Swimming in poison

Scot McKnight shares his insights on how today Western civilization is awash in "a toxic combination of modernity and postmodernity":

If modernity gave our culture a sense of individualism that has been ratcheted up beyond what either Bible or philosophers would ever recognize, postmodernity tells us that individual choice itself is relative. I don’t believe we should dismiss postmodernity with the derisive, and far too often unthinking, label of “moral relativism,” but there is within postmodernity’s deepest impulses the belief that universal truth and all-encompassing metanarratives can’t be had. We are too finite and when folks believe they’ve found the magical metanarrative for all, they abuse power and turn violent.

Well, yes, there’s some truth to that, but that’s the whole problem with postmodernity. Genuine insights become, paradoxically enough, all-encompassing metanarratives against all metanarratives. This tendency is one of postmodernity’s addictions.

So, here we are. Staring at a unique cultural product: humans turned inward investing sanctity in the Self. We have constructed a postmodern castle wall around that Self believing it is so sacred that no one may violate your choice – you determine what to believe and what is right and wrong. The Self is protected by the Wall of Individual Relative Choice.

That one's a keeper.