Each generation gets a label. At least it has been this way the last few generations. Starting with the "Baby Boomers" and continuing with Generation X and Y, we find labels that not only describe when a group of people were born but what their beliefs and ideas are. For instance, "Baby Boomers" were born between the years of 1946 and 1964 and are known for their relaxation regarding social and religious ethics that were previously in place.
Dr. R.C. Sproul pointed out in church this past Sunday that during the 1960s and 1970s when these boomers were now growing up, the social etiquette and fear of disapproval were tossed out the window, rationalized away, to make room for the "sexual revolution". The hippies and rallies have dissolved away. However, now we who are growing up in this generation of the "digital revolution" have it as bad if not worse than the boomers did in the '60s.
The ideas that took place in those decades were merely that, ideas. They professed them in lecture halls, screamed them in the streets, and flaunted them for all to see. Now those ideas are the very substance on which we thrive. The digital revolution has taken the ideas of the rebellious '60s and turned them into marketing tools. Every billboard, every clothing store, every Hollywood movie, every magazine, every newspaper, every commercial, every television show take the ideas and sell them to us.
For girls if we aren't skinny and pretty and fun, well then you're just an "ugly Betty". If guys aren't handsome and buff and trendy, than they are "Napoleon Dynamites". Pretty women and handsome dudes sell everything from "cars to Eskimo pies" as Dr. Sproul put it. And it is everywhere.
Ubiquitously, I am fed the message that being thin and having immaculate, revealing clothes and styled hair is the only valuable things worth having. Only when I climb into bed and turn out the light or when I am reading my Bible is there some respite from the constant noise of our society.
My dad asked one day on the way home from work how my faith was doing and if I had any questions about Scripture or theology. I told him that it was so hard to live in faith when all around godlessness is being broadcasted, not merely as palatable but as the best fudge sundae you have ever had! What is even harder is many Christians have latched onto these ideas to be "culturally relevant" and in the process, have lost the distinction between what is of God and what is of man.
When Jesus came, he had to differentiate between what the Pharisees and the Sadducees were teaching everybody and what he, the God of the Universe, really meant. His Sermon on the Mount is the message that corrects the faulty thinking of a wayward generation: "You have heard it said...But I say."
Now, right now, Christians are being told that it is acceptable and even required to look, act, sound, and think like the world around us. Churches are now rock concerts with a few feel good messages thrown in just so that we can label it a "church service". Call me harsh, but this is the world we live in. We are an overwhelmed generation, overwhelmed by the self-gratifying messages of the culture and now the church. We as Christians are called to be set aside, a holy people (1 Peter 2:9, 10). We are to be different than the rest of the world, living our lives as an pleasing aroma to our Heavenly Father. "But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Corinthians 6:11). God said it, so that settles it.
--HM
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