JAMES W. PREECE
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A culture of Offense

2/7/2022

 
Here for the past few years we have been seeing an up rise to attack various areas of our culture from the removal of monuments and statues remembering Confederate leaders from public and government grounds, the renaming of public schools and the attempt to rename Army instillations. We are also witnessing the removal of certain books and movies due to their content that illustrate the mind set of the culture of that time and any that makes light of stereotypes.  The idea, in my opinion, is if these things are removed the problems in our culture will be fixed.  If monuments and history books are removed or rewritten then the supposed hate of that time will not flow into our culture today.  Avoiding something will only cause a repeat of that time.  A common saying goes if we do not learn from our past we will be doomed to repeat it.  

Just last week the co-host of the television show "The View" Woopy Goldberg made a statement, an ill informed statement, about the holocaust had nothing to do with race.  Due to her comment there was a huge backlash and she was placed on suspension for two weeks.  In part I believe this was a double standard against ABC, who is owned by Disney, who fired  Gina Carano's comments about the current political climate being equal to the Nazi Germany.  That is her view and her constitutional right, the freedom of speech.  She wasn't making any threat against anyone in our political atmosphere.  Hey, the Democrats have said the same thing about those on the other side of the political spectrum yet we don't see any repercussions against their freedom of speech.  If anyone knows their history they will see that such claims are usually made out of ignorance and are uneducated on so many levels.

What is very interesting about the Cancel Culture is how they attempt to use Jesus to justify their attempt to end division and offending others.  What is clear is their rhetoric exposes their lack of knowing anything about Jesus.  Something I believe the reason for Cancel Culture is we are witnessing the stepping stones being placed to end religious liberties and to silence the church in our culture.  Using Jesus is merely a smoke screen.  Why do I say that?  Well if anyone who has done any serious Bible reading will know that Jesus said he did not come to bring peace to the earth but he came with a sword (Matthew 10:34).  What is the purpose of a sword?  To cut things, to divide, to kill. Jesus offended the religious leaders all the time with the things he said that exposed them, when he did miracles on the Sabbath, which he did often, and especially when he equated himself equal with God.

When the topic of the gospel comes up people are offended to hear that they have sin in their life and with sin comes consequences.  People don't like to view themselves as bad people and sin does that.  Sin makes us look bad, nasty and ugly.  To remove that ugliness, to look good in their eyes, they feel they need to remove that which makes them look ugly, the identity of sin.  People are well aware that sin separates us from God and separation from God means no eternal life in heaven.  

I'm offended by the world and by many things taught in the church.  However, I don't believe silencing those things should anyone's purpose in life.  If you believe it is your purpose and mission to silence those things that offend you in our culture, you have a very large task to deal with because you will find something around every corner that will offend you.  To all my Christian brothers and sisters, our purpose in life is not to change the world.  That is impossible.  We are never called to do such a task.  Our purpose in life is to be faithful with what the Lord has given us and to produce spiritual fruit that brings glory to the father.  We are called to spread the seed of the gospel no matter where that seed may fall, what type of soil that seed may land upon. Some are called to plant and some are called to water but it is God who does the growth.  We cannot change people's hearts, only the Spirit can, we cannot change lives, only the Spirit can.  We can be an influence but I promise you, we will offend people, there is nothing we can do to avoid that, to prevent it no matter how nice you say something, people don't want to hear that they are not good people and sin separates us from God.  We will face suffering and tribulation for our efforts.           
  

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