We are of a most sophisticated generation that is the most most gullible (brainwashed) in all history. Don’t think so? Keep reading to see where you are. (Please note that quotes are italicized.)
The “birth-pangs” of the Post-Modern Christian Movement are in reality the dying gasps of this age. The spirit behind most movements promising a new world today is not Christian. It is not light breaking through, but rather darkness settling in (False light is the same as darkness).
Food For Thought (From www.gotquestions.org/post-modern-Christianity.html):
“Post-modern Christianity is just as difficult to lock down in a concise definition as post-modernism itself. What started in the 1950s in architecture as a reaction to modernist thought and style was soon adopted by the art and literary world in the 1970s and 1980s. The Church didn’t really feel this effect until the 1990s. This reaction was a dissolution of “cold, hard fact” in favor of “warm, fuzzy subjectivity.” Think of anything considered post-modern, then stick Christianity into that context and you have a glimpse of what post-modern Christianity is.
“Post-modern Christianity falls into line with basic post-modernist thinking. It is about experience over reason, subjectivity over objectivity, spirituality over religion, images over words, outward over inward. Are these things good? Sure. Are these things bad? Sure. It all depends on how far from biblical truth each reaction against modernity takes one’s faith. This, of course, is up to each believer. However, when groups form under such thinking, theology and doctrine tend to lean more towards liberalism.
“For example, because experience is valued more highly than reason, truth becomes relative. This opens up all kinds of problems, as this lessens the standard that the Bible contains absolute truth, and even disqualifies biblical truth as being absolute in many cases. If the Bible is not our source for absolute truth, and personal experience is allowed to define and interpret what truth actually is, a saving faith in Jesus Christ is rendered meaningless.
“There will always be “paradigm shifts” in thinking as long as mankind inhabits this present earth, because mankind constantly seeks to better itself in knowledge and stature. Challenges to our way of thinking are good, as they cause us to grow, to learn, and to understand. This is the principle of Romans 12:2 at work, of our minds being transformed. Yet, we need to be ever mindful of Acts 17:11 and be like the Bereans, weighing every new teaching, every new thought, against Scripture. We don’t let our experiences interpret Scripture for us, but as we change and conform ourselves to Christ, we interpret our experiences according to Scripture. Unfortunately, this is not what is happening in circles espousing post-modern Christianity.” (Source: http://www.gotquestions.org/post-modern-Christianity.html)
The following is by Jack Niewold:
“… The fact is, the faith system of great swaths of younger people today, and not a few older people, represents what Bret McCracken calls “ hipster Christianity.” This was quantified a few years ago by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons in their groundbreaking study of American Christians called UnChristian. “Out of ninety-five million Americans aged nineteen to forty-one,” Kinnaman and Lyons write, “about sixty million say they have already made a commitment to Jesus that is still important; however, only about three million of them have a biblical worldview.” The authors’ definition of worldview is based on eight criteria, a mix of seminal doctrines and practices, as well as a commitment to an objective moral code.
“When only five percent of those who profess to be Christians respond that their beliefs affect them both cognitively and practically, we have a problem.
“The fact is, much that we call Christianity today is neo-gnosticism. It is a minimal set of general, internalized religious propositions that have little affect on matters of language, habit, dress, social expression, sexual standards, and public witness. For millions of evangelical church-goers, “faith” amounts to—in the formula of sociologist Christian Smith—“moral, therapeutic deism,” a kind of feel-good, do-your-own-thing, subjective spirituality.
“Thus, in the study done by Kinnaman and Lyons, vast numbers of these young believers have little disagreement with cohabitation, pre-marital sex, abortion, public profanity, habitual movie attendance, and generalized adherence to the political and moral values of the culture at large.
“As in every age, when someone attempts to discuss this problem, or to suggest any kind of threshold Christian identity, he or she is understood to be fundamentalist, as placing barriers in the way of those who would otherwise come into the faith, or as judgmental. The very idea of such a discussion is preemptively ruled out of bounds because it offends the sensitivities of those who, in agreement with secular notions of “tolerance,” hold to a conviction that each person is autonomous and possesses a veto over theological or moral considerations that he or she finds personally distasteful.
“Is there a problem here? You bet. We seem to be rapidly approaching a point at which the soft tyranny of secular intolerance of public religious expression is combining with a self-censure on the part of the church over what it will agree to as a minimal deposit of the faith and its moral component. We are being driven from the marketplace not only on the basis is external opposition, but by our own misguided belief that Christian faith is primarily a private matter between ‘me and Thee’ …” (Source: http://vitalsignsblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/when-hip-trumps-holy-post-modern.html)
Think About It…
Rallies (“movements”) across America are breaking down barriers and bridging the gaps of all denominations and non-denominational “believers” alike. Why? To make us all one (The goal is to set up a one world church – of the Anti-Christ).
Don’t you ever ponder about what happened to the Spirit-energized change of life style once an individual becomes a Christian – inside…and out? How can you have a personal relationship with Jesus and not understand how to become a part of the Kingdom of God?
Haven’t you observed that the Rapture is stressed so much that the present physical, social and political needs of the inhabitants of world are completely ignored. Most “Christians” are thinking about how to escape the world, rather than how to bring God’s justice to the world (foreshadowing what God will bring to the world – the new Jerusalem).
Where are you standing?
G Freeman Shepherd
