Understanding the Spiritual Climate of Today’s Youth Culture

Understanding the Spiritual Climate

of Today’s Youth Culture

By Jay Wegter

INTRODUCTION:

What is the value of understanding the times in which we live? Why should we know the culture into which we are to speak the Gospel? Understanding the times is necessary if we are to make wise decisions (1 Chron 12:32)? Like a school of ravenous piranhas, there cultural issues poised to prey upon our youth. In my talk today I will endeavor to name and describe briefly as many of those ‘piranhas’ as possible (with a short summary under each on how we may fortify our youth with biblical worldview).

If we are going to teach the rising generation how to think like Christians; we will have to show them why, and how they must reject the false dichotomies which saturate our culture (divisions between head and heart; belief and practice; idea and consequence). One of my ambitious goals in equipping Christian teachers and parents is to explain why a fragmented worldview can lead to a fragmented life—and to offer hope in Christ as the great “Unifier” of our biblical worldview. How we need clear views of Christ as Lord of the cosmos in order to have a unified worldview.

When we think about our culture; there could hardly be a more accurate assessment of our country today than the description found at the end of the book of Judges God’s Word says in Judges 21:25, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

Because our young people are for the most part unprepared; they are becoming the casualties of our culture. Most are unprepared for culture’s onslaught against biblical Christianity. Nominally ‘Christian’ students never trained in biblical worldview who attend secular universities are at greatest risk. University campuses are stealing the souls of our youth. Colleges have become the most active purveyors of pantheistic worldview, or the new paganism. High school and college campuses are indoctrinating our youth in the satanic philosophies of humanism, naturalism and pantheism at an alarming rate. Rampant moral decay is the result—accompanied by a gross loss of confidence in the reliability of the Scriptures. If we do not train our young people in Christian worldview; then we are guilty of sending our kids off like lambs into a pack of wolves.

College students who leave the faith are, for the most part, those who were never taught a unified worldview which has Genesis and biblical creation as its foundation. High school students who are never taught what is at stake if the foundations of Scripture are destroyed are astonishingly vulnerable to erroneous worldviews.¹

We are standing at a crossroads in human history—will we prepare and protect this rising generation, or lose them? Now is the time for the church to become proactive in training its members in biblical worldview. Our Christian students are waiting to be formed into ‘worldview changers’— into maturing saints able to resist the tide of our culture’s lies.

The advantages in training our young people in Christian worldview are immense. Worldview may be defined as: A set of beliefs through which we view the world and our place in it, and our calling and future in it.² Biblical worldview is the very foundation of ethics, life decisions, values, and behavior. Believers equipped in biblical worldview develop the resolve and discernment to live life without compromise; to live in light of God’s total truth; for His honor and glory. Training in worldview enables Christians not only to stand firm in the face of our culture’s non-biblical ideas; but also to tear down the atheistic absolutes of false worldviews; and to powerfully share the Gospel in a secularized society.

I. Cultural factors that shape today’s philosophic climate

A. The loss of biblical cosmology

By cultural factors, I mean plausibility structures, or common beliefs which have left our young people with a hopelessly fragmented worldview. Our youth have grown up in a society that has lost its grasp of biblical cosmology. (Cosmology is that branch of philosophy which deals with the origin and structure of the universe.) Biblical cosmology deals with the question of God’s relation to the universe and man’s place in the creation. At the heart of biblical cosmology is the Creator-creature distinction. Cosmology includes the creation of male and female as the image of God (with the sub-themes of the dominion mandate; and biblical anthropology).

Central to biblical cosmology is that God is Creator and ‘Definer’ of what He has made. As Creator He gives designations, definitions, categories and relations of what He has made.³ God’s defining role over His creation has established the creation structures of male and female and marriage and family. These creation structures are foundational and ontologically real—they are at the core of your being (which is why social contract theory, sexual perversion, and abortion constitute a radical overturning of biblical cosmology).⁴ Without biblical cosmology; morality appears to be imposed arbitrarily by religious conservatives (as opposed to morality being the very creation structures and ‘fabric and furniture’ of the universe). God’s moral creation structures (heterosexual marriage, the nuclear family, etc.) are just as real as physical structures such as the solar system or a mountain range.

The absolute truth of cosmology is essential in interpreting the universe accurately and truthfully.⁵ God’s relation to the creation is the ordering and unifying principle of the universe and of reality. Because God is the sustainer and definer of all that He has made; there is no such thing as a reality greater than God—or a reality in which God is but a component (note how common this error is in modern forms of deism and pantheism).

Thus, biblical cosmology is the sole vantage point ‘high enough’ to provide the foundation for a unified biblical worldview (the alternate is hopelessly fragmented knowledge). Cosmology alone provides a wide angle lens broad enough to see man’s place in the universe. Without biblical cosmology worldview has no foundation (and it cannot have a totalizing impact).

Consequently biblical cosmology is the foundation of the gospel—for the gospel ONLY makes sense in a world in which our omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God is Creator, Owner, Upholder, Lawmaker, Ruler, Redeemer, and Judge. The gospel has no point of contact in a world in which pagan cosmology has replaced biblical cosmology, and pseudo-science defines reality. This is why there is an increasingly desperate need to define categories as God does—that He is Ruler, Sustainer, Owner of His creation—and that the designations and definitions He has made concerning His creation are absolutely essential for accurately interpreting reality, and for making wise life choices. God’s creation structures (His ‘blueprint’ for us His creatures) are inseparable from His moral government over us as His image bearers.

At the end of each section in this article you will find an underlined portion beginning with the word, “antithesis.” Antithesis means contrast—contrast between truth and error. That is something missing today in our culture of countless opinions and no absolute truth. Our young people need to be prepared to answer each major cultural issue of our day.

ANTITHESIS: Contrary to the prevailing belief in a purposeless creation; God has authoritatively set forth His ‘blueprint’ for His creation found in His Word. God’s relation to what He has made is our fixed point of reference which provides our understanding of the nature of reality (see Ps 96). Only by what God has said in His infallible Word do we know what is true, real, right and wrong.

⁶ Scripture defines freedom as living according to God’s divine blueprint for us. Christ said that

freedom from sin’s rule can only come by knowing and doing the truth (Jn 8:31-32). Secularism defines freedom as the rejection of God’s blueprint in favor of the media’s conception of the world.

⁷

B. The pervasive influence of Darwinian Theory

Darwinian Theory has had a central role in removing biblical cosmology from the American mind. The average Christian high school student assumes that there is more evidence for evolution than creation. Young people brought up on evolutionary theory in the classroom have been taught that death, disease, pain, and suffering have always been part of life (as if the only way God can make creatures is by death, deformity and suffering—by millions of years of natural selection—non-random death). This has a ‘killing’ effect on cosmology; for it sends the message that the only way God could make things was by the cruel forces of billions of years of evolution.

Harvard Anthropologist Irven De Vore captures the same thought, “I personally cannot discern a shred of evidence for a benign cosmic presence . . . I see indifference and capriciousness. What kind of god would work with a 99.9 percent extinction rate?” De Vore’s point is hard to miss—what kind of character would a god possess if he created such a scenario? “How could a God of love allow such horrible processes as disease, death, and suffering for millions of years?”⁸

Ken Ham notes that the ‘god’ who uses death and suffering as part of the creation process is a cruel god and not the God of Scripture. Scripture makes it clear that death is not part of the creative process; death is the penalty for sin (1 Cor 15:26). Evolutionary theory redefines death as a driving force in the creative process.⁹ (Darwinian educators who ‘normalize’ death go to great lengths to make their point—i.e. in the Tomato patch story a teacher dying of cancer ordered her cremated ashes to be plowed into her tomato garden and then the tomatoes fed to her former students. She said they would be “taking a bite of her.” In the write your own epitaph story, a grammar school teacher wishing to normalize death had her fourth graders write their own epitaph for their future gravestones.) Nearly every museum of natural history (and, or earth history), and every park with an interpretive center has become a shrine to evolutionary theory.

An evolutionary upbringing has taught students that death, pain, suffering, and bloodshed have always been a part of life for millions, if not billions of years. Therefore, death and suffering are not the direct result of sin’s entrance into human history, thus God must be cruel. When the church compromises, placing death and suffering before sin, it is telling the world that God is the author of these things and is therefore cruel. What is the hope of overcoming death if death has always existed? God did not make a world of billions of years of pain, death, suffering, and disease. All these came about because of man’s sin.¹⁰ We stress that the curse was a judicial act of God (Gen 3:14-19).

The answer is a return to the authority of God’s word—especially as it unfolds cosmology. “When [young people] see that sin is the cause of death and their own hopeless condition, the results are dramatic. Now they have answers to the pain in the world and in their life. [T]his can be a painful process shaking their whole worldview. But this understanding of their own lost condition is vital before they can understand God’s grace. Says Geoff Stevens, “We need to prepare the ground, removing the all the evolutionary . . . boulders and rocks so that the Gospel seed falls upon fertile soil. Today’s needy [young] people with all their baggage, tend to fall in love with God once they understand this full truth. They are also much more likely to be serious about their walk with Christ, and to become dedicated disciples.” ¹¹ No wonder cosmology is so important to the ‘big picture’.

C. The rending apart of fact from value

The loss of biblical cosmology has produced an immense gash in our thinking; a tearing apart of creation and redemption. Remember, cosmology is God’s relationship to the creation. He is creator; upholder, owner, definer. The secular academy and pop culture have been systematically teaching our young people that scientific facts are totally objective and moral values are totally subjective. That message can rip a kid apart ethically when they accept the lie that morality is based on choice and not upon the unchanging character of God. Our young people need biblical worldview answers to equip them to stand in the face of cultural lies hostile to the gospel.

This fragmented view of truth, of knowledge, and of reality is the outworking of the loss of divine transcendence. The secularist claims to explain everything in terms of natural laws instead of by means of the Creator. The result been a pervasive splitting which separates creation from redemption. This two-level view of truth has imbued students with the notion that religious views are private and have nothing to do with the real world. The secular arts continually operate on this premise that the real world is concrete, and that the spiritual world is not.¹²

Having dispensed with the wonder of divine creation as the revelation of God (and thus having removed His rule and reign over creation), reality is nothing more than what you choose to make it—in essence an extension of the self. The sovereign self, with its autonomously shaped identity, may use the world as its ‘raw material’ to construct the self. We must know how these philosophies are affecting our students’ worldview.

Once the universe is viewed as merely a select mass of raw material with all phenomena reducible to material properties and natural laws and processes, then the very ground of prime reality is no longer Almighty God. Prime reality becomes impersonal matter and motion. In this view the cosmos becomes purposeless and is severed from redemption in the minds of most people. Religious truth claims are regarded as personal, private, subjective ideas existing in the heads of people.

Kids are taught philosophic naturalism—that’s evolution functioning as a religion (namely the idea that scientific objectivity begins with the assumption that matter is uncreated and ultimate). With this materialistic view of the universe comes the assumption of mechanistic determinism: that uncreated primeval matter sat there pulsating—filled with self-determination to show what it could do and be if given a chance. As if matter wanted to become highly organized star systems, to express itself in the formation of whales; coral reefs; water falls; wildflowers; mangoes; antelopes; and people.

Secularists have said in effect: “We will tell you what reality is—what the universe is—you Christians will yield the floor to us—because science is the only reliable way to explain the universe.” You keep your beliefs to yourselves (private, inward) out of the public arena; out of government and education. Sadly, (for our kids) for the most part, the church has knuckled under (allowing itself to be intimidated by the academy). Naturalism’s insistence on a material explanation for everything has blinded students to the sacred canopy of the Bible’s total truth. Students have systematically had their view of the sacred canopy blocked—as a result the divinely ordained transcendentals of truth; beauty; goodness; morality; law; logic; order; and divine providence are put into naturalistic categories instead of where they belong as testimonies of God’s character and governance of His universe. (This is just one more symptom of the fragmented worldview that dominates the scene).

What was the net effect, in the minds of most, of replacing biblical cosmology with philosophic naturalism (the worldview of Carl Sagan)? In the minds of most, God as personal, transcendent, involved with creation was eclipsed and demoted.¹³ God’s direct involvement in the lives of His creatures was increasingly ruled out. God was no longer linked to all the details of reality. God had been marginalized. (The pop song, ‘Material Girl’ by Madonna exemplifies the divided view of life.)

How has this divided view of reality impacted the church at large? Though evangelicals stressed personal faith and piety, they also began to divide God’s role—they saw Him as active in redemption; but allowed science to define the creation. The great problem is the church accepted this as relatively benign “as long as we have Jesus in our hearts.” But the fallout in the form of fragmented lives is deadly serious.¹⁴

When one allows the Bible to describe salvation and science to comprehensively describe the creation; it produces a tear, or rend, in our thinking. The reason why is the salvation-science dichotomy pictures God as having two radically different faces—the side of God that dealt with creation was far less personal than the side of God that dealt with salvation. As a consequence, the Jesus of salvation became very other-worldly, personal and private and even sentimental.

As a case in point, “believing students on university campuses are able offer Jesus as ‘friend’ but have no clue how to proclaim Him as Lord of the cosmos.”¹⁵ This prevalent split view of reality welcomes Jesus as ‘helper’ but cannot conceive of Him, or proclaim Him, as majestic Lord of the universe. This is the dilemma our Christian students face today on the secular university campus. The loss of biblical cosmology forces them to live with an immense ‘disconnect’ between faith and life.

Popular culture has deepened the yawning chasm dividing creation from redemption; it has separated the physical from the spiritual in the minds of many believers. Mass culture has bombarded our youth with this divided view of reality. The wonder of creation as the revelation of God’s majesty has been erased, and with it God’s rule and reign. For the majority of America’s youth today, reality is nothing more than what you make it. The creation is but raw material by which one may construct the self. Pop culture incessantly feeds this lie to our youth. But what really is the creation? It is a stage for God’s glory; the revelation of His attributes; a worshipping chorus of God.

ANTITHESIS: The fact/value split is fueled by scientism’s folly and pride. (Scientism is the belief that everything in our experience, including religion and ethics, has a reliable scientific explanation). Scientism has become a worldview—it assumes the scientific nature of truth as if man’s reason alone is sufficient to access truth. The empiricists would like us to believe that they possess perfect knowledge. How powerfully the Word of God refutes this exercise in absurdity. For truth is not a sterile lab fact under a microscope, truth is an absolute Person. Jesus is the truth. His authority stands behind all truth. The doctrine of the incarnation of

Logos destroys all dualisms. This has the

power to blast us out of privatized religion. The incarnation of the God-man does not permit us to partition off reality into a spiritual and a non-spiritual sphere. All reality flows from one point of integration—the Son of God.

¹⁶

D. The acceptance of postmodernism

Postmodernism has moved our thinking to the place where truth is no longer objective and universal. Truth no longer transcends race, culture, and language. Postmodernism pushed truth off of the table and made everything into a perspective. Nothing is bigger than the individual. Divine transcendence has been eroded away.¹⁷ D. A. Carson comments about postmodernism, “Truth is no longer foundational and axiomatic. The postmodern meaning of things is supplied by the mind, not by the data which is sensed.”¹⁸

In postmodernism there is no universal omniscient divine mind who supplies the ultimate criteria for truth. In PM there is no ultimate “Knower” who is the absolute reference point for reality (this is the loss of an absolutely authoritative vantage point of God’s view of the world). Instead the acquisition of truth is severely limited by finite autonomous man—so much so that objective truth is not attainable. But this position of PM is more than a bare philosophical view; it is also an ethic. PM says that epistemological certainty is not desirable or attainable. It is not attainable because there is no sure place to stand (no omniscient mind to test things). And it is not desirable because the true knowledge of things is constrained by the interpretive communities—objectivity is lost in the limits of the finite knower. Thus epistemological certainty is a chimera. Therefore to claim epistemological certainty is to be arrogant, bigoted, and out of date. Students feel more humble ‘not knowing’.

According to postmodernism, to claim epistemological certainty is not desirable because totalizing statements impose a kind of total structure and worldview which is manipulative and controlling. Thus, due to the human condition, it is far better (PM ethically) to speak of truth as a correlative (‘truths’ from different perspectives—i.e. from a certain time in history; from a particular stance; from one’s upbringing; from one’s religious perspective; from a group of feminists; etc.).¹⁹

The presuppositions inherent in postmodernism are in collision with biblical cosmology. PM suggests that what we ‘think’ are creation structures (male and female, right and wrong, marriage and family, etc.) are actually products of finite human beings. Thus what passes for creation structures are not constants deposited to us by an omniscient mind outside of us as a fulcrum to move the world. They are merely ‘social constructs’. Thus with no transcendental truth or objectivity; to claim to have it is to use an instrument of coercive subjectivity—a power play.²⁰

Postmodernity’s deconstructing influence opens the door to pagan worldview because the transcendent Creator of the universe is no longer the ultimate reference point for reality. Pagan worldview suggests that man’s nature (unaided by the God of the Bible) is capable of connecting with the divine and is able to produce world harmony.²¹ How radically different is the message of Scripture with its divine testimony that man is broken by sin, spiritual dead, rebellious, helpless, and depraved.

In PM, biblical theology, with its God-centered theocentric absolutism, is no longer considered relevant—Bible doctrine is viewed a divisive and a hindrance to spirituality. This is the polar opposite of Scripture which affirms that theology defines; informs; and produces proper spiritual experience. Spiritual experience that is genuine is anchored in the twin truths of biblical history and Bible doctrine. Christ’s incarnation, Person and atoning work as suffering substitute is the ground of real spiritual experience.²²

By contrast, PM is open to astrology, ‘third eye,’ sorcery, intuition, and subjectivity. PM’s presupposition that knowing goes way outside the limits of science and physical laws (while rejecting the infallibility and perspicuity of Scripture) makes a way for other theories of knowledge which can be sorted out and either verified or falsified.²³

Postmodern popular culture has been relentlessly eroding away every transcendent reference point. In so doing postmodernism leaves nothing but the self as the only reliable, trustworthy center (everything else in pushed through the grid of self). This is the existential situation our young people find themselves in. They have been systematically taught by popular culture to be skeptically of absolute truth claims. Our kids have been marketed since they were potty trained. As a consequence, they carry a palpable skepticism with them. Postmodernism helps ‘seal the deal’ that there is no truth outside of self.

Postmodernity deepens the divided view of reality leaving knowledge utterly fragmented— spirituality is partitioned off from the remainder of life. The secular/sacred dichotomy tends to restrict Christianity to the realm of ‘religious ideas’ (and not total truth about reality)—this creates double minds and fragmented lives.²⁴ A pastor friend shared the following account. “It took two weeks of counseling before one young man was able to see that porn is not a ‘compartment’ in human experience; but a worldview hostile to the knowledge of God. Among today’s postmoderns, a huge disconnect exists between their ethical life and their professed belief—truth and everyday life are commonly torn apart.”²⁵

Though the world’s philosophies of secularism are relentless in their efforts to drive a wedge between truth and life—the Word of God overturns the two level view of truth. (At The Master’s College we have Truth & Life conferences to ‘rejoin’ all of life under Christ’s lordship.)

ANTITHESIS: There is no split between creation and redemption in the Scriptures. Scripture affirms that truth and life are forever joined in the Person of Christ. We need to thunder again from our pulpits and lecterns what’s been in the Word of God all along—Christ unifies all reality because He structures and upholds all reality. He is the Great Insider who entered human history as one of us; yet without sin. Christ is Lord of the cosmos; goal of all reality; consummation of all history; and some day, restorer of a sinless reality.

Postmodernism has overlooked the one grand infallible meta-narrative that explains life and meaning—the one totalizing worldview that is able to solve Enlightenment dualism—namely God’s plan of the ages in Christ.

²⁶ Only when we understand the Father’s plan to restore us to the image of God in Christ, and only when we grasp Christ’s preeminence and the Father’s determination to give Him first place in everything will we find the cure for our fragmented lives. Feeding our minds and hearts on His majesty is the key to living for His approval in preparation for His coming Kingdom.

E. The entrance of diversity’s Trojan horse

Our kids are being conditioned to see everything through the lens of cultural diversity. Cultural relativism’s assumptions include the following: one cannot transcend his own cultural situation. Thus, one cannot find an objective vantage point from which to make objective judgments. And, because of one’s limited cultural perspective, any judgment offered would be conditioned by Western civilization. There is no perspective which transcends culture; no one is in possession of absolute truth. To assert that one possesses the truth is to be a dangerous fundamentalist. All cultures ought to be affirmed.

But diversity conceals a destructive agenda. Diversity appears benign because it states that every culture deserves equal respect and sanctity. But it operates on the assumptions of cultural relativism—that an individual’s beliefs and practices should be understood in terms of his culture. Thus it operates on the assumption that there is no superior answer or absolute truth and morality that applies to all people in all places at all times—therefore all judgments are made from the perspective of one’s own culture.

Christian kids are being told that their biblical ideas amount to nothing more than their own cultural situation. Can you see how this would ‘box in’ Christianity? In a world in which all judgments are relative to one’s culture, those who make judgments that are absolute are regarded as ‘absolutists,’ ‘closed-minded’ and guilty of discrimination. (Because all we really have are opinions). Therefore evaluations based on truth and justice increasingly are becoming socially unacceptable.

What the rising generation tends to miss is that diversity issues its mandates from the worldview of relativism. That’s what is hidden within the Trojan horse of diversity. The push for diversity conceals a siege taking place against the normalcy of heterosexual monogamous marriage. Diversity is a covert weapon in the culture war, and the culture war is actually a battle between two worldviews. Those who subscribe to the worldview hostile to Christianity are attempting to ‘liberate’ the world from the boundary of heterosexual relations. This amounts to a radical deconstruction of the family. The culture’s message to our kids is, don’t let your ethics and your ideology get in the way of cooperation and respect.

What is concealed behind the agenda of diversity is a worldview that is seeking to dignify homosexual relations (as if homosexuality is not a behavior; but instead deserves the status of a community). This lets ethics come from ‘culture’ and not from God. Our young people have become unwitting participants in a spiritual war that is seeking to normalize homosexuality. The proponents of same-sex marriage would like nothing more than to recruit our children to be defenders of the homosexual lifestyle—all in the name of diversity and fairness. (As if the practice of homosexuality is truly a culture worthy of the same respect, support and admiration as the traditional family.)

For the most part still concealed in the ‘Trojan horse’ is that diversity’s agenda is not so much a cultural change as a spiritual change! What is perceived in our society as a culture war is actually a spiritual war. We are experiencing a cultural assault on the life of the church. The new spirituality is dead set upon rejecting the categories found in biblical theism. Diversity’s agenda conceals a massive paradigm shift in spirituality that has entered our culture like a Trojan horse.

God’s plan for marriage and family has come under attack through the assumptions of pagan spirituality. Says Peter Jones, “Central to a pagan spirituality is the idea of monism—that all is one—that we live in a closed universe with no transcendent God outside of it—a universe in which all things share the same substance and are therefore divine. The denial of the Creator-creature distinction is foundational to the pagan worldview.”

Diversity conceals a totalizing worldview which is being raised up against the knowledge of God. This spiritual shift in the West is no longer a peripheral novelty—it is morphing into a planetary worldview that will not permit Christianity to oppose its views on marriage and sexuality. This is why cultural relativism has become relentless in its assaults upon a traditional understanding of morality, marriage and family. Only the biblical worldview stands in its way as the last obstacle.

Homosexuality can’t be normalized UNTIL there is a religious explanation of reality that opposes biblical view (that religious explanation is monism—the ‘one-ness’ of all things). So, why does diversity operate like a Trojan horse? Because multiculturalism is a smokescreen for monism—it is an attempt to explain the world by the world, and not by our Creator’s infallible self-revelation. What is taking place in our culture is the replacement of the biblical worldview with a pagan view of the universe. This is happening at a time when globalism is surging. The perceived need is to work toward a greater geo-political reality. Our Christian kids desperately need to see what is at stake in this spiritual war. The consequences of each of the two worldviews could not be more immense.

ANTITHESIS: What the rising generation tends not to see is that at the heart of the debate are two opposing conceptions of the world—two ideologies locked in combat (one constrained, and one unconstrained—by ‘constrained’ is meant God’s blueprint and wise and good boundaries). God’s design of heterosexual marriage is the fundamental building block of a civilization’s order and wellbeing. God’s plan for human relationships is based upon His design for the body—a design which is founded upon gender distinctions. Our young people today are being taught the opposite—a worldview which promotes the acceptability of homosexuality. We much train our young people in the worldview of the Bible. But we must do so as Paul did, in the presence of two antithetical ways of describing the world.

Our young people are being told to stop allowing their religious ideology ‘get in the way’ of cooperation and dialog. They have popular culture’s message coming at them from all quarters—a message which urges them to allow society to dictate ethics and not God.

We need to equip them so that they may answer their detractors by saying, “May I tell my story? Christianity has a different way of conceiving of things. Rather than all things existing in one circle, Christianity poses asserts that there are two circles—God is distinct from His creatures and His creation. Everything God has made is dependent upon God; therefore the creation is not divine. Jesus, as Lord of the cosmos, is the Lord who saves you and He also is the Lord who made you. Therefore, since He owns us and upholds us, He has the right to tell us how to live and what to believe about reality. According to the Word of God, Christ’s relation to the creation and His infallible plan for His creatures constitute reality.” Now let’s examine the major factors that have shaped the existential situation in which our youth find themselves.

II. Factors that have shaped today’s spiritual climate

A. A deluded spirituality

The gods of popular culture are fighting a ceaseless battle against the transcendence of God. Like termites in soft wood; postmodernism eats away every transcendent reference point—SELF becomes the only ‘reliable’ or trustworthy reference point remaining. In essence, self becomes the ‘default’ god when the God of Scripture is marginalized.

No wonder our young people are confused—they have been systematically taught that there is no longer any absolute meaning outside of self. Religion becomes completely based upon self—it’s the disordered self in need of order (the therapy view of religion). The boundary between God and self becomes fuzzy. The Creator-creature distinction (so foundational to theism) becomes obscured. An encounter with God no longer depends upon God’s revealed truth, the Bible, but upon an inward experience. Self-sufficiency in the realm of the spiritual is celebrated.

It is in this religious/philosophic climate that faith is dislocated from its object (God’s self-revelation in Christ in the Holy Scriptures). Faith is redefined and distorted to fit the Gnostic concept of faith. In the second and third century A.D. Gnostic “faith” was but an avenue, or pathway, to gnosis —and gnosis is where discovery, blessing and initiation take place. Faith is no longer hard-wired to truth.²⁷

Thus in our present postmodern culture, faith and spirituality are rapidly being redefined along the lines of ancient Gnosticism. Postmodernism set the stage by deconstructing absolute truth—and with it theology. The word “Jesus” is being torn from the infallible Word of God and being redefined as a religious buzz word to describe one’s spiritual journey. In neo-pagan spirituality, self becomes the main form of reality; spirituality is based upon inward knowledge; not outward belief. The new spirituality endorses reinventing and remaking the self.²⁸

The new spirituality seeks to justify self which is equivalent to being the enemy of faith. The postmodern construct of the new spirituality says that there is a sacred reality that is humanly accessible and attainable. This is a contemporary version of ancient idolatry. How different is the testimony of Scripture!! God has ‘shut up all in disobedience’ (Gal 3:22; Rom 11:32).

The Spirit of Truth invades sacrosanct areas and spaces. God respects no sacred spaces other than the ones He fills! The truth is: God brooks no rivals. He respects no self-constructed sacred spaces.²⁹ The self seeking of ‘Eros spirituality’ dies in the presence of God’s Word because biblical truth destroys the sinner’s sovereignty. The sinner’s imagined sovereignty is at the heart of the new spirituality. But grace is only grace when there is no cooperation with Eros desires and human effort.

The Christian faith is about listening to the Word of God—in utter dependence upon God’s revelation. By contrast, Eros tries to reach up in self-sufficiency. When the Word is faithfully proclaimed; it overturns our natural instincts about self and God. Herein is the radical antipathy between the new spirituality and true Christianity; it is the difference between listen to self; and listen to God’s Word. It is self versus divine revelation. The upward of Eros is forever blocked by God who makes Himself inaccessible to it.³⁰ (EX. While sharing the gospel with my new age neighbor, I asked him what he does when the god within disagrees with the God of Scripture. He answered, “I trust the god within everytime.”)

Biblical faith is about agape love—God reaching down to disclose Himself to those who would not otherwise be restored to Him. The Word of God says that there is a humanly impenetrable boundary between God and humans—a boundary that can only be understood through the Scriptures. God’s revelation is needed in order to understand that by reason of man’s sin; God is hidden and man is blind. Only by the biblical revelation is the boundary made visible. Narcissistic, self-possessed, self-assertive spirituality is utterly blind to the sin barrier which separates man from God.

The meaning of God’s Agape love is God reaching across the boundary to sinners. In His revelation, He destroys illusions, misconceptions, and frauds which sinners have perpetrated on God and the cosmos. God’s Agape love is downward, gracious, condescending. He makes Himself known to us by way of a knowledge that gives understanding of life’s meaning which corresponds to objective reality. God’s sovereign love (Agape) revealed in His Word destroys all false worldviews.

The cross of Christ killed all private worldviews. God’s in-breaking into history through Christ is Agape, not Eros. To be confronted with Christ is first of all to be confronted with one’s sin against God—the reason being is Christ is the manifestation of God’s glorious holiness. We desperately need God’s testimony concerning our lost condition. The believer discovers that in Christ —Creator and Redeemer are one (Col 1:15-20). Christ is the reference point for all reality. How radical this stands in opposition to postmodern spirituality which seeks meaning and salvation in self. God’s agape bridge to man reaches all the way down to the spiritually dead sinner (Col 2). Man’s imagined spiritual sovereignty (Eros) is slain by the Gospel of sovereign agape grace in Christ.

ANTITHESIS: How opposite is God’s way of saving from the new spirituality—in Christ the Father redeems and seeks that which was lost. Christ dies for the helpless. God cannot be manipulated by the human spirit nor accessed by methods. Grace alone from outside the sinner can save. Human questing and seeking for its own sake is still unbelief. The locus (or center point) of true faith is what God has spoken (Bible doctrine), and how God has decisively acted in Christ (redemptive history).

B. A domesticated Jesus

In the absence of theology, today’s domesticated Jesus of progressive Christianity is not preeminent, but helpful. He is not cosmic Lord, but inspirational friend. He is not majestic Lord, but mascot. He is not the authoritative source of all knowledge and certainty. Thus, He is not a source of reverence, awe and authority. Dear people we know from Paul’s second epistle to the Corinthians that Satan is more than happy to accommodate those who want a Jesus in their own image (11:4). There is a ‘different’ Jesus, and a different gospel. Those who climb the mountain of the new spirituality will find Lucifer at the summit instead of Christ (2 Cor 11:4, 14).

This different Jesus is a divided Christ whose offices are separated (He is Priest but not King; Protector but not authoritative Prophet—the result is a divided Christ and a divided reality. Only when Christ is exalted in His preeminence; cosmic Lordship; majesty; and supremacy will we recover biblical spirituality. True spirituality does not come from within man (esoteric). Biblical spirituality has but one source—a sovereign act of God Almighty which unites the helpless sinner to Christ.

In order to be salt and light in a darkened and perishing world, we must apply ourselves to the truth of Christ’s supremacy, preeminence, and vastness.

ANTITHESIS: We must understand how Christ, in His own Person, refutes pantheistic spirituality. As we proclaim the vastness of His Person and the complete sufficiency of His work, all pseudo spiritualities are exposed as enemies and as impostors which advocate the esoteric, but have only self, the earth and demons as gods. (Salvation involved confessing “Jesus as Lord,” see Rom 10:9-10.) You can’t understand the cross until you know the One who died upon it. He who is transcendent to creation condescended to become one of us—the Great Insider—to live vicariously the life of a creature in order to bring us to God.

III. Lifestyle symptoms of today’s spiritual climate

A. A dysfunctional discernment

• 70-88% of students from “Christian” homes deny their faith before graduation from college (www.barna.org)
• Only 9% of Evangelicals have a biblical worldview (“A Biblical Worldview has a Radical Effect on a Person’s Life,” 12/1/03, barna.org)
• Only 33% of churched youth say the church will play a part in their lives when they leave home (Josh McDowell, 2006)  We live in a media-saturated age in which pop culture floods our senses. The constant drone of secular culture’s deceptive message has been ‘mainlined’ into our youth like heroin into the bloodstream. The consequences have been deadly—discernment has suffered incalculably.

The majority of our kids tend to believe what they hear in the media. When polled recently, 66% of high school boys believed that cohabitation is the best preparation for marriage. In addition, the vast majority of evangelical teens believe that there is more evidence for evolution than biblical creation.

Moral relativism has become the very air they breathe. This is the pervasive mindset of their classmates—and it comprises much of the content of their entertainment. We have left our kids to tread water in a swamp of moral relativism where the notion of absolute right and wrong is treated like a layover from the age of prejudice and bigotry. All the while, our culture is increasingly sexualized— we are assaulted with images which have a net effect of ‘normalizing’ illicit sexual behavior.

Without God’s Word and the Gospel, mankind has no reliable moral compass. It’s like a boat with no rudder and no navigation device adrift on a shore-less sea. People make decisions based upon their felt needs and desires instead of by discernment grounded in God’s eternal truth. Each individual becomes a law unto himself—choosing what is ‘right’ in his own eyes without respect to God’s standards. This is the ‘philosophic climate’ our young people are facing.

Mass culture provides its own set of “plausibility structures.” In other words, pop culture offers its own set of ideas about what is good, normal, abnormal, and evil. We have reached a point in culture in which the plausibility structures accepted by our young people about reality are created more by popular culture than by Christian truth.³¹

The electronic media is intent upon tearing apart Christian worldview. The homosexual agenda is embedded in pop culture. As evidence for lack of discernment, consider that nearly 70% of young people in USA thirty years old and younger now believe that it is discriminatory to refer to homosexuality as immoral or wrong (that is a sentiment born of media-driven pop culture).

One poll discovered that adolescents take impressions from television and treat them as reality. Here is just a partial list of how skewed perception has become through the distorted impressions delivered by of the world of television: adults drink far more alcohol than they actually do. Parents are pictured as dumb and kids as smart—constant theme—the parents discovering that the kids are right. It’s a constant refrain of the parents waking up to find out how wise the kids are. Dad fumbles, mom has the answer. The death of modesty has taken place. Females convinced that immodest fashion will help fulfill their romantic yearnings. Males constantly hit with sexualization as well (even in the ads during football TV broadcasts).

Our kids are becoming products of the electronic media entertainment culture. Adolescent life is lived out to the constant soundtrack of background noise in their lives. Emotional power is concentrated in music. It goes around the mind to reach the heart affections. Kids are surrounded by music aimed at the sensual instead of the higher nature. Kids live by the background beat of the hip hop music genre which has become a conduit touting vile and misogynist behavior. In addition, the values, lifestyle and language of characters out of movies are often emulated. Sexual immorality, violence and pessimism are normalized. The homosexual movement is joined to pop culture and is defended by pop culture. Accompanying this immersion in mass culture is the peer reinforcement of pop culture’s values.

How does a young believer ‘swim upstream’ to escape mass culture when he or she is embedded in it as a consequence of living in techno society? How may they resist the current so as to swim upstream against the tide?

ANTITHESIS: The answer is to be utterly deliberate about developing the discernment principle. First of all limit the band width of intake from the pop culture highway (music, TV, movies, web, magazines, cell phone, etc.). Take an honest look at how much of mass culture’s message you are absorbing passively by your exposure to these sources. Take a break from the perceived need of electronic background noise to accompany everything you do. If you listen to music, make a conscious shift toward worship and classical instead of passively going along with pop culture.

³² Deepen your grasp of worldview. Set aside time to discuss worldview until you can watch a

movie or television program and immediately discern the worldview coming through in the plot, behavior or language. Scripture commands discernment for the child of God. The true believer operates by means of a renewed mind (the ‘mind of Christ’) by which he may discern all things (1 Cor 2:15-16). Expect to be misunderstood by those who do not manifest Christian discernment (Jn 15:18-25).

B. A disconnected way of living

What is the collective effect of the above influences on the spirituality of our youth? They live with a huge ‘disconnect’ between their thoughts and reality (they live with an intrusive dualism). This does not create a new viable way of existence—departures from God’s view of reality produce real pain in the lives of young people.

Living with the divide inherent in postmodernism means that the majority of our young people don’t see God for who He is and don’t see man for who he is (or man’s place in the universe). Christ is seen as the lord of the Christian church but not the lord of the cosmos. Creation is severed from redemption. This severing manifests itself in a form of a ‘disconnect’ placing redemption outside of the objective reality of everyday life.

Redemption and biblical truth claims are seen as private preferences (upper story myths) with no basis in fact. Redemption is viewed as existing in the mind and the heart; therefore it is something ethereal and less than real because reality is the physical universe. The world’s philosophies, by severing salvation from redemption, have relegated Christ to a truncated religious role in which He is no longer Lord of all of the details and decisions of daily life.

Christianity is viewed as a heart preference absolutely divorced from the purpose of the cosmos. The sovereign rule of the Creator, the consummation of human history in Christ, the coming Kingdom of God, and the ultimate restoration of the cosmos are all out of view.

The lordship of Christ is seen as existing over things that belong in the Christian religion—His lordship is not seen as His absolute rule and authority over all reality. As a consequence, knowledge is hopelessly fragmented into innumerable particulars. In this dualistic view of life spirituality is segmented off from the rest of life so that the truth of God is detached from the everyday decisions of life.

Compartmentalization has become the rule of the day. Christian students are commonly at a loss to understand the connection between their Bible study and the discernment of culture. A fellow professor from The Master’s College noted, “The screen has become the students’ world. An understanding of the relationship between soul and body is absent. Young people seem surprised when the truth about the human body being ‘for the Lord’ is explained to them. So serious is the disconnect, that the whole concept of being ‘a vessel fit for the Master’s use’ is a novel idea to them.”³³

With the image of God lost (an essential aspect of cosmology), anything goes. The human body becomes the canvas and the playground upon which to experiment with the task of being the architect of one’s identity. Freedom, fulfillment, identity, and meaning, come from doing your own thing. Well because this is God’s world designed to operate in the way God has made it, it is axiomatic to say that the false promises of youth culture won’t deliver. Young people carry a quiet desperation, a metaphysical lost-ness, a palpable absence of meaning. Love, meaning, purpose, joy, identity only can come from serving, obeying, knowing, and enjoying one’s Creator.

Postmodernism reinforces this split view of life which expresses itself in a lifestyle of ‘disconnect.’ In other words, Christian beliefs become theoretical, or abstractions, instead of truth that transforms. The young professing believer allows culture to set the parameters for behavior—all the while claiming to believe the Bible. With ‘convictions’ in an upper story of theory and abstraction; compromise with mass culture is inevitable. Behavior becomes disconnected from divine truth. This is dangerous beyond words; for Scripture warns of a kind of faith which cannot take you to heaven (a spurious faith void of holiness and testifying works) (James 2:17, 20, 26).

ANTITHESIS: We must show our young people that God’s truth is active in the true believer. It not only transforms and renews; it keeps the believer from being conformed to culture (Rom 12:1, 2). Faith and life must be joined. Belief and practice must operate together. Anything less is hypocrisy and presumption. In the true believer, God’s truth is operating in the affections. In the person living a disconnected life, biblical truths are held intellectually; but not in the affections. The genuine believer is always repenting. He is continually seeing to have his life match the truth. He loves the truth. It is impossible to live a dichotomized (disconnected) worldview for long. Either the person is repenting so that behavior is aligned with belief. OR, disobedient practice will cause one to twist the truth and lose one’s grasp of truth. Serving Christ and righteousness as Master is the answer (Rom 6).

C. A destructive source of identity

Your identity is what you look to—to define you. You need an identity for the purpose of ultimate meaning, significance, fulfillment, love, purpose, and belonging. It also functions like a score card to see how you are doing. What is the source of your identity is the big question we all face: What is it that defines my life? Your identity is like your worldview—it shapes all your choices. That means you will live out your identity (whether you intend to or not). That’s why a Christian’s identity in Christ is so important: it tells him who he is; who he used to be; what his purpose is in life; what he is becoming, what his true treasure is; what His Lord requires of him; and where he is going.

As Christians, we are locked in combat in a culture war that has radically different ideas about what will give a person his or her identity. We live in an identity hungry culture (EX. Miami Ink and endless reality TV shows). Your identity is a battle ground; even your choice of friends (according to 2 Cor 6:14-7:1) has a profound impact on your choice of identities.

And you know why—when friends and acquaintances get together socially; they reinforce the identity source of their friends—whether it is the gospel; fashion; music; sports; academics; whatever. The wrong friends will (guaranteed) pressure you directly or indirectly to get on board with their counterfeit source of identity. They will heap praise, acceptance, attention; affirmation; belonging on those who carry the same colors or ‘score cards’ that they do (a social dynamic also called peer pressure). From your concept of identity flows your view of community.

Now, either one’s identity is from the world, or it is from the gospel. You can’t get your identity from both—anymore than you can serve two masters (James 4:4; Lu 11:23). The gospel is a whole different way of seeing. It radically transforms your relationships because it defines and identifies who God is; who you are; who others are; and what this life actually is.

God’s grace is 100% relational. The gospel tells me comprehensively who God is toward me in Christ; and the gospel tells me who I am in Christ (a new creature with all new values). How unlike the world is our identity from the gospel. Worldly identities have a score card, or standard, that causes the individual to vacillate between pride; despair; and earthly comparisons. (EX. The other day I took my family boogie boarding at Laguna Beach. As we walked below a balcony with some teen surfers above us, they mocked our boogie boards as we were a lower life form because we lay on a ‘sponge’ to ride waves.)

A worldly identity depends on how well you are keeping the standard. How different is the gospel in which Christ carries our worth as a constant—accepts us on behalf of what He did for us and keeps forgiving us when we fail. There is no pride there—it’s all of grace.

Please look at a passage with me (1 Jn 2:15-17). The ‘pride of life’ comes closest to what it means to seek an identity from the world rather than from Christ. The pride of life says “I can use something in the world (even a good thing) to integrate myself; make myself significant; provide my identity. I can make it work for me—just watch.” (Sounds like American entertainment doesn’t it.)

This is so subtle (Satan’s plan to ruin lives comes through I.D. hunger—and not normally the offer of a hit of crystal meth in some dark alley). Electronic entertainment is just filled with the pride of life in its stars. Making us envy their world-derived identities. But the cost is immeasurable. According to our 1 John passage, those who freely choose an identity apart from God in Christ set themselves on a trajectory of eternal separation from God.

You see if you build your life upon anything but God (even something noble) you ultimately will be enslaved by it. It cannot define you. Because you are made in the image of God for God; any finite integration point will not make you whole or fulfilled. It will deliver eternal disintegration instead of integration—it will ultimately fragment you instead of making you whole. And the Scripture calls this the second death (self-delusion; self-absorption; self-recrimination go on forever in hell).

Popular culture is dead set on having you forget your identity in Christ—mass culture wants to steal your identity and give you a soul-destroying identity in its place. Credit card theft or social security theft is small potatoes compared to cosmic identity theft. The latter takes place when we permanently take our hunger for identity to the world instead of to Christ (Phil 3:18-19). The devil uses the love of the world and its spurious offers to take souls.

ANTITHESIS: Our identity in Christ is continually realized only as we keep preaching the Gospel to self. We must keep our identity in Christ in view. We should always be matching His all-sufficient Savior-hood with our sinner-ship—always dwelling upon how His redeeming work is a perfect fit for our ruin (Heb 7:25-27).

Reckoning who we are in Christ means that our identity in Him will exert a greater sway upon our choices. Thus to identify ourselves as Christ does (a sheep, a freeman, a son, a beholder, an heir, and an overcomer, etc.) means that we are

becoming what we really are.

To have received God’s free gift of redemption is also to be owned by the Lord as His possession (1 Cor 6:19-20). It is to be Christ’s ‘slave’ who is ruled by His Word. What follows the rest of our lives (in time and eternity) is sonship—

giving our selves back to God in overflowing gratitude, obedience and praise (Rom 6:12-23).

Now in rapid fire fashion I want us to review how the prevailing philosophies of our day (in shaping spiritual climate) are translating into the way in which young people think:

D. A dangerous set of ideas about personal significance

1. “We can create our own reality.” Regarding today’s popular culture, modern individualism encourages each person to define their own social reality apart from considerations about how the creation is ordered. Thus there is a huge dysfunction between reality in the created order and popular culture.³⁴ So much of popular culture operates on the false assumption that we create our own reality (and we do so to the degree that we insist upon our preferences. Years of marketing have imbued this lie). God proclaims that there is one reality ordered by one God. We are answerable to Him for our conduct within that reality. Reality and its center is Jesus Christ (not self). Pop culture’s dynamics tend to encourage self-centeredness— which Christians must avoid.³⁵

2. “We may ‘construct’ the self and establish our own identity and meaning.” The role of defining reality was once reserved for God. The Word of God says that God’s will and Word establish the categories, the meaning, and the significance of all things. Consider how the electronic media of popular culture has usurped that role of defining reality³⁶ (“We will tell you what is important in life; what life is about; what freedom is . . . etc.”)

The world’s philosophies (which make up so much of pop culture) have reduced religion to a private preference. Salvation has been divorced from the purpose of the cosmos. This modern divide has shoved the majesty of God in His creation to the periphery. It has torn God’s created order from our consciousness. We have lost the vision to use the creation in a ‘sacramental’ fashion (to the glory of God). The creation as the revelation of God’s majesty, wisdom, and rule has been removed from our consciousness.

With the image of God lost; reality is nothing more than what you choose to make it—an extension of the self. The sovereign self with its autonomously shaped identity now uses the world as ‘raw material’ to construct the self.

The answer to this lie about meaning and identity first involves grasping the painful fact that one is living a “culture identity” lie. Only then can there be a real choice in which one’s true identity in God is made comprehendible and exerts the most powerful source of personal identity.³⁷

3. “We view the electronic media of mass culture not primarily as rebellion; but as an art form that provides lifestyle options.” The electronic media is a modern art form. The flood of images in the electronic media shapes a person’s worldview. Electronic visual media totally shapes the way people perceive the world. Pop culture often has a low view of reason; instead it is characterized by clichés, political correctness, and sensuality—rather than by propositional truth. There is an accompanying unwillingness to think upon divine transcendence (the only true source of coherence and consolation).³⁸

4. “We accept the notion that it is possible to be spiritual apart from the Bible.” (Non-theistic, or non-biblical spirituality, offers legitimate spiritual options.) Secular humanism “killed God” and postmodernity deconstructed meaning. People were left people yearning for something spiritual. Currently the Western world is awash in spiritualities—all of which are from below. More and more Americans are looking for spiritual power within rather than to the God of religion. Each year the sentiment grows that ‘the god of the sacred within’ removes the need for church.³⁹

Common to contemporary spiritualities is that god and spirituality may be accessed within the self and unmediated (as if a god lives in all of us and we just have to open the door to self to reach the divine anytime we want).

Biblical theism condemns all privately constructed sacred spaces. The truth is that there is a fixed boundary between God and the sinner. That boundary cannot be crossed on our side (a biblical truth which offends postmoderns). We could summarize the elements of contrast between theistic and non-theistic spirituality as follows:

The world is increasingly hostile to any exclusive truth claims—that only in Christ do we find reconciliation to the Father. But the Gospel of John is so clear. Forty two times the theme is repeated: Christ was sent into the world from above. Jesus is the “Great Insider;” He was sent into our human experience to be bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.

He learned obedience through the things which He suffered (Heb 5:8). His sufferings and temptations perfectly equipped Him to be our merciful and faithful High Priest.⁴⁰

Our young people are tempted to view non-theistic spiritualities as a viable option (if not for themselves; then for others). The interest in self-focused religions and spirituality is growing at an enormous rate. The newer non-traditional beliefs tend to emphasize self-transformation, self-fulfillment, and self-enlightenment to the exclusion of community.

“Traditional religion tends to promote the idea of social responsibility and thinking of others’ interests, whereas the New Age movement pushes the idea that we can transform our world by changing ourselves. The downside is that people are very much on their own and not part of a community, which may lead to a kind of isolation. Says agnostic researcher Rosemary Aird, “[Those who replaced] traditional religious beliefs with trendy, self-focused religions and spirituality are not the happier for their attempts at self-transformation.” “People who are into the New Age spirituality tend to shop around and will tend to borrow from all sorts of old beliefs, like Wicca, witchcraft, or Native American religions. It’s a whole mishmash and changes all the time . . . they’ll do something for awhile before doing something else.” “If there is no sense of any kind of tradition, it means you are cast adrift and [it] means that there’s no fundamental basic thing to hang on to.”⁴¹

Aird also noted that popular culture had fed the trend toward non-traditional beliefs with a popularization of “spirituality.” “Religion and belief has kind of become mixed up with popular culture.” Note the television shows such as “Supernatural,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” and “Medium.” They promote witchcraft, special powers, and spirituality. Young people exposed to them could see them as attractive. “People want to find some way of embedding these things into some sort of belief system.”

In commenting on the plethora of self-help books and do-it-yourself spirituality, Aird said, “My generation was about social responsibility and collective interests compared to the Me generation. [The] New Spirituality promotes the idea that self-transformation will lead to a positive and constructive change in self and society. But there is the contradiction: how can one change society if one is focused on oneself?”⁴²

5. “We view sexual relations as existing to meet the need of human love, response, and connection.” (Sexuality is not fundamentally covenantal, sacred and spiritual). There has been a spate of Hollywood movies made about unwanted pregnancies. “Juno,” “Knocked up,” “Waitress,” and “Bella” to name a few. The box office hit “Juno” sends the message that, “[T]eenage girls can withstand the shock of pregnancy to attain blissfully happy endings.”⁴³ The incredible crisis of an unwed teen mother is reduced to a “blip” on the radar of one’s life. Some have lauded the pregnancy movies as an example of being willing to bear the child instead of choosing abortion. But, is it really that simple? Hollywood evades reality by oversimplifying tough choices: “I got pregnant, I guess I can have the baby too.” It is expected that 750,000 teenage girls in America will become pregnant this year outside of marriage.

6. “We regard a person’s attitude toward his or her gender as a matter of personal right. Attitude toward one’s gender is a choice that belongs to the person.”

Popular culture has jumped on this bandwagon in a host of ways. World Wrestling Federation calls young males to be barbarians. Girls are indoctrinated by the media to see themselves as “blow up” dolls. Marketers press this script relentless in the interest of profits. A number of female pop icons have admitted that they have to play the role of loose woman because the culture demands it.⁴⁴

How tragic that in the pursuit of the dollar, companies have shamelessly offered an identity to our youth of barbarian or harlot. Males are taught that masculinity and crudeness belong together. And females are schooled in sex and sensuality. These false ideas pumped out by the media about gender are also complicated by the notion that gender rebellion is freedom and sex is love. Finding oneself has now become finding new ways to rebel against true manhood and womanhood.⁴⁵

Men and women are not being taught how to treat each other. This creates a greater barrier to trust and to marriage. Darwinism has blunted God’s truth so effectively in the minds of our youth that men and women are regarded as separate coincidences of nature.

We cannot find purpose and fulfillment in our relationships if turn our backs on God’s order. It is time we tell the truth to our young people. God’s plan is for our blessedness and fulfillment. Gender neutrality and sexual experimentation are a form of anarchy against God.

God’s plan for gender and sexuality is not something the church has imposed on culture. God’s plan is His sovereign act in creating us male and female. It is time we ‘anoint’ and bless masculinity and femininity. Our true manhood or womanhood is a gift of God. There is power, purpose and joy in realizing God’s plan for gender and sexuality. And there is destruction when it is rejected.

Questions our Christian youth need to be able to answer:

1. How does my Christianity critique culture?
2. How can my entire life be an answer to God’s calling?
3. How can I make Christian truth speak to all of life?
4. In the battle for the heart, why is the body is the epicenter of the battlefield?
5. To what degree are our youth affected by a market-driven culture?
6. What are the assumptions of popular culture concerning reality?

CONCLUSION: Training in biblical worldview has never been more important and strategic. Today’s young people are under enormous pressure to move in the direction of moral ambiguity—all in the name of unity. Students are hammered with the notion that “We can all get along” if we abandon our differences and distinctions. As Christian parents and educators we know that these are tension points in our culture. The drumbeat of the ‘new tolerance’ has students stranded between two mutually exclusive worldviews (the biblical worldview and the humanistic worldview).

As a case in point, recently a Christian high school principal confided in me commenting, “I fear we are seeing a whole new generation of ‘practical agnostics’ who are incredibly vulnerable to cultural compromise because they do not have a unified Christian worldview or a unified Christian experience.” In other words, their ‘life view’ is not consistently anchored in God’s transforming truth, therefore their Christian experience often manifests a radical disconnect from Scripture.

The principal’s words hit home. We must be utterly deliberate about equipping the rising generation of believers in biblical worldview. We have failed to ‘keep up’ with the monumental task of training in biblical worldview, and it is showing up in our kids. In terms of engaging the culture for Christ, young believers are in ‘retreat mode’ on a grand scale.

Biblical worldview is a ‘big picture’ tool which has the potential to shape the entire Christian education, ministry, and spiritual life experience of the Christian young person. This is a gift to students who have grown up in a relativistic world of ‘blur’ in which a mixture of ideas from world religions have resulted in the compromise of truth. Realistically, we are engaging in false hope if we subscribe to the osmosis theory of transformation (that our young people will be fortified against culture’s assaults by two hours of sermons a week). What is needed is radical intentionality that lets us speak into their lives with soul care and systematic instruction.

Only by a firm grasp of the unifying power of Christian worldview will our young people be able to resist the false promises of popular culture. Our God-given yearnings for meaning, purpose, dignity, significance, connectedness, and love will either be taken to Christ or to the world. Christ alone can satisfy these deep yearnings. He alone can unify our view of life. He alone through His Word is able to properly inform our everyday life decisions. Without Christ, our young people will not adequately understand the unbreakable connection between ideas and consequences. Christ alone as the Word of truth can provide the definitive reasons to repent of reckless living. Young people without a biblical worldview have little reason to stop reckless living (whether that recklessness is in the form of substance abuse; hyper body-piercing; destructive entertainment and music; etc.). Our goal is to shape the students’ mindset in terms of biblical faith for all Christian living.

Because Christ is central and preeminent—His rule is comprehensive and His work on behalf of sinners is all sufficient. As Lord of creation and Lord of redemption (holding both together) Christ repairs a divided view of reality; for He is upholder of all reality. He rejects every private sacred space; for He only occupies those sacred spaces He sovereignly creates and fills by regeneration. He renounces the ‘different Jesus’ of the new spirituality (who is not lord of all; but made in our own image). Christ is Lord of the Cosmos. When we consider the ‘vastness’ of His Person we come face to face with the fact that He is the reference point for all reality:

He is restorative Lord: He will reconcile all things.

He is consummative Lord: He will sum up all things in Himself.

He is cosmic Lord: He made all things; He is upholder; all has been made for Him.

He is judicial Lord: All judgment is given to the Son.

He is epistemic Lord: In Him are all the treasures of God’s wisdom and knowledge.

He is providential Lord: All authority has been given to Him in heaven and in earth.

He is rational Lord: He is the rationality of the universe and of every man.

He is revelatory Lord: He is radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His character. He is veracious Lord: He is the truth incarnate. Truth is Christ; an absolute Person.

Endnotes:

1 Fallwell & Ham, If the Foundations be Destroyed
2 Norman Klassen, Jens Zimmerman, The Passionate Intellect, p.17
3 Dave Doveton, “Paganism in the Church” (Escondido, CA: Christian Witness to a Pagan Planet, think-tank, 2007).
4 Jay Wegter, “Worldview, Apologetics, and Evangelism, BCW363A” (Newhall: The Master’s College, 2007).
5 Dave Doveton.
6 Jay Wegter, “Worldview.”
7 Richard Weaver, Ideas have Consequences, p. 45, 94
8 Ken Ham, “The god of an old earth,” Creation Magazine (21:4, September-November, 1999) p. 42.
9 Ibid, pp. 44-45.
10 Ibid. p. 23.
11 Ibid.
12 Jay Wegter, Art and Biblical Worldview--Developing Christian discernment, p. 8-9.
13 Ken Myers, “The Problem of Contextualization in a Decadent Culture” (Southern Baptist Seminary, Gheens Lecture
Series).
14 Ibid.
15 Peter Jones, “Framing the Issues; Finding our Voices” (Escondido, CA: Christian Witness to a Pagan Planet,
think-tank, 2007).
16 Klassen, Zimmerman, The Passionate Intellect, pp. 21, 30, 73, 87, 101, 148-150, 169, 187.
17 Dominic Smart, Postmodernism and Discipleship, www.sermonaudio.com.
18 D. A. Carson, Postmodernism.
19 Ibid.
20 D. A. Carson.
21 J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 65.
22 Ibid, pp. 71-72.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid, p. 25.
25 Jim Newheiser, Pastor, Grace Bible Church, Escondido, CA.
26 Klassen, Zimmerman, The Passionate Intellect, p. 159
27 D. A. Carson, Christ and Culture Revisited, p. 110

28 David Wells, Above All Earthly Powers: Christ in a Postmodern Culture, pp. 148-155.
29 Ibid, pp. 164-175.
30 Ibid, pp. 179-185.
31 Al Mohler, Raising Teens in a Media Culture.
32 Ibid.
33 Grant Horner, The Master’s College.
34 Ken Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes, p. 85.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid, p. 161.
37 Bob Just, ‘Killer Culture: A call to the churches’, WorldNet Daily, p. 6.
38 Ravi Zacharias, Mind Games in a World of Images.
39 David Wells.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid, p. 2.
42 Ibid.
43 Gary Direnfield, “Teen Pregnancy: It’s not like the Movies” (The Hamilton Spectator, Jan 14, 2008).
44 Bob Just, Killer Culture, p. 7.
45 Ibid, p. 8.