The Culture on Us

Culture, I've got culture on me!

A friend recently sent me an e-mail pondering our cultural influence on the issue of anger. As I was reading it mind flashed back to my theology professor in college. He said it very simply, “The core of sin is selfishness.” Madison Avenue and the marketing culture has perfected tapping into this “hidden” sinful selfish nature we have. “That’s nice” becomes “I want that” which turns into “I need that” which turns into “I deserve that”. We then break out our credit cards and buy the object of our desires because it will make us happy, fulfilled, smarter, thinner and (insert adjective here). Not only are we left with something that does not meet our true needs but we get to keep paying for it long after the item of our desires had been left by the wayside in a closet or the trash.

Madison Avenues messages are wrapped around “entertainment” on TV and in the movies that compound our problem. In years past TV and Movies tended to try to express the “ideal”. We saw perfect families, well groomed children, hard working moms and dads all in situations that were wholesome, moral and uplifting. Some people saw this and said I want that – if I only had that perfect situation I would be happy. Other people watched that and said this is not truth. I don’t see anything I relate to here. This doesn’t match my life. Many of the people in this second group are behind much or our current media. They have chosen to depict life “accurately”. We now see the broken, immoral, hurting existence that many of these people experienced. One of my wife’s favorite shows is ER. I hate watching it because each time one of the characters begins to find a healthy growing relationship the writers feel the need to tear it apart. I suppose it makes more dramatic television but it is also symptomatic of what I am taking about.

So what is the solution? What is the antidote to the messages we are bombarded with. We are told on one hand by our entertainment that life sucks and then you die and then Madison Avenue steps in and says but if you only have this, look like this, smell like this, drive this car and live in this neighborhood your life will be perfect. If “the core of sin is selfishness” the antidote is living outside oneself.

In Philippians 2:3 & 4 it says “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

There is something miraculous that happens when we get our eyes off our own situations and onto others. We begin to become the people we were intended to be. The selfish core of us begins to weaken and we begin to become the vessels of grace and love and hope that God intended. Sin keeps our eyes focus on us and separates us from those around us in the process. When we begin to focus on the needs of others along side our own we begin to find ourselves connected in relationships. We find that what really matters in not the stuff but the people.

God Bless
Dan