If you have noticed in the sidebar under “Jason’s Current Reads” I have been working on David Wells’ book Above All Earthly Pow’rs for quite some time. It is a great book, but I am a poor reader. Don’t get me wrong I love to read, but whenever I read Wells, I have to have a dictionary open (because I wasn’t learned how to read them there big words so good.)
That said, it is an intriguing look at Postmodernism and especially that of the “American” sort, if such a distinction can be made. In the most recent section of the book Wells draws out that Americans live in a sort of masked Nihilism (definition: the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless. New Oxford American Dictionary.) He explains (and I paraphrase) that America has this sort of upbeat external image, but inside the dark parts of the soul, there is really nothing but this emptiness. Wells argues that this is amplified by the mentality of Postmodernism that purports there is no ultimate truth. Wells explanation is that for all of our dressed up tolerance of one truth being on the same plain as the other, at the end of the day, their is emptiness, because no one can be certain of anything.
This led me to consider how this is being played out in modern day Evangelicalism. The movement to say that there is uncertainty is growing. At the end of the day, if as a movement, we are unsure of how one can be made right with God, where does that leave us? Now this is not to say we have figured out all of God nor His Word, but we must be certain of what He has revealed plainly or hope is lost. What hope do we offer sinners if we can’t be sure that they are sinners? What hope can we offer if we write fiction novels that portray the Trinity in an unbiblical manner? If in the end all we can say is, “We’re not sure,” is this not a road that leads us to no hope which leads us to the empty existence of Nihilism?
Wells wisely points out that this is not a philosophical “living out” but rather psychological, which is lived out in the mind, but dressed up with an “ideal American existence.” (My words not Wells’.)
I also want to be quick to say, I think most people in the “uncertainty” movement, are unaware of this. I don’t think they are belligerently steaming ahead with the idea of a Nihilistic world domination. But it is the end result of uncertainty. I think most people are caught up in the “hipness” of the movement. I think they are guilty of what my buddy Eric Herb used to say, they are to busy, “trying to be non-conformists like everybody else” to recognize the faulty ground on which they are standing.
