Where do we start if we want not to conform to this world? There is a sense in which we could begin at any point, since truth is a whole and truth in any area will inevitably lead to truth in every other area. But if the dominant philosophy of our day is secularism (which means viewing all of life only in terms of the visible world), then the best of all possible starting places is the doctrine of God, for God alone is above and beyond the world and is eternal.
Where do we start if we want not to conform to this world? There is a sense in which we could begin at any point, since truth is a whole and truth in any area will inevitably lead to truth in every other area. But if the dominant philosophy of our day is secularism (which means viewing all of life only in terms of the visible world), then the best of all possible starting places is the doctrine of God, for God alone is above and beyond the world and is eternal.
As believers we need to reject the world’s thinking and begin to think as Christians. This is what the apostle Paul is writing about in our text from Romans 12:2: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” This means that our thinking is not to be determined by the culture of the world around us, but, rather, we are to have a distinctly different and growing Christian worldview.
This week we’ve looked at different ways that “the pattern of this world” eases its way into our worldview. And this is the point at which we also need to talk about genuine mind renewal for Christians, which is what I will continue with next week.
Was Jesus amusing? Were Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wesley or Jonathan Edwards entertainers? We must learn to seek truth, and avoid being caught up in the search for entertainment which has so permeated our culture.
A great deal of what Postman develops in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, is reinforcement for what I have been describing as mindlessness. And “the pattern of this age” today is certainly mindless. So let me review two specific areas of bad influence, as he sees it.
Television is certainly capable of imprinting “the pattern of this world” on us. An academic study of the negative impact of television on culture has been provided by a man named Neil Postman, a professor of communication arts and sciences at New York University. It is called Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.
In our time there is no longer a distinctly Christian way of thinking. There is to some extent a Christian ethic and even a somewhat Christian way of life and piety. But there is no distinctly Christian frame of reference, no uniquely Christian worldview, to guide our thinking in distinction from the thought of the secular world around us.
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