![Living 1 Corinthians 7 with Saint Paul: Sex, Marriage, a Feminist Option and the Rhetoric of Equality. Is Celibacy more Spiritual than Marriage? by [Gregory Laughery]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51asuYb1HJL.jpg)
One of the salient features of the twenty-first century is that we are living in a post-trust culture. As I have recently mentioned in another post, this means that our ability to trust institutions, governments, politicians, economics, and churches is coming to an end. Furthermore, the Christian faith in the West seems to be losing its traction, coherence, and credibility. The principles of marketing and consumerism in many churches are replacing the deep spiritual realities of truth, unity, and love, which are so essential in a world lost in propaganda and fraud. It seems to me, therefore, that this is a defining moment and the church is at a historic crossroads where its survival is under serious threat, and it is likely that, at this moment in time, it needs to be.
Since the knower is involved in the knowing, there is always a subjective personal dimension to knowledge, yet this does not mean that knowing is entirely subjective. Rather, it is quasi-subjective, as it must conform to degrees of objectivity. Thus, a better configuration of knowledge might be that it is subjectively objective, especially as represented by self, other, and the world.
Engaging the challenges of post-modern thought, for better or worse, may now suggest that we have to reassess our understanding of God, ourselves, and the world. That which has been previously assumed to be real or unreal calls for re-exploration.
