YOUR OWN VALUES ?

On Creating One’s Own Ideology… Rewriting One’s Own Values

Decades ago, C. S. Lewis penned this somber warning:

“The diseases that will certainly end our species… if it is not crushed, (is) the fatal superstition that men can create their values; that a community can choose its ‘ideology’ as men choose their clothes.”

We as a nation have done exactly what C. S. Lewis warned against. Reminiscent, is it not, of Israel’s condition in her depravation:

In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.  (Judges 17:6)

And as a result, America today is facing a crisis of values of monumental proportions. Some observers are terming it a “Civil War” of values.

Tragically, this deterioration of values has profoundly impacted our own lives and our friends and families: Many people today sense that there is something terribly wrong in the Land. But because they are generally lacking in a Biblical perspective, they have no idea how we as a People got to this point, much less how they can personally escape from it.

Let me ask you a question: Are we trying to write and embrace your own brand of “Christian“ values… our own ideology, that conveniently accommodates our quest for personal freedom?”

If the answer is “yes,” then our lost friends are being deprived of observing in us two important realities that a life of obedience to Christ would have revealed:

(1) The magnitude of their lostness, and

(2) The fact that there is a way out of their life of bondage.

In this age of disintegrating values, and morals, and consciousness may we respond to Paul’s passionate challenge:

That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain.  (Phil 2:15-16)