Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Excellent Synopsis of the Post-Modern Religious Age

The following was posted in  the comments section by a participant. I found these comments insightful and I didn't want them to remain buried.
"The Postmodern age we now live in poses perhaps the greatest challenge to orthodox Christianity. At least in Luther's time his words were taken seriously. Today, with the philosophy of Relativism permeating society, people are not able to even distinguish the TRUTH because of the cacophony of conflicting and inconsistent messages being transmitted. A good example of this is the frustrating experiences of the author of this Blog - James Swan - in dealing with Roman Catholics on another site. One would think that the 16th century Reformation never even happened, since the same unscriptural abuses and heresies have simply been handed down over the centuries to different people. James Swan no sooner finishes an excellent communication with one person on the RC blog, and then another person pops up with identical false beliefs the other had weeks ago prior to discourse!
The battles fought by St Paul in Galatians and elsewhere are simply being repeated in each generation, with only the external packaging being different: the sum and substance of the debates are unchanged and are all somehow associated with the Person and Work of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. While our society may be advanced technologically, theologically this age is as confused and ignorant as ever. People are confused and superstitious, being non-thinkers with respect to anything theological. Since a man's life is so short and eternity so great, one would think people would be more seriously engaged in theological dialogue. Perhaps Luther was correct in seeing Satan behind the masking of our eyes from Christ and His Finished Work? Indeed, that would explain a great deal of the confusion in our Postmodern relativistic world! Scripture is correct in stating that although the sands on the seashore are virtually countless, only the remnant in each generation are saved. Is it only 1 out of 100 sheep? Or less?"
I would speculate, the problems pointed out above may be (in some part) due to a lack of persecution in the Western world. People will believe or disbelieve all sorts of things. There's nothing like a good dose of "freedom" to make us lazy and stupid. I think those claiming the name "Christian" would become better theologians (hopefully, of the cross), if what they believed carried consequences!

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