Modernist or Traditional?

When you see a problem in society what is your first thought for a solution? Take the recent Covid hoax, when it first hit the news it appeared to be a serious problem that might reach the level of the black plague. What did you think was the means to overcome the problem? If you thought first about anything political or medical as the solution, you tend toward a modernist or liberal way of thinking. A few modernists and liberals will admit this, but most are unaware of their own thinking process. If, however, you thought first of what Christ can do, then you have a traditionalist way of thinking.

One of the biggest dividing lines between modernists and traditionals, is that the modernists have the mistaken notion that everything can be solved through politics, and traditionals rightly understand that everything really can be solved through Jesus Christ. Yes, there are other things that separate these two ways of thinking, but this really points to the core of the difference.

Others have pointed out that modernists try to reduce everything to material realities, where traditionals try to reduce everything to spiritual realities. Although I have known a few tradtionals who think this way, it is not proper to the traditional way of thinking. In a well developed traditional way of thought, there will be an intentional balance between the physical and the spiritual. This is the real difference we are looking at in the above paragraph. In some ways reducing everything to the spiritual realm is just as wrong as reducing everything to the physical realm.

As was said above, when modernists try to solve all the world's problems with politics, they are merely staying consistent with the idea of reducing everything to the physical realm. Traditionals, however, should steer clear of limiting God to the spiritual realm (a common pagan mistake). To acknowledge that there is a spiritual realm and that God works in it, is not the same thing as reducing everything to spirituality, it is merely to acknowledge that spirituality cannot be ignored.

So, then, where does your mind go? Do you see Jesus Christ as the solution to every problem the world has? Or do you still believe that politics can save us? One of those two perspectives is whole and entire, and it keeps a proper balance. The other, however, is worldly and limited to the simple imagination of fallen humans. Only one of them will give us hope and keep us working in the Kingdom of God.