Time for Truth: Living Free in a World of Lies, Hype and Sin

Beloved Christian writer Guinness here bemoans current-day relativism and pleads with his readers to recognize the value of truth. We live in a new order, Guinness writes, in which ""truth is dead and knowledge is only power."" But this new creed will not bring about the utopia its postmodern boosters imagine. To the contrary, he contends, postmodernity, along with its cousin multiculturalism, may be the worst tragedy in all American history: if unchecked, it will end America's leadership of the West. (Clinton, ""the first postmodern president,"" comes in for special opprobrium.) Guinness, however, is no fan of modernity, which, he says, relies too much on human reason. In place of either modernity or postmodernity, he encourages embracing the traditional religious worldview provided by Judaism and Christianity. Guinness is a lucid writer, and he presents his ideas without too much bombast (although his defense of faith is marred by a certain pro-American chauvinism). The ideas themselves are old news--which is precisely what Guinness likes about them. Unfortunately, he does not have the masterful gifts for apology of, say, G. K. Chesterton or Cornelius Van Til. In the end, even the reader who agrees with Guinness may feel that he sounds like an out-of-date grandfather arguing a case that has already been lost, with interlocutors who have already moved on to another conversation. (Feb.)