As much as I see the evidence that America is a post-Christian nation, I am still often taken back by some of the expressions I see of that fact. The evidence for this is not even hidden any more. You have TV shows like Two and a Half Men which is just one vulgar joke after another. Then there is the blatant promotion of deviant sex in the sex education curriculum being forced on children as young as 11 years old by the state of New York.
Just today I saw more evidence of this downward spiral. The nations current favorite movie star train wreck, Lindsey Lohan, has recently announced that she will be doing a Playboy spread. Now certainly this, in itself, qualifies as evidence of the degeneration that is happening in our country. But what I saw today takes the evidence up to a whole nother level.
On a legitimate news website, I was watching a video clip featuring a panel on a major cable TV network made up of both men and women. The question was asked of the panel whether or not doing the Playboy photo shoot would be good for LiLo’s career. The unanimous answer was that it would not hurt it. The panelists were divided as to whether it would be a good move or that it wouldn’t help or hurt. But were together in believing that there was nothing wrong with it. In fact, one of the panelists, herself, had graced the cover of the magazine in the past.
The thing that struck me about this conversation was how doing this kind of activity was assumed by each of the panel members to be no big deal. In fact, they talked about it as something completely normal and natural. In fact, they even expressed how they couldn’t wait to see the issue.
Of course, what was on display, here, was a worldview which sees public nudity as no big deal. It reflects a view of morality as situational and based entirely on personal opinion.
To me, this reflected how completely our entertainment industry is dominated by Naturalistic thinking. Naturalists believe totally that there is such a thing as right and wrong morality. We get to choose our own morality, and whatever we choose is just as good as what anyone else might choose.
As Christians, we certainly oppose this kind of thinking. There is such a thing as sin and many of the images, philosophical expressions, and language which is on public display these days expresses sin. And Christians are right to be disgusted by and oppose it.
But it is at this point that we must be careful. It is not good enough to oppose it simply because we don’t like it or just because it goes against traditional morality. These things are not wrong simply because they are written in the Bible. A legalistic mindset will never express the will of God.
All we have to do is look at how Jesus condemned the Pharisees. Why did he condemn them? It wasn’t because they were trying to rebel against God. After all, they were trying to follow what was taught in the Old Testament scriptures. It is just that in trying to follow God they misinterpreted and misapplied scriptural teachings because of their legalistic mindset. Legalistic reasoning will easily cause people to do that. In the Christian faith, it is not just the acts a person does which must be right, the reason for doing it must also be right.
Our culture is way out of kilter. And to fix it, Christians must become authentic and intentional. We can’t just be against sin, we must be for God. We must actively live and share our faith out in the world. We can’t do that without equipping ourselves with the knowledge of what the Bible teaches. But we also can’t do it if we are not living out an authentic relationship with God. We will not turn our culture back to Christ until massive numbers of Christians work to turn massive numbers of non-believers to Christ. It is my prayer that you will use the resources found on the MarketFaith Ministries website to equip yourself to be one of those God uses for this purpose.