by Elder Mike Chon

In a life full of decisions, why do you choose what you choose? As we looked at the last article, many of us make decisions based on what works before we consider what God’s Word has to say about our decisions. Many times this is a clear indication that our worldview is not based on Scripture alone but has been influenced by worldly thinking. In today’s culture, we have all been exposed to postmodern thought. Postmodernism teaches there is considerable doubt as to the existence of objective universal truth.  If it doesn’t exist, then it stands to reason that no one can confidently make it known, which tends to lead to the pluralistic belief that there are actually myriad forms of personal truth. Most of us can barely get through an hour of our day without encountering this belief in some form or another.  So the question is, have you been influenced by this lie that teaches that God’s Word is not truthful and sufficient? For most of us, we will agree that God’s Word is truth but yet we will live our lives as though it does not apply.  We say that God exists and that He speaks, and then we go and live like He doesn’t.  We can get a clear picture of this in what has been going in the last two decades through the Emergent Church or Conversation.

The Emergent Conversation began as a response to what many young postmodernists saw as a need to change church and ultimately the truthfulness of God’s Word. They wanted to experience something more authentic and something with substance in their life. Their motivation for this was not entirely bad or wrong; they felt that the church was not meeting their needs or reaching their generation, and so they began in the early 1990s a network of similarly-minded individuals who embraced postmodern values and were convinced that postmodern times demanded major changes in the church. However, they had their own disparate agendas and views of what needed to change, which were primarily discussed through the internet in the form of various blogs and forums. They began calling themselves the “Emerging Church” since they were convinced that a radical new Christianity was on the horizon (“emerging”). In 2001, a group of key leaders jumped on the Emerging bandwagon and either called themselves the “Emergent” or “Emerging” Conversation. (Editor’s note: even among themselves, not all who adopted these labels agreed on common definitions of what they meant). Within a few years, the Conversation seemed hopelessly hung up on terminology and even ideology and began to dissolve. There was no structure and nothing holding them together since ultimately their postmodern philosophy prevented the exclusivism necessary to define their movement. Everyone had anything and everything to say, and eventually the leaders of the movement themselves have retreated from using the term “Emerging.” Even though this term may not be used, their influence is continuing through other avenues which you still should be aware of.

This is a wide-scale example of what postmodern thinking can do to influence large numbers of people; it can even cause people to redefine the Word of God as such, and undermine its authority. But even for the believer that can discern this type of error, we sometimes allow this type of thinking to influence our daily decisions. How many of us have an “opinion” on what type of church is a good church for “us?” To determine what is considered a “good” church by a subjective standard that the individual determines is a hallmark of postmodernism. The emphasis on an objective standard of truth is removed; in it’s place is substituted an idea that individuals must determine truth on a personal level.  However, where we need to start is with what the Word of God says. If a church is subjecting itself to the Word of God and following the principles of the Word of God, and you still have a problem with the church not fitting your needs, maybe the problem is with you. Could it be that your life is not following the Word of God and that you are living your life for yourself and not for God? Before you criticize a church for not meeting your needs, maybe you need to look at your life and determine if you are following Christ as Lord in your life first.

So why is it so easy to fall prey to this type of thinking in our decision-making? We need to start with the knowledge that we were all enslaved once to sin. Sin not only affected the way we live our life outwardly, but it also inflicted our mind and how we think (what theologians call the “noetic effect” of sin). The Bible has a lot to say about how we thought before we became believers in Christ. Scripturally speaking, an unbeliever is a fool because he has forsaken the source of true wisdom in God. Here is a quote from Always Ready by Greg Bahnsen to describe how we all used to think:

“He is unteachable (Prov. 10:8) and despises instruction (Prov. 15:5); whereas the wise man heeds counsel given to him, “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes” (Prov. 12:15). The fool has utter self-confidence and imagines himself to be intellectually autonomous. “He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool” (Prov. 28:26). A fool cannot think of himself as mistaken (Prov. 17:10). He judges matters according to his own pre-established standards of truth and right, and thus his own thoughts always turn out in the long run to be correct. The fool is sure that he can rely on his own rational authority and intellectual scrutiny. “The fool beareth himself insolently and is confident” (Prov. 14:16), and therefore he utters his own mind (Prov. 29:11).”

If this is how we all were (there is more but I thought this would be enough to get the point across), you can see how easily we can fall back into this type of thinking with anything that we do. So what can we do to guard against such errors and being a fool in the way we make decisions? In Romans 12:1 it tells us what must be done to make decisions that are God-glorifying, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” In the next article, we will look at how we can practically accomplish this so that we will make decisions in our life that is biblically based and God-honoring.