Let God Interpret You: Recovering the Self in a Postmodern World
If Christians are to think well about living faithfully to Christ in a postmodern world, we must realize that we are dealing with the interrogation of language, the interrogation of thought, and ultimately the interrogation of reality.
And this thinking has permeated nearly every thread of our society.
Understanding Postmodern Thought
It could be said now that anyone who tries to understand postmodern philosophy and its claims will quickly become frustrated. You may feel like there’s a lack of order and conclusion.
And here’s the thing: that’s the point.
You’re not supposed to be able to make sense of the framework because the system itself is skeptical of frameworks.
Because when you try organizing your thoughts with a logical progression and try making rational conclusions, and especially when you try assessing these ideas according to Scripture, you will find yourself very frustrated because postmodern thought is cynical about all those means that we take for granted as being actual means of knowing truth.
And that frustration itself gives us insight into the insanity and the chaos of the educational theories that are driving this cultural breakdown we find ourselves in.
Why Does This Matter?
“Okay, I get it. These ideas have had really bad consequences, but what’s at stake here?”
Well, it matters because the very thing that postmodern epistemology is most cynical about as a means of knowledge is the very thing that Christians believe is the means to knowing God AND knowing ourselves.
What am I talking about? The Scriptures: Special revelation.
Postmodernist thought does not take language at face value as if it actually represents what it intends to represent.
The Bible: An Absolute Text in a Relative Age
Yet, God intends for people to receive his Word objectively and to submit themselves to it. There is no biblical category for analyzing God’s Word and questioning it and being skeptical of it and bringing our own experiences and cultural understandings to bear on it.
No, God’s Word claims to be divinely inspired and authoritative, and we are to bring it to bear on us. We are not the standard for judging God’s Word, God’s Word is the standard for judging us.
We don’t approach the Bible critically; we approach it willfully ready to conform to it. Why? Because it is the unchanging Word of God:
Isaiah 40:8 - “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”
Matthew 24:35 - “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
Revelation 19:15 says of Christ’s second coming that “From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations.” That’s apocalyptic language used to describe his word.
Hebrews 4:12 - “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
The First Postmodernist
We cannot compromise on God’s Word. It must be a hill the church dies on.
Because here’s the thing: Satan is an old dog, and old dogs don’t learn new tricks. Foucault and Derrida and Lyotard were not the first ones in human history to sow skepticism about words, and the day in which we live is not the first time that there has been doubt raised against the Word of God.
We see this all the way back at the beginning of human history, with the serpent in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve.
Consider God’s revelation in Genesis 2:15-16:
“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
This is objective revelation straight from the mouth of God to Adam. Genesis 1 and 2 make some things very clear: God is creator; God is in charge. Adam is subordinate; Adam is dependent.
God Interprets Us
Adam has one means with which to make sense of himself, to understand his purpose, to make meaning of the world he’s been put in, to understand the wife he’s been given. And that means is the spoken revelation of God.
Adam and Eve are not to question God’s Word. They are not called to question what interests to power inform their interpretation, they are not called to change and adapt God’s Word to fit the context of their cultural situation.
They are called to receive his Word and obey his Word. Period.
Whatever he says about them, they are to accept it. Whatever he says to do, they are to do it.
Whatever he says not to touch, they are to stay away from it. There is no relativism; there is not subjectivity. Not open to interpretation. No, this is objective, and it is absolute, and Adam and Eve are to submit to it gladly.
Truth Is Objective
What do we mean when we say that truth is objective rather than subjective?
When we say truth is subjective, we are saying that we are allowing our own personal feelings and interests and motives and wishes to play into interpreting the data.
When we say that truth is objective, we are saying that nothing inside of us is allowed to be brought to bear on the truth.
Truth is what it is, regardless of how one feels about it. That’s how Adam and Eve were to treat God’s Word.
Satan’s Oldest Trick
But notice what the serpent says when he comes on the scene. Look at Genesis 3:1: “Did God actually say….”
The serpent tempts Eve to question the objective Word of God.
Not, “Does God actually exist?” but, “Did God ‘actually’ say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?” And he twists God’s Word because God never said they couldn’t eat of any tree in the garden.
Look at Genesis 2:16. God actually says, “You may eat of every tree of the garden.” Every tree except one.
So Satan, by casting doubt about legitimacy of God’s Word and twisting it, successfully sows cynicism in Eve’s mind about the accuracy of God’s Word and her ability to know his Word.
He does not tempt her to question her belief in God but rather her ability to know what he has said and know what he means. The legitimacy of God’s Word is challenged, and Her interpretation of it is challenged. Do you see this?
Postmodernism and the Self
So, what does this have to do with the way in which people today interpret themselves and the world they live in?
Well, in short, it has EVERYTHING to do with it.
The modern LGBTQ+ movement and also the rise of transgenderism, along with all the destructive components to these, are allowed to thrive because postmodern thought has become the normal epistemological framework for the greater Western society.
The once shocking statement, “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” only makes sense in a world in which people look to themselves and to the culture around them to interpret themselves rather than looking to the objective revelation of God to define them.
Because people suppress the clear truth about God in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:16) and pursue their own sinful passions as they follow Satan and the course of this world (Eph. 2:2-3), we must look to God alone to repair us and define us.
A New Self in a Broken World
But thanks be to God that despite whatever lies the spirit of this age tells, God has prepared his plan for redeeming and repairing humanity since before the ages began, and he has accomplished this plan in his Son, Jesus Christ (Rev. 13:8, Col. 1:26-27).
In Christ, God renews and repairs the Self. He does this as we “have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Col. 3:10).
And just like God interpreted Adam and Eve in Genesis 1-2 and defined their meaning and purpose, he has defined for us, on whom the end of the ages has come (1 Cor. 10:11), exactly what his goal is for the New Self: to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers (Rom. 8:29).
May we point the many broken “Selfs” in the broken culture to the God who made them, defines them, and delights to repair them.
This article is adapted from a Sunday morning sermon, which you can view/listen to in full here: