Increasingly, people seeking religious input draw more from the
Internet than from church history, more from their own intuition
than formal study. When you wed the American independent
streak with a postmodern skepticism toward institutions, you
set the stage for what theologians call syncretism, which is the
blending of elements from various faiths into a new form of
spirituality. Like grazing at the buffet table at an all-you-can eat
cafeteria, syncretists adopt doctrines that seem appropriate to them
and leave behind others they regard as offensive or outdated. What
emerges is a Jesus customized for their worldview--a designer Jesus.

A 2005 survey by CBS disclosed that 36 percent of Americans combine
the teachings of more than one religion into their own faith. Thus, Los
Angeles Lakers basketball coach Phil Jackson calls himself "a Zen Christian,"
while a well-known actress once identified herself as a Christian who is "into
goddess worship." One Presbyterian minister described how he was taken
aback when a woman introduced herself to him by saying, "I'm a Presbyterian Buddhist."

The attitude of many Americans is that they like Jesus but not the church,
which they see as exclusionary, condemning, intolerant, and intent on
strapping people into a straitjacket of rigid beliefs. But the Jesus they
like may look very different from the historical Jesus. If the traditional
church imagines Jesus as a finely painted portrait, then syncretists
often render him as abstract art--many times to the point where he's
unrecognizable from the Jesus of ancient creeds.

For syncretists, that's okay. Many of them find their Jesus more satisfying
than the judgmental Jesus they learned about in Sunday school. Besides,
they assert, who's to say which Jesus is more "real" than the others? If history
is all based on someone's interpretation, they reason, then nobody can be
certain who Jesus was and what he taught anyway. In this age when "you
have your truth, and I have mine," the important issue becomes what "works"
for each individual life.

INTERVIEW #6: PAUL COPAN, PHD

My wife, Leslie, and I were chatting about these sorts of issues in my
office one Saturday afternoon. The title of a book, crowded among many
others on my shelves, caught her eye: True for You, But Not for Me. She
pulled it out. "Maybe you ought to talk to the person who wrote this," she
suggested as she handed the book to me.

I was familiar with the author, Paul Copan. When Leslie mentioned him,
I remembered he's among the leading experts in this area. "That's a good
idea," I said, and within days I'd made arrangements to fly to Florida and
meet with him in his offices in West Palm Beach.

Copan and I sat down at a round wooden table in the corner of his office,
flanked by floor-to-ceiling shelves teeming with books. I started with a
broad question to lay the foundation for our discussion. As I did so, I thought
of Pontius Pilate's question two millennia ago: "What is truth?"

IT'S ALL RELATIVE

"We're living in a postmodern era in which concepts like 'truth' and 'morality'
are more elastic than in the past," I said to Copan. "How do you define postmodernism?"

"First, it's helpful to know what modernism involves," Copan said. "Modernism
can be traced back to René Descartes, the 17th-century French philosopher
who is famous for his pursuit of certainty. Descartes said that one thing he
couldn't doubt was that he was thinking, so his starting point for knowledge
became, 'I think, therefore, I am.' There was a sense in which you had to have
100 percent certainty or you couldn't know something," Copan continued.

"So postmodernism is a reaction to Descartes' quest for certainty and to the
creation of systems like rationalism, romanticism, Marxism, Nazism, and
scientism. These systems tend to oppress people who disagree with those
in power--the Jews under Nazism and the capitalists under Marxism, for
example. French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard said that, simplifying
to the extreme, postmodernism is suspicion toward a 'metanarrative'--a
'big-picture' view of the world--that's taken to be true for all people in all
cultures and which ends up oppressing people."

I was thinking through the implications as he was talking. "The idea,
then, is that certainty leads to oppression?" I asked.

"When people are so certain that they've got the truth and believe their
system explains everything, then people who disagree with them are on
the outside. They end up in Auschwitz or the Soviet gulags," he said. "So
instead of 'meta-narratives,' postmodernism emphasizes 'mini-narratives.'
In other words, each person has his or her own viewpoint or story."

"And each viewpoint is as valid as any other," I said, more of an
observation than a question.

"That's the postmodern view, yes. There's a suspicion toward sweeping-truth
claims, which are seen as power grabbing: Whoever is in charge can say
'This is true' and then back it up by oppressing those who disagree."

"And suspicion of truth can contribute, in some cases, to relativism,"
I commented.

"Right. To the relativist, no fact is true in all times and all places. The beliefs
of a person are 'true' for him, but not necessarily for anyone else. This means
that one person's 'truth,' which really amounts to his or her opinion, can
directly conflict with another person's 'truth' and still be valid.

"To the relativist, no religion is universally or exclusively true. You can have
your kind of Jesus, and I can have mine; it doesn't matter if our views contradict
each other. There's no universal right and wrong. Moral values are true--or
'genuine'--for some, but not for others. Since there are different expressions
of morality in the world, there's no reason to think that one viewpoint is any
more true than another."

I searched my mind for an example. "So adultery can be okay for some
people but not for others?" I asked.

"In the view of the relativist, yes," he replied. "Something is wrong only if
you feel it's wrong. Now, relativists may not approve of adultery, and they
may even have strong reservations about it. But they'll say, 'Who am I to
say someone else is wrong?'"

"What are the greatest shortcomings of relativism?" I asked.

"Relativism falls apart logically when you examine it. As a worldview, it
simply doesn't work," he said.

I was looking for specifics. "Tell me why," I said.

"For instance, relativists believe that relativism is true not just for them but
for every person. They believe that relativism applies to non-relativists
('true for you'), not just to themselves ('true for me'). The relativists find
themselves in a bind if we ask them, 'Is relativism absolutely true for
everyone?' To be consistent, the relativist must say, 'There's no reason
to take seriously the claim that every belief is as good as every other
belief, since this belief itself would be no better than any other.'"

Even so, I knew there must be reasons why postmodernism has
taken root. "Are there aspects of postmodernism that make sense
to you?" I asked.

"Despite some of its own incoherencies, yes, there are some lessons
we can learn from it," he said. "For example, we do have our limitations,
biases, and perspectives. We should admit that.

"Also, those with cultural or political power--even those with religious
power--many times do try to spin the truth to suit their own agenda.
And meta-narratives often do alienate and marginalize outsiders--although
I should note that Christianity teaches the intrinsic value of every
individual, including the disfranchised."

**

Taken from "The Case for the Real Jesus" by Lee Strobel and Jane
Vogel, copyright 2008 Youth Specialties/Zondervan. Used by permission.
Order the book here: http://www.youthspecialties.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=418