So-Called Culture

If you have been reading this blog you know some of the darker sides that I have experienced. You know that I am open on how sexual sin has affected my life in many ways and how I truly believe that it was the “gateway” to all the other sins that I indulged in. I sometimes ask the question of why am I sharing this with an audience that I mostly do not know personally? Why do I stay up late into the night with a passion to write and to develop some sort of message? It’s because sexual sin is out of control and has become an accepted part of out society.

Michael Vick recently was reinstated into the National Football League after spending 18 months in a federal prison. Vick recently did an interview with ESPN and made this comment –

“I let myself down, you know, not being out on the football field, being in a prison bed, in a prison bunk, writing letters home, you know. That wasn’t my life. That wasn’t the way that things were supposed to be. And all because of the so-called culture that I thought was right – that I thought it was cool. And I thought is was, you know, it was fun, and it was exciting at the time. It all led to me laying in a prison bunk by myself with no one to talk to but myself.”

Michael Vick bought into a culture that was feeding him with empty promises and he was following false idols. Vick was at one time the highest paid quarterback, when he was convicted and sent to prison he lost $135 million in contracts and endorsements; along with the money, the people who where his friends where the first to pin everything on Vick to prevent themselves from going to prison. The “so-called culture” that Vick referrers to is the lie that the world sells to each and every one of us as men. This is why I am sharing my story, not because I have some close connection with Michael Vick but because he resembles what most men are battling; a culture that has embraced sinful actions.

Men are losing the battle against sexual sin. We have become a generation of men who are consumed with selfish desires and we don’t even realize it. We are tricked by the seeming innocence of little things such as billboards and advertisements with scantily clad dressed women that are specially designed to draw our eyes in for closer looks as if we ourselves are David looking at the woman bathing on the roof (2Samuel 11:2). Just like David, we go out inquiring and eventually we sin. You may think that I am being a bit dramatic but consider a few of these facts:

• Hollywood currently releases 11,000 adult movies per year – more than 20 times the mainstream movie production. (LA Times Magazine, 2002)



• One in 4 American adults surveyed in 2002 admitted to seeing an x-rated movie in the last year. (National Opinion Research Letter)



• 42% of songs on ten top-selling CDs in 1999 contained sexual content, 41% of which were "very explicit" or "pretty explicit." (Family News in Focus, July 2005)



• "Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, pulled in $50 million from adult programming. All the nation's top cable operators, from Time Warner to Cablevision, distribute sexually explicit material to their subscribers. But you won't read about it in their annual reports. Same with satellite providers like EchoStar and DirecTV, which is owned by Hughes Technology, a subsidiary of General Motors. How much does DirecTV make off of adult product? “They don't break the number out. But I would guess they'd probably get a couple hundred million, maybe as much as $500 million, off of adult entertainment, in a broad sense,” says Dennis McAlpine, a partner in McAlpine Associates, who has tracked the entertainment industry for over two decades. “I would think it's probably more than what their overall profit is. The other areas are losing money. That's making money.” Then there are the big hotel chains: Hilton, Marriot, Hyatt, Sheraton and Holiday Inn, which all offer adult films on in-room pay-per-view television systems. And they are purchased by a whopping 50 percent of their guests, accounting for nearly 70 percent of their in-room profits. One hotel owner said, "We have to have it, our guests demand it.” (From a CBS News Special Report, November 2003)



• "The porn industry employs an excess of 12,000 people in California. In California alone the porn industry pays over $36 million in taxes every year." (Bill Lyon, a former lobbyist for the defense industry turned lobbyist for porn, as quoted by CBS News November 2003.)

Our so-called culture is built off of the sins of our fathers. Generational sin is very real and if you are struggling with some type of sin in your life odds are your father struggled in the same manner. Both my grandfathers were alcoholics and from what I know put their families through some tough times and had tough times themselves. My father was an alcoholic but made the choice to break the bondage of alcohol on our family. I may have struggled with alcohol and drugs but realizing the decision my father made and remembering the change that occurred even at a young age was dramatic and impressionable. In Exodus 34:7 it says “Keeping mercy and loving-kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but Who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children, to the third and fourth generation.” My father made the first step to breaking the generational sin in our family and at 25 yrs old I made the choice to continue. I vowed to take what my father had started and build off of it so that my wife wouldn’t have to suffer through some of the trials that come with dealing with men with addictive habits.

To break sin in your life you must make a choice, to serve God or the world. In Joshua 24:19 he is speaking of the renewal of the covenant, “…You will not be able to worship the Lord, because He is a holy God. He is a jealous God, He will not remove your transgression and sins”; our rebellion and sins keep us from a relationship with God not to mention experiencing His blessing that come from an in-dept relationship. I made that choice to not serve the world but I didn’t do it overnight and to be completely honest I am still working on it.

When I decided to choose God I addressed all the “big” sins in my life: sexual sin, drugs and alcohol. Addressing these sins in my life was a huge step and I felt as if I had removed the sin that was enticing me; however, I had not begun to address the sin that had become sensible in my life because of the acceptance in our so-called culture. In our culture it is not a question whether you will be tempted but rather then when will you face temptation? The truth is that we will all be tempted and there is nothing we can do about it. The problem really isn’t the temptation either. The issue is that we have become so focused on our definition of sin that we haven’t developed responses to the “small” sins, the sensible sins. We stamp people as sinners for lust and addictions to alcohol, drugs and sex; when we ourselves are not vigilant when it comes to materialism and excess; pride and resentment, gossip, jealousy, selfishness and greed, monitoring the words we say. I don’t know about you but I have become pretty good about ignoring these “small” sins because in our so-called culture these sins are acceptable as Christians. We use these small sins in our daily lives to move us forward because broken people are motivated by broken efforts.

Sinful nature is in each and everyone of us. If the weakness that we have in our lives is not held accountable then the sin will add up and eventually destroy our lives. Little sins lead to the big sins. We have pursued holiness in the areas of our lives that our so-call culture looks down upon therefore causing us to label ourselves acceptable Christians with the attitudes and approaches that are actually sin. I am not defending Michael Vick but I am saying that he got caught up in the so-called cultures view of acceptable sin along with myself. We must look to God for acceptances and the sin in your life and my life must be taken to Him in prayer. We have such a hard time admitting failure and that we need help. The hardest thing I ever told anyone was when I told my wife that I had a problem with sexual sin in my life and I needed help… the second was admitting to God that I had fallen into the worlds definition of a Christian and not His – this was just a few weeks ago.

The reason I write this blog – God has called me to share my thoughts, trials and concerns. Why? – because I believe that men are ready to take a stand against a culture that has tried to mold us. We wander why we have feelings of failure, it because we have not looked to our true father – God.