One Massive Collection of Confusion
The more I learn about periods, cultures, and worldviews, the more confused I get. Unlike the naïve freshman that I was three and a half years ago, the terms empiricism, realism, romanticism, materialism, mysticism, Darwinism, Marxism, modernism, post-modernism, naturalism, existentialism, and all the other –isms that I cannot think of at the moment are not new to me. However, while I have had plenty of discussions and even written papers concerning these… what? What do I even call them? Worldviews? Is that all they are? How do you even “define” a worldview? Is Christianity not a worldview? It is a religion. Or is it? Some people cringe at that term. I know I do. I prefer to call it a relationship. That is what distinguishes Christianity from all the other religions. But wait. What? Other? So Christianity is a religion? I just contradicted myself! But is that not what we do? Constantly? We make a claim, qualify it, and then contradict it. And that is exactly my point about all the –isms we have collected from the past.
We start out with God creating the world and giving us the Word, but then people come up with theories and ideologies to accommodate their inability to accept the Truth as it is. Then in response to those theories, even more are made up to counter them – and as Veith writes, worldviews do not go away (191). And so we are left with traces of all these previous “worldviews” which we think are in the past but really carry on until today. The difference between people now and people back then is that people today have a record of the people back then.
Consequently, discussion after paper after discussion after paper, I am still not sure I know much more about these concepts than I did when the only thing I had ever heard of – ever been told about – was postmodernism. Back then, all I knew (because it was all I was told) was that I lived in a postmodern society and that young people are too “postmodern” in their thinking because they do not believe in absolutes. But then, is that not relativism? (Hurray for yet another –ism!) The more I read about culture and pendulum swing reactions between one culture and the next, and the more I try to neatly categorize the -isms under period, religion, theory, worldview, or culture, the more I find myself unable to qualify them. Some of them function as time markers, some are more religious in nature, some are social ideologies, and some overlap two or more categories.
Supposing that “worldview” is the overarching term for all of these categories, then I guess we can call them worldviews. Whatever they are, they play an integral role in the way people reason, and with all the worldviews that have sprung up in the last few centuries, society today is bogged down by a load of presuppositions that most people are not even aware of. As a result, we have Christians who are existentialists in some ways, postmodern in other ways, Marxists in some other way, and romantic in yet another way. How then do we define our current society? How will our future generations refer to us when they look back at us? Would they somehow be able to come out of the incredible mess that we are in and come up with something definitive or would they be an even more confused society? Has society ever been definitive in the first place?
All of these questions create chaos in my mind, making me want to jump up and go back to that Sunday School default of yelling out “Jesus!” After all the concepts/ideologies/ worldviews that have emerged over the centuries, the only clear and coherent thought that I can give is that I am thankful I can go back to the Word. I can go back to God – I can go back to the beginning. I may not have answers for the many questions in my head – I may never be able to fully comprehend any of them. I may be a little bit of an existentialist at times, or maybe even postmodern. But then I also have the Holy Spirit to keep me in check, and the Word of God to ensure that I do not confuse the Holy Spirit with myself. For that, I am thankful.
Work Cited
Veith Gene Edward Jr. Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature. Illinois: Crossway Books, 1990. Print.