We live in a time and culture that is growing increasingly hostile towards Christianity. Our culture influences us daily, in ways that we sometimes are not fully aware of. Television shows, movies, social media, and the news constantly promote, often in very subtle ways, beliefs, values, and behaviors that are antithetical to what the Bible teaches. Like a frog that is placed in a pot with cool water, then the water’s temperature is slowly increased over time, to the point that it begins to boil, the frog, though slowly being killed, fails to recognize its danger and jump out of the pot, so it is boiled alive by its “culture”. This can be said of many Christians, including me. But it’s not too late to see the danger and jump out of the “cultural pot”.
Start with these questions: what’s influencing you? Are you like the frog? Are you allowing our culture to subtly influence your thoughts, attitudes, words, and actions? Is it influencing you in negative ways?
In Jesus’ prayer to God the Father in John 17:14-16, we hear Him say, “I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one.”
We live in the world, but we should not be of the world, adopting its values and behaviors. Christians are commanded by God to be a people set apart for Him. To be holy as He is holy, Leviticus 11:44 and Leviticus 19:2.
The Bible warns us in 1 Peter 1:13-16, “So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control. Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world. So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.’” Then in Romans 12:2, “And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind He will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship Him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” And again in 1 John 2:15-17, Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.” And in James 4:4, “don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who wants to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.”
You see, as Philippians 3:20 states, “Our citizenship is in heaven”, and not in this world. As Jesus said above, we are in the world but not of it. Yet God has determined in His wisdom that we are to be in the world, to accomplish His purposes, being salt and light to our culture, to represent Christ as His ambassadors, pleading with our culture to repent from its sins, turning to Jesus, and believing that He alone is its one true Lord and Savior.
Like Mordecai’s message to Esther in Esther 4:13-14, telling her that she was born and in her position, “for just a time as this,” we too were born for a time as this. Don’t surrender to the culture, but take a stand for Christ and allow God to work in and through and around you, for you were placed here, right now, for a God-ordained reason.
But how do we combat the influences of our culture, overt and subvert? Unlike the frog in the above example, we must wake up to our danger and recommit ourselves to being fully committed to Christ and God’s commands found in His Word, the Bible. We need to be honest with God about how we’ve fallen short of living out those commands in every area of our lives. We need to work at disciplining ourselves to use our time, thoughts, words, and actions more wisely. Instead of spending unfruitful time in front of a television, watching content that influences us in the wrong ways and teaches us to accept as normal morally wrong things, instead, spend more time reading, studying, meditating upon, and memorizing God’s Scriptures. Instead of scrolling through social media sites that shape our thoughts and attitudes in negative ways, spend more time walking in God’s nature, meditating upon, and talking with Him. Instead of caving into our culture, be counter-cultural and live your life as a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God. Live a life that stands out from the culture and reflects Christ to those around you. Instead of letting the news, people, and other sources mold your beliefs, seek to live a life of love and service towards God and others, even towards those who are opposed to Christ and the Bible. Instead of being conformed to the pattern of this world and loving it and the things it offers, things that produce lust for pleasure, pride, selfishness, self-centeredness and the many other things that Satan uses to pull us away from Christ, making us hypocritical, which hinders our testimony about how faith in Jesus brings love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control.
Finally, don’t try to do all of this alone. If the frog in the pot had other frogs who were on the outside of the pot calling to him, warning him, encouraging him, and even reaching out to him to help him get out of the pot, he’d still be alive and not killed by his “culture”. We need each other. We need to worship together, serve together, pray together, and study the Bible together. If you are not already attending a Sunday morning Bible study class or are in one of Parkside’s small groups, then seriously consider joining one, assured that God will use others to fill your life with His influences and not the culture’s.
Blessings,
Randy A