"What Do Ya Want, a Medal?"

Congratulate me! My blog has won second place in a contest that judges weekly internet journals written by Church of Christ preachers named Jeff to distribution list of less than fifty and publish them between the hours of 2 and 4 am. I, of course, already knew that I was great, but now with this prestigious, all be it anonymous, award, I can rightly hold my head high.

Are you ill yet? You should be. But this is the egocentric society in we live. It comes from a society that refuses to make judgments. One that says all ideas are equal. There is no right nor wrong, no absolutes, and truth is relative. This post-modern nihilistic philosophy seeks to render all authority impotent.

The result is a classroom culture where the teacher has no control over his students but feels free to have illicit relations with them. Red ink is considered harsh ego-damaging criticism, and students are socially promoted because their feelings are regarded as more important than actual education. The home culture has the children calling the shots, love is only a feeling, and divine familial design is scorned. The work culture is full of rhetoric about the value of its employees but demonstrates their value with fewer benefits, gives great reviews but little raises, and dispenses titles like penny candy, but gives no authority to accomplish it. Our community culture preaches that there are no winners and losers. I have been to team sporting games where they don't even keep score and at the end of the season every player on every team gets a trophy.

Overall, our culture thinks that it is doing everyone a favor promoting a society with no judgments. It is the "I'm okay, you're okay" delusion. They have wheeled the ten commandments into the closets and told the homosexuals to come out. They have tried to bar God from the public square at every turn. Debate has been labeled contentiousness. They claim community without real unity; marriage without real love; and spirituality without the real God.
The self-proclaimed self esteem movement has psychologists and childrearing experts patting themselves on the back. A 2006 study of college entrance profile tests revealed that 30% of Generation Y freshman are "overly narcissistic" when compared to 25 years of their predecessors. Looks like Gen "Y" is better called Gen "I" (or "Me" if you are a stickler for grammar).

As Christians, why is this important? Paul said:

"For I say, through the grace given to me, to every one who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think. But set your mind to be right-minded, even as God has dealt to every man the measure of faith." Romans 12:3

Pride is a monumental obstacle that keeps us from God because it seeks to replace Him with ourselves. It should be no mystery to us that for self-esteem to reach its unhealthy limits, God must be removed from all aspects of society. This is certainly Satan's strategy in 21st century America. This year marks the 75 anniversary of US organized humanism. Though its axioms have been reworded over the years, its basic tenants proport denial of anything supernatural, man's knowledge is the highest order, and take a Marxian view of religion as merely "the opiate of the masses." In their charter they claim,

"In the place of the old attitudes involved in worship and prayer the humanist finds his religious emotions expressed in a heightened sense of personal life and in a cooperative effort to promote social well-being." (To read all of this culturally influential document, click here Humanist Manifesto I)

This is why you can have "churches" that openly embrace atheism such as the Unitarian Universalist church. To them a godless church is no contradiction because the church is merely to be self-serving: A glee club of sorts. And this philosophy is ever permeating our world. Survival of the fittest becomes the defacto reality in a culture of selfishness, and that is exactly what pride becomes.

As Christian, we must be aware of the Satan's schemes. No truer words were written than, "Now the serpent was more cunning than any of the beasts of the Garden." He is apparently subtly, slowly turning up the heat as not to alert his prey to their precarious position. And although the church, the called-out ones, are not of be of the world even as they are in it, we are too often influenced by our world.

Be sensible and vigilant, because your adversary the Devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking someone he may devour;" 1Peter 5:8

Now the point of this treatise is this: When we artificially raise the self-esteem of others, especially our children, by meaningless standards, we in reality devalue them. When everyone is a winner, winning is meaningless. When we refuse to discern right and wrong, people are left wandering aimlessly. When we tell them they came from slime and evolved from animals, should we be surprised when they act like animals? Can we expect even prideful people to truly feel valuable when we teach them there is no God, no forgiveness, and that they were an accident rather lovingly, purposefully created?

Tragically, what has happened in all the self-congratulation and hubris is a desperate underlying sense of insecurity. Pride and insecurity equal envy. I watched an interview lately between a British subject and an American. Though we are seemingly trying to quickly catch up to them, Europe is well ahead of us in this pattern. The Brit was trying to understand the American ideal of genuinely being happy for someone else's successes. He could not understand why we might have some joy about anything that does not benefit us directly. He seriously said that when other people succeed, he gets depressed. He said that is the way it is in Britain and could not relate to any other way.

I have heard many others echo that sentiment since that interview. And that is where we are headed if the church continues to idly sit by and do nothing. What are we to do?

"And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, in order to prove by you what is that good and pleasing and perfect will of God." Romans 12:2

This is a key that will unlock God's floodgates. Of course the transformation involves pressing toward the greatest Christian virtue: Love. In definition, the love is selflessness and not merely some emotion that we arbitrarily assign to some to the exclusion of others. So I leave you with the God-ordained antidote to our societal ill:

Love God completely, love others compassionately, and ourselves correctly.