Believe Differently

This is the first in what is going to be a series of posts aimed at helping those suffering from a condition known as PMT: Post Modern Tension; alternatively known as PMA: Post Modern Anxiety.

The condition occurs when a subject is first exposed to post modern thought and especially when the critique first starts to take hold. Those most vulnerable are typically modernistic in their thinking but can be theologically conservative or liberal in their views; the condition strikes with impunity toward a person’s theological circumstance. Symptoms vary depending on the patient but can range from a mild tension or anxiety, to full-fledged panic! When I first came down with the condition, when I first went to study theology, I remember my reaction was somewhere near the more extreme end of the scale. As someone well on his way to recovery, though, I think I am well placed to offer some help to those not so far along the journey. These posts, although a little tongue in cheek, I do offer as serious advice.

So then, my first top tip: “Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater!”

The post modern critique effectively dissolves all absolutes. It washes away all preconceived notions of truth; or should I say, more specifically, all foundations upon which our understandings of truth are fabricated. The sudden dispelling of this illusion of certainty can be very unsettling, and often prompts an overreaction in an individual’s thinking. The thought occurring along the lines: “… if all is relative, and there is nothing upon which I can base my understanding of the world, God or reality, then how can I believe in anything?” In an extreme case, the subject is at risk of falling into an abyss of nihilistic despair. This may sound overdramatic – and perhaps it is - but actually for me, my first encounter with post modern thought was very frightening. For someone who had always approached his faith within a fundamental back and white framework, the sudden sweeping away of all the grounds upon which I had built my theological understanding and, by extension, my world view, was more than a little scary. My reaction was, to throw out all I thought to be true; I did throw out the baby with the bathwater!

What I did not realize was that although I had become a convert to theoretical relativism, I was not a relativist. No one can be a relativist. We can subscribe to relativism as an epistemological reality but in doing so, we are believing in something and therefore are no longer “being” a relativist. My point: no matter how convinced we become of the post modern critique theoretically, none of us can stop believing in stuff. Just because we have lost purchase on the grounds for our certainties, that does not stop us being certain. We are still sure of things: God is love, murder is wrong, children should be protected etc.1 What does leave us, though, is the rationalization of such claims. There is no epistemological hook upon which to hang them, except to say we simply believe these things to be so.

Those things which we passionately believe, should and do remain true for us, even if we cannot philosophically defend such a position. There is absolutely nothing incoherent with this situation, it is just plain recognition of our human condition. This is how we, and the world we live in, have been made.

Those things which we doubt though, those things which we do not passionately believe, those things which have been rationalized to us on shaky epistemological premise, should be questioned. I have found that I have thrown out many views that, despite passionately believing otherwise, I used to hold because I had been taught to accept them based on some illusionary platform of truth: church authority, say; or a particular teacher’s interpretation of scripture etc. What the post modern critique tells us is that we should distrust all such claims. That there are self interested motives behind all such teachings; we should, indeed, remain steadfastly incredulous toward all such meta-narratives - to paraphrase Jean-François Lyotard’s famous definition of post modernity.

There are truths we believe because they seem obviously self-evident to us, and there are those truths which have been fabricated for us on imaginary platforms of certainty. The latter kind, once recognized, should be rejected – that is, if we find we do indeed, disagree with their claims. This is not to say that we might passionately change our minds concerning that which falls into either category, but since we are such contingent beings, in order for us to live truthfully and faithfully, we can only do so according to, and within, the terms of reference resourced by our current revelation and understanding. Ultimately we must trust that God will let us do no evil as we seek to work out our lives and love our neighbour.

1. This is the same issue which came up in my conversation with Saint Peter. [↩]