The following is the first post in a three part series by DMI Intern, Eric Parker. In this series Eric shares his thoughts on Secret Church 11 and the current cultural climate in relation to “Family, Marriage, Sex, and the Gospel”:
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Secret Church 11 – “Family, Marriage, Sex, and the Gospel “
Consider, for a moment, how deeply our world, and culture, is steeped in sexual sin on a variety of different levels. Let this sink in—Every second, 372 Internet users type adult search terms into search engines. At this given moment, there are 40 million prostitutes at work in the world. Sex trafficking is a $58 billion industry worldwide. In the United States, over 45 million abortions have occurred since 1973. 1.4 million abortions occur every year; 3,000 abortions occur every day; an abortion occurs every 20-25 seconds.
The fact that this may not even bother us, is itself a shameful indicator of where we are. It is safe to say that our world has reached an unprecedented point in its history. Knowing that many of those realities are true in our culture, then it is safe to say that we are drowning in sexual abominations. But in America's inception, the family was understood, and defined, in light of Judeo-Christian values that found their roots in the Hebrew culture we see expressed in the Old Testament. But these are perilous days when it comes to the family, marriage, sex, and the gospel.
Dr. Platt did well to start with, what I think is a really helpful quote from pastor-scholar, Mark Dever. He writes:
The most important revolution in the last century has been the sexual revolution… Contraception replaced conception. Pleasure was separated from responsibility. It was as if a license was given out, legitimizing the bending of every part of our lives around serving ourselves. Since that time, divorce, remarriage, abortion, premarital sex, and extramarital sex, as well as homosexuality have been accepted by increasing percentages of the public. Pornography is huge business. This is not just a problem with society out there. Many churches have found their members plagued by failed marriages and illicit affairs, by so-called private sins that turn into public disgraces, some of which are known, some of which are not yet known.
Current Cultural Reflections
We could go on and on about all the areas of our culture that have eroded away over the last 100 years, but it would be more helpful to make a few observations about where our culture is today, and where we may be going.
Where We Are—The Sexual Polarization
As Mark Dever has so helpfully pointed out, the sexual revolution may be one of the most drastic shifts in our culture. Much of the decay of marriage, sexuality, gender, etc. can be traced back to the sexual revolution. But it seems that we are beginning to see a polarization occurring. This is a polarization between those who would claim to want total "sexual liberation" and people who have bitten the fruit, yet have been left wanting.
What I mean by "polarization" is that there seems to be a spectrum, of sorts, on which you either have people who are extremely open with their own sexuality, or people who would fall into traditional conceptions of purity when it comes to their openness about their sexuality. But there are increasingly less people who would fall in the middle of this spectrum.
On one end of the spectrum, you have an overall attitude that sex in all forms is a good thing, and to put any restrictions on someone's sexual freedom would be wrong. This works itself out in many different forms.
For instance, the pornography industry continues to grow, and has become one of the greatest profit generating industries in the world. On the global scale, pornography has grown from about $57 billion in revenue in 2003, to $97 billion world wide in 2006. I shutter to think of the statistics today.
Or the fact that there is something called "Gay rights", as distinguished from human rights, says volumes about this far-end of the spectrum. Albert Mohler, in a post entitled Evangelicals and the Gay Moral Revolution, said:
In less than a single generation, homosexuality has gone from something almost universally understood to be sinful, to something now declared to be the moral equivalent of heterosexuality—and deserving of both legal protection and public encouragement.
In this postmodern age, we live in a country that has functionally given way to relativism, to the point that any group, whether previously understood as immoral, or not, is seen now as amoral, and deserving of full acceptance, as well as endorsement.
Or think of the impact of ideological feminism in politics, academia, and the Church challenging Biblical understandings of men, women, gender, sexuality, and marriage.
Consider that in most secular humanities courses within our western universities, gender is seen to be something that is socially constructed. This is completely foreign to any time period of recorded history, except the last 50 years. Think about the impact of this notion. For gender to be distinguished from one's "sex," is to say that gender is not understood in light of ones biological association. Once gender is disconnected from biology, identity becomes fluid. And with such fluid identity, it's only inevitable (and is indeed happening) for marriage, family, relationships between men and women (whatever that means), and even society to be degraded. For gender is one of the main foundations upholding marriage, family, and relationships between men and women.
That is a little bit about where we are today in terms of the sexual disparity of our culture and world. We will look at, what I call the "new conservative" end of the spectrum in the next post.
Next week – Part 2 – The Sexual Polarization—The "New Conservative"
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To watch or listen to Secret Church - “Family, Marriage, Sex, and the Gospel”, visit the Resource Library in the DMI website. DVDs, CDs, and Study Guides are also available for purchase through the DMI Store.
