The Postmodern

~ D. A. Carson

At last we know all truth is gray: no more
Faith’s raucous rhetoric, this blinding trap
Of absolutes, this brightly colored map
Of good and bad: our ocean has no shore.
Dogmatic truth is chimera: deplore
All arrogance: the massive gray will sap
The sparkling hues of bigotry, and cap
The rainbow, mask the sun, make dullness soar.

            Yet tiny, fleeting hesitations lurk
            Behind the storied billows of the cloud
            Like sparkling, prism’d glory in the murk:
            The freedom of the gray becomes a shroud.

Where nothing can be false, truth must away-
Not least the truth that all my world is gray.

Copyright (c) 1999 First Things (May 1999)

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HT: Carmon

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I like the way Carson contrasts the grey of postmodernity, not with the black and white of modernity, but with the many colors our Trinitarian God actually used in the creation.

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More spring color here — pinkbuds and violets: