principles to the different circumstances experienced by the people we meet. Such preparation is not easy. Diligence with the Word is required (cf. 2 Timothy 2:15). But such diligence is necessary if we will "become all things to all men so that [we might] . . . save some" (1 Corinthians 9:22).