Christendom's Adolescence, Pt. 2

In my previous post on this topic, I explained how I believe that Christianity reached its adolescence in recent centuries, and is still in that stage now. Implicit in this terminology (and explicit in the previous post) is a comparison with the development of the individual. I said that the time of adolescence is the primary time for testing beliefs one once held without question, and that it results ultimately in the retention or rejection of those beliefs.

This is, then, a crucial time, but also one of hope, for our task is not to revive a dying old man but to mentor a developing young one. In considering how to influence the world to retain a strengthened Christianity rather than dispose of a distrusted one, my thoughts continually return to the absolutely essential essay by Richard John Neuhaus from 1998, C.S. Lewis in the Public Square. Fr. Neuhaus considers the question of how C.S. Lewis would have altered his strategy in the context of postmodernism, and in the process gives an excellent summary of the state of thought today, which itself can basically be summed up in the phrase we've all heard (essentially), "Right you are if you think you are."

The essay is dauntingly long for something to read on a computer screen (for me at least), but I'd really seriously recommend it to... everybody, but especially to anyone who has an interest about into which port this ship called society is being steered. Also, to anyone of the many people who haven't quite figured out what this whole postmodernism thing is all about, it offers a very good explanation. Right now there seems to be a divide between the academic philosophers and their admirers, who have for the most part fully embraced the incoherency of postmodernism, and the rest of the world, which has quite reasonably gone on thinking that x = x and that one is right only when one is right. Those who are most responsible for the defense of reason are the ones most eager to abolish it in favor of... what? I don't even know. Nothing, I guess. I don't know how long this divide between intelligentsia and the rest will last, but I know that the longer this fantasy is confined to the ivory tower, the better.

I have doubts that pure postmodernism will ever be accepted by society in general. Most of us are pretty attached to our old-fashioned idea of truth (even those who claim it doesn't exist are fond of it, as evidenced by the fact that they bothered to make any claim at all). Ridiculous ideas are for ridiculous people, and I think academia for the most part sadly qualifies. But if after nearly a century after Marcel Duchamp's readymades, the majority of people still don't consider the act of signing random objects and putting them in austere white rooms to be art, then I can have hope that post-modernism will remain locked in that tower until it finally dies of boredom.

It may well be that I was overly optimistic just now, and that post-modernist ideas (I have a hard time calling them that) are already doing their damage on a wider scale than I'd like to think. Indeed, discussions with typical college students might indicate that I was. Regardless, the secret to ending this insanity is to continually expose it as the direct attack on reason it is.

I pray that I might be able to see during my lifetime the beginnings of the widespread acceptance of Christianity as the True Story of the world, strengthened against any and all attacks after centuries of rigorous examination. Maybe it won't happen in my lifetime, but I have faith that it will eventually and I will tell you why. First, I have confidence, as Mr. Lewis and Fr. Neuhaus have confidence, "that human beings are hard–wired for reason in search of truth." Second, well, here: Revelation 5:13 --

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing:

"To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be praise and honor and glory and power,
for ever and ever!"