Just recently, Hollywood director Nick Cassevetes, in a media interview, came out in favor of incest. He did this in promoting his new film that features an incestuous relationship between a brother and sister. His rationale? The whole movie is about not judging and doing what you want.
In our day, this is not an anomaly. While I was waiting in the hospital during my sister’s surgery, a TV was on. I pretty much ignored the Soap Operas and game shows most of the day, but later in the afternoon, after the place had pretty much emptied out, the quietness of the room allowed the sound of the TV to stand out. At that point, it was about halfway through The Ricki Lake show. As I looked over at it, I saw that the guests were a couple. It turns out that they were engaged, but with a caveat – they were also swingers. It seems that the entire show was dedicated to advocating deviant sexual behavior.
It was rather disgusting to me, but as I watched, it was evident that most of the studio audience was accepting. I don’t know that most of them would want to participate in such a lifestyle, but they were still mostly accepting it as normal. Then they brought on the “relationship experts” who went on to justify this kind of behavior not only as normal, but as desirable.
Then, it dawned on me … much of America really does accept this kind of behavior as okay. Again, not that all of them would personally participate, but in our postmodern society everyone is permitted to do whatever they want and it is deemed okay. There was no hint of anything resembling a Christian worldview being expressed on the show. Why did this jump out at me so? Because as the guests spoke, I was able to recognize the worldview platform they were coming from. Because of my ability to compare that worldview with my Christian one, I was not only able to understand that the TV guests were wrong, but also why.
This is the world we live in. The only ones who are not allowed to openly express their view of morality are those of us who believe in a God who holds this kind of behavior to be sin.
As Christians, if we want to be faithful to Christ and share the truth of the gospel to this dying world, we are going to have to learn to swim against the cultural current we live in. And to do that will require that we become good at not only understanding the biblical view of morality, but also master how to share why it represents the truth. This kind of knowledge comes from an understanding of worldview. Christians who ignore Christian worldview training in the pluralistic world we live in will be confined to spiritual bubble which will not allow them to see and challenge our increasingly anti-God culture.