There is a reality that I pray that I will not fail to see as clearly as I think I see it now:  our world is absolutely corrupt and our society is sick unto death.  I do not want to lose sight of this reality because I see it more clearly now than ever.  It makes me wonder why anybody who is a believer would not want to find them a good solid bible-based and Christ-exalting church and make it the focus of most of the investment of their time and energy.  Why would we want to be more increasingly involved a society that is sliding downhill fast?  Now, I can answer that question in terms of the announcement of the Gospel to sinners, but that is the only way in which I can answer that question.  But why would have to be involved in culturally conditioned community activities in order to announce the Gospel to sinners?  That is the question that I cannot answer except to rub people the wrong way.  If the goal of some activity is not to glorify God and to advance the Kingdom of God why would I as a person whose priority is to see God glorified and to be used of Him to extend His Kingdom even want to invest time and energy is some enterprise that has no connection at all to the Kingdom of God?  My answer to that question is that I would not want to be involved in that and would not be.  In fact, I want my absence from such events to speak clearly about my own lack of support and endorsement.  It is time for God’s people to look carefully at our culture and to recognize that Jesus has given us two reasons for being involved in the world, only two:  we are to be the salt and we are to be the light.  We are to be present to sting and to preserve a Gospel witness and we are to shine the light of the Gospel in the darkness.  Now if we can be present at events that do not bring glory to God and extend His kingdom and feel comfortable in such a way that others do not feel uncomfortable, we have serious, serious issues.  We have compromised with a culture that is collapsing.  And we will bring that compromise to the church and bring the same collapse to the church to which we belong.  And our culture is collapsing rapidly.

I saw it again today.  A coed at Penn State and her colleague had designed the white tee shirts for the white out Saturday at a Penn State football game.  The front of the shirt did have a remarkable resemblance to a cross so much so that six people complained that the shirt had a religious message.  Now in our current culture such complaints from so few people could cause loud protests if not a lawsuit.  The coed who helped create the shirt said this morning on Fox News that she and her colleague had no religious intentions in the design of the teeshirt. So far, so good.  Then she said, “don’t we know anyway that symbols have no inherent meaning; we bring to them whatever meaning we want to bring.’  She spoke as clearly as I have heard the central truth of our postmodern culture.  Symbols have no inherent meaning.  The flag can mean whatever you want it mean:  wave it or burn it unless of course you wave it in front of the wrong people and then you are a bigot who is intolerant and you have to be restrained.  This has already happened.  The cross can mean the place where Jesus died or it can mean that you are a person who trusts the cross but if  you make the cross to visible as a Jesus symbol and are to vocal about it, you have to be silenced.  That is happening too.  The truth is that symbols do have inherent meaning and it is when that inherent meaning is  estalbished as the only meaning that our postmodern culture cries, “crucify him.”

Want more.  Fox News also did a story this morning on the young man from Home Depot where I visit once every three months just to walk through and feel like a real man who wore a pen that pictured a flag with the words, “in God we Trust.”  He also took his Bible to work with him each day and read it during his lunch.  He was fired.  Home Depot it seems issues pens to its employees to wear on their vests and the ones with “in God we trust” violate company policy.  Why?  If symbols have no inherent meaning and we invest them with meaning then those who read his pen can make it mean whatever they want it to mean.  And what it means in our day is that the God who sets Himself over the world as Sovereign Lord and Judge is not the God in whom we trust.  Our God is the God of Hindus, Muslims, Mormoms, etc.  He is a know nothing and do nothing God who gathers all these chickens in his roost.  Such a view is at the center of the collapse of our culture.  If we keep holding on to it without a real reformation in our land, we will see one day just how significant are these symbols.  They have real meaning.  And the one who is behind them has real power.

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