Brad Alles

According to Post-Modern thinking, there is no Truth, just beliefs that are products of human subjectivity. You don’t test whether something is objectively true; you see if it works or has beneficial effects in the lives of people who believe it. For example, does it make them happy or give them meaning? That’s what makes something true—if it is pragmatic. Josh McDowell rightly points out, “This generation, as a rule, is not asking, ‘Is it true?’ but rather ‘Does it work?’” In addition, Steven Prothero, professor of religion at Boston University, says, “It isn’t about orthodoxy. It’s about whatever works. If going to yoga works, great—and if going to Catholic mass works, great. And if going to Catholic mass plus the yoga plus the Buddhist retreat works, that’s great, too.” So being a Catholic-Buddhist is contradictory on a logical level, but not for the Post-Modernist.

Yet here is where we must help people think through their beliefs before we show the truth of the Bible.  If all beliefs are not really true, but only useful, then this Post-Modern concept itself is not true either. A statement that undercuts itself is self-defeating or self-referentially absurd. An example of this is a married bachelor—there’s no such thing! When Post-Modernists claim that there’s no truth, just whatever works for you, why should the rest of us pay any attention? Their own claim fits in the category of “no truth.”

In addition, we can point out that since there’s no truth, there’s no measure to gauge whether what works is good or bad, right or wrong. Is lying bad? Is cheating good? If the measure for truth is that something simply works, then “immediate workability” will lead to instant gratification and temporary fixes that are not necessarily moral. They simply achieve what a person wants. Worse yet, it often leads to whatever the most powerful people want, and others will suffer for it.