Being Biblically Correct in a Politically Correct Culture

Riding the Rapids: Being Biblically Correct to be Politically Correct Culture Part One

Proverbs 15:28The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer, but the mouth of the wicked pours out evil things.

Luke 6:45The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

In George Orwell's novel 1984 the ruling government in London is simply called the Party. The Party controls everything, including people's history and language and monitors everyone through their television screens with the face of Big Brother, the Party's seemingly omniscient leader, who is, they are constantly being reminded, "watching over you". In order to eliminate all words that might stir up rebellion against the Party, they have forced the implementation of a newly invented language called Newspeak. Even thinking a rebellious thought is illegal. In fact, thoughtcrimes are considered the worst of all crimes.

The protagonist, Winston, works in the Ministry of Truth, and he begins to hate the absolute control the Party exercises over everyone. He tries to align himself with a resistance group called the Brotherhood but is betrayed to the Party and caught reading a forbidden book by the Thought Police. He is then taken to a place called the Ministry of Love where he is tortured, brainwashed, and finally, forced to face his worst fear. Winston snaps, and in the end is a broken man who has accepted the Party and grown to love Big Brother.

Language is a powerful thing. With language we communicate our feelings, express our ideas, and share our opinions. Dictators know that words can stir up dangerous pockets of resistance and so they dictate very carefully what is allowed to be said and what's not allowed to be said. I read this week that a guy in Turkey is awaiting trial because he compared the Turkish President to the character Gollum in the Lord of the Rings. In Turkey it is illegal to insult a head of state punishable by up to four years in prison. So the Turkish court has appointed five LOTR experts to determine whether Gollum is a good guy or bad guy and if it's determined that the comparison was an insult to the president the guy who made that comparison can face up to four years in prison. I think he's in trouble! Orwell's novel illustrates a powerful point: controlling people begins with controlling what they should and shouldn't say (and think).

There is a growing concern in this nation that there is a new kind of Newspeak emerging: it's called political correctness. Political Correctness ostensibly claims to be encouraging greater sensitivity and respect for diversity in our communication, but there is a growing sense that PC-ness is getting out of control, and, more ominously, that there is an agenda behind PC-ness that is not civility or respect at all, but the control of language (and thereby having a greater control on thought). There are examples all around us, but here are a few:

1. Chaos at colleges- a couple weeks ago protests started to break out at the University of Missouri over racial tensions. Students complained about not feeling safe in class or on campus, initially because of racially charged slurs that some had been exposed to, but the complaints grew to include being exposed to ideas and viewpoints that differed from their world view and thereby offended them. The Mizzou president and chancellor were forced to resign after protests because they failed to create a "safe place" for students. Safe places are meant to be places where students don't have to risk hearing a viewpoint that offends, frightens or upsets them. In order to accommodate this sensitivity to contrasting and potentially offensive perspectives more and more universities are creating safe places, as well as "free speech zones" - free speech zones are restricted areas where anyone sharing controversial or potentially offensive ideas need to go to share those ideas. Those who object to the creating of free speech zones point out that through the 1st amendment the entire United States is a free speech zone.

2. In her book, The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech, liberal democrat Kirsten Powers details the advance of the Thought Police in almost every area of society today. She documents how what she calls the "illiberal left" doesn't want to engage in debate or discuss ideas they don't agree with, they want to delegitimize the person holding a dissenting viewpoint by demonizing them as a horrible person with horrible values They do this by using words such as "racist", "homophobe", "hater", or catch phrases like "war on women" and "rape apologist". Powers writes: The purpose of demonizing opponents is to make them radioactive to the broader culture. The illiberal left uses character assassination to ensure their opponents won't be treated as sincere or thoughtful contributors to the national conversation. The illiberal left doesn't desire debate, it wants a monologue on one side, and silence on the other. ¹ Again I want to point out that Kirsten Powers is not a conservative Republican, she is a lifelong liberal Democrat.

Careers of good and honest people are being destroyed if they stray from the approved Politically Correct path. In March of 2014, Mozilla co-founder Brandon Eich was announced as Mozilla's new CEO. When gay rights supporters found out that six years previously he had donated $1000 to Prop 8 in California, which was a ban on same sex marriage, they demanded that Mozilla fire him. One week later they announced his resignation. A Mozilla executive summed up this process as demonstrating why we need the Internet, in order to be able to engage freely in these tough conversations to make the world better. Powers has a very different assessment of what this process demonstrated. She writes, pushing someone out of his job for dissenting on an issue that has nothing to do with the mission of the company and then portraying the purge as a "free" conversation that boosted humanity is creepily Orwellian.² In essence: you are free to engage in tough conversations as long as what you say is politically correct.

So how are we as Christians to navigate the whitewater of today's politically correct culture. There is no doubt that there is a good deal of pressure to be PC in our culture, and no one here is exempt from that pressure. Those of you who are younger, I think this is going to be an even bigger issue because PC pressure is growing and because it will be the prevalent current of thinking for many of you - you won't remember a time when our culture didn't think and speak PC.

So I want us to examine PC in light of the Bible. When Janice saw me reading Kirsten Power's book and I mentioned that it was in preparation for today's message, she was concerned that it was going to be a political message. But at its heart, political correctness has less to do with politics and more to do with what is and what isn't correct to say (and ultimately to think). It's a fight for the hearts and minds of young people, which is why the epicenter of PC-ness are our colleges and universities. And there are several ways that being PC cuts directly against the grain of the Bible. I want to share four ways that PC-ness runs counter to God's word and as I was working on this I realized that there was too much to cover in one message, so this is part one of a two part message called Being Biblically Correct in a Politically Correct CulturePart One.

1. God cares a lot about our speech

The Bible has a lot to say about what we say. It is not biblically correct to be careless about our words. Proverbs 18:21 says death and life are in the power of the tongue. Our words can spread life or spread death. Words are very powerful things and we need to be careful how we use them. Prov. 12:18 says The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. To blurt out whatever crosses our minds is to be reckless - we can give wounds with our words that don't heal easily, if ever. But when we are wise with our words, we can help bring healing to wounded and hurting people.

Paul tells us in Eph. 4:29: ²⁹ Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. Our words should build others up in grace, according to their needs. Paul exhorts us to Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. ⁶ Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. Col 4:5-6

God wants our speech to be seasoned with the salt of grace, which means that people taste grace when they talk with us. They should not have the taste of arrogance, or bullheadedness, or prejudice, or disrespect, or unkindness in their mouth when they leave a conversation with us. They should have the taste of grace when they leave.

2. Being biblically correct will make us politically incorrect

So God cares a lot about what we say (and how we say it). To the degree that the aims of PC is civility, respect, and an appreciation for diversity - and there has been some important progress in these areas through elements of the PC movement - that degree we can agree with and commend those goals. Christians should be for those things, as reasonably defined. But at its core I do not believe the aims and agenda of PC-ness agree with the Bible's aims at all, in fact they are cross-purposes. Being biblically correct will make us politically incorrect and I want to share four points, two we will look at this morning and two we will leave for next week.

1. Political correctness encourages a victim mentality - the Bible encourages us to rise above trials, hatred, oppression, and injustice through faith in God

We live in a broken world with real pain and heartache and injustice and oppression, and God cares about that. There are very real victims in this world and they need support and care and love and encouragement. When someone is a victim of another person's harmful actions or words, God calls us to help them find help and healing. So this is not to diminish or downplay the reality that there are very real victims in this broken world. But when I say that PC promotes a victim mentality, I mean they are encouraging people to see themselves as victims even when the hurt or injustice they've experienced is relatively slight. That's really what a victim mentality is: it's finding our identity in victim status, pasting a "victim" label on us as though that was the thing that defined and controlled our lives. A victim mentality seeks to enlarge whatever wrong was done to because victim status gets us attention and sympathy. The PC movement is encouraging a victim mentality by offering empowerment to victims. Not empowerment to rise out of victimhood, but empowerment to leverage victimhood for one's own benefit. And so people are reading victimization and oppression into the smallest of things. One woman at UCLA claimed that she was the victim of micro-aggression because she capitalized the word indigenous on her paper and her professor corrected it. To her it was a racially motivated attack on her ideological viewpoint and she started a protest over it that got that professor in trouble and created a special review board to investigate how future micro-aggression trespasses could be avoided. He changed a capital I to a small i.

After the Paris terrorist attack when 130 were killed, some of the protestors at Mizzou were complaining because with the press paying so much attention to the terrorist attacks in Paris they weren't paying attention to their plight anymore. One person complained that the press was covering the terrorism in Paris but weren't covering the terrorism at Mizzou. They saw their ability to leverage their victimhood for publicity slipping away and they didn't like it.

It is never good to encourage a victim mentality in others, it is never loving to urge people to adopt the identity of a victim. The Bible offers another, far better direction. When we are the victim of any hurt or abuse, any oppression or injustice, the Bible encourages us to rise above it through faith in God. When we are tempted to take the path of self-pity, scripture calls us to take the path of trusting God. God never pastes the label "victim" as a permanent label on anyone.

David wasn't a victim of bullying by a bigger guy named Goliath, he was a champion of the Lord Most High. The prophet Micah didn't sue for victim status when he was slapped and mocked by the false prophet Zedekiah for contradicting all the false prophets and predicting the downfall of King Ahab, he saw it as the contrast between prophets who speak from God and those who lie in the name of the Lord. When Peter and John were beaten for preaching Christ, they didn't leave shell-shocked and victimized. They left rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus.

Our greatest example is Jesus Christ. He was perfectly righteous, innocent, and good, and yet he was scorned as a false teacher, accused of being a law-breaker, mocked for his claims of being the Messiah, and found guilty of being a blasphemer in a sham trial, and then executed by evil men who were acting out of their own corrupt and unjust motives. And yet, as Jesus hung there on the cross, he didn't hang there as a victim. He was the recipient of much wrong and injustice, but he wasn't a victim. He was the Savior. He triumphed over evil on the cross, overpowering his enemies at the cross!

We aren't Jesus, but we are called to follow in his footsteps and not allow ourselves to wallow in self-pity and adopt a victim mentality. Listen, at some point almost everyone will be on the receiving end of hurtful words or actions. It can be over race, looks, personality, athletic ability, or any number of things. But these moments provide us with important life lessons and opportunities for growth in character. If you have unconsciously labeled yourself as a victim, it's time to take it off. It's time to see that Christ has made you more than a conqueror in him, that God can empower and enable you to rise above any hurt that has been inflicted on you to cause you to be an overcomer, not a victim. Political correctness encourages a victim mentality - the Bible encourages us to rise above trials, hatred, oppression, and injustice through faith in God

2. Political correctness views offending someone as one of the worst things we can do to someone- the gospel of Christ has offense built into its DNA

As I mentioned in the last point PC-ness rewards and empowers those who are the most outraged, offended, or frightened by someone else's viewpoint or action. As one student at Wellesley College in MA put it, the most powerful person in the room is the most offended person in the room. As I mentioned, in an effort to protect college students from hearing viewpoints, ideas, and worldviews that differ from their own worldview (and offend their worldview), colleges are creating safe places, implementing free speech zones and putting "trigger warnings" on books and curriculums that might include anything that could trigger anxiety, apprehension, or bad feelings of any type in students.

The result is a generation of people who are easily offended. And offending someone is one of the worst things you can do. Subjecting someone to viewpoints they don't agree with or that disturb them is a form of aggression against them, to offend them is to violate and victimize them. This is the climate that is growing in our culture and it presents a real challenge to Christians because offense is built into the DNA of the gospel. PC says, if you offend me, you've hurt me in the worst possible way. The Bible says, the only way to help and save you is to offend you. But even that language is offensive: who are you to say I need to be saved? That language is condescending and insulting. But at the center of the gospel of Jesus is the truth that we need to be saved from our sins.

Paul writes in Gal. 5 But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision (the PC approved message of his day), why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed. (Galatians 5:11 ESV) In other words, Paul is saying, if I tailored the gospel so as to make it politically correct to the Jews I wouldn't be persecuted, I'd fit right in. But to do that I would have to remove the offense of the cross, and it is only by the preaching of the cross that anyone can be saved.

The cross is offensive because it declares that all of us are sinners who deserve to die. That in order to reconcile us back to God, Jesus had to die a brutal death in our place and bear the wrath of God for our sins. We aren't good people who deserve heaven, we are depraved sinners who deserve hell. That is an offensive message! And yet God deliberately wove offense into the only message that can save a lost soul for eternity. We can see Satan's bigger purpose behind this element of PC-ness: if society can be persuaded to believe that offending someone is one of the worst things that can be done, the gospel can be neutralized and silenced.

The cross of Christ is not to be preached tactlessly or arrogantly or obnoxiously, but it must be central to our message, and if that offends someone, we need to be willing to allow the gospel to offend them and not try to round the corners off of gospel in order to make it inoffensive to everyone. To do so would be to empty the cross of its saving power. But expect our culture to make the claim more and more that evangelizing and even witnessing about Christ's saving power is violating and victimizing those who don't agree with it. We need to accept being politically incorrect if we are to remain biblically correct. And have faith that God can overcome the cultural viewpoints of those we share with, and that God is still working powerfully to save the lost. Let's pray and ask God to give us courage to speak and faith to believe that He will use us as witnesses for Jesus Christ and that many will come to faith through the preaching of the cross of Christ.