In this first vodcast of the “Food for the Faithful” series I want us to look at how the God of all creation operates. Simply put, He creates reality by speaking it into existence. This process of creation involves His Son who is the living Word of God. The Postmodernist doctrine infecting society today seeks to do the opposite. It attempts to give language the power to uncreate as opposed to create. It doesn’t merely seek to destroy or undermine; it seeks to call that which plainly and manifestly exists into non-existence. But the power which calls all things into existence, the very Light of Life, cannot be put out. And so, I will read to you from the Gospel of John 1: 1-5 taken from the impactful Bible translation of Eugene Peterson known as The Message:
The Life-Light
1 1-2 The Word was first,
the Word present to God,
God present to the Word.
The Word was God,
in readiness for God from day one.
3-5 Everything was created through him;
nothing—not one thing!—
came into being without him.
What came into existence was Life,
and the Life was Light to live by.
The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;
the darkness couldn’t put it out.
And from John 1:14-15 this time from the 21st Century King James Version (KJ21):
14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His
glory, the glory as of the only Begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.
And from Colossians 1:16-17 from the New American Standard Bible:
16 for by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or rulers, or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him.
17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
These readings demonstrate the importance of the Word since by the Word all things are not merely created but held together. Which is why Postmodernists seek to deconstruct language. They seek to nullify what cannot be invalidated, namely reality itself. And they do so violently. I refer to the brutal censoring from those who claim to be “WOKE”. Note their choice of wording here, WOKE has replaced the Light of Christ. I cannot emphasise sufficiently the need to understand where this ideology originates since if permitted it will come after the fellowships where we gather and to our places of employment in an attempt to force us to conform to language aimed at nullifying the reality held together by the Living Word.
The deconstructionists:
Who were they? One of their leading philosophers was Jacques Derrida. What is the main point of Derrida's theory of deconstruction?
The point of the deconstructive analysis is to restructure, or “displace,” the opposition, not simply to reverse it. For Derrida, the most telling and pervasive opposition is the one that treats writing as secondary to or derivative of speech.
Let us examine, as though anyone of faith would wish to other than out of our present necessity at the deeply perverted, disturbed and deviant thinking of Postmodernists.
Deconstruction according to Derrida
Etymology
Derrida's original use of the word "deconstruction" was a translation of Destruktion, a concept from the work of Martin Heidegger that Derrida sought to apply to textual reading. Heidegger's term referred to a process of exploring the categories and concepts that tradition has imposed on a word, and the history behind them.
Basic philosophical concerns
Derrida's concerns flow from a consideration of several issues:
A desire to contribute to the re-evaluation of all Western values, a re-evaluation built on the 18th-century Kantian critique of pure reason, and carried forward to the 19th century, in its more radical implications, by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
An assertion that texts outlive their authors, and become part of a set of cultural habits equal to, if not surpassing, the importance of authorial intent.
A re-valuation of certain classic western dialectics: poetry vs. philosophy, reason vs. revelation, structure vs. creativity, episteme vs. techne, etc.
To this end, Derrida follows a long line of modern philosophers, who look backwards to Plato and his influence on the Western metaphysical tradition. Like Nietzsche, Derrida suspects Plato of dissimulation in the service of a political project, namely the education, through critical reflections, of a class of citizens more strategically positioned to influence the polis. However, like Nietzsche, Derrida is not satisfied merely with such a political interpretation of Plato, because of the particular dilemma modern humans find themselves in. His Platonic reflections are inseparably part of his critique of modernity, hence the attempt to be something beyond the modern, because of this Nietzschean sense that the modern has lost its way and become mired in nihilism.
What is the main principle of deconstruction?
Deconstruction generally tries to demonstrate that any text is not a discrete whole but contains several irreconcilable and contradictory meanings; that any text therefore has more than one interpretation; that the text itself links these interpretations inextricably; that the incompatibility of these interpretations.
So, after that painful hiatus away from the Word of God we can see what it is the disgruntled Marxists who invented Postmodern ideology are attempting to do. Since the Scriptures themselves make it abundantly clear that the very universe was called into existence and is being upheld by the Word of God, USE IT! Refuse to debate with Postmodernists using their language, use God’s Word instead and if they reject it so be it, do not continue to cast pearls before swine. They are not interested in ethics, epistemology, and ontology since Postmodernist ideology rejects them! You will never win an argument by conceding to their deconstruction of language for the moment you concede to using their definition of words you will have become complicit with them.
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