postmodern

Suggested Reading

December 3, 2014 by Beryl Smith Leave a Comment

To my Friends Across The Country:

I have wanted to write you about a series of books that I would like to recommend to you.

David F. Wells (PhD. University of Manchester, Distinguished Senior Research Professor @ Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) received a Pew grant, “Exploring the nature of Christian faith in the contemporary modernized world.” From his study he has produced a series of very good, relevant, Christ-honoring books that I feel every spiritually minded Christian should read.

Here are the titles of books written by David Wells that I hope will peak your attention:

No Place for Truth: Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? (1993)
God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (1994)
Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision (1998)
Above All Earthly Powers: Christ in a Postmodern World (2004)
The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (2008)
God in the Whirlwind: How the Holy-love of God Reorients Our World (2014)

I have been deeply moved and blessed by David Wells’ ministry. He has appeared on the White Horse Inn and his books are sound, relevant, and filled with Biblical Truth.

From his latest book I quote from his concern regarding worship in many, if not most of the evangelical churches in America:

“If we look at the way in which many evangelical churches have actually been worshiping since the 1970s, it is rather different from what I have been describing. It has become far more culturally defined than Biblically. It has often catered to generational niches. It has been about marketing a ‘product’ in a way that attracts new customers. The new customers, though, tend to belong to one of the generational tribes. Christian faith is pitched to them often without doctrinal truth. Pastors who have been in this business have mistakenly thought that doctrinal truth is ‘off-putting’ to believers and unbelievers alike. And the outreach that has been done often has far more in common with the entertainment world than with the truths at the core of Christian faith. Too often it has been about the worshipers, and giving them a pleasant experience as they express themselves, rather than about the God whom they have come to worship.

…Now, along the edges of the evangelical world, this disposition is producing a lot of bleeding. It has propelled an exodus out of evangelical churches. Some have moved out into Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglo-Catholicism, and Catholicism. Others have simply moved home. Born-againers, in significant numbers, are dropping out of church. This is not true everywhere, or of everyone, or of every church. But many who were once part of the born-again world are now turning away from evangelical churches. In one study done in 2013, it was found that in the recent past, 70 percent of the young people who had been raised in evangelical youth groups had dropped out of church attendance once they became independent adults. Why?”

(God in the Whirlwind: How the Holy-love of God Reorients our World; pp. 198-199)

Now, having been a believing Christian for over three-quarters of a century and a minister of the Gospel for over a half-century, this is what I have observed:

In the evangelical churches in America in the 1920s to the 1930s, liberalism and higher criticism invaded the major evangelical denominations, churches, colleges, and seminaries. The cancer of European liberalism, skepticism, and unbelief became embedded in evangelical circles. Out of this came those often condemned as “fundamentalists.” They started new denominations, colleges, seminaries and churches. They were called “fundamentalists” because they held to the major biblical truths of the Protestant Church. I am a fundamentalist! No apologies. No hedging my theological beliefs in the faith of our Protestant for-bearers. One of my ancestors, Ralph Blaisdell, was a Puritan who left England in 1635, to be a “planter” in the New World. He left the skeptical liberalism of the Church of England so he could worship God according to the dictates of his Puritan heart.

Since the 1970s, a profound change has taken place in the evangelical world. To put it simply, the “emergent movement” has done to the professing evangelical church in America what liberalism did to the church in the 1920s and 1930s. Today the church has forsaken sound theology, and expositional preaching, and has turned its emphasis into what Christian Smith in his book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual lives of American Teenagers called “moralistic, therapeutic, deism.” Today the church has forsaken any claim to be “fundamental” and is producing “another gospel” that offends no one, leaves theology in the back room, welcomes all into the “gathering,” and lets them leave with a gospel not demanding repentance of sin and absolute trust in the Christ of the Cross and the Empty Tomb.

The invisible Church of Jesus Christ in America is in desperate need of a spiritual revival in the hearts of her leaders. The nation crumbles in moral and spiritual darkness while the Church stumbles in dim light.

I urge you to pray for a genuine Holy Spirit rejuvenation in Christ’s body. We “come out from among them and be separate” (II Corinthians 6:17-18) or we perish with a nation that has turned itself from the God of the Bible to the god of secular humanism.

The Curse of Postmodernism

November 1, 2014 by Beryl Smith Leave a Comment

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to fables.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

That time came and continues to this day. Each generation has those who succumbed to the enticement of the new and novel in religious belief. In Protestantism, it started in earnest for the generation of the 1920s and 30s with the coming of what was called “modernism.”

Modernism isn’t something modern. It can be simply defined as the ideology of not believing what the Bible says. For more liberal churchmen and seminary scholars, to be modern was to adopt the theological critics “more advanced” views of the veracity and sufficiency of the Bible. The Bible was simply not inspired verbally. It was full of inconsistencies and errors, newly discovered by the more elite. These views created a battleground with those who held to the inspiration and inerrancy of the Scriptures.

In our generation modernism was traded in for a more “sophisticated” and avant-garde term: “Postmodernism.” This term can be easily defined and traced to its source: the Garden of Eden. Post modernism is simply a repeat of the oldest question addressed to our first parents: “Hath God said?” That is, is what is recorded in the Bible really accurate, or has it been distorted in some way? Is it archaic and not sufficient to satisfy the cravings of our more technological world? Surely we have better ideas. We are better educated and have so many scholars who reject such dogmatic ideas like the record that God created the whole universe out of nothing by His commands uttered in six days!

To the postmodern mind, there is no such thing as “absolute truth.” Truth is something each successive generation decides and defines for itself. After all, isn’t the idea of truth relative to one’s time and culture?

Well, you can swallow the lies of postmodern thinkers and educators, if you want. But I won’t. I’ll stick with God’s own word, as uttered through His prophet Isaiah:

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts; nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth, and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:8-11)

If you want to stick with the prattle of today’s postmodern thinkers and writers, go ahead. Adam and Eve believed the lies of the Tempter, look where it got them – and all of us. Personally, I’ll stick with the words taught to me and those believed by my forebears – Puritans who left England for a land where they could hold to the Truths of God’s Word. I think they were probably inspired by such men as Martin Luther, who proclaimed,

“Feelings come and feelings go,
And feelings are deceiving;
My warrant is the Word of God–
Naught else is worth believing.

Though all my heart should feel condemned
For want of some sweet token,
There is One greater than my heart
Whose Word cannot be broken.

I’ll trust in God’s unchanging Word
Till soul and body sever,
For, though all things shall pass away,
His word shall stand forever!”

In order to truly be postmodern, you need to be pre-modern. Get back to Eden. See how the curse of postmodernism had its origin in the rebellion and lies of the one still deceiving people to doubt and deny the absolute truth of God’s Word, the Holy Bible.

Taming the Monster of Modernity

October 28, 2014 by Beryl Smith Leave a Comment

“I have set the Lord continually before me; because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” (Psalm 16:8)

If we lived in a rural existence, like herding a flock of sheep, or driving a tractor to plow a field, things would be quite different. But that’s not where most of us are.

Working in an office or factory, answering scores of emails, catching the news or following our favorite sport or TV series, we don’t consider our lives as being simple. There is the complex of modernity all around us. War in the Middle East, a new virus threatening the entire world, the Stock Market rising and falling unpredictably, and then there are the problems of our families, towns, and states. We cannot escape modernity. So, how do we find time to know God in all of this? With a life surrounded by distractions, how can we come to know Him?

Someone wisely said that repetition is the mother of all learning and discipline is its father. So what? What must we do to somehow push the world aside and find a way to personally get to know God?

Here are ways I am trying to fight the monster of modernity’s life distractions:

I have been a convert to Christianity since I was six years old. I didn’t really know much about God then; and I’m still trying to discover more about Him. I have found that growing, “…in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”, (2 Peter 3:18) is not a weekend retreat. It’s a lifelong struggle, filled with both disappointments and personal achievements. I have never been a real scholar; but I have realized that life is not a joy ride. Getting to know more about God and personally commune with Him to discover His purposes will be my challenge until I someday meet Him face to face in the Person of His Son. I’ve got a long way to go on my pilgrimage to the Celestial City.
I have experienced some discipline in my life. My father, being a Police Inspector, was really good at discipline – kind but firm. He did not spare the rod. Neither did my Heavenly Father. He has taken me to the spiritual woodshed many times. But the discipline I’m referring to is personal discipline. It was Julie Andrews who said, “Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly.” Did she ever fly with her beautiful voice and thrilling music! Discipline of mind and schedule are imperatives to growth in grace.
It’s been said, “The smallest package in the world is a man wrapped up in himself.” It’s easy to get self-absorbed. Narcissism is never a philosophy by which to live. It’s self-defeating and self-consuming. I’ve found one way to learn more of God’s grace is to share it with others. Whether by friendship, personal witnessing, or by prayer, opening ourselves to the lives of others is rewarding. One way I do it is by means of my Prayer Journal. In it I have photos and names of many folks for whom I try to pray with some regularity. I might not be able to speak with them, but I can speak through Christ, my intercessor, and the Holy Spirit, my prayer interpreter, to the Father on their behalf. (Romans 8:34 and 8:26-27). Prayer does change things. It changes me.
Jesus was quite specific about the means of personal growth – both physiologically and spiritually. “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4) As The Bread of Life, Jesus knew what He was saying. Although, somehow, we have such a hard time learning this. We stuff our faces with good food and stuff our lives with easily provided entertainment; but somehow we let days go by without cracking open one of the many Bibles we have in our homes. We are starving spiritually by failing to feed our spirits on the Word of God. And that is the primary way we come to know God. My advice: turn off the computer or TV and get in the Book.
There is one person who is often forgotten – both in our personal lives and in worship in our Evangelical congregations: The Holy Spirit of God. What did Jesus say about the Holy Spirit? “He will guide you into all the truth…” (John 16:13). What was Paul inspired to tell us about what God wants to give us? “For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God…Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.” (I Corinthians 2:10-11). The Evangelical Church of our generation has committed a terrible blunder: pushing the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit to the periphery of our beliefs and teachings. We are wounding and grieving the Holy Spirit of God by not waking every morning and praying, “Blessed Holy Spirit, what do you have for me today?” He is much closer to us today than Jesus was to His disciples in the 1st Century, because He is the Life of God dwelling in our bodies.

Modernity clutters our world with a lot of “stuff.” And it chokes us from getting to know God. It distracts us from our main occupation, getting to know God. We must get back to “following hard after God,” or God will leave us to our little selves in a nation that God has abandoned.

The Whole Enchilada

September 5, 2012 by Beryl Smith Leave a Comment

“Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.” (II John 7-9)

One of the characteristics of many postmodern pastors and teachers in the Evangelical Church in America is that of treating the teachings of Jesus Christ and His Apostles as though those teachings were a blob of play dough.

Ignore the broader context of those teachings, abandon the great, historical creeds of the Protestant Church that expound them, and turn Jesus into whatever you want him to be. Dance around the theological doctrines taught in the inspired Holy Scriptures and make your sermons or Sunday School lessons what you think your hearers will enjoy.

After all, we don’t want to offend anyone or make them feel as though they weren’t very nice people.

Isn’t doctrine or theology a divisive matter to be left to the theologians? Fortunately, the Word of God presents a different message from what we’re hearing as “sermons” today.

The text in II John is quite explicit in its teaching regarding what Jesus Christ said in His earthly ministry. The one who “goes too far,” that is, goes beyond what Jesus actually said, adding one’s own thoughts, and the one who does not stick to what Jesus said – and I mean ALL that Jesus said – does not have God. He might have a tortilla with some refried beans, but the meat, cheese and sauce are missing. He doesn’t have the whole enchilada of biblical theology. He’s missing the meat of the precious doctrine that makes Protestantism the message of the Gospel that can save condemned souls. Without the biblical facts of Christ’s incarnation, substitutionary death, blood atonement, crucifixion, burial, resurrection and ascension, he’s left with only a good teacher. He’s substituted the pop psychology of a Tony Robbins or Joel Osteen for the truth of the Son of God.

Jesus plainly said, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven…He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent me.” (Matt. 7:21, John 14:24)

Jesus clearly taught that there would be a lot of people who thought they knew Jesus, who called Him Lord, prophesied in His name, performed miracles and did wonderful deeds. They thought they knew Him; but they didn’t – and still don’t know Him. They make their play dough Jesus and set Him up as a fine example to follow; but they refuse to believe that he is the sovereign God of the universe, co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

They fail to teach that He may one day say to them, “I never knew you!” (Matthew 7:23) He will banish them from His heaven as those who practiced lawlessness. What will be their hell-deserving sin? Refusal to believe all of His teachings will banish them to eternity in hell.

I might not understand all that Jesus said. I might find some of His teachings grating against what I have been taught. But the fact remains: if I don’t believe everything He said, I do not have the Jesus who is God. And God does not have me as one of His chosen individuals from the mass of humanity.

So, if you claim to be a believer in Jesus, I would urge you to ask yourself, “Do I really believe everything Jesus said, or am I just believing in a Jesus who is compatible with my ideas about life?”

Since Jesus Christ is God, I want to discover everything He said. If “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10), I pray that I will have enough sense to be afraid of rejecting some of His words that might conflict with my ideas. I pray that God the Holy Spirit will give me grace and faith to say, “Whatever You have said in Your word, Lord, I believe. Please help me to discover more and more of Your sovereign work in the redemption of Your people. I want the whole enchilada. I want the whole counsel of the teachings of Christ and His apostles that can make me wise unto eternal salvation.