Since Thursday of last week we have been discussing a Barna\Summit Ministries survey the revealed Biblically-incorrect beliefs that many Christians hold true. We are attempting to overcoming them with the truth of Scripture. Yesterday’s article combatted materialism from the “secularist” movement and today we examine post-modernist beliefs that have slipped in particularly among Gen-X Christians. Post Modernism is a belief system that rejects the common notions of absolute truth, objective reality and many other grand narratives of the last century. This thought system asserts moral relativism and, likewise, there is no one correct system of logic. If true, then nothing can be known with certainty.

19% of those surveyed believe no one can know for certain what meaning and purpose there is to life. I could understand a Christian believing this if the statement began with the phrase, “Apart from God”. In fact, excluding God seems to be the key mistake post-modernists make. In a world without God their assumptions would very much be true. Jeremiah 10.23 tells us: “Lord, we know that people do not control their own destiny. It is not in their power to determine what will happen to them.” Without God there is no meaning or purpose in anything that exists or any event that takes place. He is the Creator, and apart from him we can do nothing (John 15.5).

23% of those surveyed believe what is morally right or wrong depends on what an individual believes. By removing God from the equation, we are left with ourselves being the only source of truth and morality. Most any kind of personal behavior is now permissible. Lying to get what we want, believing whatever we want, having sex with whomever we want, doing whatever drugs we want – it’s a very college freshman kind of morality. This sounds good on the surface, being able to determine right and wrong for me gives me latitude to live any way I like. What if I determine what is right for me is to become a serial killer? Well, that is covered by the next belief.

15% of those surveyed believe that if your beliefs offend someone or hurt their feelings, it is wrong. Under post-modern beliefs you can live however you like – so long as those moral underpinnings do not offend or hurt anyone else. That means becoming a serial killer is out of the question. These two systems operating together, says the post-modernist, allows individuals moral freedom without social consequence. Again, in the absence of God, this makes a certain kind of sense. In the presence of God, however, it fails utterly. Here’s a case in point: the individual may determine that sexual activity outside of marriage is acceptable, but when they appear before the Lord for judgment that reasoning proves to be a broken cistern, that is to say that it holds no water. God has made it very clear that any sex outside of marriage is sin and will be judged. Furthermore, the activity is not just a sin against God but against one’s self. The Bible states: “Flee sexual immorality! Every sin a person commits is outside of the body – but the immoral person sins against his own body” (1 Corinthians 6.18).

It is the foolishness of unbelief that leads a person to accept such philosophies as post-modernism, and any Christian accepting such beliefs is far removed from thinking biblically. Tomorrow we will examine the last and most insidious philosophy some believers have accepted: Marxism.