Books trendmeisters, speakers on the pastoral circuit-all proclaim, prophetlike, "The culture we minister in has changed. We live in a postmodern world."

Uh, what's a postmodern world? Is that where people read Wired, drink double cappuccinos, and buy alternative rocker Alanis Morissette's hot-selling CD?

Postmodernism is a throw-away word that means everything and nothing. J. I. Packer, theologian at Regent College says, "Postmodernism is a word that has never secured a dictionary definition. Different people use it in different ways."

Postmodernism is, in short, a hackneyed word ill need of definition.

Mother of all negation

I fondly recall a silver-haired woman in a church I served. She never met a new idea she liked. She criticized everything, was never for anything. Her contribution (if that's what you call it) was negation.

She shares much in common with postmodernism, which is a reaction against something. It's the mother of all negation. Postmodernism, a phenomenon of Western ...