The word that needs dusting off is normative. Normativism holds that things should be as they ought, and that anything not as it ought to be, must be changed.

We run into both philosophies in trying to read theology. When it suits the wants of the writer to advocate a change of some sort, we hear normative arguments. When the writer is defending the status quo, we hear positive arguments. Adding to the confusion, the reactionary who intends to confuse people, will misuse the term "positive" to imply that he seeks the opposite of negative, when in fact, he seeks the opposite of change.

Adam's curse being, of course, the capacity to hurl criticism and judgments about, with imperfect knowledge of the underlying facts. The criticisms aren't particularly troubling, because with enough thought they can be understood as valid and taken, or refuted as invalid and ignored.

When the judgments turn into an excuse to force people to do things they'd rather not, we hit the slippery slope into totalitarian politics and cultlike beliefs. And, since totalitarian political systems and cultlike beliefs refuse any self-examination whatsoever, the safest way off that slippery slope is to use force as little as possible, preferably not at all. I've yet to see any Amish pacifists shoot each other over a theological dispute…but then, the Amish make a particular effort not to use force and have been at peace amongst themselves since their founder, Jan Hus, was burnt at the stake in the 1400's for preaching that war is sinful.

Michael, good points!

As for our being culture bound, your comment reminded me of this quote from C.S. Lewis:

"Most of all, perhaps, what we need is an intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age."

Many Modern Christians made the error of not learning enough from the voices of the past and adopting too uncritically the themes of Modernity. Hopefully Postmodern Christians won't make the same mistake by too-uncritically adopting Postmodernity.

We certainly have a tendency to lock on to one aspect of things. Theologically, we lock into a canon within the canon or a theme (covenant, kingdom, liberation) and then lose sight of other themes or passages in the canon.

We are inevitably culture-bound. This means that we dress ourselves, our thinking, and our institutions in the clothes of that culture. But culture is not static, the world is ever-changing and so is culture. Without a healthy deconstruction process, we simply leave those clothes on and add accessories from the emerging culture, or worse, we add a layer of clothes on top of the clothes we already have on. Deconstruction is exigent to the contextualization process.

Even among college educated 20 and 30-somethings who have taken a few courses in postmodern literary criticism or philosophy, I rarely see the type of deconstruction that you are describing. Much of their "deconstruction" seems more like a cynical debunking of what they grew up with rather than a love-driven search for better understanding. It's often even accompanied by a belief that "better understanding" is an illusory concept based on outdated notions of objectivity. The result can be a stance of perpetual ironic detachment toward anything that would claim my love or loyalty, unless I am already subjectively inclined in that direction.

I think postmodernism and deconstruction offer some helpful correctives to modernity. Church people who run in fear from the least hint of them need to get a grip, humble themselves and learn. But an uncritical embrace of postmodern deconstructivism is no better in my mind than an uncritical embrace of modernity and all of its assumptions.