I was going to write something well-organized and full of impact about this trend. But as I have a headache, and my eyes keep crossing, I shall simply rant about it.  You were warned.

We All Know Where To Point Fingers

There is a sort of star-quality class of legalisms in North American churchian culture: the King-James-translation-infallible phenomenon (I guess if the Pope is the devil, one must find some other idol).

The women-must-wear-skirts phenomenon–I would still like to know this: How many patriarchs of that movement purchase their trews from the women’s department when pricing makes it a matter of better financial stewardship? After all, pants are supposed to be “men’s” clothing. So, good sir, don’t tell me those are women’s pants in the women’s section.

The do-not-associate-with-sinners camp. Self-disassociation Anonymous?

The you-must-homeschool-or-the-culture-will-get-you camp, AKA Pinky and the Brain’s Next Scheme for World Domination Using Cute Overachievers. (Yes. This is the post where I lose all my Kingdom Now homeschooling friends.)

The women-are-not-allowed-to-have-thoughts camp. One of my favourites, at least when I’m in a mood to disconcert some unsuspecting male schlubs who are classically incapable of critical thought.

Easy targets, right? These are tried-and-true religious inventions. Like all human religion, they use scripture for justification and authority, but are founded on assumptions from outside the scriptural framework.

Major trends exist to free us of the oppression of legalism. In the process, they’re reinventing legalism with a whole new set of chains, perhaps even heavier than the previous generation’s.

Thus, I give thee: post-modern legalism.

As You Like It

Post-modernity believes that everyone has their own truth, their own understanding of it, and their own limited perspective which renders us all incapable of ever truly grasping absolute truth.

Because after all, none of us can have a complete and perfect framework. Therefore, all we can do is pick an arbitrary community standard and force people to live with it or get out.

This is no part of the biblical framework of a priori assumptions, which place God’s perspective before us in clear, understandable terms.

The remodelled radical churchianity, the “free” churchianity, does not throw out legalism. It comes with new chains. It silences teaching. It removes conviction. It destroys relationship with God.

I mean this:

As Tozer would say, we have a great longing to be near to God, yet we feel that He is far from us. So we plead in our prayers and songs, “I want to worship You,” or “Come near to us.” We don’t actually worship; we don’t actually face the presence of God.

Because the distance between us and God is in unlikeness, not in space-time. And in throwing out absolutes, we throw out God Himself, the one true Absolute. We declare Him unknowable, essentially a figment of our imagination.

God is right there, but our natures are so far from His that we can’t see Him. As long as we view Him through a human-invented lens–post-modernity or old-style legalism, it doesn’t matter–He will be distorted, not as He is.

Clinging to this approach is faith, but unregenerate. The work of the Spirit is no part of the equation.

Freedom–Like a Rock Star, Baby

Ultimately, a libertine is not a libertarian.

For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.

~Philip. 3:18-19

A libertine will not approve the things that are good–and if He Himself is our peace (Eph. 2:14), if I have no good besides Him (Ps. 16:2),  then a libertine cannot approve Christ, nor those who desire to live godly in Him.

And indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. (2 Tim. 3:12)

Maybe my kids will laugh at postmodernists. I guess it doesn’t captivate my imagination because I was raised that way–by secularists–long before post-modernism was cool. One thing you learn, growing up in the non-Christian culture, is that the real biblical framework will never be appealing to the non-believing mind.

For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life. And who is adequate for these things?

~2 Cor. 2:15-16