The fundamental principle for understanding the broadest interpretation of Modern culture (and the Modern parent) is its aspiration to Atheism. Moderns (anyone born before 1989 or anyone with a substantive memory of life before1989) operate almost exclusively within the atheistic framework that what can be known can be known apart from God. For the non-Christian this means that God does not practically figure into any part of the world. For the Christian this means that, though God "figures" into the world, the world can still be understood and appreciated apart from Him. This concept, I argue throughout my entire book, is the focal point to which the Modern ignorantly seeks to orient his Post-modern child.
The Post-modern (anyone born after 1989 or anyone with no substantive memory of life before 1989) is culturally oriented to Polytheism—not Atheism. It is critical to grasp this point if one is to understand the distinction between the Modern parent and his Post-modern child. The Post-modern affirms the existence of deity so that both the non-Christian and the Christian Post-modern believe that deity theoretically and practically figures into the world. On the basis of belief in spirituality, there is no difference between the Post-modern Christian and non-Christian. In other words, religion is no longer a separate conversation from regular (read “secular”) life.
The Post-modern holds to the polytheistic aspiration that what can be known cannot be known apart from deity. This is even true for the Post-modern who calls himself an atheist. The Modern atheist said that there was no God for anyone—end of the discussion. The Post-modern atheist says that though there is no God for himself, there might be God for someone else. Herein is a culturally nuanced rift as divergent as any opposite.
I provide the year 1989 as a general marker for the generational shift from Modern to the Post-modern culture for the following reasons.
1) The tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was an indication of the beginning of the end of Communism. Communism was the political form of Atheism and the most comprehensive attempt by that revolutionary spirit to de-Christianize the Free West. Therefore, the death of Communism was the death of the dominating world spirit of Atheism. This does not mean that Atheism and its cultural expressions were dead in 1989. What it does mean is that optimism in Communism had peaked and was rapidly on the decline while being replaced by another dominant worldview.
2) The fall of Communism did not just happen because of politically democratic influences like Ronald Reagan or Gorbachev. Rather, it was attributed to the sum of the moral motives and actions of the "little" people on both sides of the Iron Curtain. History makes it clear that the common masses of non-governmental institutions behind the Iron Curtain were largely responsible for the tearing down of the Berlin Wall on the East German side in June 1989, for the overthrow of Ceaucescu in Romania on Christmas Day 1989, for the freeing of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland in 1989 & 1990, for the beginnings of revolution in Yugoslavia in 1989, and for the democratic push in the Soviet Union the same year.
Gorbachev formally disarmed the Soviet Union in 1991, but his political decision was entirely preceded by an uncharacteristically democratic revolt behind the Iron Curtain. The common people did not just happen to suddenly revolt against the political form of Communism. They were revolting against the philosophy of Atheism, the engine of the Communist political system. Communism no longer resonated with the majority of people. The revolt against Communism indicated a definite shift from the dominating world spirit of Atheism to a world spirit of faith, however ambiguous and varied that faith has expressed itself these last two decades.
3) The generic interpretation of End Times prophecy was completely wrapped up in the outcome of the Cold War (c. 1945-1991). Most Christians now reject the once popular theological consensus (or at the least they are ambivalent to it). Before the European reforms in the late 1980’s, it was largely believed (with slight variations) that the Cold War would climax with the Rapture, followed by rise of Anti-Christ within the European Common Market, seven years of Great Tribulation, the rule of Christ on earth for 1,000 years, the Battle of Armageddon and finally Heaven. Or some similar order.
Cold-War-generation Christians typically believed themselves to be the chosen generation who would experience the initial climax of Biblical prophecy via a Rapture. Though the date was altered many times in the 20th century, those prophecies were finally mathematically predicted to happen by or around 1988 (40 years after Israel became a nation). Whatever the case, the Last Days and the climax of Communism were to be intimately entangled events. Since 2000, the Christian community has been reticent to project an actual date for the end of the world.
