A tongue-in-cheek exercise in postmodern hermeneutics
What is truth? Is there truth? Or, are there many truths? Postmodernism asserts that there is no single truth that should command the attention of humanity. Instead, humanity consists of various tribes, each with its on tribal story, and each story is an equally valid truth. But then again, maybe not. If one’s tribe has been oppressed, its story is given priority.
Allow me to demonstrate. God created a Garden. Then God created humanity – male and female – in God’s own image. Also, there was a snake in the Garden. So, our story has four principal characters – God, Adam, Eve, and the snake (Genesis 3:1-19). According to the postmodern hermeneutic each character has a story and each story is truth.
God’s story is that God planted the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God warned Adam and Eve that if they ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they would die. The snake tempted Adam and Eve and they disobeyed God, therefore God exiled them from the Garden.
Adam’s story is that God provided a help-mate, Eve, so that they could share life in the Garden in fellowship with God. But his help-mate convinced him to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree. In Adam’s story, the fall of humanity is the result of his sharing authority with a woman.
Eve’s story is that God placed her and Adam in the Garden together, but she was subject to the evil of patriarchy – male domination. Furthermore, the fall is God’s fault because God created the snake.
The snake’s story is that it too was created by God. But snakes don’t belong in a Garden, so it entered the Garden surreptitiously and told its truth – that God was lying to Adam and Eve.
In this postmodern telling of the story, God is the privileged antagonist who sought to deny humanity the knowledge of good and evil. God unjustly persecuted the snake for its attempt to enlighten the human mind. God’s judgement against Adam, Eve, and the snake is an act of divine injustice. God is the ultimate oppressor and therefore God’s story must be suppressed.
According to postmodern hermeneutics the voice of the oppressed is given greater authority. The snake is the most intersectioned character in the story. Therefore, the story of the snake reveals the greatest truth. After all, the snake bore the harshest judgement and has been oppressed by humans throughout history. So, the snake hopes for the day in which humans are extinct and the world is dominated by reptiles.
I’m sure that the apostle Paul would critique the postmodern hermeneutic with the words, ‘Professing to be wise, they became fools . . .’ (Romans 1:22).
The biblical truth is that Adam, Eve, and the snake are co-conspirators in revisioning the Garden. The man and woman (and all humans) are of one substance, in the image of God. Ultimately, there is no male truth, no female truth, no white truth, no black truth. Our tribal stories are told for the purpose of self justification, or reflect memories that are marred by trauma and scarred by sin. Human history is told in various stories of violent aggression. Humans are ‘swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in their paths. . . there is no fear of God before their eyes’ (Romans 3:15-18). Human criminality is our shared story. Postmodern hermeneutics breeds even more tribalism, unrest, and violence. That’s precisely why we need God to judge our stories.
God’s truth is that every human tribe is affected by sin, every human tribe has done what is right according to its own story, every human tribe has rebelled against God’s truth, and every human tribe’s version of truth is clouded by lies. As God’s truth reveals the human condition we are suddenly confronted with the horror of our tribal crimes.
God’s truth judges the stories of the three Garden conspirators to be lies. This is our terror and our hope. The terror is that an omniscient holy God reveals the thoughts and intentions of our hearts and brings truth to bear on our stories (Hebrews 4:12). The hope is that even as we are exiled from Paradise, God has provided the seed of New Creation – Jesus Christ. God’s truth is the ultimate revisioning of the human story in which justice and righteousness prevails. The Christian Faith dares assert that there is truth, that truth can be known, and that Jesus Christ is the embodiment of truth. The biblical story of humanity resists the tribalism of postmodernity in favor of a shared story of redemption, a new human tribe of many tongues and nations united in devotion to Jesus Christ (Revelation 5:9).
