This is where we are.Ĭonsider also Paul’s words to the church at Rome: Paul indicates that this heads in the direction of illicit sex, which will tend to extremes. They “give themselves over” to physical pleasures. “Having lost all sensitivity” to God and to spiritual things, they fill the void left in their hearts with sensuality. These verses spell out the trajectory toward hedonism for those who live without God. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more. They (those without God) are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. I’ll cover two key New Testament passages.įirst, Paul’s words to the church at Ephesus: We should understand that this is the root of the titanic changes we are witnessing.
To turn away from God affects a society at the deepest possible level. He could be dispensed with and very little would change. This seismic shift hasn’t come out of nowhere, neither does it take the God of the Bible by surprise.įor the last hundred years or more, secular thinkers have argued that God either doesn’t exist or at least is an irrelevance to daily life.
How did we get here? First, we need to get a grip on this from Scripture. In particular, the Christian view of gender and marriage is being rejected as oppressive and damaging (Genesis 1:27 Matthew 19:4–5). Many cultural norms concerning sex and acceptable sexual behaviour have been swept away. After all, this isn’t simply a piece of fascinating contemporary history it’s something which may well cause faithful Christians to lose their friends and maybe their livelihoods. My purpose is to get us thinking and hopefully for pastors to be able to give accessible teaching on the situation to God’s people. So I want to give my own brief biblical introduction and attempt to sketch an overview of Trueman’s work. Many busy pastors simply will not have time. However, it’s more than 400 pages of intensive thought and tightly argued argumentation. Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is the most thorough and helpful introduction so far to our current situation. But now it’s supposed to be taken very seriously indeed. Our grandfathers would have heard such a statement with blank incredulity. PASTORS IN A HURRYĪs an example of how much things have changed, Carl Trueman begins his landmark book on this subject by asking how the statement “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” has somehow become cogent and meaningful in today’s society. And it’s likely to get worse before it gets better. Society is dramatically different-possibly in unprecedented ways. You can lose your job for expressing certain ideas, especially biblical ideas concerning things like gender and marriage. We’re now “the bad guys.” Things like freedom of religion and freedom of speech were once regarded as absolute rights. Now we are increasingly regarded as a harmful influence in society.
Now they’re waking to the fact that the world has changed and things can’t go on as they have before.īelievers used to be thought as somewhat odd but basically decent folk. They’ve been insulated against and disconnected from secular society. They may not have been physically asleep for 20 years, but they have maybe been cocooned in a little Christian bubble of Sunday church, Christian conferences, Christian books, and Christian music. Many Christians today are having a similar experience. He was out of place and he didn’t know why. Rip proclaimed himself a loyal subject of King George III not realizing that while he had been asleep the War of Independence had occurred and America was now its own country. When he entered his village he didn’t recognize it. His beard was a foot long, his dog was gone, and his rifle was covered in rust. There were signs something strange had occurred. He awoke 20 years later, not realizing that he had slept more than a night. Dulled by drink, he fell into a deep sleep. Published in 1819, the story is set in late 18 th century America and tells how Rip lay down while out squirrel hunting in the Catskill Mountains of New York. Washington Irving wrote the fanciful tale of a hen-pecked, work-shy man named Rip Van Winkle.
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