Written by Meredith Gravatte
“Come on people now, smile on your brother. Everybody get together. Try and love one another right now.” This song by the Youngbloods is the reason I am writing this article. There seems to be strife among students at Harding University in regards to the topic of modernism and postmodernism. Even though this article is not timely in reflection to the Piece by Peace conference, I will refer to that as a means of supporting my opinion.
I did not personally attend the entire conference because I was sick and tired of hearing the same jargon of psychobabble talk about understanding “God,” “theology,” and fancy words used to complexly say simple things like: God is omniscient and He loves everyone. The fact of the matter is I was frustrated with listening to people talk about their understanding; I wanted to see people live it out. I hope the speakers are actually living out their faith, and they came here to share their experiences and inspire those who are seeking to do similar tasks. Yet there was still unrest in my heart because faith and theology have become lost in translation.
Within dialogue and relationships, faith and theology have become lost in translation because too many times, myself included, people focus on the theory of praxis rather than the act of believing and not seeing. God calls us, as disciples of Christ, to live the question. Not think about the question and how it applies to better understanding. But we are called to be witnesses of the gospel to God’s people.
St. Francis of Assisi beautifully stated, “preach the gospel, and use words if necessary.” I think he made that statement because words create and destroy thoughts and expressions. But nonetheless, words are influential, and words are the reason that the ideologies of modernism and postmodernism are at each other’s throats.
I cannot claim anything about proofs or absolute proofs, truth, peace or relativity in the caged aspect of academics. The knowledge I have attained in those subjects will never be fulfilled, because those subjects are always being philosophically refined. However, I believe that there is truth, and I believe that there is peace. It is in belief that faith takes action, and it is in defining the meaning of those words that theology prevails. Thus I find myself seeking to provoke thought among my peers. What do you believe, and how do you define the words that are the foundation of religion? How do you define truth, God, peace, love and whatever word you don’t fully understand? Discussions and questioning are important aspects to our understanding, but they are not the only ones on which we should center our focus. We have to learn to trust God, with being uncertain about all the amazements of his power.
If we spend our lives trying to understand that of which there is no full understanding, we will be living with a constant depth in our soul, full of emptiness, and numbness. Can numb be the new deep, according to John Mayer, or can being deep be found in belief and submission to never knowing everything in full? Does it really matter that we can never know everything in full? Freddy Mercury said, “Nothing really matters. Anyone can see. Nothing really matters to me.”
Well, we can live by the words of Freddy Mercury or live by the words of God, which call for “a time for everything under the sun,” including doubt and faith. Also, the word of God states, “Knowledge puffs up, but to know the heart of God builds up.”
