thoroughly [post]modern

The first time I read anything about the postmodern paradigm (or movement or whatever) was at a friend's house in the 1990s. Although I don't remember a lot of what I read at that time, I do remember feeling singularly unimpressed. Not because the next generation was discarding "traditional values" as the term is bandied about these days, but rather because they were discarding objective reality in favor of subjective "experience" -- which, now as I write this, seems exactly to be about the traditional value of rational inquiry as seen by a proponent of the modern view.

So when one of our pastors started talking about postmodernism, I reacted with the enthusiasm normally reserved for a skunk's arrival at a picnic. Now, a few years later, having read some of Adventures in Missing the Point and A New Kind of Christian, I have a bit more clue and appreciation for the postmodern "thing."

So here's one example I remember, maybe *the* one example I remember: how we evangelicals approach the Bible. Sometimes we approach the Bible as a biologist approaches a frog for dissection: we try to analyze it (where analyze -> "take apart") to find answers. But how else might we approach the Bible? Like two young people approaching each other on their first date (or their third, or their tenth). Like a cancer patient meeting an oncologist or therapist. That last one might be the most apt.

Who was it that said, "the point of the Bible isn't to make you smarter; it's to change your life"? I think s/he was pretty smart