When I looked at this subject matter: Postmodernism
and Philosophy at one o’clock in the afternoon,
I didn’t know if it was a test of your mental
agility, my capacity to engender interest,
or both.
Especially since Chesterton said "Everyone’s
world view changes dramatically thirty minutes
after lunch."
So I don’t know what worldview you brought
here but we’re going to push you to the
limit.
The only good news for you is that it will
be easier to grapple with me than to grapple
with Al Mohler who follows later.
Even the sign language gentleman was just
telling me.
He said "This is a tough bunch to interpret
for."
He said, and this is the first time I’ve
been paid a compliment, He said "Actually
you’re easier than Al Mohler.
He’s just so brilliant."
So we are here to balance the stakes here
and give you a good fair expression of what
this theme is about.
You will have to bear with us, humor aside.
These are tough subjects.
If you deal with them in a surface manner,
you do injustice to the theme, and you are
unfair to the protagonist on that side of
the issue.
So at times you might just wonder where this
is headed, whether you’ll really be able
to come to terms with the ideas, or are you
may just want to switch off.
Don’t!
The bottom line is that it is a worldview
that needs to be responded to.
It needs to be dealt with.
It has some surface issues.
But it also has some philosophical underpinnings.
And the goal will be, hopefully by the time
all of the speakers are done, to give you
both the surface understanding of it and the
depth understanding of it.
John Reed the well known Anglican bishop of
years gone by from Sydney Australia was on
one occasion telling this story.
I forget what the context was but as soon
as he finished telling the story, I thought
to myself "That is a classic illustration
of post-modern thinking."
He talked about two Australian sailors who
had just gotten off the boat in England and
wandered out into the night to enjoy the night-life
and had stepped into an English Pub, enjoying
all the offerings for the night there.
They had inebriated quite a bit, and stepped
out of the pub wobbling on their on their
feet into a dense London fog.
As they were staggering there outside the
pub, they saw a man coming in unknown to them
he was a highly decorated British naval officer.
So they waited until he came close and they
said to him "say ya bloke, do you know where
we are?"
The English naval office, rather offended,
by this looked at them and said "do you men
know who I am?"
At this point one Aussie said to the other
"We are really in a mess now.
We don't know where we are, and he doesn't
know who he is."
That is the quintessential explanation of
what postmodernism is all about.
We don't know where we are.
We don't know who we are.
And yet we are pontificating with rather thick
volumes on all of this.
Last year I was asked to speak at John's Hopkins
on the theme: What does it mean to be Human?
I liked the fact that they wanted it defined,
but isn't it fascinating it's 2006 and we're
still trying to figure out who we are.
I don't hear of dogs getting together to define
doggienes.
We're supposed to be at the highest rung of
the ladder, and we don't know who we are,
and we're doing the defining.
If we don't know what it means to be human,
what does humanism mean?
What was all this writing on humanistic ways
of determining ethics and so on.
But there is another story I want to link
into this.
Some years ago I was speaking at one of the
major bar associations of the country.
When I arrived there I was sitting at the
head table and the woman who was the head
of the bar association looked at me and said
"You must be a very bold man."
I said "Why do you say that?"
She said “Because you are dealing with a
subject here to an audience who are peddlers
with words."
I said "So I'm supposed to be nervous?"
She said "Yes."
I said "Frankly, I wasn't until now."
So I - this was by the way in the days of
when the famous statement was made "It all
depends on what the word "is" means."
- made by a rather notable character.
So here they sat with their arms folded.
It was lunch hour again.
And I was to talk to them about the meaning
of words.
I said - "Before I go into this, let me tell
you what the first three items of the news
were."
I said "I was watching a television program
on the news, and these were the first three
items."
Question number one was being raised: do words
have any meaning, or does the speaker reserve
the right to fuse his or her words with his/her
own meaning?
Is there auten-referent?
Is there a point of reference for language,
or does the speaker determine that right to
say whatever he or she wants and mean whatever
he or she wants?
And in our salvation by survey culture, the
rolling camera men went around asking the
world, "Do words have any meaning or do we reserve
the right to fuse our words with any meaning
we choose to."
If the words don't have any meaning, what
does the question actually mean?
But they don't ask such questions of themselves.
And the survey said: words do not have any
meaning.
The speaker deserves the right to fuse it
with his or her meaning.
So that was that was the first item on the
news.
The second item on the news was "Does morality
have any absolute or does each individual
reserve the right to choose his or her own
morality?"
So the camera men tried again.
Answer?
Morality doesn't have any absolutes.
You reserve the right to make your own relativistic
choices.
I said "First item do words have any meaning?"
Answer: No.
You reserve the right to fuse it.
Does morality have any absolute?
No, you reserve the right to be relative at
your own whim.
I said "Do you know what the third item in
the news was?
We had just sent Saddam Hussein a warning
that if he didn't stop playing his words games
we were going to start bombing him."
The arms went down; the peddlers with words
were willing to listen.
You see we expect of the listener to be help
responsible for what he or she has just been
told, but we don't give ourselves the same
responsibility when we want to flirt with
the edges and do whatever it is we want to
do.
But how did postmodernism come to be?
How did these ideas actually gain such popularity
and find philosophers to back it?
Was it not George Will who said "There is
nothing so vulgar left in human experience
but that we can fly some professor from somewhere
to justify it?"
Postmodernism became like that.
But if you go back across the five centuries,
the 1500's, 1600's, 1700's all the way down
to the last century - the twentieth century.
First it was rationalism stern.
I think therefore I am.
You wanted to hold your beliefs with indubitable
rational certainty.
But on the heels of that the empiricists came
along - that the only world you can really
speak with certainty is the phenomenal world
that you can empirically verify.
Logical positivism was being birthed and the
ideas of reality were then framed in this
sort of scientific single vision.
So from rationalism we moved on to empiricism.
Empiricism gradually gave way and in the 1800's,
Darwin with his Origin of Species and so on
began to ground it all within a naturalistic
framework.
From rationalism to empiricism to naturalism,
existentialism then was birthed in the 1900's
on the heels of the writing of the previous
century just begun by people like Kierkegaard,
and Nietzsche and so on.
So existentialism began to hold sway on the
minds of young university students starting
from Europe moving across the waters and then
finding anchor points out here.
So you moved all the way from rationalism,
to empiricism, to naturalism, to existentialism.
Postmodernism was waiting to be born in throwing
off the single vision of all of these.
It became the kind of an eclectic system.
Take a little bit of this and a little bit
that and make yourself the centerpiece of
all philosophizing.
Now many times you'll hear authors say something
like this "Modernity reigned from 1789 with
the storming of the Bastille in France to
the 1989 with the fall of the wall in Berlin.”
Those two hundred years are generally given
that parenthetical portion of the modern world.
But is done mainly just for some kind of convenience.
The fact of the matter is that the writings
of Wittgenstein, and Searle, and Nietzsche
had already paved the way for what post-modernity
was going to become.
In fact, some of the most vociferous spokespersons
for postmodernism, people like Jacques Derrida
and Michel Foucault, had already done their
US bit of speaking.
It was in 1985 that Derrida came to John's
Hopkins and deconstructed the entire United
States Constitution in front of that audience
to a resounding applause.
It was in '84 that Michel Foucault, who embodied
postmodernism, died that horrific death with
his body plagued by AIDS which completely
destroyed his health.
So when we say 1989, we are just using it
as a kind of convenient two hundred century
mark.
The fact of the matter is, the damage in thinking
had already been done.
In fact it was in the 1970's that Malcolm
Muggeridge said "It' is difficult to resist
the conclusion that twentieth century man
has decided to abolish himself.
Tired of the struggle to be himself, he has
created boredom out of his own affluence,
impotence out of his own eroto-mania, and
vulnerability out of his own strength.
He himself blows the trumpet that brings the
walls of his own cities crashing down until
at last having educated himself into imbecility
having drugged and polluted himself into stupefaction
he keels over a very battered old brontosaurus
and becomes extinct."
This was in the seventies.
The work was done.
The seeds were sown.
The soil was prepared.
But you know what, where postmodernism was
really born?
It was born in Genesis three.
"Now the serpent was more crafty than any
of the wild animals the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, "Did God really say?"
Is propositional truth absolute?
Can you be certain that this is exactly what
the creator actually meant?
Then she goes on to say "The woman said to
the serpent 'we may eat fruit from the trees
in the garden, but God did say you must not
eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle
of the garden and you must not touch it or
you will die.'
'You will not surely die.'
The serpent said to the woman.
'God knows that when you eat of it your eyes
will be opened and you will be like God, knowing
good and evil.'"
That said "Did God really say?"
And if you violate God's command you play
God and you redefine good and evil.
Muggeridge said "All new news is old news
happening to new people."
Jacques Derrida and Foucault and all didn't
come up with some new idea of postmodernism.
It happened right in the beginning of the
garden, questioning whether God had really
spoken, and was it not possible to redefine
his reality and do it on your own terms.
But the fact of the matter is ladies and gentlemen,
it has gained currency.
It has gained vogue.
People like Richard Rorty and others will
talk about their own pilgrimage.
Ironically Rorty makes the comment that in
the beginning he had some interest in Christianity.
He would read the gospels and so on, but he
saw its demands of humility and he could not
bring himself to that point, and he turned
his back on this challenge to be humble and
became then one of the gurus of postmodern
philosophy and postmodern thought.
What I want to give for you very plainly and
very quickly is three or four principles ideas
of what are the major tenets, the philosophical
tenets of post-modernism, and we will race
through them.
The first is this: They do not believe is
there is an objective reference for words.
There is no reference for words or for language.
So please listen to their own definition here
very carefully.
It is based on an epistemology that holds
to a limitless instability of words - on an
epistemology a truth basis that holds to the
limitless instability of words.
Texts are stripped of their meaning, and words
are given no point of reference.
There is a limitless instability in language.
Words do not have a point of reference.
You have your point of reference for language.
I have my point of reference.
So the ground is always shifting in speak
and in thought and in any form of propositional
truth.
Fascinatingly Paul de Man, one of the spokespersons
for trying to sustain this point, of all the
places he goes to Archie Bunker.
For those of you in less than that generation,
this was quite the show of all shows.
It broke all of the revered kinds of humor
about thirty years ago.
So Archie Bunker, what was his name?
Carol O'Conner and Jeane Stapleton were Archie
Bunker and Edith Bunker.
He was thought of as the quintessential right
wind snob who bullied his wife and bullied
everybody else, and sneered at everyone else.
And Edith was sort of that half-dumb wit,
but was actually smarter than him.
And so at one point he says to her "Edith”
- this is Paul de Man again by the way using
this illustration.
"Edith, would you back my bowling shoes into
the bag."
So Edith says “Archie, would like them laced
from the top or from the bottom."
And you can just see his expression, and he
says "Edith, what's the difference?"
And she goes into a prolonged answer on what
muscles are held in place with the top-lacing
over against the under-lacing, and the audience
is roaring.
And Archie Bunker is just staring at her incredulous.
Paul de Man says this proves - now brace yourselves
for this statement.
Here is what he says.
"This proves that rhetoric radically suspends
logic and opens up vertinicious possibilities
of referential aberration."
What?
That rhetorical radically suspends logic and
opens up vertinicious possibility of referential
aberration.
What he's really saying is it takes you to
dizzying heights of meaninglessness.
What Paul de Man does not understand is that
the reason the audience was laughing was because
she didn't understand Archie's question.
Archie was really saying "I couldn't care
less."
Do it at the top.
Do it at the bottom.
And she is going into this physiological impact
of lacing shoes.
But you know, they move from this horrible
sense of superficiality to something that
becomes extremely serious.
And here is where I want to read for you this
notation.
Anthony Freeman in his book God in Us: A Case
for Christian Humanism talks about what the
postmodernist actually means by language and
how they make the charge.
Listen carefully now, he is dealing with Isaiah
44:14-17.
He quotes the verse and then responds to it.
Follow me carefully.
The prophet Isaiah says "All who make idols
are nothing, and the things they treasure
are worthless.
He cuts down cedars, with some of it he takes
and warms himself and kindles a fire and bakes
bread.
But he also fashions a god and worships it.
He then prays to it and says 'save me you
are my god.'
So he takes the tree, cuts it down, makes
an idol, worships that idol and it is something
that he has fabricated with his own hands.
Anthony Freeman says that is what the prophet
Isaiah says, listen to what Freeman goes on
to add.
He says this "the writer who is Isaiah failed
to realize how close his own case was to that
pagan who he was lampooning.
The idol worshiper had constructed his own
idol with wood, the author made his god out
of words that really was the only difference.”
Do you see it?
Isaiah talks about the idolater who takes
wood, and then proceeds with that wood to
make an idol and proceeds with that idol to
then bow down and worship it.
Freeman says "You know, what Isaiah doesn't
realize, he's made his own idol with language,
and then fabricating this idea of God and
he is bowing down and worshiping before his
own language.”
That's what this is all about.
The limitless instability of words.
That words actually do not have an ultimate
point of reference, and what happens at the
end is that we manufacture reality by the
words you use.
Listen to how Nietzsche said it "The real
truth about objective truth is that the later
is just a fiction.
Every candidate for truth must first be expressed
in language, and language is notoriously unable
to get us to reality.
Words like a hall of mirrors reflect only
each other, and in the end point back to the
condition of their users without having established
anything about the way things really are."
“Truth is the name,” says Nietzsche, “we
give to that witch agrees with our own instinctive
preferences.
It is what we call our interpretation of the
world.
Especially when we want to foist it upon others.”
It's like a hall of mirrors, smoke and mirrors
as it were.
We're just using words.
They reflect back, they bounce back.
It only reveals what we want to term is truth.
But ironically a few stanzas later here is
what he says "But I still am too pious that
even I worship at the alter where God's name
is truth."
What Nietzsche is saying is, yes it's all
about words, but let me tell you something,
at the end of the day I too believe there
is some such thing as truth because I can
not deny truth while at the same time believing
that my denial is not truthful.
You know there was an old Irish farmer.
And the Irish have a way of saying things.
It is something like this, the story goes.
A tourist is driving around and he gets lost
way out in some hinterland parts of Ireland
there.
And he looks at a farmer and he says "Can
you tell me how to get to such and such a
place?"
And the farmer stops and says to him "If that
is where you are going, this is not where
I would begin."
If postmodernism wants to end up with autonomy,
this is not where to begin.
But this is where they begin.
They basically end up cutting the branch on
which they are sitting.
They are talking about the limitless instability
of words.
But they use words, and words, and words,
and words telling us that their philosophy
is actually quite stable, because they are
explaining it so thoroughly.
So the first point is basically that there
is no point of reference for words.
Secondly there are no laws of logic which
we should be seeing as superintending or governing
our discourse.
No indubitable laws of logic.
The laws of logic are cerebral.
They are sort of ways in which we construct
our own western world or eastern world.
There are actually no laws of logic that are
undeniable.
Now the truth of the matter is ladies and
gentlemen, when you go to the laws of logic
there are fundamentally four.
There are many subsets under these but fundamentally
there are four.
One is the law of identity.
When you have identified something as A you
are not talking about non-A. The second is
the law of non-contradiction.
The third is the law of the excluded middle,
which basically means that just because two
things have one thing in common does not mean
that they have everything in common.
And fourth is the law of rational inference.
The law of identity, the law of non-contradiction,
the law of the excluded middle, and the law
of rational inference, these are the four
fundamental laws of logic which we assume
are sub-sumed in our discourse.
But the post-modern thinkers logically want
to argue that logic doesn't really work.
They want to de-bunk this notion of logic.
What fascinates me, absolutely fascinates
me, when I became a Christian in the sixties
and I would start visiting campuses and so
on, they would ask me for reasons why I have
become a Christian.
I'm struggling sometimes to answer their questions,
and so I made it the pursuit of my life to
study the relevant answers to such honest
questioners.
Now, when you give the same answer, do you
know what they say to you?
They say "That's too rational.
There is too much of logic involved in all
of this."
The moment they have been beaten at their
own game, they wan to change the rules and
the terms of engagement.
This is precisely what has happened in our
university campuses.
The law of non-contradiction is being jettisoned
and denied.
When I finished a talk at the University of
Iowa, a student ran to the microphone, she
cupped her hands and she shouted out at me,
William Lane Craig and I were doing some open forums
out there together, and the place was packed.
And she looked at me and shouted out "Who
ever told you that our answers to life needed
to be coherent?
Where did you get this from?
Is this not another western way of foisting
it's worldview upon others?"
And she went on and on.
One of the secrets to answering a question
is to let the questioner talk long enough
and they will convict themselves.
And so when she finished I said "Ma'am, I'll
be glad to answer you're question, I just
have one question for you.
When I answer you now, do you want my answer
to be coherent or may my answer be incoherent?"
The audience roared.
I said "You know what, hold that laughter.
I really want to know where she is coming
from.
Is she comfortable with contradiction only
in herself or is comfortable with contradiction
in any counter perspectives as well."
You may have heard this so forgive me for
repeating if it's familiar too.
But this happened years ago, and then I'll
move to my next couple of points.
It was in Santa Barbara California.
It was in the 1980s or so.
I was dealing with a series of talks on why
I believe Jesus Christ to be the only way
to God.
A professor of philosophy, an American gentleman,
came up to the front to me and said to me,
"I want you to do me a favor.
I want you to deal with the subject, why you're
not a Hindu."
He said, "Because I have become a Hindu."
I said "Well, I'd be interested in why you
have, so on and so forth."
I said "It sounds fascinating."
He said "No no, you don't need to hear that.
I want hear from you why you're not one."
I said "You want me to take a whole talk on
that?"
He said "yeah."
I said "No, I don't want to do that.
You know I learned a long time ago when you
through mud at others, not only do you loose
a lot of ground but you also get your hands
dirty."
He didn't find that funny.
He just looked at me and said "No, no I want
to take you on.
You know what, I challenge you.
You speak on why you are not a follower of
that worldview, and I'll bring my whole class
on philosophy and we'll rip you apart at the
end of it."
I said "That's supposed to be an inviting
feeling for me?"
I said "Look, I'll make a deal with you.
Let's go out for lunch."
I gave him my famous line "You pay, I'll pray
and we'll have a good time together.
I don't want to impress your students.
I don't want to impress anybody else, just
you and me.
He said "Can I bring the professor of psychology
with me?"
I've always wondered why he wanted to do that,
whether we were going to be two subjects of
study under scrutiny or what.
I said "I'm happy for you to bring him, but
you and I are going to talk, not him.
Just you and I."
He said "Okay."
We went out for lunch and he began his long
discourse with his opening line which was
flawed.
He began by saying to me there are two kinds
of logic, actually there are many more, but
you don't stop a person that quickly.
So I said, “keep going."
So he said "There are two kinds of logic."
And he said "Ravi, the kinds of logic are
these: one is the law of non-contradiction,
the either/or system of logic.
Either affirmation is made or ascension is
made if you say it is either this or that,
not both of these."
And he gave several illustrations on this.
He said "The problem with that either/or,
non-contradictory type of logical system is
that it is a western way of thinking."
I said "No it's not."
He said "Yes it is."
I said "No it's not."
He said "Yes it is."
I said "No it's not."
He said "Yes it is."
I said "Keep moving on then."
He said "There is a second kind of logic that
is the dialectical system of logic, both/and,
both this and that."
He said if you look at a systematic treatment
of eastern philosophy, you ask one person
“Is God personal?”
He says yes.
The you ask another person “Is God personal?”
He says no.
You ask a third person who's right and he'd
say both of them."
He said "Because the easterner does not worry
about contradiction.
It's the dialectical system of Hegel and Marx
and on and on."
And he went on and said "The dialectical both/and
is an eastern way of thinking."
I said "No it isn't."
He said "Yes it is."
I said "No it's not."
He said "Yes it is."
I said "No it isn't."
He said "Yes it is."
I said "Move on."
So, he'd established these to propositions.
The either/or system of the law of non-contradiction
is a western way of thinking.
The both/and dialectical system is an eastern
way of thinking.
He drew his conclusion now.
"What you really need to do Ravi when you're
studying eastern philosophies, rather than
saying that you've dismissed it because of
systemic contradiction is to say, 'but this
is the way we think in the east so it's okay.'
You should not worry about contradiction.
They don't."
He said, "Your problem is that you are studying
the eastern religion as a westerner."
The irony of this conversation was that this
was a westerner telling me that.
I said "Okay.
Sir, I just have one question for you."
Because by now he'd used up all of his placemats
and everything.
He'd drawn on everything and we'd finished
up our lunch, the psychologist and I.
His was now sitting congealed in front of
him.
So I said "I have just one question for you.
What you're telling me sir, is that when I
am studying eastern philosophy I either use
the both/and system of logic or nothing else,
is that right?
That I either use the both/and system or nothing
else, is that right?"
He'd just picked up his knife and fork.
He put it down.
And God as my witness here is what he says
to me.
"The either/or does seem to emerge doesn't
it?"
I said "Sir, I've got some shocking news for
you.
Indelibly I look both ways before we cross
the street, it is either the bus or me, but
not both of us."
I said "And you've got your facts wrong."
Shunkera the leading proponent of monism of
the Hindu kind was an either/or believer.
He believed in the law of non-contradiction.
Gautama Buddha was born a Hindu.
He rejected Hinduism and became and founded
Buddhism because he subscribed to the law
of non-contradiction.
Muhammad very clearly subscribed to the law
of non-contradiction.
The question is whether those systems are
true or not standing up to their own tests
by their own leading protagonists."
I said “You know what; you spent the last
hour using the law of non-contradiction with
which to debunk it.
You are telling me either I use your system
or nothing else."
As I told my brother-in-law, this was a Hindu
convert.
He said "That's funny you are an evangelist,
I'm an expositor and you go for the jugular,
I go for the defense.
He said "If he had said that to me, I'd have
said if both/and is all that you crack it
up to be, why can't I use both the both/and
and the either/or."
It's a kind of gentler version of what I just
said to you.
But when you look at post-modernity, there
is no anchor for language, no objective place
for logic.
Thirdly, you move very quickly.
There are no boundaries for meaning.
There are no boundaries for meaning.
You know what, it is sad when you think of
what happens in the lives of those who have
lived it out.
I don't want to celebrate this tragedy, but
since postmodernism believes in this story
to a certain extent with out a meta-narrative,
let me read for you the story of a postmodernist.
I'm reading for you how the life of Michel
Foucault ended in 1984.
I think he was about fifty-six years old.
He was the grand professor of philosophy in
Paris.
He died there in the same hospital in which
he had once written a major book on madness
and civilization.
It is Os Guinness who tells it so powerfully
that for me to try to tell it in my own words
would rob the impact of the impact it had
on me when I read it.
Please give me you undivided attention.
"Night had fallen on death valley.
But for the three men sitting there on the
edge of a cliff in the spring of 1975 the
darkness was anything by inert.
It was crackling with anticipation and with
the electronic music of a Karl Hiem Strauckhousin
concert.
Soon for each of them in different ways it
was also exploding with the ecstatic visions
of their LSD tripping.
Two of them, the young Americans had experienced
acid before.
But for the third, a Frenchman in his late
forties, the experience was novel and shattering.
Two hours later he gestured towards the starry
heavens.
"The sky has exploded.
The stars are raining down on me.
I know that this is not true, but for me it
is the truth."
The trip was enough of a gamble for the Americans.
It was their idea, and they might have just
blown the fuses of the man they had considered
the master thinker of our era.
It was a far greater risk for Foucault, world
famous philosopher, militant and professor
at the prestigious College de' France, but
one he undertook eagerly.
Ever since he was a young man Foucault had
been on the Nietzschean quest to become what
one is.
Or as Nietzsche had expressed it more strangely
"Why am I really alive?
What lesson am I to learn from life?
How did I become what I am and why do I suffer
from being what I am?"
Foucault aimed to complete this quest through
the ordeal of limited experiences; going to
the extremes and through the discovery of
the dioneation element in his personality
within.
He had said once "It is forbidden to forbid."
But that night in Death Valley, he increased
the stakes of his life-long wager.
He'd always been fascinated by madness, violence,
perversion, suicide and death, and now he
wanted to liberate himself further by transgressing
all boundaries.
Buffeted by a strong wind all three men huddled
together on the promontory for Foucault spoke
again tears streaming down his face, "I'm
very happy tonight.
I'm very happy.
I have achieved a full perspective on myself.
Now I understand my sexuality.
We must go home now."
Only Foucault’s friends know the full story
of that evening in Death Valley.
But there is no question that it changed him,
especially his thinking on sexuality.
It propelled him with reckless abandonment
to the doomed mid-seventies San Francisco
world of free sex, powerful acid, altered
states of consciousness and death from AIDS.
Defiant in its openness, reckless in its conviviality,
the homosexual world of Castro, Polk, and
Fulsome streets had suddenly become one of
the wildest least inhibited sexual communities
in history.
For Michel Foucault the lure was irresistible.
He was a non-stop testing ground rich in limited
experiences for both body and mind.
He ended up with that Faustian gamble dying
a horrific death of AIDS at the age of fifty-six.
That's his story.
You know what?
I have a strong sense that the Son of God
weeps at the loss and misplacement of such
genius.
He was a brilliant man.
He was a brilliant man.
But here is the point.
Postmodernism writes out its individual stories
by denying an overarching story.
So, they debunk words.
They debunk logic.
They debunk meaning.
And they debunk the meta-narrative.
There is no overarching story.
You know I was born and raised in India.
Some time ago my wife began to do a family
tree study of my own life.
She talked to one of my aunts who'd lived
to be one hundred and three.
My wife comes from Canada.
And she said "I want to know a little bit
about Ravi's background and family."
Page after page was written, and written,
and written.
And then I sent one to all of my brothers
and sisters.
We could only get back about seven generations.
How wonderful it is to know you're own background,
your own family tree from whence you came.
Think about being in this world and knowing
nothing about its origin, knowing nothing
about why you are here, knowing nothing about
language, knowing nothing about meaning, know
nothing about the story of why this world
was meant to be.
There is no meta narrative.
There is no overarching story.
Ladies and gentlemen, Franz Schlegel wrote
years ago wrote a play about an audience sitting
in an arena in an auditorium looking at a
platform waiting and waiting.
The curtain rises, all of a sudden all they
see is the backs of people sitting on chairs
facing the other side and five minutes later
another curtain rises and those on the stage
are looking at another stage with other people
sitting on their chairs and waiting for another
curtain to rise.
After about twenty minutes of this the people
in the actual auditorium start looking around
to see if they too are on a stage.
There is no point of reference whether you
are author or spectator.
The tragedy as I said is genius gone wrong.
Let me close with a couple of thoughts for
you here, and with that I will come to an
end.
"Well Sam, will you tell me the parable of
the Good Samaritan."
This is a young ordained about to get his
first interview.
"Yes sir, I will sir.
Gladly I will.
Once there was this man traveling from Jerusalem
to Jericho and he fell among thorns and the
thorns sprang up and choked him.
And as he went on his way, he didn't have
any money and there he met the Queen of Sheba.
She gave him a thousand talents and a hundred
changes of raiment.
And he got into a chariot and drove furiously
and when he was driving under a big juniper
tree, his hair got caught on the limb of that
tree and hung there many days.
And the ravens brought him food to eat and
water to drink.
And he ate five thousand loaves of bread and
two fishes.
One night when he was hanging there asleep,
his wife Delilah came along and cut off his
hair and he dropped and fell on stony ground.
But he got up and went on and it began to
rain.
And it rained and rained forty days and forty
nights.
And he hid himself in a cave and he lived
on locust and wild honey.
Then he went on until he met a servant who
said "Come take supper at my house."
And he made the excuse and said “No I won't,
I have married a wife and can't go."
And the servant went on into the highways
and into the hedges and compelled him to come
in.
After supper he came down there to Jericho.
When he got there he looked up and saw old
queen Jezebel sitting way up high in a window.
And she laughed at him and he said 'Throw
her down out of there.'
And they threw her down, and he said 'Throw
her down again.'
And they threw her down seventy times seven.
And of the fragments that remained they picked
up twelve baskets full besides women and children.
And they blessed are the piece-makers.
Now whose wife do you think she will be on
that judgment day?"
It's a brilliant story, but it's not the story
of the Good Samaritan.
He didn't get the job.
Do you know the story of the gospel?
“Tell me the story of Jesus.
Write on my heart every word.
Tell me that story so simple, sweetest that
ever was heard.
Tell how the angels in heaven sang as they
welcomed his word.
Tell me the story of Jesus.
Write on my heart every word.”
She says "Whisper it in my ear 'till I can
see His love."
Fannie Crosby a blind woman.
There is a story to be told.
There is a story that is messed up.
And geniuses are leading our world astray.
Take to the word.
Take to His reason.
Find His meaning, and tell His story well.
There are many who are waiting to hear good
news.
Postmodernism is bad news.
God bless you.
Thank you very much.
