Lessons from Imus

Wow, what a furor! Recently, Don Imus said some really nasty things about the ladies on the Rutgers, women’s basketball team. From that moment on, he has been pummeled for it.

Well, I’m certainly not here to defend him. As the original “shock jock,” he has been making those very same kinds of remarks for decades. I, personally, wish he had been off the air years ago. Any time I have ever stumbled upon his show, I have immediately changed the station.

But the fact is, hoards of people like his style. He has stayed on the air because he has been able to attract listeners and advertisers. Without the ratings, he would have been long gone. So why the sudden outrage?

Analysts have been going wild giving their opinions about this. I don’t really care to get into that fray. What intrigues me is why there are so many who enjoy listening to his irreverence.

Not too many years back, the kind of language he uses would not have been tolerated. It would have offended so many people that his show would not have been a success. But now, he is only one of many across the entire country who have devoted audiences who like to listen to that kind of programming. What has changed?

Basically, there has been a worldview shift. It used to be that Christian values were the dominant foundation of our society. Not that everyone was a Christian, and certainly not that everyone lived up to the values they professed. But the Biblical revelation was looked to as the standard.

However, with the rise of atheistic Naturalism, that has all changed. Now, a large percentage of the American public do not acknowledge a transcendent standard. For many in our society, relativism rules the day. And since this approach allows for no moral absolutes, we are forced to make it up as we go along based on our own desires. The group which can amass the most power gets to set the rules.

The only problem is, a large enough number of people now exists who don’t see anything wrong with what Imus is doing, or any kind of immoral behavior for that matter. In fact, it is now considered by many to be immoral to label anything immoral. This might be okay if there were no consequences to those acts. Unfortunately there are, and we are beginning to reap what has been sowed.

A large number of people now want to make up their own rules, and they live as if the claims of the Bible are not the Truth. Everyone has that right in our society, and I am certainly an advocate of our democratic process. But that does make it possible for untruth to dominate. And when it does we end up going down a very destructive road, as evidenced by the Imus incident. If we do not get back to a foundation based on transcendent truth, I believe that the worst is yet to come.