Why GOD Can't Get Playing Time in Popular Culture -or- Drawing Conclusions and Making Connections Where There Are Likely No Conclusions or Connections

The most provocative, contradictory, and fueling statements about what is called postmodernism is that it rejects absolute truth. The recursive argument against this statement on postmodernism is that accepting the posit that “postmodernism rejects absolute truth” is accepting the absolute truth that there is no absolute truth. Headache? Me too. I suggest Tylenol over ibuprofen for your newly incurred headache, but that’s only because I accidentally overdosed on ibuprofen once in high school. It scared the crap out of me. I had hives and was shaking. I felt dumb. I was, in fact, dumb. Also, former San Antonio Spur and All-Star Sean Elliot lost a kidney from taking so many ibuprofens. That scared me too. (My publicist claims that I did not O.D., and that it was, in fact, Terrell Owens who took my pills).

So here we have this idea of “truth” on the popular-thought chopping block. (I would argue that most of this talk of the failure of absolute truth is actually people misconstruing “truth” for “certainty”. At least, this is my take as a good Church kid.) All truth is challenged. All things that were solidly believed are shaken in popular thought. All those who believe so firmly in any “absolute truth” are undoubtedly labeled fundamentalists, and maybe justifiably so (I would still suggest that even these people confuse “certainty” with “truth”).

So then there is this challenge to “truth.” I came across an article from Europe today on CNN.com about the French government passing laws concerning, at their core, truth.

“Ignoring Turkish protests, the French lower house of parliament overwhelmingly approved a bill on Thursday making it a crime to deny Armenians suffered genocide in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turks… The legislation establishes a one-year prison term and 45,000 euro ($56,570) fine for anyone denying the genocide -- exactly the same sanctions as those imposed for denying the Nazi genocide of Jews during World War Two.”

With the recent denials of the Nazi-inflicted genocide on millions of Jews and other groups, these types of stories have been spotlighted. Why? Because these are the growing pains of people trying to construct and define what is true and what is not. In the pop-version of the postmodern worldview, truth—historical, scientific, social, or spiritual—is scrutinized and deconstructed. (Though it sounds bad, I believe that this can be a positive process.)

I bring up this piece of news only to point out the immense struggle going on inside of people in the predominate postmodern worlds of the West. People cheer on some rejections of accepted “truths” in past and recent history, and people cringe at others. The challenge of the existence of the Holocaust is the cringing kind for most. This is because we (most people) believe, we even would say that we “know” the holocaust existed. We have seen images. We may have even met people and heard stories. And some have even lived it who are still here among us. So we say, “Of course it is true! How could you deny it? Look at the numbers on these arms. Listen to these stories. Look at these images (even though we know that now even images can be deceiving… did we really go to the moon?). It happened! It happened to him! It happened to my friend’s grandfather! This is ridiculous!”

And I think “we” are right. I think we shiver at the thought of some truths being denied because we believe them to be such real, living, experienced truths, events, and experiences.

So then we get to God (gulp).

Certainly, in today’s world, God is the most challenged “absolute truth” of our day (at least in the perception of a good church kid). And the Christian argument is, “Yes it is true! I know it is true! I have experienced it. My grandfather has experienced it! I have a whole book full of encounters and experiences that attest to this truth, and it is leather-bound and has gold on the edges of the pages!”

This is the best argument we have going for us, and yet most of us articulate it so weakly that it is laughed off. We use this argument without passion or conviction because many of us have held the reigns back on our “experiences” with God. Many who claim Christianity may not even realize they have any “experiences” of note that didn’t involve some “praise and worship music” and a good prayin’.

This is why experiences with God must be reexamined. If the Christian common definition of God-experiences can transition out of the model of “praise music and prayer” and into the stuff of life, the living and breathing, the going out and coming in, the struggle, the success, and the failure, then we too can claim “truth” more readily in the public arena. Maybe we will not be laughed at as much. Maybe our “truth” will be graced with the honor and thoughtfulness that it no doubt deserves. But as long as we disable our truth with our currently weak and weary models of “church” and “Christianity” and “faith”, we should not expect too much credit our interest from anyone. Until we start recognizing our own God-experiences outside of only the “sacred”, only the “institutional”, and only the “Constantinian” models of “faith”, “Christianity” and “church”, our truth will not cause people to lose sleep at night. Our truth will remain the truth that popular thought says, “is fine for you, just not for me.”

I suggest that we all reexamine truth. Tear “truth” apart, explore “truth” deeply, challenge “truth”, question “truth”, and experience “truth”. If we (Christians) believe what we say we believe to be true, then these things are avenues to knowing the Truth.

The scary part: I think many “Christians” have no idea what this Truth is or how to experience, question, and explore it.