On Post-Modern Graduations

Lots of people complain these days about the negative influence of “postmodernism:” the concept that there is no objective truth, or even objective reality. Everyone forms their own understanding of the world, and there’s no universal standard to which we must conform our perspectives of the world. This common version of postmodernism, by the way, resembles but is very different from what I’ve examined in my philosophical and literary studies in my PhD program.

In the past month I’ve had the joy of being at two family graduation ceremonies: my stepdaughter’s university commencement and my stepson’s high school ceremony. In both ceremonies, I heard the same exhortation to the graduates that seems to be standard fare at all such ceremonies. It typically sounds something like this: “Hold on to what you know to be true and don’t let anyone tell you that you’re wrong.” Isn’t that, in a nutshell, the sort of postmodernist thinking that many people get so worked up about? I doubt this is what most commencement speakers have in mind, but the message seems to be “This institution has spent years helping you gain knowledge and understanding. Now you can forget all that; do and believe whatever seems good to you.”

I’m uncomfortable with applying the label “postmodern” to this mindset, because it doesn’t do justice to a nuanced philosophical approach. A better term is “moral autonomy.” Or as Burger King puts it, everyone wants to have it their way. We want to decide for ourselves what is right and wrong, good and bad. And we resist anyone’s attempt to correct us or to tell us that maybe we’ve got it wrong. Commencement speakers don’t need to encourage this value, because it’s embedded deep within the human psyche. We’ve had it ever since Adam and Eve wanted to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil: they wanted to decide for themselves what’s right and wrong. And if you’ve ever been around toddlers for very long, you know that it’s not an urge that anyone has to teach you. We all resist efforts to correct or modify our personal agendas.

While there are certainly profound theological differences between Christians and Muslims, here’s at least one thing we agree on. “Islam” literally means “submission:” submitting oneself to God’s will. Scripture passages such as Mark 8:34-38 (“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves…) and Philippians 2:3-11 (“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…”) direct us Christians toward a similar submission of our will to God’s will.

My prayer is that we will not heed the common advice of graduation ceremonies to stick to our convictions, no matter what anyone says to us. Instead, I hope that we will renounce the original sin of moral autonomy that we inherited from Adam and Eve. May we set aside our ideas of “right and wrong,” and submit our hearts and minds to the direction of the Holy Spirit. Even if we don’t like where the Lord leads us, may we follow.