Three centuries of human progress turned out not to be human progress after all. Man had more machines and tools and information but man also had more wars, dictators, and poverty. The promised utopia did not come and people became disillusioned with science and human reason as they really did not solve all of man’s problems. What happened? Disillusionment leads to depression and despair and lack of hope. How Western society has dealt with this condition has been given the name postmodernism.

The disillusionment with the culture of Modernity began manifesting itself in radical ways in the 1960s. I received my undergraduate degree in 1969 so I have lived through the cultural shift from Modernity to what came to be called Postmodernity and its present-day manifestations. In the process of this cultural shift, most things have been questioned and rejected. They were questioned and rejected without being analyzed to see if they were good for individuals or society; if they worked or did not work; and no thought was given to what would replace what was rejected. Generally speaking, the 21st Century culture here in its third decade reflects the void created by rejecting Modernity and the bits and pieces that have been sucked into the void. These bits and pieces give existence in the form of experiences but do not meet the definition of a culture. One philosopher said that Modernity’s “culture of optimism” has given way to a postmodern “culture of ambiguity.” I will try not to be ambiguous in giving a general and simplified description of current Western culture. This cannot be an exhaustive treatment so I will concentrate on the areas of cultural change that now directly conflict with Christianity.
The role of deconstruction
Deconstruction is a concept hard to define. It began as simultaneously a theory of literary criticism, put forth by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in the last half of the 20th Century, and a philosophical movement that questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth. It was in the area of literary criticism that it captured the attention of academics and thus, gained its initial influence on the minds of students.

In the real world, words signify meaning. But for Derrida, the meaning of words is dependent on other words, the meaning of which depends on still other words, so that one can never find the original word that has meaning. One cannot find it because it cannot exist since all words depend on other words for meaning. “What does that mean?” you ask. That is a good question, but what do you mean by “mean”?

Deconstruction says that in reading a text there is no point of enlightenment, such as the intention of the author or a conformance to an external reality that confers significance or meaning on a text. The meaning a reader gives to a text is derived from the meanings the reader gives to the various words of the text. Words are relative, and meaning is a feature of that relativity. No matter how hard an author tries to say something plainly and simply, someone can always read the text and mistake the meaning. Since the author’s intent cannot be derived from the text, what does this do to our reading of God’s words recorded in the text of the Bible?

The following example from art will illustrate the theory applied to literature by deconstructionists.

Do you see a duck or rabbit? One person will look at it and immediately see a duck and they have to be shown the rabbit. Another person will look at it and immediately see the rabbit and they have to be shown the duck. People can see the same thing differently. The point is that, obviously, the artist intended it to look like both. You really can know the artist’s intent in a piece of artwork and you really can know the author’s intent in literature. This deconstruction aspect of postmodernism does not hold true.

Another facet of deconstruction that affects the meaning of words is Derrida’s theory of word hierarchies. In literature, there are often pairs of words that are opposites of each other and they are usually understood to be in a hierarchy, one being higher or better than the other. One word is dominant and its opposite is inferior. Some examples would be good and bad, light and darkness, God and Satan, and democracy and dictatorship. However, we can only define one word by saying it is not the other. One word is meaningless without the other and therefore the two opposite words are equally important and the hierarchy disappears. For good to exist, bad must exist, so the existence of both is equally important. To give one word superiority over the other is to empower one and oppress the other. Of course, any kind of oppression is bad, but the opposing empowerment is equally as good. So says the deconstructionist.

As illogical as these two facets of deconstruction seem to the logical mind, they have influenced Western thinking and culture more than anything else. For written text to have no meaning but the meaning the reader gives it and for the dividing line between opposites like good and evil to be dissolved, the whole structure of society is dismantled.

Written text defines who we are as a society, usually in the form of a constitution and history books and the distinction and preference between word opposites forms the basis of societies’ laws. If the written documents that define who I am are subject to my interpretation, and if the words that describe what is lawful and unlawful are equal in value for me, then I can be who I want to be and do what I want to do. And that is where we are early in the 21st Century.

The Western culture that has been in place for about 2,000 years is based on a worldview, a Judeo-Christian worldview, founded on a sacred text. The great foundation of our civilization, the one that holds the sacred and the secular together to form a culture—the secular law—has made writing an essential requirement for human transactions. That is because writing has always been a permanent sign of human intentions and desires. After deconstruction, the content of the text is derived by us and our reading of it. The author disappears and his absence is read into the text so that the reader fills the void and assumes the position of the author giving the text his own meaning.