Short Take #2: How Did We Go From Post-Modernism to Anti-Truthism?

Here is another short take from the Christian Worldview with David Wheaton. Our society has gone from a post-modern worldview where truth isn't, we don't have the ability to know truth, it's relative to the individual, we just can't know it, it's subjective. We've gone from that worldview to I think more recently, within the last maybe year or two, to what we're calling now an anti-truth.

The worldview now is directly against truth, it's just all out lies. So how or what do you think changed our society from going from post-modernism to anti-truth? Well this began decades ago, David, with the Frankfurt School, which was a group of Marxists who came over fleeing the Nazis, and they put into place Marx's critical theories. Karl Marx was the father of communism, and he was a big fan of criticizing everything that existed and then tearing it all down and reforming society to reflect a communist viewpoint of shared ownership, abolishing private property, abolishing the nuclear family, abolishing marriage. People don't realize how radical Marx was and how radical his followers today are. The critical theory was applied to religion, the higher criticism it was called. These people took an axe to the Bible and to doctrines that were common in America right through the 20th century, and then on into every subject under the sun. Herbert Marcuse, who was a Marxist, brought this to the campus.

He was well read on campus. I had to read him when I was in college, in grad school, and he criticized capitalism, he criticized religion, he said that people need to focus on themselves, and he was a big proponent of the sexual revolution, as were Marx and Engels. There's a real story there, David, about Engels being kind of a cad himself and Marx also being awful to their families. Engels openly proclaimed free love, and a lot of the early socialist philosophers went along with this because they thought, okay, this makes sense if we can pry people away from things like marriage and family, we can split society into where there are no intervening institutions to protect the individual from the state. This will leave the individual helpless before state power, and then we can usher in socialism, and finally communism. Today we see this at work in Black Lives Matter, which was founded by two lesbian Marxists and one other Marxist woman, and the Antifa movement. They are at war with truth, they're at war with the family, they're at war with capitalism in America, and a lot of people, because of the George Floyd death a year ago, bought into the Black Lives Matter movement, not realizing its Marxist origins and how dangerous it really is. But here's one more element, David, and that was the me generation.

In the 1960s, everything was challenged. The left was fortified by the writings of Herbert Marcuse and Theo Adorno and others, who said you really have to concentrate on yourselves. So when you turn inward, you eventually come to the point where you think your truth is the only truth that matters, and you still hear that phrase today. I have my truth, you have your truth. It's nonsense, it's entirely subjective, it's an evidence of a religion of relativism that replaces Christianity, which says you can discover truth by giving your life to Jesus Christ and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide you in discovering truth. That all went out the window in the 60s, and now we're reaping the whirlwind of that today. This has been a short take from The Christian Worldview with David Wheaton. To find out more about The Christian Worldview, order resources, make a donation, become a monthly partner or contact us, visit thechristianworldview.org. You can also call us at toll-free 1-888-646-2233 or write to us at Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. That's Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331.