Debate results

I am sorry that I haven't contacted you lately. School exams are this week and I have been overloaded, plus I am trying to get final details about a novel for Breakaway magazine resolved. That, combined with Christmas holiday, and you see how things are.

Many of you have asked about the debate with the atheist last week. I really must tell you that I left with a very odd feeling. There was really no battle at all...the atheist side had nothing to give! Wihtin the forty minute debate, I presented at least twenty facts on creation, prophecy, miracles, philosophy and religions and my opponent answered none of them. In fact, those who watched the debate on in-school television agreed that he gave no facts whatsoever. I quoted not only from the Bible (Isaiah 1:18, Mark 12:30) but also from Nietszche, Kierkegaard, Kant, Stephen Hawking and others. I gave facts from both sides of the fence and answered them carefully, but there was no response to my assertions, just opinions and feeling.

This, my friend, is postmodernism.

Let me give you an idea of the society around us which is postmodern. Here are some characteristics:
"- there is no objective progress, simply a 'playful celebration of chaos'..." (Hewitt sociology website) In other words, it's better to kick over a construction that to build one.

"...society is based instead upon the decline of absolute truths, and the rise of relativity." (Ibid) Relativity is the belief that there is no real right or wrong... you can make up your own right and wrong. Absolute truths like sin, purity and obedience are outmoded to the postmodernist.

The pbs.org website offers it best:
"...postmodernism is highly skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing always that the outcome of one's own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain and universal."

Note that it is up to interpretation of the individual as to whether something is true or not.
THAT is the way the debate went. The atheist answered no questions but plowed ahead with his own questions...yet when I answered them cleanly, he registered no response but merely went off on another trail.

I send this to you so that you may be aware of the thick postmodern thinking about us in the world today.

People are trying to invent their own truths, but may I encourage you with one clear picture...
...after the debate I met him again in private at a Starbucks for a one-to-one. In showing him the prophecies of the Bible and their fulfillments (Psalm 22:1,16, 18 ; Isa. 9:6 and Micah 5:2 for example), he was genuinely shocked.

Please pray for this man, and please study to be ready for a postmodern challenge that may come your way.