Global Weirding: climate changes that affect youth culture

The sights and sounds of pop culture so familiar to most of us in youth ministry are merely atmospheric signs pointing to significant climate changes in the way western culture defines itself. In his excellent book, Deliver Us From Evil, Ravi Zacharias comments: “the greatest scrutiny must be paid to how and why we make our individual and societal decisions..... When those reasons are examined, they often prove to be unblushingly spurious and would result in chaos if everyone operated by the same principles. The implications of our choices carry over into what we call lifestyles. Individually they may seem to be insignificant, but when the mindset of a whole culture is altered in accordance with those choices, the ramifications are staggering.”

In an effort to understand youth culture, we need to give thought to some of the climate changes that have made adolescent culture so stormy.

Secularism is a worldview that assumes that this world—the material world—is all there is. Any romantic notions about a reality beyond that which can be accessed through our five senses may be a pleasant illusion, but it simply isn’t true. The process by which this worldview takes root in the consciousness and public policy of a culture is called secularization. Secularization might be manifest in a number of ways. But essentially, it is marked by the removal of sectors of society and culture from the domination of or exposure to religious institutions and symbols.

For example, in July 2002, a 2-1 decision of a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the words “under God,” when recited in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, were unconstitutional. While the ultimate legal questions still remain unanswered, the decision itself is indicative of a secularist pattern in American culture that includes previous court rulings banning prayer at school graduations, or even student-led invocations at public high school football games.

Without commenting on all of the legal questions surrounding these issues, it is important to understand that these rulings and this mindset reflect a worldview that proclaims individuals free from responsibility to any transcendent moral authority for their actions and choices. And, with the deterioration of any transcendent notion of Truth, there is no basis for morality. The only remaining rationale for knowledge is technique. In other words, with “Who?” off the table, “Why?” becomes a matter of personal opinion, so the only real question becomes “How?”

Richard Corliss observed that MTV “is the shotgun annulment of character from narrative, the anaesthetizing of violence through chic, the erasing of the past and the triumph of the new.” Interestingly enough, Corliss is one of the founders of MTV.

The most serious fallout of such a position is that, on such terms, any choice, any decision, can be defended as the right choice. If there is no transcendent compass, then any trail in any direction is the right way to go. One’s commitment to a belief is the only rationale necessary to validate the belief. But, if that’s the case, then where are the limits to human evil? All moral choices are reduced to simple pragmatism. If “it works for me”; it must be right.

I was recently talking to some Christian teenagers, one of whom had just been to a concert by one of the hottest pop female vocalists of the moment. I commented that a friend of mine had gone to the same concert with her young pre-teen daughter, and had left the concert out of disgust from the blatant (actually, “crude” is the way she put it) sexual dancing and monologue from the stage. The girl who had been to the concert was shocked, “Oh I thought she did a great job! It was a really amazing show!”

Sounding like an aging prude, I said, “I’m not saying it wasn’t a good show. I’m just curious if you think Jesus would have been pleased had he been there in the audience.” At which point, a gallant young lad defended the befuddled damsel by saying, “Sure! I’m sure that Jesus would have thought, ‘If she’s comfortable with her body, and everybody’s having fun, then that’s just fine.”

Two thoughts came to me as I reflected on the conversation. First, the girl’s evaluation of the show was solely based on technique. The truth of the message, or, for that matter, the message itself, never came into question. Secondly, the noble young man stepping into rescue the young girl, clearly articulated a morality that is rampant in an increasingly secularized church: “If I feel okay about it, it must be fine with Jesus.” Welcome to secularism in everyday life.

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