The postmodern tendency, therefore, to delight in the irrational and the absurd kills the patient rather than curing the disease. The turn to carefree playfulness as a riposte to the drudgery of bureaucracy and the boredom and superficiality of endless consumerism marks a regress to childhood, not a development to a fully responsible adulthood. The unpalatable truth is that postmodernity, if consistent to its own ideals, is pure escapism. Kirk comments that postmodernity mirrors the results of the technological reason it so passionately despises. The second step for missiological reflection is to invite contemporary Western culture to consider the thesis that the destructive consequences of the inherent contradictions in its mode of thinking and between its thinking and action can be turned into new life by accepting the gospel as the one perspective that gives sufficient grounds for the integration of thought and of theory and practice.
Integration involves thinking, being, and doing.
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