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As I start to write this blog, I can see the sky outside my window here in Aspen CO. lit up by the lights of the 2013 ESPN Winter X-Games. As I watched the opening days events something that the young edgy announcers said caught my attention. They described the X-Games as a global youth culture event. I do not doubt this, but I do know that the real X-Games going on in our culture are the radical cultural shifts taking place right now. I believe these cultural shifts are stronger, more dangerous and have more momentum than ever before and they are sweeping our youth and young adult culture and all of our society down a road that is having and will have an extreme impact upon life as we know it in America. You might say, that seems extreme – it is extreme, it is X-Culture. We are truly in extreme times and therefore we need extreme hope and guidance otherwise these extreme games will sweep us away to a place as a nation that we may never recover from.
What is X-Culture? (extreme culture)
The cultural shifts taking place today are moving at a rate faster than ever before. Changing the definition of marriage, legalizing pot and radical entitlements are but symptoms of the momentum of X-Culture. None of these shifts are what made America a great and blessed nation. These shifts have been in the works for a while, but now they have a momentum and are moving quickly. Here is a summary of some new sociological findings about youth culture:
Teenagers spend only 16 hours a week interacting with adults compared with 60 hours with their peers. This was completely opposite a century ago.
Therefore, teen culture has created values, interests and attitudes that are far removed from adult responsibilities
Teens want more than anything to define themselves, but the x-culture of High School is one of the hardest places to do it
90% of unwanted identities and labels begin in High School
The more concerned teens are with popularity the more aggressive they are
Teens become more vulnerable to aggression as their popularity increases
Social combat describes the teen world today
Kurt Vonnegut wrote that high school “is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.”
The largest share of people’s Facebook friends come from High School
Kurt Vonnegut wrote that high school “is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.”
The largest share of people’s Facebook friends come from High School
(source: NYMAG.com, Why You Never Truly Leave High School)
And here is a brief look at some of the X-Culture within our universities today:
We are seeing now the results of the ongoing refashioning of American culture and politics that has been taking place within academia
Moral relativism has been taught and now what we are getting is “Sex Week” at Yale, Harvard, Brown and many more universities
Sex Week is a festival of sleave, porn, and debauchery, dressed up as sex education, including the screening in classrooms of hard-core pornography and the giving of permission to sex toy manufacturers and porn production companies to market their products to students.
University officials defend Sex Week as academic freedom. What happened to the pursuit of truth!
Yale administrators have taken their allegiance to cultural relativism so far that they invited a sworn enemy of America to be a student, admitting Sayed Rahmatulla Hashemi – a former diplomat-at-large for the Taliban- in 2005. Talk about diversity! In an interview, Hashemi boasted to the New York Times: “I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Instead, I ended up at Yale.” This is X-culture!
“To the extent that Yale and schools like it succeed in producing leaders who subscribe to the ideology of moral relativism- and who thus see no moral distinction between America and its enemies- we will likely be disabused of this false sense of security all too soon.”
Sex Week is a festival of sleave, porn, and debauchery, dressed up as sex education, including the screening in classrooms of hard-core pornography and the giving of permission to sex toy manufacturers and porn production companies to market their products to students.
University officials defend Sex Week as academic freedom. What happened to the pursuit of truth!
Yale administrators have taken their allegiance to cultural relativism so far that they invited a sworn enemy of America to be a student, admitting Sayed Rahmatulla Hashemi – a former diplomat-at-large for the Taliban- in 2005. Talk about diversity! In an interview, Hashemi boasted to the New York Times: “I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Instead, I ended up at Yale.” This is X-culture!
“To the extent that Yale and schools like it succeed in producing leaders who subscribe to the ideology of moral relativism- and who thus see no moral distinction between America and its enemies- we will likely be disabused of this false sense of security all too soon.”
(Source: Man, Sex, God and Yale by Nathan Harden, editor of The College Fix)
So, how are we to respond to the momentum of X-Culture? At the end of Paul’s life he wrote to Timothy from a Roman prison. It was an extreme time and Timothy needed extreme hope and guidance in how to lead the church forward. In this last letter to Timothy Paul exhorts him in 2 Timothy 2:22:
“Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”
This exhortation to Timothy has two primary actions. The first is to run away from the evil desires of youth – the X-Culture. Secondly, pursue the things of God that will bring a blessing to people’s lives and to the nation. The important point that is often overlooked is that Paul ends this exhortation by telling Timothy this is not an individual pursuit but one to be done with other faith friends. No one can stand for the things of God in the face of X-Culture without a strong band of faith friends. Surround yourself with faith friends! Anyone can take pot shots at culture and make a platform on what they are “against”. Unfortunately, the Church and followers of Jesus today are often more known for what they are against than what they are for. It is time for the Church and for followers of Jesus in America to make a stand and pursue passionately the things of God, good things, things that better a society and nation, and things that enhance healthy relationships and family. Things like righteousness, faith, love and peace. But this cannot happen without believers surrounding themselves with faith friends.
Surround yourself with faith friends so you can stand in the face of X-Culture with the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and bring a blessing to our culture and nation.
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