The Emotion-Driven Life

We live in a world that is driven by its emotions. This plays out in many ways.

Firstly, people base their morality on how they feel. What you think should be okay becomes okay for you. Basically, right and wrong are relative to how you feel on a given day. You may set a standard for yourself, and say, “I will never cross this line”; but once you hit that line, you will cross it, rationalize it, and make another line in its place further along. Then, down the path of your experience, the process will repeat itself. What you previously believed to be immoral suddenly becomes okay when you are faced with the choice to go through with that very thing.

Secondly, and stemming from this first thing, people shape God in their own image. You think to yourself what you’d like God to be like, keeping all the “good” traits, eliminating what you don’t like, and of course include yourself as someone who gets to go to heaven.

Reality simply does not work this way. There is such thing as an absolute right and wrong that does not change with our feelings. Murder is wrong whether we feel that way or not when pointing a gun at someone who hurt you in some way. Likewise, God is true to his nature, character and Word, regardless of how we feel about it.

Someone may accuse me of being narrow-minded about such a view of God. To you I ask this question: Are you truly seeking after God? In your view of God, are you really interested in finding the truth, and therefore truly knowing him. If your answer is no, then your view of God is irrelevant. If your answer is yes, then doesn’t it make sense to seek out God where he may be found, as the Bible says. If God has revealed himself to this world in the person of Jesus Christ and has provided the only way of salvation through him, it is not at all narrow-minded for God to point you in the direction that he has made for you to know him.

Morality, truth and God do have an absolute fixed point of reference. If you are really seeking after the truth, then we must find this point of reference, and live life accordingly.

May I point you in the right direction: That absolute point is the Lord Jesus Christ.

A New Generation In A Hostile World

Editor’s Note: I want to sincerely apologize for the inconsistent and sporadic frequency of my postings on this blog. Beginning this week I will be posting again on a three-day-a-week schedule. Thank you for continuing to read these Acts 20:24 Ministries blogs. I hope this newest blog is a blessing to you, just as our other blogs. Today I would like to introduce a fellow minister of ours, Bianca Rivas.

A New Generation In A Hostile World – by Bianca Rivas

When I was a child I can remember getting up on Saturday morning anticipating my favorite cartoons on TV. I also remember TV only being available at home. In this day and age you can find television everywhere you go – while driving in yours car, at the gas station, in the classroom, and even on your cell phone or portable music player. Technology has progressed so much in the past couple of years. We now live in the age of technology, where we are everywhere bombarded by the media. It is hard to get away from it – anywhere you go there is advertising.

This world has changed, and with such a major presence that the media has today, it is bound to influence the younger generation as well as the older generation. The world is a hostile place for a child, thanks to the media. Over the years the media has been pouring out garbage that distorts good values. And the media does have an effect on child development. Studies of shown that a crucial developmental stage occurs in adolescence. So if a child is watching a violent show were the “good guy” kills off all the “bad guys” as a means resolving something, then ultimately a child may learn to use violence as a means of conflict resolution. The issue is that there are so many portals where children can be exposed to danger – some even in our own living rooms.

The Internet has become a quick way to look up information and to share information. Kids have access to the Internet in their homes, through friends and in school. Just recently a popular Internet site “Myspace” deleted over 200,000 profiles of sex offenders. There is a reason why Dateline’s ‘To Catch a Predator’ has become a major hit show. The danger for our children today is that they are more exposed to explicit material and child predators while surfing the Internet.

Violence, casual sex, drugs and gore are in practically all cinema films and TV sitcoms. Scary movies are no longer scary. They have become horror movies which are filled with violence and gore. Comedy movies have become very obscene and crude. TV sitcoms show teenagers getting high on marijuana. Sitcoms are becoming more and more filled with junk and negative messages, showing things such as casual sex being okay and swearing being funny – and our kids watch these shows right in our living rooms. Hollywood actors who star in these films have become irresponsible role models for children. Some have even become jailbirds.

In America we have developed a system of rating movies and TV shows according to its content, which has been fairly accurate and productive. This allows us to know what is out there. But it still becomes an issue when the parent becomes careless and let their child view R rated films (some sometimes even just PG rated films) without previewing their content.

Commercials have also become a cesspool for negative advertisement. A child who has just watched an hour of TV has watch over twenty minutes of advertising. In that time period they would have seen advertisement for toys, junk food and name brand clothing. The brand of your clothing seems to be more important than intelligence.

Kids are being bombarded by the media and its negative messages. If it’s not at home, it’s in the car, on our I-pods and on our computers. So we know what is out there and we are not blind to it. But for some reason we continue to stimulate the growing media to put out garbage into the world for our children to see.

The media only advertises what they think people want. Apparently Americans want sex, violence and gore. And the next generation will be the result of this generation’s consumption of the media.

The Influence of Music

Last week in the Chicago Tribune there was an article about censorship in hip-hop music. The debate is whether certain words should be censored, whether this would make a difference, and if there is anything wrong with the words at all.

Listen.

(Firstly, I’d like to note that this is not a discussion about hip-hop music only, but any kind of music that carries these kinds of messages. Hip-hop just seems to be the most prominent style of music promoting these messages right now, so we will discuss it.)

Not too long ago I watched a documentary about hip-hop music. It, like the article in the Tribune, talked about the messages of hip-hop music. Dominant in these discussions are the portrayal of women.

Let’s look at the lyrics and the videos for what they are. They portray women as “hoes” who are only good for one thing. They show women wearing next to nothing, and hanging off the men. Sometimes these are shots of women in strip clubs.

If this wasn’t put out on TV as a music video, it would easily pass as pornography. The lyrics of the songs are so explicit that if you spoke like that to, or in the presence of, any underaged person you would be arrested. So why is it alright to have this type of thing in our music? In my opinion these types of songs and videos can not be viewed as “artistic expression” any more than pornography can.

Some justify it by saying that they are only singing about what is real in our culture. This is true in the sense that this is what our culture is like. But I think it is more the case that the music is not singing about our culture, but shaping our culture into that which it is portraying.

Today’s philosophers are its musicians. Lyrics and videos impact the way we live, shaping minds and influencing attitudes.

This isn’t the kind of thing I want influencing my generation or that of my children. This isn’t the kind of thing that I want on my block.

Guilty Consciences

I was cruising http://www.answers.yahoo.com a bit. I do this for the same reason that I read people’s blogs – to see what people are talking about and what concerns they have. I was amazed at how many questions about sex are being asked by teenagers. Many of these questions involved the possibility of pregnancy and STDs. The tone of most of these was fear and paranoia.

Now you listen to me.

This fear indicates one thing – a guilty conscience. And this is a good thing.

I’ve encountered these kinds of questions not only on the internet, but in real life as well. A teen’s paranoia about getting pregnant or contracting a sexually transmitted disease is well-founded. But too often these teens bury their fears and numb them in order to quash their conscience, that thing implanted in us all that tells us that what we are doing is not right.

I wish that more people who listen to their consciences.

But our society has been indoctrinated with a sexually explicit attitude, and has been deceived into believing that it is normal to have sex before marriage. To many, the thought of abstinence hasn’t even crossed their mind.

Are you one of these? I am not only talking to teens now, but anyone who things that it’s okay to give your body away to someone you are not in a committed relationship with – and by this I mean the ultimate commitment of marriage.

The Bible says that only within marriage are two people to become one flesh (Genesis 2:24; see also 1 Corinthians 6:16). Only God’s design will bring true fulfillment. The rest is just counterfeit, or altogether empty.

Don’t believe the lies of the world.

God’s Megaphone

There are a lot of bad things in this world. Bad people. Crime. Violence. Natural disasters. Starvation. AIDS. Slavery.

Listen.

It was C.S. Lewis that said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Could it be that God is trying to get our attention, but we are too busy looking around at each other, or else shaking our fist at God himself, to hear what he has to say?