Culture Shock 4.0

I will never forget the time in late high school my dad had progressively become an alcoholic and he went from a couple beers after work each day as a school teacher to drinking all the way up after school to dinner and then missing dinner and then pretty soon not getting home until about eleven at night. My mom was a guidance counselor, she was emotionally intelligent.

And it got to the point where she had tried everything to accommodate, to be kind, to be loving. And she realized that she had to confront him. And she said, “Reb, you’ve got forty-eight hours. You can choose this bottle or you can choose me and the family. And there’s no going back.”

And in twenty-four hours he quit cold turkey. No counseling, no anything. He changed because someone cared enough, loved enough, was willing to risk everything to not allow him to keep destroying his life, but also destroying all of us around him.

And as we start this brand-new series, I’ve entitled it “Caring Enough to Confront: Bringing Light Not Heat to Today’s Most Critical Issues.” We are living in a day where people who love God, people who know the truth are keeping silent. Because we don’t want to rock the boat or we are very concerned that we are going to get canceled.

What the research tells us is there’s about six percent of the people on the far, far left that are radical and vocal and cancel people. And there’s another six percent on the far, far right that are radical and vocal and they cancel people. And just about everyone else is somewhere in that middle of the big scale.

And inside that is a great majority of very good, kind, loving Christians that, when conversations come up at home, when conversations come up at church, when conversations come up at the neighborhood or at work you are silent about these controversial issues whether it’s politics, whether it’s climate change, whether it’s LGBTQ. We need to be the salt and light of the world.

About ten years ago, it was 2014, I wrote a book called Culture Shock. And that grew out of a season in my life where thirty years ago, a little over thirty years ago, I was a pastor in the most progressive city in California: Santa Cruz. It was, I think, the place of the very first gay pride parade. It was filled with New Age centers all over the place, drug use. I mean, it was a place where people were far, far, far from God. But even more than far from God, they didn’t know anything.

And for reasons that only God knows, He did something in that church that astounded all of us, literally, within a few years thousands of people were coming to the church. People were coming out of New Age, they were coming out of the occult, they were coming out of alternative lifestyles. Radical, radical perspective on things.

But then those people came and they said, “I just don’t know what to do. I mean, most of my friends are in the homosexual community. Or most of my friends are in the New Age. Or I came out of the cult.” I mean, we had actual Satan worshippers and warlocks and witches. And, I mean, it was – for some of you that are a little older it was like living inside of a Frank Peretti novel. But it was also like seeing the power of God and the love of God and the light of God.

And they would come and say, “I don’t know, how can I communicate this new life, this freedom? And so, my goal in writing that book years later was out of a series of messages where I realized I needed to teach what the truth is, but I needed to teach the truth in a way where a regular person could sit down with a friend who totally disagreed and we would bring light, that we would honor their position, that we wouldn’t, you know, make up statistics or pull things out of context, but we would talk about abortion and say, “This is what Planned Parenthood believes and why, and these are their presuppositions.”

This is where the division are in politics and this is what the Bible says about the Church’s role and an individual’s role. And this is what the Bible says about sexuality. And this is why God set boundaries on some things to prevent not just disease but to bring about life and encouragement and intimacy and oneness.

And so, we taught through, I mean, all these controversial issues. I mean, and I’ve got the book in front of me. We talked about: Whatever happened to right and wrong? And we taught them philosophically about where truth came from and why there isn’t just you have your truth and I have my truth. There is an absolute truth. And we couldn’t not talk about those things. And then we talked about how do you sit down with someone and not talk at them but hear and listen and build a bridge.

In fact, early in the book this is written in 2014 and it says, “This book is an honest effort to get Christians talking openly and respectfully about these issues. It’s an effort to seek out what it looks like for followers of Christ to bring to the table both grace and truth in dealing with these issues and the people that they impact. I’ve tried to present the presuppositions of both sides of each issue and report the research and the statistics in context. I certainly have a bias, but we all do. Most of all, Jesus does. And that’s the bias I want us to get clear on and follow Jesus. Jesus brought light, not heat. He confronted unpopular and controversial issues with clarity and truth, but He treated people with dignity and respect unless their motives and hypocrisy dictated otherwise. For far too long, the Church has been silent on these issues that are shaping our culture. For far too long, opposing groups have thrown rocks and slanted statistics and vilified one another even within the Church. Jesus promised that the truth once we put it into practice would set us free. Let’s explore the truth together. He commanded us to love one another. Let’s put truth and love together and explore what the Bible says about today’s most divisive issues.”

So what I want you to understand and what we are going to do over the next many programs is we are going to learn what is the truth? And how do we communicate that to people that we really care about? How do we treat people who would radically disagree? And how do we refuse to be quiet when conversations come up about these critical issues? Our country is at stake, our communities are at stake, and the Church is at stake. We have to understand what we believe, why we believe it, and then be able to articulate the truth in a way that doesn’t judge people, condemn people, or put people down. But do it in a way where they understand we care.

When I look back on what my mom did, I stand in awe of her strength and of her courage and I think I realized that she realized that possibly for a number of years, out of the best of efforts, her loving response did a lot more to enable my father. And guess what, it impacted all of us.

One of my siblings rebelled and probably rightfully so. Another had an eating disorder. I became a workaholic by the time I was probably, eleven, twelve, thirteen years old.

When we’re unwilling to kindly, lovingly, clearly care enough to confront, it’s not just things are going to be okay. The Church is dealing with issues right now and this series and these messages are for God’s people. My concern and our concern is to tell followers of Jesus: This is how God has called us to act. There is no room for compromise, there is no room for silence, there is no room for blaming, condemning.

Some of the posting I see on social media by Christians that attack others who disagree, I think it breaks God’s heart. And it’s very ineffective. We are going to need to take some radical steps as followers of Jesus. We are the hope of the world. Listen carefully to what Jesus said. And I would tell you that His goal was not just to make our lives easy or happy.

On the Sermon on the Mount He writes in verse 10 of chapter 5, “Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” Notice the persecution isn’t for being a jerk, it’s not for posting things, it’s not treating people terribly, it’s not for calling people names. It’s for righteousness, it’s for living according to God’s Word, He goes on in verse 11, “Blessed are those when men revile you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely on account of Me.”

We need to be willing to stand up, but it has to be on the account of Jesus, it has to be on the account of us taking a stand and saying, “This is what Jesus said. These aren’t our opinions about sexuality, these aren’t our opinions about gender, these aren’t our opinions about treating those who hate you with kindness, these aren’t our opinions.

And where this needs to start is that we have to own our own issues in the Church first. We have to address our hypocrisy. We need to address our disobedience. We need to ask ourselves, “Lord, what do you want to do in us?”

And so, this series That we are going to go through is we are going to look at what does the Bible say and what does Jesus say about all these critical issues? And, yes, will you get canceled? Maybe. But our fears are overshadowing everything that God wants us to do. In fact, He says in verse 12, “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

I meet Christians all the time that they don’t talk about certain things inside their own Christian families with their adult children or even teenage children who have taken different positions than what they know is true. I meet other Christian families who are now compromising on some of the most basic morality in Scripture because someone they love has taken a turn and decided they are going to live in opposition to what is clearly true in the Bible. And what I would want you to understand is that sin brings about consequences and the consequences are death.

We have to speak up, not because we need to be right or tell people they are wrong or bring about condemnation. We have to speak up because there are lifestyles and there’s values that are killing people both literally, psychologically, and relationally. I just want to say to fellow Christians right now, being silent at this time in world history is not an option. Being silent in your church when you see it compromising doctrine is not an option. Being silent at work and neighborhoods, even if there’s a great cost, is not an option.

But what we are going to talk about is how to speak and how to live and how to have the kind of life that gives you a platform to speak into things with compassion. The proverbs are very clear. It’s a gentle answer that turns away wrath. Harsh words stir up anger. We don’t need to condemn, we don’t need to be bigoted, we don’t need to accept views of Christians that you’re all like this. We need to break through and bring light.

Jesus promised if you abide in His Word – in other words – put it into practice, then you will know by experience, by life transformation what the truth is and the truth will set you free. That’s what Jesus called us to be and that’s what He called us to do.

In fact, this is what He would say to that first generation of Christians who changed the world. “You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has become tasteless, how will it be made salty again? It is good for nothing anymore except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.”

Listen to that. Salt purifies, salt seasons, salt preserves. Christians living righteous, winsome, kind lives, unhypocritical. It doesn’t mean we’re perfect, but it means when we blow it, we own it. It’s us owning some things that we have let slide in our world. We can’t call people out for sexual impropriety if we’re not going to deal with our own unbiblical divorces, their own porn issues, the adultery, and the living together inside the Church that we have a blind eye to. We first and foremost, judgement, starts with the house of God.

We, God’s people, need to be the light before we share the light. And God calls us to do that. And then we have a platform and an opportunity with compassion.

I remember doing the research and it just so broke my heart and I shared this as I taught on homosexuality thirty years ago in this very, very progressive town. And I’ll never forget it because the first two rows were filled with gay and lesbian and bisexual and they put fliers on all the cars and we had just a number of people, I learned more from the people who had come out of the lifestyle than anybody else. And my heart was breaking.

And I remember doing the research and at the time and I’m so glad that medicine has progressed, but twenty-five years ago, thirty years ago there was no big antidote for HIV positive. And the average lifespan of a male homosexual in the San Francisco Bay Area was forty-three years old. And I apologized for the names that Christians have called people in the homosexual lifestyle and I also apologized for Christians who said, “Oh, it’s okay, God doesn’t say anything about that.”

God is very clear about heterosexual sin, homosexual sin, any other kind of sin because He loves us. And I remember saying, “How could I say, ‘I love you’ if I didn’t at least let you know this is what the light of Scripture says. You don’t have to believe it, but I am sorry for all along the spectrum of people who have told you either you’re such a terrible person and God hates you. That’s not Jesus. Or that everything is okay and you can live any way you want and there are no consequences. That’s not Jesus.”

Something radically wrong has happened inside the Church. Instead of bringing the light, we are afraid to speak, we are changing some of our doctrines because we want the approval of the world. And what I want you to know is Jesus said, “Once the salt loses its saltiness, it’s worthless. There’s no impact.” He goes on to say not only are we the salt of the earth, you’re the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden nor do men light a lamp and put it under the peck measure or a lampstand but it gives light to all in the house.

We can’t be silent. You can’t keep going on and saying, “Well, when those controversial things come up, you know, I don’t want to cause an argument. I just stay silent. I don’t say anything.”

I remember flying home just a few days ago with a lady, then we found out we both lived in the similar area here in California and I was flying back from Atlanta where our headquarters was. And we had a very open conversation and she began to talk and she goes, “You know, I’m so concerned about the world. But, you know, when friends get together and talk, I just don’t say anything anymore. I just keep to myself and I just pray. I’m just, I’m just praying because…” She began to list all the things and children and grandchildren and things that were happening and the fallout and the hurt and the pain and her concerns.

And, but she goes, “I just don’t say anything.” And I thought to myself, it broke my heart, I totally understand it. But, you know, if she doesn’t know the truth, if she can’t articulate it clearly, if she doesn’t know the facts, if she can’t have a grasp of things where she could look into someone’s eyes and, you know, sort of with a posture of putting your arm around someone and say, “You know, we may really disagree and it’s okay if we disagree, but there’s not a bad person in the room.

Could we, could we talk openly and would you be willing to hear at least what Jesus says on these things?” And what I would say is people don’t want to hear what Jesus says on these things until you listen to them, until you hear their story, until you find out where they are and why they are where they are. Because the fact of the matter is, it’s not an accident that thirty-three percent of all of our eighteen to twenty-four-year-olds have some sort of mental, diagnosable disorder. One out of eight of the next generation, eighteen to twenty-four seriously has suicidal issues that come to their mind. One in four have some sort of a drug or alcohol addiction that they are dealing with.

People are experiencing destruction and death and being silent or staying in our little holy hubs was never God’s agenda, it’s never His will. And He calls us to be the light of the world. In fact, He doesn’t say, “Be that,” He says we are that. And then He says in verse 16, “Let your light so shine before men that they could see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”

Our good works. We need to help people in drug addictions, we need to help the poor, we need to find where there’s common ground in terms of delivering people from the sex trade. We need to be a part of the solution, not voices casting stones from the outside. I have had the privilege of living in the most progressive area of all America and I will tell you, the light is very, very bright when it shines. The salt is very, very salty.

And here’s what I want you to know: People are hurting, they are lonely, they can say whatever they want and often their anger or their words and their harshness or their even attack when you take a stand for things, is down deep, there’s a pain and things don’t work and they are in great need of light and of love and forgiveness. And Jesus said it was worth His life to offer that to all people and He said, “Follow Me.”

We are to follow in His steps, to live righteously, to share the truth lovingly, kindly, boldly, and winsomely. And what we want to do is to go through each of these critical issues in our day and educate you on: This is what the truth is. This is what Jesus taught. This is what the Scripture says.

Second, here’s how to articulate it in a way where you’re on the same side of the table with your arm around, at least metaphorically, a person, not against them, and looking at the truth together and let them make their own decisions. It’s not a rejection of you, it’s a rejection of the truth.

And then to be able to enter into vital activity and action that brings about life and forgiveness and truth and righteousness in every area of your world. That we would be the kind, loving, righteous light by what we actually do.

We want to care enough to confront. We want to bring light, not heat to today’s most critical issues. There is so much at stake. I hope you’ll not miss a single program God wants to speak to you, then He wants to work in you, then He wants to work through you.