“If your truth is so universal…how come your modern, universal worldview has oppressed so many people and animals?

YOU CALL THAT ENLIGHTENMENT?

Let’s start with indigenous cultures. So when modern civilization show­ed up at Greenland and “civilized” the Inuits (by the hand of those pesky Danes), their culture crumbled like a house of cards. Unbelievable misery ensued and many of them became alcoholics at the very bottom of Danish “modern” soc­iety. If you go a little farther back in time, the Europeans consciously and delib­erately conquered and exploited others in the name of civilization and moder­nity, claiming that this was the scien­tifically supported order of things. But even if you don’t go back to colon­ialism, today most indigenous and traditional cultures around the world are taking heavy hits as they face an endless onslaught of commercial­ization, instrumentalization, bureaucratiz­a­tion and social degradation. Are those just road kill on the path to the univer­sal truth you say you found in a high school physics class?

Or how about the process of modernization itself. You said there are no science wars. But did you ever notice there are other wars going on, stemm­ing directly from the vanity of the modern project? Look at how China and the Soviet Union modernized – millions and millions of people died. Oh, that wasn’t realmodernization? Only Western modernization is real? They did become modern countries, you know. And what about the US, if it’s so en­lightened, how come its black book of human rights abuses is so thick? Those victims don’t get a say in the universal truth found in chemistry 101? Speak­ing of chemistry, did you know that the British Em­p­ire started using chemical dyes and then instantly collapsed the Indian indigo cloth dye market – that the Empire had created – and let millions starve to death? Oh, that wasn’t real modernity either, was it? How about the Indian traditional society, they don’t get a say on this? Do you know that the biggest and bloodiest war going on right now is in the Congo? A long-term result of some of the worst atrocities in recorded history, committed by enlightened, modern Wester­ners who used their oh-so-hailed rationality to force native Africans to produce cocoa and rubber instead of food so that you can enjoy that delicious fine Belgian choc­olate. Have you thought about that? Oh, and where do the minerals in your Smartphone come from?

 ….Or how about the patients? Modern medicine is powerful, you’re right. Vacc­­ines are good, most of the time. But the history of modern medic­ine is a marathon of abuses by doctors who were convinced they had objective sci­ence on their side. How much power have they not misused to lobo­tomize and lock up and castrate people – until political, not scientific, currents in society changed? Oh, those patients were weak and crazy. They don’t get a perspecti­ve on universal truth, of course.”  – Hanzi Freinacht

Until the late 1990s, scientists thought that gravity must be slowing down the expansion of the universe. “Recent discoveries told us that the universe is flying apart—faster and faster,” It changed everything we ever knew about the cosmos. (article here).

In the end, the world has been rightly humbled by modernism.  We meet them by being humbled by the same thing and stripping ourselves of an authority that Jesus did not sanction.  Do we know Truth?  Yes, in part (I Cor. 13:9-12).  Do we speak Truth?  Yes, according to the revelation of the Scriptures.  Do we have the corner on Absolutes?  Only God does.  We’re the followers.  Let’s slow down our pace and keep in step with those whom we are seeking to share Jesus with.