Post-Modern or Post-Sanity?

The times were post-modern, the setting? — anywhere U.S.A. The question then, “hath God said?” Answer, “you shall not surely die.”

Heard this before? Yes, we have read it in our Bibles, pages 1-3.

Quohelet later speaks in Ecclesiastes, “All is breath, and herding of the wind.” There is nothing new under the sun.

Same old — same old! The dialectics tell us of new forms for reasoning, that the truth-based deductive reasoning is obsolete. They tell us we must accept both sides of the question and reject the law of non-contradiction. They want us to tolerate the lie, accept it’s right to express itself, and even exalt it to a place of equality with truth.

• Red dogs bark louder,
• my dog is red
• my dog barks louder.

They dismiss the simple reasoning. Ho hum; the Bible calls these folks, “fools” because they have no delight in understanding — but only to uncover their hearts — Yes, the deceitful and desperately wicked hearts which every human has. See Proverbs 18:1-3

How is it that a man comes to trust his own heart? Well, the opening of the proverbial “Pandora’s box,” took place in our Bible pages 1-3. There Adam and Eve gained a self-guided conscience, they started to know “good and evil,” independent of God.

Then, with Post-modern thought, the diabolical merging of good and evil together as one, originates now from every man’s subjective evaluators; and appears to be a step above the old discerning of what is good, distinct from what is bad. It offers escape, relaxing of strict standards, it eliminates law, and is lawless.

It’s flaw becomes apparent. What man calls liberation, (Casting off restraints), God calls sin; and sin has it’s wage — death. A lot of lives get messed up here.

The Preacher comments in 2:13 of Ecclesiastes, “and I saw that wisdom surpasses folly, as light surpasses darkness.” To that, Robert Alter says, “it is better to live disabused of all illusion …  than to live a deluded life, like the fool.”

In Ecclesiastes 1;17 the writer,”set his heart to know wisdom and to know revelry and folly.” Again R. Alter suggests “…a wild and unruly indulgence of the senses in which lucidity is lost — hence revelry.”

However:

“the purely hedonistic probe of Quohelet’s experiment with experience, fails

because the wildness of orgiastic release proves to be no more than a transient excitation, leading to nothing and providing no lasting satisfaction.”

Friends, Gene Edward Veith Jr. Lists tenets of post-modernism in his Book, “Postmodern Times.”

1. Social Constructivism – “meaning, morality, and truth do not exist objectively… They are constructed by society.”
2. Cultural determinism – individuals are shaped by culture.
3. The rejection of individual identity.
4. Rejection of humanism, “every culture constitutes its own reality.”
5. Denial of transient – no absolutes.
6. “All” are expressions and masks of the primal will to power.”
7. Rejection of reason.
8. “rationalism, order, and the unitary view of truth needs to be replaced by the new world order.”

Veith  pictures the far-reaching effects of the simple acceptance of philosophical engineering. The trigger points are the mechanisms of “doubt,” “skepticism,” and “unsurety.” The begging and deluding concept is the release from guilt and worry. Sin freely.  The ultimate results accumulate “units of wrath,” from a loving Father in heaven, who must judge the rejection of His perfect plan of redemption through His Son, Jesus.

In closing, another “fatal hook” learned in Genesis 1-3 is the quest for knowledge, the desire “to make oneself wise.”

Please listen to the Preacher, “its all mere “breath” and “herding of the wind.” Folks, we cannot recover a breath once breathed, nor can we shepherd a flock of wind.

The desire for control brings a snare. The lust for mental-superiority leads to emptyness.

But,

we find our sanity under the banner of His love, under the shadow of His wings, under the covering of a blood stained garment. With these come rational thinking, logical deduction, truth based evaluation and real meaning. We find out purpose, and meaning. We reveal His glorious nature to a lost and dying world.

• God so loved the world
• I am in the world
• God so loves me!

Love ya