Secularism is the religion of the 21st century West, and all the most powerful messaging cultural machinery indoctrinates us into its view of reality. At the top of that list has to be our entertainment mediums, especially movies and television. Stories on screens are reality shapers, that is, they build into our imaginations ways of seeing and interpreting the world. Sociologically speaking, they are plausibility generating mechanisms in that they, without our knowing it, paint a picture of reality that we accept as real, or what seems real to us. Over time, if we take in entertainment uncritically, our plausibility structure (the building in our minds that determines how we see reality, the seemingness of it) becomes thoroughly secular, regardless of what we “believe.” (And for a short definition, what I mean by secular is that the material world, this world, is all that matters, and the here and the now is what is most important about life.) (more…)
Most people are familiar with the name of Kanye West, even if they think it an infamous one. After all, he’s married to a Kardashian, and with that comes a cultural ubiquity of not the best sort, at least from a Christian perspective. Plus I’ve always thought of him as kind of strange, and an egomaniac to boot. Now he claims a conversion to Christianity, and in Kanye fashion isn’t keeping quiet about it. Much Internet ink is being spilled with a distinctly jaundiced eye toward the news, and I can certainly empathize with that. But given things seem to be going in the opposite direction culturally, with people advertising the abandonment of their faith, I thought, maybe I should give Kanye the benefit of the doubt.
In case you are not aware where “Eat the babies” came from, watch this priceless satire of the leftists’ absurd obsession with “climate change”:
The woman was a plant at an AOC townhall, and she appears distraught at the “three months” we have before “climate change” doomsday is upon us. Every time I think of the phrase, “We need to eat the babies,” I laugh, and hearing her voice saying it makes me laugh all the more. The point, so artfully made, and to the oblivious crowd gathered in that room, is that human beings are not the cause of our supposedly impending climate catastrophe. If the “climate change” alarmists are right, then we are, and why not “eat the babies.”
We were all taught growing up that there is this thing called the separation of church and state. The phrase goes back to a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptists (CT) in 1802 where he mentions a wall between the two. This metaphor of Jefferson was transformed by a Supreme Court case in 1947, Everson v. Board of Education, into a partition not between church and state, but between religion and public life that made the Berlin Wall look like rice paper. Ever since, American secular cultural elites have pushed Christianity ever deeper into the crevices of personal experience, so that any expression of specifically Christian faith is deemed, in an appropriate German word, verboten.
If you’re at all familiar with popular music in the last decade or two you surely know of Amy Winehouse. This young talent died of alcohol poisoning in July of 2011 at the ripe old age of 27, joining the pantheon of young musicians who’ve died before they got old. My wife, son, and I recently watched the heart-wrenching documentary of her short life on Netflix; it was not easy to watch. Sadly, her most famous song is aptly titled “Rehab,” and the lyrics prophetic:
They tried to make me go to rehab
I said, “no, no, no”
Yes, I been black
But when I come back, you’ll know, know, know
I ain’t got the time
And if my daddy thinks I’m fine
He’s tried to make me go to rehab
I won’t go, go, go
My first response to hearing of the horrific shooting in El Paso was, where was the good guy with the gun who could have stopped this? This is the world bequeathed to us by a secular culture that has rejected God, that you can’t go shopping on a Saturday morning in America without worrying that you might be mowed down by an evil man (it is always men, isn’t it?) with a gun. Then I thought of the families devastated by the loss of their loved ones whose lives will be haunted by this event as long as they live. Imagine it happening to those you love and care about. It is infuriating. Then learning it was a 21 year-old, I thought what kind of parents could raise a child capable of such evil. Blaming parents does not make me popular with those who are convinced raising children in 21st century America is a crap shoot. So be it. But I won’t tarry on these things because life in a fallen world to put it bluntly, sucks! Or it can, as such events demonstrate.
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