Hi. My name is Leslie Bevill. I’m an English/journalism major from Fruita, Colorado. I like my major. I take just the essential classes from two different majors. That way I don’t get bored. My major is great for another reason. Without it, I would not have been able to internalize an understanding of the age in which I live, the Postmodern Age.

My English professors expect long paragraphs, completely explaining a series of ideas to create a complex analysis where all the pieces are connected by proper punctuation, no rule broken.

Not so with journalism.

My journalism professors urge me to break every rule I must in order to keep the readers’ attention. Sentence fragments.

One sentence paragraphs.

There are different sets of rules, or truths, for the same action — writing. My identity adjusts according to my assignment.

I exist with full acceptance of antagonistic doctrines, without any problem at all. Just as I don’t force journalistic non-grammar on someone else’s English composition, I expect that others shouldn’t take a red pen to my journalism, marking up the unconventional punctuation or construction.

So why do I find it so natural to mark up, grade down, others’ rules for living? How, with such a personal understanding of tolerance with respect to rules, can I stand firm as a Christian?

I profess that Jesus Christ, the superman of loving acceptance, is the one Way, the one Truth and the one Life.

Postmodernism, the philosophy for today, professes that there are as many ways, as many truths and as many lives as there are individuals. Be open-minded.

Pepperdine University Affirms That God Is.

Postmodernism, the popular social perspective of our time, Affirms that you create your own god.

William Hingest, a character in C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength, Affirms, "There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there’s never more than one."

Like me, like Pepperdine, this character advocates absolute truth, but ...  Turn a few pages, and the members of the popular social movement of his time, Affirm that Hingest is a dead man, sending hit men to beat him to death. I wonder, is there a price on my head or have I sold out to survive in this hostile, yet so accepting, climate?

Hi. My name is Leslie Bevill. I’m an exhausted senior from Fruita, Colorado. Today, I was beaten. I ditched class today because the project I was supposed to turn in, the cumulative project of my semester’s work, was not done. I just didn’t finish it.

Today, I didn’t take the time to nurture my spirit. I didn’t have the energy to really listen to the friend who needed to talk.

I started the semester with the mission of encouraging my peers to seek the answer, to ponder life’s most important questions and then to discipline their lives according to their findings. I intended to publish this piece according to those purposes.

The following pages explore a Postmodern perspective, however superficially, of three of life’s defining questions:

What is Good?

What is Beautiful?

What is True?

The English major in me might require further explication of my theses. But the journalist in me taps her foot and demands conciseness. So, here goes—the history of the world and the Three Virtues, goodness, beauty and truth, in three sentences:

In Premodern times, these Three Virtues were inseparable and nearly synonymous. Although they were defined by an authority rather than the self, life still had a personal spiritual mystery. As science explained away the mystery, the Three Virtues became disconnected—the Modern Era.

As science failed to squelch an undeniable spirituality, humanity became disillusioned, and the Three Virtues disconnected and only to be defined by the individual. And here we are: from the beginning of time to the Postmodern Era.

We define our own virtues, dangit.

But here’s the problem: practicality beats us down. We’re too consumed with life to think about life. I discovered this today, in the middle of a midterm week, as I struggle for survival and appear to be failing.

In our Postmodern Era, most of us are too overloaded to take the liberty we’ve been given. We’re too busy to define our own goodnesses, truths and beauties. No one stops to think (Isaiah 44:19).

Service Learning Coordinator Regan Schaffer commented, "When I teach a class and we talk about a meaningful life, out of thirty, only one-quarter of them have ever really thought about it."

Choosing not to think about it and choosing not to define it are very different things. But they are easily mistaken one for another.

Therefore, Postmodern tolerance allows mental and spiritual laziness.  Fight back.

Hi. My name is Leslie Bevill. I’m a country-girl from Fruita, Colorado, living in L.A. College-life-in-the-fast-lane beats me up.

Nonetheless, I affirm my commitment to live in answer to life’s biggies:

Where did I come from?

Where am I going?

What is my purpose in life?

What is my source of life?

Pepperdine University affirms that truth (or goodness or beauty), having nothing to fear from investigation, should be pursued relentlessly in every discipline.

Even Postmodernism affirms that truth, your individual truth, should be sought.

We all agree: Slow Down; Seek Answers.

Author Sandra Kerka, in her book, "Postmodernism and Adult Education", gives Postmodernism five characteristics:

One: rejection of attempts to provide encompassing explanations

Two: identity that is fluid, changeable and derived from multiple discourses

Three: loss of confidence in progress, rationality, science and "objective" reality

Four: recognition that perception is interpretive and inseparable from individual frameworks

Five: a view of power as a process that enables/restricts or promotes/ discourages, forms of practice or thought

—Ordinary People, by Judith Guest

Dr. Michael Zakian, Museum Director

As I understand Postmodernism, it is based on a decentralization of disciplines. ... Art has become more personal. ... Postmodernism doesn’t really have standards and that’s why its so controversial. ... Because Pepperdine is a Christian university, they look at beauty, as well as most things, in a more traditional manner. Because Pepperdine stands for the fact that there are still standards, guidelines and values, that is somewhat counter to the Postmodern perspective which questions the idea of single guidelines and values. The exhibitions I choose are ones that I think are proper for Pepperdine. They do emphasize the fact that there are values that are worth upholding.

The art I show tries to uphold the Christian ideals of Pepperdine: the belief that you should lead a positive and productive life, that you should be of service to others and that you should contribute to society at large. ... The [contemporary] exhibitions I do take show a more general approach to Postmodernism and not anything that could be considered a hard-line doctrinaire.

"Coach" Bob Privitt, Fine Arts Professor

The role of beauty is subservient to truth. ... One of the annoying things about truth is that it’s not always beautiful. ... I think that particularly contemporary artists are searching for truth and they’re discovering that it isn’t always beautiful, and that sometimes you’re ostracized [for depicting the truth]. ... As a human being who understands there is a right and wrong way of being, you have to say some of these [truths].

Postmodernism has given us freedom to its absolute limit, maybe without considering responsibility. ... There is a certain value to shock in art ... but with every freedom there is a responsibility to ... taste, discretion and sensitivity. We are allowing in the name of freedom all sorts of images. Artists have a duty to self-censorship. What you’re dealing with is your sensitivity to the needs of other people. ... [It used be that] Truth is Beauty, Beauty is Truth ... but now something can be ugly or terrible or dissonant and because of its truthfulness it is a beautiful thing.

... If you want to go through life looking only at the beautiful things your life is not full; it is not true. ... [Taking a relationship with Christ for example,] in order to really empathize with him, even to understand a small fragment of his life, you need to know about the nails going through his hands ... that is not beautiful.

Nina Lora, Senior, art student

I really think that everything is beautiful stemming from the inside.  Once you’re able to really believe that, you start seeing it everywhere, even in seemingly ugly or evil things. ... I’m not aesthetically pleased by some of the art I see, even my own, but I love it because every artist through his or her creation is reaching inside and pulling out from the struggle something beautiful and giving it to the world.

... Many people these days see art as chaos and nonsense, but I feel that that’s only their unwillingness to accept the diversity of human existence and people’s choices on how they’re going to live their lives. ... There are plenty of pretty things that aren’t beautiful. ... Real beauty, in my opinion is on a more personal level. ... Nature is beautiful, pain is beautiful, laughter is beautiful, love is beautiful.

... I think there’s a lot of so-called art today that’s not really art — it’s a lot of people making pretty things, but they’re doing it for the wrong reasons: power, money, boredom. But anyone who simply has a need to create, and to acknowledge and express what’s going on inside is worthy of the title, "artist," and that is beautiful.