©2004 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

11/28/04

Cultural Lies

11/28/04 Cultural Lies

What I am going to do during the next few minutes

will need just a few words of explanation

before I get into it.

And I’ll tell you first of all

that I am doing what I am doing

more for myself than for you.

From the very beginning of my relationship with my Lord Jesus Christ

I knew that He wanted me involved in Bible teaching in some way.

I’ve shared with you in the past

that I spent a good many years trying to find some way of doing

what I thought I was suppose to be doing

without getting involved in established religious organizations

because I was so uncomfortable

with so much of what I saw going on in those organizations,

especially in the way local churches seemed to function as local business

who were trying to market the message of Christ on one hand

while competing with one another on the other.

But then, through a series of events over which I had no control,

my relationship with Peninsula Bible Fellowship came into being,

and I found a church family

in which I could grow and contribute what I have to contribute

without so much of the religious baggage

that so many other pastors are compelled to carry around with them.

And when it comes to my approach to teaching,

one of the things I learned early in my Christian life

is the critical value of understanding the culture in which we live

and then communicating the message of Jesus Christ

in ways that make it easiest for our culture to hear and respond to what our God is really saying to us.

And I have also come to realize

that one of Satan’s most effective tools

in his efforts to block the effective communication of the message of Christ

is through his creating cultural attitudes

that make it extremely difficult for those in that culture

to hear and respond to what’s really being said.

What I’m going to do this morning

is to attempt to put into words

a significant recent discovery I have made in this whole area,

a discovery that has helped me to better understand

why it is sometimes so difficult for Christians

to take the truth given to us by our God

and effectively apply it in the different areas of our lives.

I mentioned already that what I do this morning

may be mostly for myself,

but it helps me if I force myself to take what I’m seeing

and try to put it into words to you.

I also realize

that some of you may find what I’m about to do

to be incredibly boring,

while others may find it either confusing or of no practical value to you at all,

and still others may leave here mumbling to your mate,

“The guy is suppose to teach us the Bible,

and I don’t know why he wastes our time

with all that cultural mumbo jumbo.”

To all of you who find any of these responses within yourself,

I will apologize to you in advance,

and assure you that, if you choose to give it one more try next week,

we will be locked into the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians

in a review of the first three chapters of that letter

that I believe you will find to be of great value.

But for this morning only

we’re going to look at some cultural theories

that are, I think, helping me to be a more effective preacher.

We live in culture today

that is unlike anything we have every known before in our nation’s history.

It isn’t just that social norms and attitudes have shifted,

or that accepted social boundaries have fallen by the way.

It’s that we hear things differently than we have ever heard them before.

During the past 20 or 30 years

we as a culture have been systematically destroying the concept

of any kind of a universal moral framework to which the entire human race is called to submit.

The cultural destruction of this concept

is now both total,

and irreversible.

I can remember being in a discussion group with Dr. Francis Schaefer

way back in 1970

in which, even then, he was predicting this shift

and attempting to illustrate what it meant.

I can remember him saying that ten years earlier

he could have walked up to a college co-ed on any typical U.S. campus

and said to her, “Be a good girl!”

and she would either have been a good girl

or not been a good girl,

but she would have understood what he was saying.

But then he went on to say that

if he were to do the same thing today

more often than not the co-ed would respond, “So what’s “good”?

Even then, 35 years ago,

Schaefer was talking about the loss of the concept of any absolute moral structure within the youth culture of the 1960's and 70's.

And now, today, it is those 1960's and 70's young people

who hold the leadership positions

throughout every aspect of our society.

Many of them are wearing suits and ties now,

and driving SUV’s,

but their fundamental life philosophies have not changed all that much.

And those philosophies that seemed so extreme,

and rebellious in the youth culture back then

now form the foundation for all mainstream social thinking and decision-making

in this world in which we live.

Perhaps I could most easily illustrate

how this fundamental change altered our social thinking

through the way in which our society defines a “good man”.

When I was growing up during the 50's and 60's

a truly “good man” by accepted social standards

was a man who possessed moral integrity as defined by Biblical standards.

He lived by the 10 commandments.

He was honest, even when it was costly for him to be honest.

He was sexually pure and absolutely faithful to his wife and his children.

He placed a far higher value on relationships than he did on financial gain.

He didn’t cheat, he didn’t lie, and even his language reflected a clearly defined understanding of appropriate and inappropriate words.

In other words,

he recognized and respected his responsibility

to live by the moral standard revealed to us by our Creator.

That doesn’t mean he was necessarily a Christian,

but it does mean that the cultural concept of a truly good character

was directly linked to the degree to which a person’s life

conformed to that absolute moral standard.

But today our standard of measure for a “good man” is completely different.

Today a “good man” by society’s definition

is a man who is tolerant to the extreme,

a man who strongly defends the right of every person

to live by any value system

and any lifestyle they choose,

a man who never judges,

who never condemns

because he rejects the whole concept of the existence of one universal moral standard to which we are all held accountable.

In truth, the whole basis for defining “good”

is 180 degrees away from what it was during my childhood.

In my childhood

that definition demanded the acceptance and submission to a rigid universal moral standard,

and today it demands the rejection of even the existence of any such standard.

Sandee mentioned to me this past week

that she’d heard the report of a recent survey taken among teenagers.

And of those who identified themselves as “Christians”,

75% of them believed that there was no one universal moral standard for all of mankind

and that all religions were equally valid and acceptable paths to God.

And that was the response among those who clearly identified themselves as Christians.

And the truth is

such statistics don’t surprise me at all

because those teenagers are the product of the world in which they live,

reflecting the fundamental philosophy

that forms the basis for our entire social structure.

Though we’ve been moving in this direction for many years now,

when Clinton was in office,

living out his sexual exploits before the entire world,

he forced our nation to recognize and accept

the absolute separation between a person’s “public” and “private” life.

In the end he didn’t deny his twisted sexual conduct,

he simply said it wasn’t an issue,

it didn’t matter because it didn’t affect his public performance as president.

I was flipping through channels a few days ago during prime time TV viewing

and caught a few sentences of dialogue

between two brothers on some sitcom.

The older brother was trying to offer counsel and advice to his younger brother,

and in the process he said,

“Of course when I was your age

I slept with every girl I could get my hands on,

but I made one huge mistake that caused me tremendous pain -

I made the mistake of confusing sex with love

and I want to be sure you don’t make the same mistake.”

He went on to make it clear to his little brother

that he should get as much sex as he could

from as many girls as he could,

but he should never allow himself to think that just because some girl slept with him

it then meant she really loved him.

Such a belief would could easily cause him to get emotionally attached to the girl

and end up causing him a great deal of pain.

Now, I realize that many of you here this morning

find yourselves deeply offended by such thinking

because of your own strong moral values,

but my point here is simply this -

we live in a society in which there no longer exists

any concept of a universal moral standard.

We can fight court battles all over the nation

in an attempt to keep the Ten Commandments stuck on the courthouse walls,

but it will change nothing.

The shift is complete,

and we as a culture now think in completely different terms.

The question is no longer what is right and what is wrong,

the question is what do we think works and what doesn’t,

what will give us what we want and what will not,

what can we get away with and what can we not.

And it isn’t just that our society has seen the standard and rejected it,

it’s that we as a society have completely rejected the whole concept of the existence of an absolute standard,

and believe it would be morally wrong to suggest that such a standard exists.

I’ve brought all of this up this morning

because of one of the fascinating consequences

of this loss of any kind of moral absolute standard in our society.

Once we let go of the concept of a universal moral framework

that applies to all people

and all areas of life

it left a void within us,

a void in which we were then forced to create for ourselves

a whole new set of rules or guidelines

with which to govern our lives.

But we quickly discovered that the rules that seemed to work in one situation

often didn’t work at all well in another situation.

So what we have done in our culture

is to create for ourselves

a kind of layered approach to life.

By that I mean

that we will establish different rules to govern different areas of our lives.

When the politician draws a line between his “public” and “private” life

this is what he’s doing.

He is establishing one set of rules to govern his public conduct,

and a whole other set of rules to govern his private relationships.

In public he will acknowledge the need to appear to be honest, and dependable, and faithful to his commitments,

but in private he can be deceptive, and unfaithful, and dishonest.

And it isn’t just the politicians who live out this approach to life.

In truth, once we removed the concept of a universal moral code from our thinking,

apart from the transforming work of Christ within us,

we will all apply exactly the same approach to every aspect of our lives.

We will establish one set of rules to govern our relationship to our work and our employer,

and another to govern our relationship to our family.

We’ll have a completely different set of rules that govern our relationship to the government,

and yet another set of rules that govern our relationship to insurance companies,

and still another set of rules that control our interaction with retail stores,

and another that controls our approach to the internet,

and yet another that governs our relationship to the fish and wildlife regulations,

and still another that governs our approach to entertainment,

and on and on.

In one layer we may be honest and reliable,

and in another we are deceptive, deceitful, and rebellious.

But because we as a society no longer recognize any absolute moral standard,

or universal governing principles of life,

it doesn’t bother us a bit.

All that matters is whether or not we are consistent in our conduct

within any given layer of life.

Which brings me to the aspect of this whole thing

that got me heading this direction in the first place,

because one of those layers in our lives

is the layer of religion,

or maybe it would be better to say it is our GOD layer in life.

And within that layer

we have our doctrines,

and our beliefs,

and our principles,

and our understanding of God that then governs that aspect of our lives.

We have our GOD layer,

just as we have our family layer, and our business layer, and so on.

But given the kind of thinking that dominates our culture today,

given the way that we in this generation have been trained to think,

unless we are consciously aware of it,

and then choose to fight against it,

we will do the same thing with our God layer

that we do with all of the others -

we will keep it isolated in our minds,

a distinct layer of life

that has great importance to us within itself,

but that does not impact or alter or influence any other layer of our lives.

I have been involved in Bible teaching for more than 35 years now,

and I’ve been the pastor of this fellowship for 20 something years.

During all of those years

I think the thing that has troubled me the most

has not been those people who have heard the message of Christ and then rejected it,

as painful and frustrating as that is.

The thing that has troubled and puzzled me the most

has been those who have heard and accepted and embraced the message,

and yet have not had that message impact and alter every other area of their lives.

Now, even in the best of situations,

those changes never come quickly or easily with any of us.

But the thing that I’ve never been able to understand

is why so often

I have found people who are clearly deeply devout in their attitude toward Christ,

and yet whose devotion never seems to have any impact whatsoever

on the way they do business,

or the way they relate to their wife, or their husband, or their children,

or the way they handle their money,

or their attitude toward the government,

or toward their sexual conduct,

or any other significant area of their life.

I remember being in a conversation with a man a number of years ago

in which he was sharing with me

this tremendous religious experience he was involved in,

an experience in which he had never felt so close to God,

so filled with His Spirit.

After he shared the glories of this wonderful happening with me in some detail,

I asked him how this new depth of religious experience was affecting his relationship with his wife.

For a minute he just stared at me as if I were brain dead,

apparently wondering how someone who was suppose to be a Christian leader

could have failed to grasp the wonder and glory of what was happening in his life.

But when he finally realized that I was serious about the question I’d asked him,

he said that actually the whole thing was causing a lot of tension in his home

because his partner wasn’t into it at all.

I know at the time, hearing his response, I felt as though it wasn’t me that was brain dead,

but looking back on it now

it makes perfect sense to me.

Without realizing it,

he was the product of a culture

that had trained him to relate to the world in layers,

layers that all existed independently of one another.

And my attempting to connect what was happening in his God layer

with what was happening in his family layer made him very uncomfortable.

It seemed to come to him as a revolutionary new concept,

and one that he wasn’t at all sure had any validity to it.

Now, let me see if I can bring all of this back to our study of Ephesians,

and at the same time justify my taking one of our precious mornings together

to share with you some of the cultural observations I’ve been churning over recently.

When our God speaks to us,

when He reaches out to us,

when He relates to us at any point, at any time in our lives,

He does not relate to us in layers,

He simply relates to us as who we are - complete, whole, individual creations of His.

There is no such thing as a “God layer”

or a “religion layer” in our lives

that is somehow distinct from other aspects of our lives.

I love the way Paul put it

in his conversation with the philosophers at Athens,

ACT 17:28 “...for in Him we live and move and exist...”

The idea that there could be any kind of a religious or “God” experience

that does not ultimately impact every aspect of our being

is the most logically absurd idea we could ever have.

The battle we are involved in is real,

and the stakes are high for all concerned.

It is no cultural coincidence that we have socially evolved into a layered approach to life,

an approach in which we honestly believe

that we can have a “public life” and a “private life” with separate rules governing each,

or that we can have a God layer to our lives

that exists independent of other aspects of our life.

It is yet another brilliant strategy by our enemy

to diffuse the potential power of God’s truth to transform our lives.

That question I asked that man years ago

is a far better measure than I realized at the time

of the truth or validity of any religious experience or principle we may encounter.

“How does it affect your relationship with your partner?”

“How does it affect your relationship with your children?”

“How does it affect your relationship with neighbor, or with your boss?”

God is not attempting to build for us a nice, solid “God layer” in our lives.

He is offering us a relationship with Himself

that, when correctly understood,

will become our foundation and the reason for every aspect of our lives.

“...for in Him we live and move and exist...”

And when we return to our study of Ephesians,

or an other passage of Scripture,

it is critical for our own healing and growth

that we not allow ourselves to hear the words as simply “God talk” for the religious layer of our life.

I’ll be the first to admit

that even recognizing

much less fighting against cultural attitudes within us

is among the most difficult growth areas

God’s Spirit will ever lead us through.

I know, too, that after going through all of this today

I should be able to offer three nifty steps

for reversing what our culture has developed within us.

I don’t have those steps.

But I have a place to begin.

It starts where all true growth and healing begins in our lives,

through our openly recognizing our total dependance upon our God

to bring about the changes within us that need to take place.

And this morning I’d like to offer that to you in the form of a prayer.

“Lord, I don’t want to live my life in layers.

I don’t want a God Layer that does not touch and transform every aspect of my life.

What I want, Lord, is You changing, healing, destroying and then rebuilding each flawed area within me.

Please give me eyes to see the lies,

the kind of religion that doesn’t truly rebuild my life.

And give me ears to hear

and a heart to respond to what You say

in a way that becomes the true, total foundation for every area, every issue within me.” Amen.