Throughout its history, Western culture has grappled with truth in a variety of ways. In its modern phase, Western culture sought to dominate truth, to wrest authority from the church and bring truth under its mechanistic and rationalized control, just as the engines of technology had gained control over the forces of nature. In its present phase, Western culture has moved to reject the very notion of truth and to embrace relativism, nihilism, and radical subjectivism.

It is impossible to deny that in the last few decades, modernity has unleashed an attack on the notion of truth. This assault modernity has unleashed on truth has certainly taken its toll–not that modernity has weakened truth, for the truth stands inviolate. Rather, the toll taken by modernity’s assault is measured in the increased secularity of the culture and the churches, in the compromised witness of many Christians, in the accommodated messages preached in many pulpits, and in the deadly confusion of the age.

Postmodernism represents the unique challenge facing Christianity in this generation. Walter Truett Anderson cleverly described the postmodern reality in his clever book, Reality Isn’t What it Used to Be. This is the central claim of postmodernism–reality is not what it used to be, and never will be again. Humanity now come of age, we will make our own truth, define our own reality, and seek our own self-esteem.

The rise of postmodernism presents Christians with the undeniable reality that many people simply do not accept the idea that truth is absolute, or even that written texts have a fixed meaning. All claims to truth–especially claims to universally valid truth–are met with suspicion, or worse. This presents the Christian with a changed climate for truth-telling–and a genuine intellectual challenge.

A common concern now seems to emerge wherever Christians gather–the task of truth-telling is stranger than it used to be. In this age, telling the truth is tough business, and not for the faint-hearted. The times are increasingly strange.

Judith Warner calls the problem, “this mess.” Author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, Werner has issued a manifesto for postmodern motherhood. As she sees it, motherhood has been transformed into a trap for young women, who find themselves torn between impossible expectations and a lack of self-fulfillment. Her new book, along with a major cover story in the February 21, 2005 edition of Newsweek, represents a battle cry for a new feminist generation.

The nation’s great divide between secularists and Christians is growing, not shrinking. This divide determines many, if not most, of our national controversies. Debates over education, abortion, environmentalism, homosexuality, and a host of other issues are really debates about whether morality is relative or revealed.

Christmas is at the center of controversy once again as school boards, municipal governments, and shopping malls become arenas for battle in what has emerged as one of the most active fronts in the Culture War.