| Good Morning Everyone, Our theme for this month: “Think for yourself” Our Bible verse for today: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” Isaiah 5:20 (CSB) Our thought for today: “Beware of ‘The Brave New World’, but don’t fear it.” In 1932 British author Aldous Huxley published his dark and disturbing novel “A Brave New World.” The story is set in a futuristic One World society where individuals are genetically engineered in the womb to fit into certain classes, and where overlord government officials use sleep-learning and a variety of other psychological tools to manipulate and control the population. The result is that the authorities are easily able to control the people, getting them to believe and do whatever is required of them. There’s much more to the story, including some brave heroes who discover the truth and rebel against it, but now you have the context and the setting of the story. Our world today has become something of a “Brave New World”, and in the same bad way. In our case the efforts to control and manipulate people haven’t reached the draconian depths depicted by Huxley in his story, but they are heavy-handed and they are bad. We’re in the situation the prophet Isaiah wrote about in Isaiah 5:20 whereby powerful persuasive cultural forces have convinced masses of people to abandon long-held and time-honored traditional Biblical principles of morality and righteousness, and substitute for it a severely distorted understanding of right and wrong, of good and evil. Ours has become an up-side-down world where what used to be called good is now considered evil, and what used to be evil is now considered good. And, worse, if you don’t agree with that new perspective it means that you are evil too. Sadly, masses of people, including many Christians, are giving in to the powerful cultural forces and are being swept up in the new way of thinking. They’re abandoning the time-honored long-held beliefs given to us by God in the Bible, and accepting the theology and morality of our Brave New World. Why? Sometimes it’s because their moorings in correct theology weren’t strong to begin with and therefore, they are easily fooled into believing a lie. In other cases, they have found that life is easier if you just go along so you can get along. In either case, they drank the cool-aid and they have joined the larger culture in the new up-side-down way of thinking. The way we as Christians avoid that happening to us is to think for ourselves. First, we must be solid in our faith. We must know what we believe and why we believe it. We must be securely moored to the foundational principles of our faith. Then we have to have the courage to resist the lies and to stand strong for what we know to be true. Life in our Brave New World is not going to be easy, but the good news is that Jesus promised us He would never leave us nor abandon us (Hebrews 13:5), and that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13). Beware of the Brave New World, but don’t fear it. God Bless, Pastor Jim |
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