In Christian apologetics, we have a term that we use to describe how we ground our knowledge and reasoning in objective truth. That term is epistemology. Simply stated, epistemology is the study of how beliefs are justified. I don’t intend to take a deep nosedive into philosophy here, suffice it to say that as Christians, we ground our beliefs in the revelation of an all-knowing, all-sufficient, infinite God.

When God created Adam and Eve, he did not leave them to figure out the world for themselves. At least, not completely. He gave them instructions and commanded them to obey. But He didn’t just give them instructions, God also gave them the ability to understand and interpret His instructions and the language by which they communicated. Upon creation, Adam and Eve’s knowledge rested solely in the revelation of God.

It wasn’t until Adam and Eve rejected the knowledge and instruction of God—the revelation of God—that the fall happened and creation began to descend into chaos. To question, “did God really say?” began the spiral into fallacious reasoning, subjective self-centered idealism, and irrational thinking, otherwise described by Scripture as “rebellion.”

Paul demonstrates this fast decline of the world, apart from God, that rejects God’s clear revelation in Romans 1:21-22, stating “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools…”

Throughout the Old Testament, we see descriptions of various revivals taking place where God chooses people to deliver out of chaos and back into order—but these people can only remain ordered so long as God’s hand restrains the rebellious among them. We’ve seen it mostly through God’s chosen nation of Israel, and repeatedly throughout the book of Judges, whereby God delivers a chaotic people and draws them back to Him. But we also see God move on Gentiles the way he did with Ninevah when he sent the prophet Jonah to call them to repentance.

Ultimately, the greatest move by God to bring order out of chaos was to send His Son Jesus to die for us, that those who would believe upon Him should not perish, but have eternal life. This regeneration of life also brought with it the benefits of the renewal of the mind—the mind of Christ. Romans 8:7 says that our previous mind which is set on the flesh is hostile to God and cannot please Him. A mind that is hostile to God is going to reject the revelation and knowledge of God naturally and move further and further away from Him.

Fast forward to the 21st Century, we are now witnessing a society that has rejected God to such a degree that it has embraced the most imbecilic nonsense that the world has ever presented. Today, this manifestation of chaos is demonstrated in things such as postmodernism which is the rejection of absolute truth.

Postmodernism, the rejection of absolute truth in favor of subjectivism, has fractured people’s ability to think in a straight line. Postmodernism has people thinking that they’re at an old country buffet where you can get a plate and just pick all the stuff you like even if there is a mass of contradiction on that plate. In postmodernism, there is no such thing as contradiction. In reality, God owns the buffet, the ingredients, the floor they’re standing on, the silverware they’re eating from, and the one true and living God is authorized and qualified to declare what everything on your plate is and what it’s for.

But the rejection of God leads to the rejection of absolute truth and objective reasoning and everyone just gets to define things for themselves. In a postmodern world, everyone gets to choose their own gender. They can decide what to do with their “bodies” and the body inside of them. They can choose their own morality; what’s right for me might not be right for you—sexual immorality is rampant. Teachers can indoctrinate children into an LGBTQ lifestyle against the will of their parents. Governments can steal from people with a good work ethic to pay off lazy people who vote for them.

And, sadly, the Church has bought into this postmodernism. In fact, Deconstruction is a primary doctrine of postmodernism, and many professing Christians have adopted this method of reasoning and applied it to Christianity. It is most importantly corrupting the way people see God’s word. The clear, objective meaning of the Scriptures the way the author under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit intended it no longer means what it originally meant. It can mean whatever you want it to mean to you.

The modern Marxist movement in our society which is being further spread by the unregenerate American Evangelical Church does not show any signs of slowing down. Society’s embrace of Critical Theory, essentially a critique of everything into destruction, has more people intellectually crippled than the world has ever seen. Rational linear thinking is being written off as “whiteness” and anyone who attempts to use rational thought is written off as a racist. The American Church has become so neutered by the secular dialectic that the last thing it wants is to be caught partaking in a system of “whiteness.”

Society no longer exists in a logical framework where bad arguments can be pinned down by logic and sound reasoning. The world just retorts to finger-pointing and name-calling. Rational people who are grounded in the knowledge of God are clearly becoming the minority. Even intelligent people are crippled by postmodernism and many Evangelical leaders—think Russell Moore, David French, etc.—are walking object lessons on what happens to a mind that has succumbed to it.

I fear it will not get better barring a miraculous move of God. The Scriptures describe the chaos at the end of times. 1 Timothy 3:1-5 says:

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.

The true and living Bride of Christ is called to be separate from these people. We are called to think rationally, having the mind and knowledge of Christ, and to destroy absurdities raised against the knowledge of Christ with sound argumentation (2 Corinthians 10:5). At this point, we have to acknowledge that the world is collapsing around us and the only sanity we’re going to have left is what we have in Christ.