POST-MODERN TIMES: FACING A NEW WORLD OF CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
Gene Vieth has written an articulate summation of the challenges of postmodernism that warrants primary consideration. Thoughtful and concise, Vieth concludes that the postmodern ideology carries inherent dangers in its broad expanse of tenuous thought and openness to multiple alternatives of expression. Difficulties must arise when a general sense of narcissistic pessimism permeates society. The disbanding of modernism’s desires for a Utopian existence has left open the possibilities of widespread existentialistic realities to be superimposed upon possibilities. If a plethora of ideologies becomes the new standard, alternative realities becomes the basis of thoughtful analysis, not universal dictums.
Modernism appears to have collapsed following a lengthy tenure that roughly encompasses the formulative years of America’s birth as an independent nation in the latter eighteenth century through the end of the twentieth century. Optimistic expectations based upon sociological advancements, political liberation, technological advances and religious discharge were dashed upon the harsh realities of mankind’s ability to act in an arbitrary and inhuman fashion without regard or concern for external considerations. Pessimistic irrationalism seems to have supplanted the enlightenments hope for a better human expression.
Shifting valuations have resulted in a new emphasis of systematic synthesis over absolute understanding, culture supersedes the individual as person and need orientation, technological convenience trumps sciences austere realities. Understanding why no longer has a place of prominence in the rational thought process of analytical considerations. Rather, being entertained and comforted in an adolescent, nascent need-oriented focus is the prevailing method of operation in modern society. Dashed expectations have led to a reconstitution of emphatic focus in order to recalibrate society, infusing the social structure with a new purpose and sense of being.
This voided time period makes allowance for a transitory mental and philosophical nature to be expressed socially as human networks are reconstructed following their deconstruction by postmodernism’s devolved sense of priorities. The mythic phoenix image encapsulates the postmodernist hope: new from old, life from death. Reason has been followed by neurosis and extensions into black-hole types of philosophic blanks. Bleakness as a lifestyle outlook has a redemptive avenue of escape, however.
In this exnihilo attitude, Christianity can triumph. Postmodern adherents see at least nominal value in pre-modern religious expressions. As scientific optimism fades, faith in that which exists outside of nature’s boundaries becomes a possible alternative once again. Postmodernisms attempt to extend beyond sensate data as the only ostensible point of reference provides the church with an invaluable assistance.
The opportunity exists: postmodernism needs values along with standards to bridge the gap of humanities basic security needs. The church can fulfill its purpose in any mental climate, accommodating those who seek reality’s comforting embrace, even when a confusing paradigm reigns as the optimum focal point of understanding epistemological functions. Rather than shrinking back from the significant pillars of doctrinal truth and absolutes, the church must insert itself into the void, filling the gap and providing a substantive way out of humanism’s deflated expectations.
