Delighting in the Lord, or …?

By: American Decency Staff

Once in awhile secular research makes a conclusion that to some may seem like a profound or surprising finding, but to those who study God’s Word is only common sense. The headline read: Children Who Watch R-rated Movies More Likely to Drink Alcohol. Here is a portion of the article: Researchers conducted a study of more 2,400 children, ages 10 to 14-years-old, whose parents allowed them to view R-rated movies frequently. Almost a quarter of the children studied confessed to having tried alcohol behind their parents back. Inversely, the study showed that only 3 percent of the students in the trial who were forbidden to watch R-rated movies had ever tried a drink. James Sargent, co-author of the study and a professor at Dartmouth, said the study had a controlled parenting style and still showed that “the movie effect is over-and-above that [parenting] effect.â€Â … http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,591507,00.html Scripture teaches that we cannot dabble with the evil of the world and not have it shape our thinking, attitudes, behavior.  That is why Romans 12:2 warns not to be conformed to this world.   I’m sure another study would deduce that young people who watch R-rated movies are also more likely to imitate other behaviors depicted – such as engaging in sexual activity and using foul language.  Bluntly stated:  garbage in, garbage out.  Delight in the Lord or delight in the sinful enticements of the world?  We can’t have it both ways.  Yet, it seems, many Christians seem to think we can. Looking again at that article above, notice there was one group whose parents forbid them from watching R-rated movies.  Sadly, I wonder how many families even within our churches hold such a line with their teenagers.  How many adults guard what they themselves watch? Many in the Christian community seem to compartmentalize their faith – seeking after personal pleasure instead of what pleases God.  I am part of a weekly Bible study at church that meets on Thursday evenings.  We have been winding up a study of the book of Ezra.  Ezra led a second group of Israelites back to Jerusalem from Babylon decades after the first pilgrimage.  Soon after his arrival he learns that some of the people of Israel had grievously broken God’s law, having not separated themselves from the practices of the idolatrous surrounding nations and taking pagan women as wives.  Read Ezra 9 to see the tremendous grief this caused Ezra.  He was appalled that God’s people, who knew His law, would disregard it in such a way.  Ezra did not take the peoples’ sin lightly.  He understood what an affront our sin is to the holiness of God. Then in chapter 10 we see the reaction and repentance of the people.  We also learn the names of those guilty of this sin of mixing with the idolatrous peoples – 111 men.  Remember there were tens of thousands of Jewish men who had returned to Jerusalem.  Yet this tiny percentage of violators of God’s law – a number perhaps seemingly insignificant to many – was of grievous concern not only to Ezra and the people, but, of course, especially to God. Yet, on how much of a greater scale do God’s people today align themselves with the things of the world, taking on the customs and practices of what goes against His Word? Recently, I read a devotional article by R.C. Sproul where he offers this commentary: “…The great tragedy of the church in the post-1960s revolution is that the face of the church has changed along with the face of the secular culture.  In a fatal pursuit of relevance, the church has often become merely an echo of the secular culture in which it lives, having a desperate desire to be “with itâ€Â and acceptable to the contemporary world.  The church itself has adopted the very relativism it seeks to overcome.  What is demanded by times such as ours is a church that addresses the temporal while at the same time remaining tethered to the eternal – a church that speaks, comforts, and heals all things mortal and secular without itself abandoning the eternal and the holy.  … We need churches filled with Christians who are not enslaved by the culture, churches that seek more than anything to please God and His only begotten Son, rather than to attract the applause of dying men and women.  Where is that church?  That is the church Christ established.  That is the church whose mission is to minister redemption to a dying world, and that is the church we are called to be.  God help us and our culture if our ears become deaf to that call.â€Â =============================================== Your support is important to our ability to make a difference! Donate online at: https://secure4.afo.net/ada/donate.php American Decency Association Bill Johnson, President P.O. Box 202 Fremont, MI 49412 ph: 231-924-4050 www.americandecency.org http://www.twitter.com/billwjohnson

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