Posted: 09/24/07

The loss of knowledge

By Steve Cornell

Bernard Dov Cooperman (Associate Professor of Jewish History at the University of Maryland), in a recent letter to the editor (Newsweek, 9-03-07) acknowledged that "…our society is more than happy to accept spin and cant because we have come to believe that all expertise is bias, that all knowledge is opinion, that every judgment is relative. I see this daily in my university classroom. Many of even my best students seem to have lost the ability to think critically about the world. They do not believe in the transformative power of knowledge because they do not believe in knowledge itself." 

The sense of loss in Cooperman's words is clear. What interests me is that he does not refer to loss of morality or virtue but loss of belief in knowledge. At the risk of oversimplification, in modernity, the loss focused more on morality. Relativism ruled out moral absolutes. In postmodernity, the inevitable occurred: knowledge itself became suspect. This is a shift from an ethical to an epistemological dilemna. Knowing (or how one knows things) is now radically individualized. Admitting to some aspect of community, postmoderns acknowledge culturally based meta-narratives as shared perspectives on life and meaning. 

However we frame the current zeitgeist, we are reaping the crop of decades of demand for moral relativism. Ironically, those who most vocally required the position of relativism have finally threatened their own viability. Now the profession of teaching (at least on the university level) is suspect. As for Church ministers who danced to the music of relativism, they have become the most irrelevant to society. If teaching is suspect, preaching is just plain rude and ignorant.  

But there are other losers–parents. Some years ago, psychologist Helen Lynd noted that "the teachers and 'sophisticated' parents were abandoning the moral framework in which guilt had played a part in training children. No longer were children being told that they were 'good' or 'bad,' or even that a certain action had been 'good' or 'bad.' Now, she said, 'the words good and bad have been replaced with mature and immature, productive and unproductive, socially adjusted and maladjusted.' These new words described the same actions as the old, and carried the same weight, but they had become morally neutralized."

With the fading of moral vision come other losses. Values such as inspiration, motivation, vision, community and purpose-all fade in the dim light of a society that demoralizes virtue as merely individual taste. When people embrace moral relativism, they become a colorless, tasteless, blandish melting pot of meaninglessness. David Wells aptly notes that, "The problem is not that we cannot discuss moral theory, although even that is rapidly being lost, and it is certainly not that we are unconcerned about our cultural circumstances. The problem is that our talk is now empty."

People who abandon shared morality also become the proverbial "sheep without a shepherd," or, perhaps more accurately, sheep who don't want a shepherd. Let's not fool ourselves, the prevailing relativism in our culture is, as David Wells observed, "driven by a deep sense of entitlement to being left alone, to live in a way that is emancipated from the demands and expectations of others, to being able to fashion its own life in the way it wants to, to being able to establish its own values and beliefs in its own way, to resist all authority. The internal ethic of the self - what is right for me - has become the means by which all external standards, external controls, and external expectations are remitted" (Losing Our Virtue). 

More deeply troubling is the fact that such individualism often occasions the greatest opportunities for large scale evil. When people embrace and even cherish, the idea that all knowledge and morality is relative, it leaves a dangerous moral vacancy. Such vacancies have often been filled in the past with the tyrannical rule of radical regimes. A civil society cannot exist without law and order. But when people have radically individualized morality, often the government, courts and legal system become the moral parents of society. This is why a people without moral bearings become easy victims of tyrannical regimes. If you doubt this, study the history of such regimes or keep watching Europe (the mother of relativism) as they dance around radical Islam.

Meanwhile back at the evangelical Church, we find a new brand of leadership that is uncertain about issues of truth and authority. In the last three decades, great strides have been made to make the Church more relevant to society. On one level, this is admirable and even mandated. One thinks of the reference to the men of Issachar who, "understood the times and knew what Israel should do" (I Chronicles 12:32). The danger in seeking relevancy, however, is becoming a Church shaped by cultural expectations.  

Church leaders must also be perceptive enough to recognize that "lost-ness" has become a more complicated matter. Someone once said that the answer will not help the person who has lost the question. In these times, we face the challenge of reframing the question before offering the answer. Compelling a morally complacent society about the urgency of being right with God is not an easy assignment.

We the Church must embrace our role to provide the moral compass so desperately needed in our times. Failure to do this is a failure to take seriously Jesus' words, "You are the salt of the earth, You are the light of the world" (Matthew 5:13,14). Yet meeting this challenge requires a great deal of wisdom and discernment. Above all, this is not a time for us to de-emphasize the sweeping claims of the Bible. Paul's words to the philosophers on Mars Hill should be our message: "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth" (Acts 17:24, NIV). From this affirmation, we can move to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I am convinced that we are in deep trouble unless Church leadership everywhere vigorously reaffirms its commitment to the fact that, "All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. 17 God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work." (II Timothy 3:16-17, NLT). This is the message needed most among those who are lost in a postmodern world.

Steve Cornell
Senior pastor
Millersville Bible Church
Millersville, PA 17551

http://thinkpoint.wordpress.com/category/postmodern/

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