More thoughts from Flickering Pixels by Shane Hipps…
Shane argues the invention of the telegraph planted the seeds for the postmodern age. Before the telegraph, information was local and rooted in a specific context. The telegraph started moving information. It didn’t collect, explain or analyze it. Quickly, there was no sense of proportion.
We are surrounded with millions of pieces of information & headlines. Most of them simply fill our brain with useless trivia.
The telegraph began to whisper a new subliminal message: Truth itself must be a lot like information.
The idea of Truth becomes entirely idiosyncratic; history is irrelevant; there is no rational basis for valuing one thing over another. Because our thinking mirrors the pattern of our media, eventually we find it only natural to deny the existence of absolute Truth.
As a result, authority, truth, and meaning become difficult to discover and establish with clarity or certainty. Doubts trickle in, and we find the notion of a single grand story that unifies everything to be absurd and even arrogant.
As a full-fledged postmodern, I really struggle with absolute Truth. Has the influence of media done this?
With apps like Wikipedia, there is no single editor who determines content. I create content all day long on Facebook, Twitter, websites and this blog.
Technology is teaching us there isn’t one main editor. Anyone can say anything anywhere and it becomes truth. Is it the same with faith?
What’s multi-user content creation doing to our faith?
palmsupco.wordpress.com 
This was starting to alarm me until I thought about how we have four Gospels – different editors, same story, and, most would say, same truth. And before there the four, there were many. They got narrowed or synthesized to the four by a process involving many editors who sought out what was authoritative, what led them to truth. Now, the question there is – is there a part of the truth that we lost in that process? How do we decide today which voices we include as authoritative and which we leave out?
LikeLike
Stephanie – That's a concern for me as well. We believe there is absolute Truth. But many others feel okay not having absolute Truth. And I wonder how technology has made that a reality. Great questions on the selection of our canon. I don't know how we decide today besides trusting the Spirit as we discern.
LikeLike