It is a long standing standard of my top ten reads list, that potent tiny tome, The Abolition of Man by the incomparable C.S. Lewis. Here Lewis enters into a critique of postmodernism that is prescient, gracious, and devastating. Of course, exposing the soft underbelly of postmodernism is like exposing the soft underbelly of a soft underbelly. It is not a difficult task to gainsay those who say, “We don’t know from nothing.” Epistemologically, postmodernism is clear and immediate hooey. It is self-referentially absurd. If it is true, it is false.
What so tickles me about Lewis, apart from the fact that he saw this coming before most people, is that he then turns his attention to the question of telos, or purpose. Relativism not only destroys truth and goodness, but it destroys purpose. If there is no good and bad, there is no good to pursue. If there is no true and false, there is no true direction to move. If, in other words, our world is ever and always under the sun, then of necessity, all is vanity.
I wonder if it is less the numbing influence of media and more the deadly poison of relativism that has given us a generation of youth who are not only directionless, but are listless. Could it be they have no get up and go because their telos has got up and went? If nothing matters ultimately, then securing the high score on some video game is just as important as serving your country. Why should we be puzzled, to borrow Lewis’ idiom, that the geldings we have made are not fruitful?
The mirror to all this is our own blessing inside the kingdom. We have been given the truth in Jesus. We are being made to be good, to reflect the character of Jesus, And we have the most sacred of callings, to make known the glory of His reign. We have not just a reason, but the reason to get up in the morning. We of all people are the most blessed. We cry out to those who would abolish man, to behold the Man, to embrace the Man, to become more like the Man. May He bless us and them with ears to hear.