So over the past few months the church I am apart of, New Life, has been going through this book, and it really has been my first encounter with the idea of postmodernism. I knew nothing about it, but find out that I was more postmodern than I would like to say, though I am working through it and reaffirming my foundations.
Postmodernism has a wide definition but to sum up part of the idea, it would be the idea of pluralism, where truth is subjective if there is any truth at all. Meaning that what is necessarily true for me is not necessarily true for someone else. Another vein of this is self-enlightenment, which means if you want to obtain a higher since of spirituality you must dig deep within yourself and find new wisdom inside of yourself.
So this leads me to my encounter today. I was walking to the bus from Zachary when a man stops me and proceeds to tell me that I look I enjoy knowledge, and to a point I do, then he tells me that he is with a group of traveling monks that give out these books on how to obtain knowledge. As you can imagine this is a thick book, I mean it has all the knowledge you could ever want in it. He believed that all that we need as humans was more knowledge, then as a society we would become less fearful and more peaceful, and this knowledge came from within in which this book helped you obtain.
He was a really nice guy, and I have to admit I some what stereotyped, I mean he told me he was a monk I was expecting brown robes with a tassel around the waist and a bald head, but all he had was the bald head.
What I am sad to announce is that I should have talked to him longer and as I walked away I was convicted to talk to him more, and yet I let my selfishness lead me away from him. This was a perfect opportunity to talk to him about knowledge not coming from within but from God and enlightenment being a gift from God. As I think now, I could have talked about how we are all wicked people in need of a Savior, and even if he didn't believe it at least he had heard about it. He was so willing to talk to me about what he believed and yet I was too cold, too tired, too focused on school to talk to him about the truth of the Gospel.
I am thankful that God revealed this to me, convicted me of it, and that I know that this is something I really need to work on. There is absolutely no reason to not talk about Jesus.
