My Recent Silence on Religion
I haven’t written much about religion on the blog for a while. Its not for lack of thinking about religion, or a period of doubt on its behalf, but I have come to a crossroads of sorts. Actually, that’s a bad analogy, its more like I have thought myself into a corner and don’t really see a way out. My problem is that so much of what the postmodern thinkers claim has come to make sense to me. Post-modernity claims that meaning is fractured, hopelessly fractured (it rests between the reader and text, cutting out the writer). It always has been, and we can only come to another conclusion by distorting and suppressing the historical record. A lot of this has come to make sense to me, but in augmented sense. Even when the reader interprets the author correctly its still the reader’s interpretation, and while I don’t like that Derrida attacks context like he did, I think he is right on this point. The problem I’m having with postmodernism has more to do with where the fracturing of meaning leads. I feel that accepting a postmodernist outlook demands (1) an ostrification of metaphysics and (2) that the only two responsible responses to this condition are either nihilism (in the Nietzsche/Foucault sense) or romanticism.
I first came around on postmodernism after reading James KA Smith’s Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism: Taking Derrida, Lyotard and Foucalt to Church. Smith showed that using the postmodern thinkers can provide limited succinct solutions to particular problems. I also got around to reading Discipline and Punish (which is fantastic, btw) and a comic book about postmodernity. The latter first made me realize that I would be caught between nihilism and romanticism. These responses issue a clear challenge to any sort of religious belief. Religious belief always involves doctrine or dogma, even if the dogma is the invention or reflection of a single individual. Even generally accepted principles like “don’t harm others,” its justification is usually some sort of wishy-washy “because its right, you don’t think its right?” (romanticism). And yet, if I reject postmodernity, then what? Christianity is one of those things that can’t stand on its own, from an intellectual point of view. Its needs an Aristotle or Plato to help make sense of it. But given what I have said above about meaning, I’m not sure how any of the alternatives can be anything other than arbitrary.
Let me end my post be adding that I am not experiencing any sort of religious doubt, I’m just stuck in an intellectual puzzle that I can’t seem to eek out. In fact I’ve been thinking about religion more than ever. Hopefully, something will crack through that will provide me some insight soon.
