Baby Its Cold Outside - The Atmosphere of Offense

In case you have not noticed, times have changed.  In recent news this past holiday season there were multiple  news articles and much discussion centered around a song that does not fit within our current context given its content.  If you gave this any thought, there is much at stake here and the discussion reflected a number of important cultural shifts.  I want to address them here.

1. Truth no longer is connected to its original context.

We no longer determine truth (if we are interested in truth at all) by looking at the origin of anything.  Instead, we define truth in our modern sophisticated society by how something makes people feel.  So if a song does not fit our current narrative we do not look to the time in which it was written and what might have been different or if the lyrics reflect something other than what it might seem from our point of view, we simply assume that our point of view is truth and evaluate our world based upon the truth we perceive.

The trouble is that the Bible is often looked upon in the same way.  We no longer care about original context, or historical understanding.  The who's, what's, when's, where's, and why's no longer matter. All that seems to matter is what does the reader think of the text they are reading.  And this makes much of the Bible seem antiquated and out of touch with reality. 

The trouble with this is that nothing could be farther from the truth.  I will consider God true and everything else a lie because I believe in a God who is Truth and His Word that is Truth.  So we as Christians need to be careful not to distance truth from its objective grounding in God.

2. The greatest problem in our culture is causing offense.

Everyone seems to get along fine until someone is offended.  And keep in mind that the offense does not have to be current.  I can be offended that someone might have done something 25 years ago to someone I don't know.  But I can only be offended if it hurts my feelings.  If I dare call something wrong (objectively) than my feelings no longer matter because I have offended someone else.  So, if for instance I argue that life begins at conception, the argument immediately derails because I have offended someone who has had an abortion and I clearly am not considering their feelings. 

Again this seems to be innocuous enough, but we have lost the ability to hold contrary sides of a position with dignity and respect.  So if I disagree with you, you assume I am not respecting you and our discussion can no longer occur peacefully.  This leads to the fracturing of society into "sides".  For an example, look at politics.  We are now more divided than we ever have been because we cannot hold to ideals or beliefs about what our government should be, we are either Republican or Democrat and either side holds shame to all those who disagree.  When we believe that Christians can only be one or the other we are committing the same issue that has caused this culture of offense in the first place by boiling down the person who has some belief into a side and judging them based on the little we know of that side. 

The bigger problem with this is that the gospel is an offense to those who are perishing. (see 1 Cor 1)  And when those who preach the gospel become a stumbling block to those that do not want to hear it, a silencing will soon follow.  We must cause offense for the content of the gospel because the content of the gospel is that people are dying because of their sinfulness.  To say otherwise is not true, regardless of how people feel about it. 

So as true followers of Christ we must ground truth in the objective reality of God and His Word and we must understand that our gospel is offensive.