Confident Belief: What Does it Mean to Know Truth?
Postmoderns also believe that truth is a construct of language. Because the meanings of words can vary, each linquistic group has its own truth. However, the fact that there are different words for the same thing doesn’t change the fact that the referent is the same. We don’t change the nature of something simply by changing the words we use for it. This is the weakness of what has been called “political correctness.” It is thought, it seems, that by using different words for something we thereby change the thing itself. While a thought, it seems, that by using different words for something we thereby change the thing itself. While a change of terminology might change our attitude about something, it doesn’t change that something itself.
Thus, we reject the skepticism of postmodernity and confidently rest of the faith we hold as describing the way things really are.
We believe that there is no reason to accept postmodern skepticism. Skepticism is ultimately unlivable, and we needn’t spend our lives “playing with the pieces.” There is no reason in principle to assume we can’t know ultimate realities just because of our human limitations. It is arbitrary to simply decide God cannot reveal truth to us because of our limitations.
Further, there is no reason why there can’t be one explanation of reality. The good news for postmodernists is that we have been met by the One who created the “story” of the world and is able to put the pieces together into a coherent whole. His is the one true explanation of reality. We deny that we are trapped behind our own perspectives, cut off from direct contact with reality,25 and thus not able to “impose” truth on others. Truth is knowable and sharable.
Postmodernists believe that each person can only have his or her own “story” or life’s situation, that each of us can only have his or her own little piece. We respond that we have a story that puts all the pieces together, a story which is coherent and consistent and which matches the nature of the needs of humanity. As we look around the world we see that we all are very much alike in our basic needs and aspirations. If there is such a thing as human nature and a human condition, it isn’t unreasonable to think there could be one explanation of it.
Summary
Modernism served to produce doubts through its insistence upon certain knowledge, and postmodernism produces doubt through its insistence that no one can really know ultimate truths. Can we have confidence in the trustworthiness of our beliefs in the face of modernist and postmodernist ideas?
Category: Fall 2007, Living the Faith
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