Our cultural moment is unique because we aren’t just post Christian, we’re quite nearly pre-Christian. As a middle school teacher Nathan Sutherland saw the number of students who didn’t have proper context to understand even simple Biblical text references from Western authors: baptism, floods, and overcoming giants. Today we discuss the idea of what has shaped modern thinking, what it means to be post modern and maybe even post-post modern, and how we can live intentionally as followers of Christ in these seasons and times.
Transcription:
Nathan Sutherland:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Gospel Tech podcast. My name is Nathan Sutherland and this podcast is dedicated to helping families love God and use tech. We are currently in episode two, the continuation of this conversation with myself and Nathan Betts. We don’t have a fancy title, so just consider it like Gospel Tech Extended right now. But we finished our last conversation, Nathan, by the way. Welcome.
Nathan Betts:
Yes, good to be back.
Nathan Sutherland:
Yeah. So we finished our last conversation talking introduction to postmodernism, where we are specifically in this conversation talking about how can we redeem conversations around culture, God and technology. And we jumped into culture, this idea that we are using apologetics, the brushing away of the dust and the filth away from the truth of Christ to expose lies in the culture and also to empower parents and young people to make deliberate decisions in the culture.
So why don’t we, when looking at this, you mentioned postmodernism, can you help us understand why that’s not just a theoretical concept? Why do we care postmodern, why should that word matter to us and what does it mean in terms of the greater cultural conversation?
Nathan Betts:
Right. Yeah, no, it’s a great question. I think for many listening, you might think, “Why are we using in that word? Why is that even important?” I think in a big way it’s just helping us put words to what we are experiencing, to what we’re thinking, to what we’re experiencing, whether it be in what we see in the public discourse, in schools, in entertainment, the engines driving social media.
So here’s the thing, coming back to what I mentioned on the last episode, the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks talking about our strange moment right now, and the words he puts there are as if we are undergoing the cultural equivalent of global warming. Okay, what does that mean? Well, it means that this moment didn’t just happen in 2024 or 2023, et cetera, et cetera. It was a slow burn.
Now, why is postmodernism so coming full circle to your question, why is postmodernism helpful? Well, it’s giving words not only to what we’re experiencing, but if you have postmodernism, it means it’s postmodernism. It means, okay, it comes after modernism. But people often think, okay, what does that mean then? What does it mean to be just postmodernism? Well, in a big way, to understand postmodernism, it’s helpful to understand it as a reaction or a response to modernism. But part of the post within postmodernism means that it’s not just a response. It also needed modernism to get here. So what is modernism exactly?
Nathan Sutherland:
I was headed right there. Yes.
Nathan Betts:
So that’s a humongous conversation and you could get-
Nathan Sutherland:
But you got to give me the three-minute version. I might fall asleep.
Nathan Betts:
Right, yeah. Okay. So much of modernism is about reason. Reason became king. Before that, now of course, if we’re going to give a big, long old history of truth, once upon a time truth, for instance, was objective and not only was seen as objective, God was a source for truth. So you go back to early church fathers like Augustine and even predating Augustine. Now, Augustine found God as an ultimate source of truth. But before that, you go to someone like Plato, Plato saw at the very least truth as objective, but slowly within this history of truth, when you move down, say from Augustine to the Renaissance, to then time of Enlightenment, so 17th century that time, and you have philosophers like David Hume, Immanuel Kant and et cetera, et cetera.
Okay, so I’ll just stop with that, because I think a lot of people are like, “Whoa, hold on, stop with the philosophers.” But the idea there is all of a sudden you had reason, reason became a source for truth and it was accompanied. So God was still there, but eventually` at some point, and then we’re not going to go there here, but at some point, truth in terms of where it was rooted, where it was anchored, where it was located, became detached from God. So reason became the ultimate source by which truth could be established.
Nathan Sutherland:
So this is huge. So I want to put, I know you were going slow, but my brain still is smoking. So Plato, we have Plato talking about truth in that everything in this reality is a reflection of the perfect, and we are trying to find the perfect, and this was the premise of logic and reason. And then as you mentioned, we jumped flash forward, we have the birth of Christ, certainly and the rise and fall of many nations, but in Western philosophy, the Enlightenment being the moment where people go, “Hey, you know what? We’re not so impressed with this God situation. Let’s see if we can do better.”
And they’re like, “We’re going to make logic and a scientific method and everything is going to be verifiable only if it can be tested and approved with mathematics and numbers effectively.” Is that semi-accurate and logic being the reasoning of the mind to really test ideas? “Is this a good idea? I don’t know. Let’s argue it out until we reach a conclusion.” So at that point, we now have modernism. Everything is going to be controlled and measured and weighed. Not on God saying it’s true, but whether it makes sense to me.
Nathan Betts:
Yes. I mean, I think truth, existence was disproportionately focused on reason. Disproportionately cognitive. And that’s modernity.
Nathan Sutherland:
That’s modernism?
Nathan Betts:
Yes. Yeah. Now, okay, many tentacles. So just for those people-
Nathan Sutherland:
Yes, we’re boiling it down for you, philosophy professors that are listening and yelling at the speakers.
Nathan Betts:
Throwing things.
Nathan Sutherland:
Yes. Please don’t send us your rage at all, but you can come on and continue the conversation with us. It’d be great. All right, so we have that at least. So as listeners we know, all right, so this wasn’t normal. Can I ask, this might be obvious, but before modernism, people then would you would say the pre-modernism was just the faith the people would turn to a God for their answers? Would turn to a God for their purpose? Is that pre-reason?
Nathan Betts:
Yeah, you have the Middle Ages, medieval time where certainly-
Nathan Sutherland:
Did I open the can with that? Sorry.
Nathan Betts:
No, I always have the caveat of there’s complexity here. It’s not this monolithic thing. I’m like, yeah, truth was just found in God, full stop. Okay, so then you had modernism and all of a sudden you had this like, no, no, no. It is more complex than that. But I will say that even the church had a more credible role when it came to understanding truth. Now we keep coming-
Nathan Sutherland:
At which point point in history?
Nathan Betts:
I would say in the Middle Ages, still, most certainly going before that. Renaissance you have, yeah, absolutely. In both the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and then I think it was now of course, I think modernism, the Enlightenment, that 17th century era is at least a helpful grid because I think it’s not just this decade or that decade or even that century, it bleeds over. But it’s at least helpful to think of, “Oh, these figures and in some cases, unintentionally putting out work ideas that detached truth and even objective meaning from God.”
And some of these people were Christian, if not theists, they believed in a God. But the unintended consequences of that was that meaning, existence, truth, life as we know it could be had, could be lived, it could be fulfilling even outside of God. So again, this disproportionate amount of focus placed upon reason. Now, do you want me to get into postmodernism? Let me just stop there.
Nathan Sutherland:
Yeah, no, the reason I asked those follow up questions is to let, as we talk about redeeming a cultural conversation, we can’t go, “Well, what’s wrong with that political party?” Or why should we just ignore this show or not listen to that musician? The problem is deeper into the fabric of how our society makes sense of reality. And I love this quote, and I know he wasn’t the one who originally said it, but John Mark Comer has the quote about what truth in reality. Like, oh, well, “Reality is that which best corresponds with truth” and oh no, excuse me, vice versa. “Truth is that which best corresponds with reality. Reality is what happens when you’re wrong.”
And I like that idea in this conversation. We have modernity and hey, there was a season where people sought truth in reality and people turned to God, and there was a very distinct spot, specifically in European and western culture where we went, “You know what? We’re going to rely on our books and our knowledge.” You certainly had your Pascals and your individuals were like, “No, we have them both, and it’s beautiful and it’s amazing.” We still revere those minds and their souls, the people God made them.
Et in our culture, modernity took a turn. We can watch the spot where reason has given away. I don’t think many people would argue, “No reason’s doing great in public discourse right now.” I don’t think a lot of people are going to say, “Yes, the selection of those characters for that game or movie were reasonable.” So how did we get to then the beyond reason point? What do we need to know? If you were to put it in a nutshell about postmodernism. With like reason’s not enough, I need something else.
And last time you semi-agreed to me with me that postmodernism is a vibe, which I mean I say it a little bit tongue in cheek, but if you see the way debate or public discourse happens through social media, it is about feeling, and you’ll hear this in churches, well, why do we disagree on the subject? Well, I feel like or another way people say, “No God that I would believe in could ever do”, as though God is beholden to your personal opinions. That’s not the way we should talk about God or decisions or our own country. So how did we get to this postmodernist spot, if you were to nutshell it?
Nathan Betts:
Yeah, I think what I’d say there is somewhere, I think in the mid to late 20th century, philosophers reacted to this disproportionate amount of energy and focus on reason. And one person put it like this, there were unpaid bills of philosophy, and one of those unpaid bills was the passions, emotions, feelings, and many, even in the academic world, and I mentioned before, say existentialist philosophers, which basically by the way, existentialism is simply this really, really drilling it down here, that what I do, what I experience, what I feel determines my essence.
In other words, I get my meaning. I get my meaning for existence of what I do, and in some cases the offshoot of that is what I feel, my emotions. So yes, we see that’s very problematic, but for many people it’s stemmed from the belief that, “Hey, those of you in philosophy, you’re spending too much energy on what’s happening cognitively. You haven’t given value to the emotions, to feelings.” So existentialism put seeds for what we now see in postmodernism in this almost going the other way, if not maybe a combination of now the emotions most certainly matter. In some cases, trump what we might deem to be reason or truth or even things that we would once upon a time have seen as objective.
Nathan Sutherland:
Sure, that your perceptions make your reality. And that in that if I perceive this to be true, then it is true for me. My truth would be the way we would hear this phrase.
Nathan Betts:
Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan Sutherland:
So in a culture, where can we begin to even address that kind of craziness? When someone goes, “This is my truth, and you have your truth, and that’s postmodernism.” That to me feels like a ship that’s already sunk, but we’re not willing to accept that we’re talking about redeeming the conversation. How can we redeem that?
Nathan Betts:
Man, that’s a good question.
Nathan Sutherland:
When it comes specifically to the gospel and hope and raising kids in a culture that’s going to look at them and go, “Well, that’s your opinion.” How do we brush that dust off the truth that lies underneath because there is truth in Christ with that reality that exists, whether or not we acknowledge it.
Nathan Betts:
Yeah, I think that the answer is always need to be contextualized, and that’s just a relational truism. I think for instance, two people could be asking a question, but the context is going to determine that in many ways, they’re asking different questions. Say if someone’s asking a question out of a crisis, they might be using the same kind of wording to ask that question that a person say in a classroom is asking, but one person in the classroom is asking academic question where the person in crisis may be using the same wording. The former is actually asking just, well, it’s a different question.
Nathan Sutherland:
Sure. Why does God allow bad things?
Nathan Betts:
Right, exactly. Classic, yeah.
Nathan Sutherland:
How could God allow and one kid, it’s a theoretical practice and one kid’s like, “No, seriously, why is this happening if God’s good?”
Nathan Betts:
Okay, well first of all, put this out there, truth matters. And that is something that has been really, that in and of itself has come under a lot of antagonism, like no, especially in the Trumpian era language like fake truth and all that kind of language of, “Okay, well truth is what you just deem it to be. But that’s not necessarily my truth.” Well, let’s see how that works in reality because that’s the test. I mean, going back to what you said, truth is understood as that which corresponds to reality. That’s a philosophical point, but also something we all realize to be evident.
So let’s draw this out a bit. At a popular level I remember years ago, there are a couple examples, but Beyonce came out with, so this is a bit older example, but in 2014, she came out with her album Lemonade. But in that album, she alludes to in implicit, but also explicit terms that Jay-Z cheated on her. Well, all of a sudden social media completely. And this doesn’t mean that much. It happens every minute now, but it blew up. And why was social media blowing up? Because everyone wants to know, is this true? Did he actually cheat on you? I want to know because I want to know if he’s a dirt bag. Now we might look at this-
Nathan Sutherland:
Just making artistic story about making lemonade out of lemons?
Nathan Betts:
Why does that matter? Because we want to know, is that thing true? Why does that matter? Because they’re relational consequences. We want to know what that guy’s really like. Now, simultaneously, I remember thinking a lot about the Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump political narratives. So much of that was based around what is true? Is Hillary this person who she claims to be? Is Donald Trump the person he claims to be? Are the claims made against these people? Are those things true? Why does that matter? It matters because we, at a relational level, the Beyonce example might be popular, but it’s still zooming in on we do value truth. So for us to say, “Well, you just keep your truth to yourself and I’ll keep my truth.” Well, we have to put what Tim Keller says, the livability test out here. Is that livable? And it flat out does not work.
We don’t live like that. If someone wrongs us and someone else says, “Oh, well, wasn’t that bad.” Hold on a second, that person just punched me in the mouth. Ah, no, no, it didn’t. No, we want to know, “Hey, did it happen?” And especially if we’re on the wrong side of justice, and that’s the other piece. So you put the livability test, but especially when it comes to matters of justice. Right now, we are living in a world where there are wars and rumors of wars, and when people say, “Well, that didn’t really happen”, that matters because lives are on the line. There’s injustices happening. And for us to say, “Well, some people think that happened, some people didn’t.” Well, that matters profoundly. We want to know at not only a relational level in this case, but at a societal level we see that as problematic. Let me just say this. When we abandon truth at a societal level, that becomes catastrophic.
Nathan Sutherland:
You don’t have a society anymore. If you abandon truth and an objective way to know it, we don’t have society. I mean, there’s no reason to send out your armies to protect something because there’s nothing left to protect. And I think that’s when we talk about this conversation about, “Okay, how do we redeem the conversation around culture?” If I were to just repeat back the basics of what you’re saying, modernism was like, “We’re going to just do what I did to my kid where I was like, you can’t your heart just focus on the facts.” And society pushed back and was like, “No, I have feelings.” And that’s good. God gave us feelings. We can be like David and tell God all our feelings. I was reading, I want to say it was Psalm 42 this morning where David is just going on about how the Lord as the deer pants for the waters, my soul longs for the Lord. And then goes on to why is my heart so heavy and what is happening inside me, and I will praise the Lord.
Those are emotions that are tied to truth. I’m emotionally experiencing untrue things. And then I love that David always comes back to like, woe is me in the world is terrible, and I will praise the Lord. But I remember being in the Lord’s presence. So when we talk culture and kids in our own families and we have post-modernity saying, “Feelings matter to the point where now my feelings are true and your words are violence because I disagree with them”, which is troubling, but we’re not here to focus just on the let’s be terrified. Let’s recognize that that’s troubling. Society can’t exist when there’s no truth claim or when the truths are just whatever the people in power are feeling today. I mean, it is a kind of society, but it’s autocratic and it’s terrible. So what then can we, in redeeming this conversation, how can we help our kids see it? How can we help ourselves process that? At least one step to do that?
Nathan Betts:
So just a really quick reiteration. What I was saying just before that was okay, truth matters because we see it. When we look at the livability test at the relational level, it matters. That’s almost like first thing that maybe it’s a bit of a captain obvious point, but we got to at least establish that one.
Nathan Sutherland:
We’re saying it. Yeah.
Nathan Betts:
Secondly to what you just said there, the question, okay, what does this look like for us as parents? Well, for me, kids aged 11, 8, 6, and 4. So I’m speaking from that particular paradigm, but I will say when we come back full circle to the whole idea of truth and feelings, so reason and feelings, how do we use both? Well, just the other day, our youngest was very angry and she started throwing things. Fortunately it was just teddy bears and things like that across the room.
But that is a case of saying feelings are important, but we have to harness that because especially I think in our cultural moment in which anger is seen as a virtue, it’s like, yeah, you know what? The more angry you are, the more respect you get. Because yeah, Christianity has something to say about that and putting it, putting that in its proper place. Okay, you’re angry, okay, that’s valid and might not be, but in some cases it is valid, but you need to harness that and it needs to be balanced out with grace. So in other words, behind the anger, is there emotion? And so yeah, feelings are important, but now we need to figure out how to live well with that and to harness it. And also CS Lewis had this great line where he says, “Sometimes we need to tell our feelings where to get off.”
And so, okay, yeah, feelings do matter, but we need to also say what is also true? What is true? Is that thing, throwing something? Is that helping you become a better person? Is that helping you become more like Jesus?
Nathan Sutherland:
I was going to say specifically more like Christ, right? When we look at the fruit of the spirit, we don’t have anger. We know that anger’s a very clear emotion that God has all the time, always angry at sin. There’s not a moment where he’s like, “I’m chill with sin today.” But the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, those are the fruit that we’re told when we’re connected with Christ, that’s what we’re going to bear.
And yeah, we need to know how do we direct it and how do we submit it to what God has called us to have? Be angry about some stuff and give it to the Lord to work it. So it’s not coming out of our will being done, but his. So postmodernism, let’s tie this down to finish this episode because we could go a long ways on this, but in postmodernism then we have parents who need to understand, sounds like biblical truth, you would say. We need to understand what scripture says. Let’s be in the Bible as our foundation of truth, the thing we’re going to… More than reason.
Because at some point you can reasonably assume my emotions are the most important thing. That’s how existentialists got there. And so we’re going to moor our foundations to scripture from this conversation forward is our clear understanding. And then what second piece of application can we give parents who their kids are listening to the music they’re watching the shows, they’re involved in the social media platforms that are megaphones for disinformation? No matter what the disinformation is, it is in its essence, anti truth. Just the fact that it’s there to confuse and demoralize, I would say.
Nathan Betts:
Yeah, I think what I would say there is as a parent, one of the most meaningful things we can do is just be present, engage. David Brooks, New York Times columnist in his recent book, How to Know a Person talks about our attention. Don’t see attention as a dimmer, see it as an on and off switch. And I think for us as parents, especially when we have screens ourselves, we’ve got whatever emails we got people to get back to, we have things on our to-do list attention is the highest commodity right now, and also it’s the most precious thing we can give to our kids. What does that mean? So flowing into how does that interface from something like what David Brooks speaking of which is actually just becoming more human? How does it interface with Jesus becoming more like Jesus? What this means is yes, what we say matters, but also what we embody matters enormously.
So just being present, being aware of how am I engaging right now? Not what am I saying, but what am I being? What am I like around my kids? Am I an anxious presence or am I someone who is okay asking questions as opposed to just offering statements? Jesus was great at that. And so in a way, I think actually to become more like Jesus actually is going to require us to become people who ask more questions. Yes, he offered statements, but we could be, I think I can always become better at asking questions. Here’s the thing, I myself will say, I’m guilty of spending maybe too much time on thinking what I’m going to say as opposed to what am I going to be? What am I going to embody? And it’s like that one person, the name has escaped me, but it is an Irish evangelist who once said, “There are five gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Christian. Most people will never read the first four.”
And so what does that tell us? Yes, we have to know the scriptures. Check. 100%. But in some cases, especially when we think of our friends, families, family members, colleagues, maybe for some of us listening, our family members, our kids might never pick up the scriptures, but they are reading something and the scriptures they’re reading is us. And if we can embody something of Jesus that might be the most compelling and most beautiful and attractive, apologetic of Jesus they might ever get. Now that also is not saying that’s an end game. It’s like, no, we want to present them so they actually engage himself with Jesus, but actually we might be the embodiment of Jesus that brings them to Jesus. So I think those are some things I would say. How do we become more human, but not only just become more human I.E. giving them our attention? But also embodiment, asking the questions, thinking not only what I’m saying, but what am I being? What am I embodying right now?
Nathan Sutherland:
Yeah, which is the reason I brought up the scriptures. I found that when I’m trying to embody my best self, I only do damage. To my kiddos, to the people that I want to bring life and light to because it extends from my ability even in my best. The reality is no matter what I think is happening, the reality that I’ve run into time and time again is this massive heart God’s given me to share the gospel or to bring hope and light into these dark places, and then the incredible finite energy that I have, even emotional energy to the point where I can’t return a text. That point where I’m so burned out, just stretched so thin, trying to be hope and light for this person to the point where, man, I need God to yes, empower my work, but to know you and for you to get that connection.
And that’s my heart as I hear you talking about us as parents, like, yeah, let’s be present and let’s make sure we’re being fed and washed by the word. That we are. As David mentioned, that we are deer panting for water, that our souls long for the Lord so that yes, we can know the Lord, but so that we can be whole and ready to love our kids, be present with them and know the source that they need for the brokenness that we can’t even fix. So all right, I had promised that we weren’t going to go too much further on that and that was probably like 10 minutes ago. Classic. Do you have any final thoughts before we end?
Nathan Betts:
No, that’s good. I think the last thing I was going to say is when we think of even attention, that’s a Jesus thing, right? I’m sure you see this all through the gospel, but recently I’ve been in Mark’s gospel and you constantly run up against this language of Jesus saw, he looked, he noticed, and Mark is making a point there, that Jesus gives people his attention. When parents are bringing the children to Jesus in Mark 10, the language there in that eyewitness account tells us Jesus picks up on that and he’s indignant. He sees actually the disciples pushing these children, some of whom are little babies pushing them away and Jesus is upset.
Then right back to back in the next story where you have this guy called the rich young ruler comes to Jesus, we have the language. Jesus saw him. And that’s not anecdotal. That’s important to the humanity of the conversation that Jesus saw him. And then also you have the profundity of Jesus saw him and loved him. But I think that’s something that if we want to become more human, but also become more like Jesus, giving our attention is actually something we see that he most profoundly embodies.
Nathan Sutherland:
And which connects with people who are wrestling with their postmodern. If you see their feelings, that is the value that lets them know that they’re both real. Like, okay, you’re like, you’re seeing me, I’m real. And you don’t have to validate it. I don’t have to say, and your feelings are right, but they’re present and they’re important and they matter to me because they matter to you. And that’s going to be a vessel that we can use to communicate hope and to redeem some of these conversations that right now sometimes feel like you just have to claim one emotion strongly enough and shout until the other person stops and feel like that must’ve been good, but man. All right.
So parents, in wrapping this up, when we talk today, we talked about in redeeming this conversation on culture specifically that our culture extends from one of reason. So it was faith and reason to the point where reason was overpowering, and we now are in a spot where emotions are king and queen. They run it, and as long as I feel this about the Bible, or I feel this about myself, or I feel this about reality, social media or whatever, that becomes our truth. That becomes what we operate on.
And that’s not what Christians are called to. We are called to a God who is embodied, who set aside his Godhood and came down and lived amongst us so that the father could get glory and in the process we could get redeemed. He defeated sin, Satan, and death, and that is the hope we now live from. When he rose again, he didn’t set up his kingdom now, he set his kingdom in each believer, and that’s what he promised in John chapter. I want to say it’s somewhere 13 to 16. It might be 14 to 16, but the idea that we have the Holy Spirit.
So parents, be encouraged. If you do not have a walking, working, faith in Christ, this is the day when you can bend your knee and be indwelled to love your kids because there is a greater truth, the truth that this life is better a reflection of. And we’ll talk more on that next week, we will jump from our postmodernism conversation to more of, all right, how do we dig into the practical? We’ll probably take a jump to either how culture sees God or how culture applies to technology, if I had to guess. But we’ll continue this conversation on redeeming this. If you have any questions, reach out to me, [email protected], or?
Nathan Betts:
Just hit me up at Nathan Betts, it’s two Ts. Nathanbetts.com.
Nathan Sutherland:
Nathanbetts.com. And then tell your friends, join us next time as we continue this conversation about how we can love God, use tech, but specifically how we can redeem the conversation around culture, God, and technology.
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