Sunday, January 27, 2008

with Fox as my witness

The reason some of us get so annoyed when Christians play postmodern is not because we're afraid of it, or can't stand conversation, or are Calvinists, or have secretly erected an asherah pole to propositional truth - but simply because so much of the theory is dated. Most Christian audiences, not being in academia, don't realize this, which is why there's a great market for the stuff as the next hot thing. The objection to my opinion, I imagine, is that postmodernity may be passé in academia, but is just now trickling down to the popular level, and so it's still very necessary to engage.

But tonight's Simpsons episode, "That 90's Show," makes it painfully clear that it is actually the mocking of deconstruction that has trickled down to the popular level, from Terry Eagleton 2003 to Fox 2008. Perhaps the fact that the episode had to be set as a flashback makes the point all the more acutely.

In the meantime, I will continue to suggest that the best of deconstruction has long been in the Christian cards (consider point 2779), and will, in my better moments, pray for an emergence into orthodoxy without scare quotes.