When the church is silent on issues that the culture is screaming about, then a whole generation only hears one worldview.
Shane Pruitt
The church must speak up, disciple up, and train up a generation to navigate through cultural issues with truth and love.
Our nation, our world actually, is in a morality crisis. Morality has become so subjective that chaos has ensued. Morality has often been described as a system of values and principles held by a society that shapes our decisions, determining what is right and what is wrong. The morality in our current culture is filled with relativity and unfettered emotion.
The message our society projects is for each person to determine their own morality – to believe there is no objective, absolute system of right or wrong. Morality has become whatever you deem it to be. While this concept has been around forever, it’s heartbreaking to see the pain and trauma unleashed on our young people as they are told to throw off the supposed “constraints” of the Judeo-Christian worldview.
What’s worse is the silent or irrelevant response of the church as a whole. Our silence tells the culture that we don’t have the answers, that following Christ is irrelevant and undesirable. We have relegated cultural moral issues to be messaged by the secular world. And, the results have been disastrous.
For decades, young people have been bombarded in school and culture with messages of sexual liberation. In their health education classes they are taught to protect themselves from “unsafe sex.”
For abortion, in large part we have been silent. In our free eBook, Life Tribe: Creating a Culture of Life (which you can find HERE), we have addressed the consistent reasons for our silence:
- We don’t want to seem too political.
- We don’t want to make people feel bad.
- The pulpit isn’t the place for this.
- We’ve been personally involved in an abortion decision.
- We don’t know how to properly address it.
The secular world has dismissed God’s laws as archaic and outdated. However, the opposite couldn’t be more true. God could have made it where His laws and commands wouldn’t benefit us at all. But He didn’t. He made His laws and commands to do just that, to benefit us. In His goodness and graciousness, God gave us commandments, laws and standards
When my children were young, I would give them specific instructions about certain activities. I’d say, “Don’t go into the road. Brush your teeth. Wear your jacket. Put your toys away. Be sure to share.” Did I give them these instructions because I loved them, or because I hated them?
With each rule I gave my children, my love for them was prompting them into obedient action. I truly had their best interest in mind, then and for their future. This is the same with God. Just as my children couldn’t really understand the reasons for my instructions, because they couldn’t see the bigger picture, so it is with us.
Regardless of what we think or feel, our God holds fast to His standards. His laws and statues are good for us. They bring us freedom, and if we respond with trust and obedience, we experience closeness, peace and joy.
The relative morality of the world leaves our young people empty, hurt and confused. For instance, Dr. Grossman in her book, Unprotected, recalls her conversation with a college student. She voiced the question many wonder: “Why,” Olivia asks, “do they tell you how to protect your body from herpes and pregnancy, but they don’t tell you what it does to your heart?”
As the world promises freedom in sexual liberties, the consequences are anything but that.
Suzanne Venker and Phyllis Schafly in their book, The Flipside of Feminism, pointed out that “Sexual liberation has produced a generation of young women who are chronically dissatisfied. Modern women are endlessly searching for their identities.“
The messages our young people are not hearing:
- Their priceless value comes from God alone.
- They are image-bearers of the Almighty God.
- God’s standards bring freedom, peace and joy.
- God’s beautiful design for relationships.
- The enemy of their soul wants to destroy them.
- There is hope in Jesus Christ alone.
Now is our time, this is our hour to bring the Good News to a world who desperately needs God’s love and truth.
