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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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In today’s world, Christians have to remember this is NOT our world, our world is in Heaven with God. The time to go there has not come yet. While we are here on this earth, we have to believe wholeheartedly that we KNOW because of God’s word or because Jesus said it. Even in today’s society, the Bible is the most important road map to believing, learning, worshiping, and Knowing God.
There are times when things happen in this world that take control of our feelings. Is that real? Feelings are not the way to follow Jesus or to gain knowledge. Feelings can cause misjudgment, but turning back to the Bible can explain things in a direct clear light.
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Postmodernism can be confronted by asking it to prove itself, which it cannot without truth claims that are predicated on the very things it calls untrue, such as “no absolute truth.” I think the climax of postmodernism is already passed, and many are leaving this philosophy behind. It has proven itself empty.
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Epistemology is the viewpoint of how can we know or what can we know? In regard to God, we can know he is real and is the author of our world and creator of mankind because the bible is the active and living word of God. In today’s world of post modernism, the world tells students that they should ignore what they observe and go by their feelings and gut instead. In regard to the gender confusion issue that plagues our culture today, we can say that God created male and female out of his own image and we can share that just because a student may feel like they are the opposite gender of what they are doesn’t mean that they are because God designed their chromosomes to either by XX or XY. Where there is confusion, we can point student back to the bible and what God’s word says.
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It is very hard teaching in the postmodernism world. But I hold true to the scriptures in the bible and discuss them with the students when we are talking about touchy subjects. That way, I show the students that it isn’t just what I believe, but it is how GOD intended us to believe and act in the world to glorify him.
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Often the challenge comes by way of some scientific principle. They challenge the existence of God because they can not see God nor detect His presence. The fastest way I dispense this problem is by having them think about their own thoughts and challenge them to explain how they know that the are thinking without having some physical sense such as sight detecting it. They know in their own thoughts that they have thoughts yet there is not some tangable thing that they can hand someone that is their thoughts so another someone can handle it and know that it is a thought.