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To Sexy

The Questions

This is my first ever blog and I don't want it to appear negative but it is something which came from a discussion at a Bible Study last night.
Where do we draw the line? I've been on Facebook for a while now and it has
been great to meet up with old friends and make new ones. The most upsetting
thing on there for me is to see some of the young people who we have met
through the years. They still profess faith, yet from their posts, sometimes
language and certainly photos; there is often no difference in life-style to
other youngsters. Kids who have never entered a church, let alone made a
commitment to Christ... frankly there are no difference. Clubbing, drink and
sadly often frankly a lack of decent clothing, seems to be the norm. I have
just a sneaking suspicion that some of Paul's letters did have a bit to say
about life-style and modesty.
People who know me, know that I haven't buried my head in the sands of time,
not a prude and try to keep abreast of today’s world. However, I do think
somewhere along the line our youngsters need to be taught that the FRUIT ought
to be growing in their lives.

DGB

The Comment

Lynn Green one of the leaders of Youth with a Mission UK said that “the last
teenagers able to rebel where born in the 60s” It’s a funny old statement, what
do I think he means.

Culture
Well Culture is a changing process, sometime imperceptibly but changing
nevertheless, sometime changing radically with great upheaval often time that
is linked to National and sometimes international event such as the last world
ward changed the roles of Women in the UK probably for ever, things like the
spinning Jenny, the internal combustion engine, and mass productions, and the
printing press have all had massive cultural changing effects. We shouldn’t
forget Television and the Internet being the latest of those cultural changing
events.

Modernism
So why am I going on about Culture, well we make culture but culture makes us,
and right now we have had particularly for young people a huge cultural shifts.
We have for a long time, particularly if you were born before the 60’s lived in
what is loosely called in cultural terms a modernistic period. What that means
in rough terms is that we think about things like cause and effect. We assume
beginnings and endings, we have a value system that is, and at least we think
it is linked to some kind of logic. For those of us who would call ourselves
Christians, or Muslims, or even Communists we have what is known as a
meta-narrative view of the world. What that means is that we think in terms of
the big picture, which is what I have alluded to above. Beginning, endings, and
cause and effect, we therefore place experiences that we have into a context of
that meta-narrative, we do that even if we have never used the word before!

Post Modernism
Post modernists are not interested in meta-narratives, they are interested in
the present, the present experience is all important ‘if it feels good do it’
that means that discussions on right or wrong don’t apply, you just are, it
means that value systems are on a sliding scale depending on what is
‘happening’. Again another leader from a large youth organisation in the UK
said at a lecture I attended, and he said it with some sadness, “it is not
unusual to see a group of the greatest teen and twenties you would want to meet
in one of our training sessions on a Friday Night, praising God, and thoroughly
immersed in worship, only to find that on Saturday Night they are fully
immersed in a drunken party, and move of to sleep with the nights partner, and
find no conflict in any of the events. Why is that, they are truly post modern
people, the present is the import thing! All events are equally valid
especially if they are happening to you. If you listen to current ‘culture
speak’ as I try to do, you will not hear words like Sin, Wrong, Right, you will
hear words like behaviour, unusual behaviour, unacceptable behaviour in current
society, you should note that when the press used the word evil in relationship
to a particularly nasty killing recently people where up in arms saying that
the ‘evil’ word should never be used, particularly in reference to children. No
wonder Lynn
says young people can not rebel any more, there is nothing to rebel again, and
there are just different kinds of behaviour. So is the Question posed by David
Butcher correct, yes it is; there is a change in the cultural behaviour of
today’s teens and twenties! If there is nothing wrong or sinful you can not
rebel, if it’s only your different, preferred behaviour what is there to rebel
against?

So is there anything we can do
I think so. Culture is made up, influenced, changed by the four legs that hold
it up:

1. Business,
2. Media, newspapers, Art TV, Internet, Advertising, music, in fact all media
things
3. Politics
4. Education, and in there I would put the Family

The church that I was part of before the 60’s actively discouraged its
Christian young people from getting involved with things like the media, they
were evil things. Even today there are those that would say, stay out of
politics if you are a Christian, I run Christian Schools because I believe what
I am saying here, yet my biggest opposition often come from Christians. Can you
be in business and still be a Christian some others would ask. Yet these are
the thing that mould and make the culture what it is. We have no right to
complain if we have opted out of the moulding process. We need to get back in
there and remould it, we need to seek the Kingdom of God
in the big wide world, and we need to find the Kingdom, find the values of the
Kingdom, which at the end of the day are highly beneficial to all people.

Those who are already Post Modernist – what hope is there?
It seems to me that most of the ancient world of Paul’s day was probably more
post modern that it was modern, and Paul got on with it, and those early
Christians turned the world upside down, at least that what the Roman Governor
Plinny writing to Cesar said. The other good news is that post modernist love
stories, but sadly they don’t understand that there is a big story, one with a
meta-narrative, its actually HIS story and there is a plan there is
consequences, and there is a purpose. I think we have to keep telling the good
news stories to these people, because life style described by David is very
short lived and very destructive, and young people need to urgently hear that
there is a good story for them too!

The Plug
I believe that in today’s world understanding culture is very important, so can
I ask you to look at my latest book Culture Clash, published by: iUniverse,
ISBN Paperback is 978-0-595-50707-8 in E-book version ISBN 978-0-595-61619-0
available from most good bookshops and certainly Amazon.UK and USA.
And even in the UK
from Tesco on line.
CULTURE CLASH: A book, a trainer's manual and a student manual
on t...