Free, multicultural, educated, and sophisticated - today's society has all the perks of of modernity without any of the hindraceas of the past traditions.

The humility of of no line drawn in the sand.

Growing from a humility of "who am I to interpret this text?" and "we don't have all the context puzzles pieces" grows a certain uncertainty about doctrines that were once clear. For some it is sincere, while others naively deceive themselves. I was in the latter category. Feeling the burden having to properly interpret the context, understand the original language meaning, and setting the text in it's proper historical narrative, the right stance on a text seemed harder than ever. For some time, I just left some text of the bible to the "professionals" - those with PhD's in ancient Greek and Roman history. Then, as hard question bubbled up in the culture wars, this became a particular comfortable position to be in. When the hot button questions would come around, I could say I don't really now, and leave it for the professors to figure out. This was convenient until slowly but surely the truth was staring me in the face: this was a practical agnosticism, a flavor of being correct while not getting in trouble but was of not usefulness in the real world. On certain matters of morality, I was a friendly agnostic happy to pass the buck on the cultural war. But such a position leads to more agnosticism.

Does the Bible answer of life's questions? Does it have verses that specifically talk about stem cell research or surrogate mothers? It does not, but that should not allow us to think it doesn't have principals that needs to be follow or that it's morality is somehow passe.

I've come to see that there are a good number of those who on one hand say we can't really know the truth about this or that while on the other hand they fully embrace a stand on particular moral position, whether they say it or not. Those who say there's not right or wrong, there's just a multitude of options, clearly embrace their version of the truth, that there is no absolute truth. That however, is an absolute and don't anyone dare to challenge it. That's the problem with being a human, a moral agent - none of us is just a by-standard. All of us, each of us make moral decision all the time. We draw lines on what we can do with our bodies, with other people's bodies, and so forth and so on. To the few and far exception that are in an ivory tower or hermits excluded from sobriety, I extend my sincerest apologies. But to the rest of us, let's call a spade a spade. A friendly agnosticism is a way of getting away with what we really want to do while dismissing any moral authority behind the great "I don't know, there's not enough evidence."

The ultimate danger for a postmodern Christian, having wonder far away from the plain meaning of any sacred text, having explained away any moral authority that orthodoxy ever held is that we can't be really sure if this new position is really Christian at all. When the meaning of the words is in the reader not the text, well... it doesn't really matter what text we're approaching. We're not really learning anything new, we're just reinterpreting anything out there through the prism of our own understanding. No morality to give an account to and all the feel goods of eternal life and being on the right side of history.

At the end of the day, the postmodern runs the risk of missing Christianity altogether, while enjoying a watered down version of "love your neighbor as yourself". The God part... well, that's for the professor to figure out.