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Postmodernism presents a challenge to the Christian view of epistemology. What are some practical ways you, as a Christian educator, can respond to this challenge?
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I would explain to my students that the world is real, and that we experience the world that God created through our senses. However, there are truths that cannot be experienced this way; truths that can only be experienced through faith and a relationship with Jesus.
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I believe that drawing students back to an understanding of truth as objective rather than subjective and relative is vital. Hence, I do lessons demonstrating that T/truth, while having subjective aspects, is ultimately objective and demonstratable.
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As a Christian educator I would respond by giving examples of how Postmodernism does not deal with reality. For instance, what you feel is not always the way it should be or the way that it is. I can “feel” like a giraffe in Africa but in reality I am not. Or you can feel like Jesus does not exist but in reality he does. Postmodernism is like creating a fake world around you in order to satisfy your emotions and opinions.
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As an educator we can point out the key laws of nature that always stand no matter what we ‘feel’. Like the laws of gravity, the laws of math, etc. I doesn’t matter that I may ‘feel’ like I can defy gravity, I will never be able to do it.
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In postmodernism, all religion, including Christianity, is reduced to the level of opinion. Christianity asserts that it is unique and that it does matter what we believe. Sin exists, sin has consequences, and anyone ignoring those truths has to face those consequences, Christians say. Scripture presents God’s truth as objective, absolute, universal, and eternal. It discloses knowledge about the nature of God, humanity, salvation, ethics, history, that we can teach our students.
