CultureWarsCh4

Focus: While not backing away from learning about the modern pressures of the culture wars, we should realise our efforts can become unbalanced, a distraction from the gospel.

An Enemy Strategy: In the early part of 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in what was supposed to be a few days' incursion but in reality, went on considerably longer. In an article in a leading newspaper, I remember a columnist bemoaning the fact that all the while Russia had been strengthening its role in the world in preparation for imperialist incursions, we had been distracted from the bigger world by the folly of culture wars either side of the Atlantic. It took this physical war to wake us up. Some are even suggesting that these ‘culture wars' that have been taking up so much print space, mostly originating from the left of the political spectrum, might indeed have come from further left, further east!

The Art of Distraction: A leader, commenting on some aspects of these culture wars, said to me, I believe all of this stuff is simply an enemy distraction to take our eye off the main goal – the gospel. I agreed – with reservations. The apostle Paul was utterly focused on the gospel but on occasion (Athens) realised his listeners were not Bible-taught Jews and so resorted to using what he found in front of himself to get to the gospel. He would not be distracted but spoke into the modern dilemma. Similarly, our example found in the verse at the start of this Part is about the same thing. Nehemiah was concentrating on rebuilding the broken-down walls of Jerusalem and when the enemy sought to distract him and drag him away from the work, he refused. He would not be distracted from the job in hand. Neither must we.

Refocusing on The Task: ‘Our job in hand' is to convey the truth of the Gospel which could be expressed in this context as follows:

• God has designed this world for our blessing but so often we turn away from Him, and that turning away is evidenced by the way we have allowed ourselves to go after our own goals, thus ignoring both His provision and His power to help our dysfunctional lives, no longer working as they were originally designed to work.

• Instead, we choose approaches that are self-serving and godless, and which take us down paths of self-destruction. This we will see as we proceed further. But it doesn't stop there, but that is the sin-producing-need side of the equation.

• The other side is focusing on the compassionate Saviour who came to meet the demands of Justice that meant death, spiritual and eternal. The end-result? Peace and wholeness.

Preparatory Checks: Parachutists do a final check before leaping out of the plane. So what do we need to check as we get ready to ‘jump'? Here are my suggestions:

1. A teachable spirit. If we are set in our presuppositions (maybe assumptions) of life, the Bible and how we interpret it, we might as well stop right now. This isn't to say we are going to have to change our views and our understanding, but it does mean we should approach the following studies with a mind that is willing to perhaps think more broadly than we may have done before and be prepared to try to think more clearly with well thought out knowledge.

2. A compassionate heart. If we view everyone who holds a different stance to us in life, as the enemy, we will a) limit our own ability to come to a Jesus-viewpoint and b) make defensive those who are the subject of our considerations. That will result in ongoing divisiveness and hostility. Those are two things we desire to overcome. They ARE going to feel defensive (because they hold an untenable position) but we should try to do nothing that might make it worse.

Summary-Recap: So, we have observed the need not to be distracted from making the gospel the main goal of our lives and then how we can reframe the reality of the Gospel by applying it into this current framework of ideas. Finally I have suggested two checks to be carried out on ourselves before we launch any further into the primary subjects at the heart of these studies.

1 Sam 16:7 “the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

Focus: To be able, somehow, to be the teachable, compassionate people we have just referred to and be able to reach the anguish being felt in modern western societies, we need to learn to look below the surface of people's lives.

Breakdown in Relational Communication: The good news of the Bible is that God does not look at what the rest of us see, the outward appearance of individuals, but He sees both their inner anguishes AND their potential. The primary unit for communication is supposed to be the family but so often families either disintegrate or simply exist apart from each other. Even in the best of families, it is so easy not to realize the potential of our children. In the incident in 1 Sam 16, Samuel has asked head of the family, Jesse, to bring all his family to the village sacrifice. It turns out he didn't bother about David because he was just ‘the youngest'. Do we miss what God is doing in our children or, for that matter, what the enemy is doing in them?

The Zacchaeus Example: Preachers, when coming to the story of Jesus encountering Zacchaeus (Lk 19:1-10), seek to look behind the obvious. The obvious was that here was a chief tax-collector, but a little man. The less obvious was that being a tax-collector his only friends would have been other tax-collectors. It also probably meant he was a rogue out to make money from others. As a chief tax-collector over a large area, it meant he was an even bigger scoundrel. All this speaks of a little person, big in his own eyes no doubt, but intensely disliked and probably without any real friends. That was Zacchaeus, the person.

The Bible shows that Jesus frequently knew the thoughts of all those around him, and the story – Zacchaeus up a tree – shows Jesus knew exactly who he was, and what his state of heart was. The fact that he came down so quickly and went with Jesus shows that this little lonely man had an open heart. The story challenges us to observe Zacchaeus's feelings and see behind the surface. God warns against looking at the outside, the starter verse at the beginning of this Part, reminds us.

A Hurting and Angry Generation: I encountered this when I first started writing Christian blogs online quite a number of years ago. Some of the responses, only some, were seriously hostile, but they went far beyond that, they were vitriolic, bitter, hurtful (if you let them), and seriously spiteful. What is it, I thought, that is causing this? Today this goes wildly beyond just Christianity, it is seen in the anguished outpourings against anyone who dares resist the mores, the customs, and values, being espoused in the culture wars that we are going on to consider but, I believe we can see that the underlying cause is the relational breakdown of the nuclear family. Examination of family breakup reveals again and again hurting young people. (see in previous part, ‘internet trolls'.

The Relationship-Happiness Equation: To quote from ‘Morality' by Jonathan Sacks , I have underlined what I believe are key words. Listen to him as he writes about,

“ … the strength or otherwise of our social connections, our relationships with family and friends… happy people have better relationships than their less happy peers …..The causality runs both ways. Friends make people happy, but happy people find it easier to make friends ….the only thing that really matters in life is your relationships to other people…. Close relationships , more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives. Those ties protect people from life's discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes .… happiness is a matter of what we do, what we are and how we relate to others .”

Consequences of Family Breakdown: The message is loud and clear as a principle, but then he drove some nails in the coffin of modern relationships :

“A 1993 survey in Britain found that children living with cohabiting rather than married parents are twenty times more likely to become victims of child abuse. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that family breakdown must be part of the explanation for the sharp increase among young people of eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, stress-related syndromes, depression, and actual and attempted suicides.”

And if that twentieth-first century warning wasn't enough, hold on to this next quote (that I have reformatted) and work for it whenever you can:

“There is overwhelming social scientific evidence that (a) children benefit from being brought up in a stable marriage by two parents, that (b) divorce is harmful to the children, and single parenthood still more so: whether measured in terms of childhood aggression, delinquency, hyperactivity, criminality, illness and injury, early mortality, sexual decision making in adolescence, school problems, dropping out, emotional health, educational achievement, career success, and the ability to make strong and lasting relationships, marriage especially … I believe that the injustice done to them by society is hard to forgive…. a generation imbibed the idea of sex without responsibility and fatherhood without commitment, as if there were no victims of that choice.”

A Concern back in 2017: Are we being over-dramatic. Well let's go right back to February 2017 in the Times, where Will Walden, managing director at Edelman UK public affairs, and former chief advisor to Boris Johnson, wrote as follows:

This morning we are publishing the findings of our young adults edition of this year's Edelman Trust Barometer, well established as the benchmark report on trust in politicians, government, NGOs, media and businesses. The findings are stark. Britain's next generation of voters feel anxious. About populism, automation, leadership and their own financial security. About getting and keeping a house, a job and a steady income. Angst is literally sucking the life out of their teenage years . Far from being interested in freedom and exploration, and removed from the concerns of adulthood, it seems instead that adulthood has arrived with quite a thud. No wonder a majority see themselves as being worse off or no better off than their parents' generation.

Above all the sons and daughters of generation X may be the social media generation but astonishingly they are uncomfortable with the pace of change. Rapid change in the world of technology isn't the panacea we all thought they thought it was: six out of ten bemoan the speed of technological disruption.

Now that, of course, was a survey for a political purpose but it did show – in addition to the things noted by Sacks in the previous paragraphs – that our younger generations are unhappy. In a piece in 2019, a Times writer, reiterated the same thing: “In the charity's Good Childhood report, the society analysed data gathered between 2009 and 2017 by the Understanding Society survey, finding that general levels of happiness among 10 to 15-year-olds were at their lowest level since 2009,” but this was all about how young people felt about their appearance.

The Start of awareness in the UK: But let's focus back on the family aspect. On August 14 th 2021, the Times reported, “ It was all over within 12 minutes. In the last moments of his life Jake Davison murdered his mother, a child and her father, a dog walker and another woman in a spree that marked the worst mass shooting in the UK in more than a decade.”

Thus a mass shooting in Plymouth was reported but the long article never used the word ‘incel'. That came the next day: “Boys as young as 13 are being radicalised by the “incel” internet subculture believed to have motivated the Plymouth gunman Jake Davison, an expert in extremism has warned,”

…. and went on to explain, “Incels are people, usually young men , who are “involuntarily celibate” and blame women for depriving them of sex. They often hate people in relationships, and in extreme cases they advocate violence or “retribution”

Experts say the incel threat is growing in the UK. Laura Bates, a researcher and author who went undercover in the incel movement, said membership had “increased dramatically” in the past two years and described it as a “real blind spot” for the authorities. “This is an extremist group advocating for women to be massacred, but at every level we don't treat this in the way that we would any comparable form of extremism and hatred,” she said.

The three biggest websites devoted to the “involuntary celibate” subculture record 506,227 clicks from UK users a month and about 4.5 million worldwide, according to research

For the uninitiated, incels are men who self-identify as “involuntarily celibate”, believing that their apparently abominable appearance discounts them from ever having a physical relationship with the opposite sex. It is a situation with which they must learn to “cope”. However, theirs is not merely plaintive teenage angst. Many believe their situation to be the result of some kind of gender conspiracy; that they are deliberately denied the right to have sex by an oppressive and innately manipulative womanhood; that they are the ultimate losers in a prevailing economy of “unequal sexual distribution”….. These men are dejected, lonely and frequently suicidal. But they are also dejected, lonely and frequently suicidal.

The Language of Incels: Note the language: young men who…. blame women for depriving them of sex…. appearance discounts them from ever having a physical relationship with the opposite sex …. dejected, lonely and frequently suicidal….. dejected, lonely and frequently suicidal

Perhaps the extent and depth of this is not taken in until you read the glossary at the end of the above article of language used on Incel websites:

Chads Good-looking, sexually successful and confident, Chads are the antithesis of incels. As such, they are venerated and reviled in equal measure.

Stacys The Barbie to Chad's Ken, a Stacy is an attractive woman who regularly sleeps with Chads while ruthlessly consigning other men to inceldom.

Cucks From cuckold. Cucks are men whose partners are cheating with others. Some enjoy the humiliation this brings.

Femoids A word used by incels to indicate members of the opposite sex as being devoid of humanity or even subhuman.

Omegas If Chads are alpha males and high-functioning incels are beta males, omegas are at the bottom of the ladder.

Gymcels Incels who spend hours in the gym in an attempt to ascend from their pathetic, undesirable status.

Roidcels Gymcels who supplement their transformation training plans with anabolic steroids.

Bonesmashers/Surgerymaxers Incels obsessed with their apparently inferior facial profiles and willing to go under the knife to rectify this.

Mogged To be mogged is to be degraded and demeaned by a Chad in close proximity by virtue of being shorter/weedier/uglier and so on.

A day or so later, another Times reporter told of having, for quite some time been researching what went on, on an Incel website, and concluded, “Men who have committed crimes against women rarely take responsibility for their actions. Whether it was their mother, their partner or the random woman in the street who “rejected” them, the men I worked with always had an excuse for their horrific crimes.”

Do you not start to catch the angst? Undoubtedly an extreme wing of sex-pervaded Western culture, but the point is being made – an increasingly growing number of seriously unhappy young people, and it's all to do with sex, sexuality, and family breakdown.

Summary-Recap: For many decades we have observed the increasing godlessness within society and the inability of the Church to halt that. There are reasons we suggested earlier but this Part has simply been to suggest a link between family relational breakup and the increased angst in the youth of today. Successive governments (and the Church) on both sides of the Atlantic have failed to address such family relational breakdowns and now we are reaping the storm. We should be turning our minds and efforts to pastorally stemming this tide as we seek to bring healing – which may prove to be costly, both in terms of lives lost (literally) and our need for sacrificial availability and godly wisdom.

So, if we are to speak into our world today, we need to do it with understanding and care and compassion that seeks to feel for those who spit out anger and hurt and anguish. If Jesus in us can't be there for them, who can?