A CREDIBLE HOPE

We find ourselves today living on the brink of a transition between two competing worldviews. On one side, we have empirical modernism that tells us that we can know reality accurately by means of empirical truth, scientific experimentation and rational evidence. On the other, we have spiritual postmodernism that tells us that all truth claims must be doubted and eventually rejected if it claims to be anything more than a subjective truth "for you."

These worldviews butt heads most directly when it comes to the question of what happens to us after we die. Modernism tells us that to work with the assumption that there is anything after death is to go beyond the empirical evidence. To live consistently in our naturalism, we must come to grips with the fact that, like animals and plants and microbes, death is death ... and there is a irrevocable finality to it. Postmodern spirituality gives us a much brighter, more optimistic view than the cold rationality of modernism. It says that it doesn't matter whether we have any kind of empirical or rational basis for our beliefs, as long as we instinctivley, though tolerantly, think that it is true, we can fashion reality after whatever image might suit us. With modernism comes a naturalistic pessimism; with postmodernism comes a naive optimism. Modernism says to ruthlessly follow our heads; postmodernism says to ruthlessly follow our hearts. Both are ultimately dehumanizing.

Yet standing on the edge of this abyss begs the question: "Is there not a third way?" Do we have to have either a bleak, hopeless empirical rationalism or a naive spirituality that boils down to feelgood guesswork about cosmic issues? Must we choose between intellectual naturalism and experiential spirituality? Are rationality and hope mutually exclusive? Or is there a hope that says "Death is not the final word" that actually finds itself rooted in empirical reality? Can we be honest about the angst of our human condition while still holding out for a real, credible hope?

It is here that the gospel speaks a powerfully good word. Only in the gospel do we have unblushing hope that is more optimistic than the most naive optimism of postmodernism. And yet, in that same gospel, we also see a relentless commitment to the empirical rationality and historical validity of the claims of Christ that would do modernism proud. Thus, modernism tells us that at the end of ruthless rationality is a bleak, hopeless world explained wholly by biochemistry and physics. Postmodernism tells us that we don't have to believe in the pessimism of modernism, but gives no rational basis for its optimism. The gospel alone tells us that there is hope and the basis for that hope is the publicly verifiable fact of the resurrection.

The Apostle Paul says it best when he writes: "And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless ... and your faith is futile ... If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men."