Time recently published its 2012 list of 10 ideas that are changing your life. Some of the usual suspects appear: “Computers are destroying our brains,” “Humanity is destroying the earth,” and (hold the front page!) “We’re destroying ourselves with stress.” There’s also the bizarre: new food preservation techniques can keep meat edible for up to seven years (think I’ll give that BBQ a pass). But at least half the entries mask a core idea that’s been causing us problems for 6,000 years—the self-centered desire and demand for independence. Here are its latest disguises.

Living Alone Is the New Norm: In one of the biggest societal changes ever witnessed, the number of Americans living alone has increased from 4 million in 1950 (9 percent of households) to 33 million (28 percent of households) today.

But don’t feel sorry for the “new loners.” NYU sociologist Erik Klinenberg tell us this is the ideal life:

Living alone serves a purpose: it helps us pursue sacred modern values—individual freedom, personal control, and self-realization—that carry us from adolescence to our final days. Living alone allows us to do what we want, when we want, on our own terms. It liberates us from the constraints of a domestic partner’s needs and demands and permits us to focus on ourselves.

The Rise of the Nones: “The fastest-growing religious group in the U.S. (16 percent) is the category of people who say they have no religious affiliation.”

That doesn’t mean “the Nones” don’t want any kind of church; no, they just want to do be free from “rigid dogma” and do it their way. The unofficial chaplain of “Not Church,” a regular gathering of American expats on Mexico’s Baja peninsula, said, “The underlying drive is to distance themselves from organized religion and build a rich if unorthodox spiritual life.”

Black Irony: Touré described for Time how many black Americans are turning their backs on conventional forms of blackness and want to “take a more independent even irreverent look at the subject.”

There’s that “I” word again . . . .and again: “Black irony’s imperative to use blackness inindependent ways responds to the mind-bending complexity of modern blackness . . . Sometimes we simply want to feel free to be independently black rather than worship at the altar.”

Privacy in Public: The drive to be free from others, from their scrutiny, and from accountability, has become so strong that the courts have now enshrined a right to privacy in public.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled against law enforcement using GPS signals to track a suspected drug dealer, even though the cops monitored only where the suspect went on public streets. “Thanks to that decision, for the first time in American history there is now a legal right to privacy in public.” Previously, courts agreed that Americans voluntarily gave up their Fourth Amendment protections almost as soon as they left their homes.

Niche Aging: It’s been worrying to watch retired people increasingly withdraw from society into “retirement communities,” often at great loss to themselves and at even greater loss to those from whom they withdraw their knowledge and experience. But now: “the generic retirement model is starting to give way to what developers are calling affinity housing—niche communities where choosy boomers can opt to grow old alongside others who share a specific interest” (e.g. Country Music, Feng Shui, and even LGBT). The idea would appear to be, “If I can’t be completely independent, then at least let me live beside those most like myself.”

Large Capital “I”
I’m not saying all of these ideas are completely wrong; some of them are understandable and even well motivated. But, taken together, do they not frame a picture of a large capital “I”? “Let me be me, let me be separate, having as little relationship with, dependence upon, or accountability to others as possible.”

But that’s not how God designed us to live. In the original creation, God created us dependent, both upon him and upon one another. Adam needed Eve, Eve needed Adam, and both needed God. And all was very, very good. It would never be better. Mutual need and dependence was part of God’s perfect order and part of our happiness.

In fact, what spoiled it all was a sinful desire for independence—the desire for “individual freedom, personal control, and self-realization.” Adam and Eve did not just want independence from God; they wanted to be god themselves. After sin entered, that desire for independence only accelerated as our first parents blamed each other and pushed away from one another.

Mercy of Dependence
In great mercy, God sowed dependence back into humanity with his first gospel promise (Gen. 3:15), calling us to depend upon him to send a Devil-destroyer and humanity-saver. In a judgment full of mercy, he then built sorrow and difficulty into two of our core callings, work and child-bearing (Gen. 3:16-18), again to make us need and depend upon one another and, above all, on God himself.

Of course, in a sinful world where interdependent relationships can be so easily abused, independence is sometimes more moral and ethical than dependence. For example, negative peer pressure or national oppression must be resisted and sometimes even fought. However, self-centered expressions of independence are far more common and reveal our fundamental flaw, rather than how to repair it.

Am I arguing for the return of a dependency culture? Yes, but not the “depend on government” culture envisioned by so many of our politicians, a dependency that only increases our separation and alienation from one another and from God. Rather, I have in mind the original divine order that built dependence on God and on one another into the very fiber of our beings and of our world.

And let’s not only be quick to spot the big capital “I” in the latest fads and fashions of our world. Let’s also keep a close watch upon ourselves. May God help us to weaken our own stubborn streaks of independence, and to strengthen God-glorifying, community-building dependency, his plan from the beginning.

Now there’s an idea that would change our lives, our families, our communities, our churches, and our world.

This article was originally published here on The Gospel Coalition Blog.

You may not know it, but you’ve been Brandwashed, probably multiple times, and especially if you’ve shopped at Whole Foods.

Martin Lindstrom made Time’s 2009 list of “World’s Most Influential People” partly due to his book Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy. His latest book, Brandwashed, highlights “the tricks that companies use to manipulate our minds and persuade us to buy.” Lindstrom is a fan of Whole Foods and loves their produce, but in a Fastcompany column, he used it as an example of how “many strategies retailers use to encourage us to spend more than we need to – more than we want to. Consider these examples from one of Lindstrom’s visits to one of Whole Foods New York City stores:

• The escalator brings you straight into a realm of freshly cut flowers, immediately priming us to think of freshness, a suggestion that we carry with us, albeit subconsciously, as we shop. (Consider the reverse impact of cans of tuna and plastic flowers).
• The prices for the flowers, fresh fruit, and vegetables are scrawled in chalk on rough cut black slate, prompting images of outdoor farmers markets and roadside stalls with prices changing by the hour. (The signs are actually mass-produced, the prices set at Texas HQ, and the “chalk” is indelible!)
• Ice is everywhere. Why? Well, of course, some produce needs to be kept chilled, but lots of other stuff needs no ice. It serves the same symbolic and priming purpose as the drops of water that some stores spray on select vegetables.
• The stacked “crates” of melons are actually one large cardboard box that’s been carefully designed to reinforce the idea of “rustic old-time simplicity”

And Whole Foods is just one example of many retailers covered by Lindstrom.  Even fruit growers are getting in on the act. “Sales records show that bananas with Pantone color 13-0858 (otherwise known as Vibrant Yellow) are less likely to sell than bananas with Pantone color 12-0752 (also called Buttercup), which is one grade warmer, visually, and seems to imply a riper, fresher fruit.” Crops are now being manipulated to ensure the maximum sales potential of the final banana! Lindstrom also found that while the Apples may look freshly plucked from the tree, “the average apple you see in the supermarket is actually 14 months old.”

Well, we can only imagine the impact of years of exposure to this kind of brandwashing. But, in a sense, its power and effectiveness should highlight our vulnerability to far more insidious and evil brainwashing. If these marketing strategies are so successful in prising our cash from us, how much more successful is the far less obvious and yet far more powerful priming and seducing we are continually experiencing at the hands of the master-marketer, the Devil.

Day after day, hour after hour, in both our conscious and in our subconscious, He is brainwashing us to believe in perception rather than reality.

So what’s the solution?

Biblewashing!

The Bible helps us to see the existence of diabolical brainwashing. It gives us a second sense, an ability to discern, a faculty of seeing that most do not have.

The Bible also teaches us the easiness of brainwashing. It demonstrates how weak, vulnerable and seduceable we are. But in doing so, it at least puts us on the alert.

The Bible analyzes the elements of brainwashing. It highlights a number of the Devils’ strategies, both by numerous descriptions and by fearful examples.

The Bible underlines the evil of spiritual brainwashing. We don’t just risk losing a few dollars as a result of succumbing to a marketing technique. We risk losing our own souls forever.

The Bible is the way of escape from the devil’s brainwashing. Yes, the only antidote to brainwashing is Biblewashing. It alone can resist the siren calls of the world: “Conform! Conform! Conform!” and enable us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Rom. 12:1-2).

This article was first published in the February issue of Tabletalk.

I’ve steered deliberately off course too…

I’ve tried to impress old friends too…

I’ve sailed too close to the rocks too…

I’ve turned too late too…

I’ve let others suffer the consequences of my sins too…

I’ve fled from the scene too…

I’ve blamed others too…

I’ve feared to face up to my actions too…

I’ve changed my story too…

I’ve refused to take responsibility too…

I’ve lied to cover my tracks too…

Al Mohler rightly called Captain Schettino  ”The Chicken of the Seas”

But am I the chicken of Grand Rapids?

Are you the chicken of…?

Don’t despair. There’s full and free and forever salvation in Christ for chickens everywhere.

After the Black Friday debacle, here’s a little tonic to rebuild your faith in human nature.

Despite the gloomy mood, the historical backdrop is stunning progress in human decency over recent centuries. War is declining, and humanity is becoming less violent, less racist and less sexist — and this moral progress has accelerated in recent decades. To put it bluntly, we humans seem to be getting nicer.

So argues Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, and backs it up by appealing to The Better Angels of our Nature, the new book by Steven Pinker, a psychology professor at Harvard.

Despite what 9/11, Iraq, and Darfur seem to be telling us, Pinker claims that: “We may be living in the most peaceable era in our species’ existence.” He appeals to the following stats:

• Despite two world wars, only 3% of humans died from man-made catastrophes in the 20th century. Contrast this with 13% of Native-American skeletons evidencing death by violent trauma, and with the Thirty Year War of the 17th century which reduced Germany’s population by a third.
• Homicide rates are far lower than previous centuries. For example, Britain’s murder rate has fallen by 90% since the 14th century.
• One academic study found that modern children’s television programs have 4.8 violent scenes per hour, compared with nursery rhymes with 52.2.
• Most nations now go to extraordinary lengths to avoid the mass killing of civilians in war.
• Genocide produces worldwide outrage whereas, Kiristoff says, “European-Americans saw nothing offensive about exterminating Native Americans. One of my heroes, Theodore Roosevelt, later a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, was unapologetic: ‘I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely in the case of the tenth.’”
• Pinker makes the case that this extraordinary moral progress can also be seen in “issues such as civil rights, the role of women, equality for gays, beating of children, and treatment of animals.”

Kirstof concludes:

Granted, the world still faces brutality and cruelty. That’s what I write about the rest of the year! But let’s pause for a moment to acknowledge remarkable progress and give thanks for the human capacity for compassion and moral growth

So, do we join Pinker and Kristof in giving ourselves a congratulatory pat on the back? Well, if even some of the stats are correct, we should rejoice. Any reduction of violence and suffering in the world is most welcome and should be celebrated by all Christians.

Praise God
However, instead of praising ourselves, we should turn the praise heavenwards. Any moral improvement in the world is the result of God’s mercy. If the statistics show an increase in peace, then we trace that not to the human heart but to the heart of God. If violence has decreased it’s because God’s “common grace” has increased. He has mercifully restrained evil by increased education, strong and just governments, technology, media pressure, and, above all, by the wider preaching of the Gospel.

Is it mere coincidence that the statistical decline in violence has coincided with the surge of worldwide missionary activity in the last 150 years? Such preaching not only results in far more Christians in the world, and the corresponding decrease of sin, but also serves to restrain evil even among those hearers who do not believe in Christ.

So, yes, let’s celebrate more reluctant and careful waging of war, more equal treatment of men and women, and less prejudice towards minorities and people with disabilities. But let’s trace the origin of any moral good not to sinful man, but to a loving and longsuffering God.

“Civilized” slaughter
Secondly, the picture is not quite as rosy as Kristoff and Pinker suggest. While in some areas there does appear to be some moral improvement, the slaughter of humanity still continues, albeit in the more sanitized and “civilized” battlefields of operating theaters, where 42 million unborn babies are murdered every year. That includes 3,300 a day in the USA alone, where 50 million babies have been killed since 1972.

Of course Pinker and Kristof would actually point to the availability of abortion as moral progress, as they also do with the increased acceptance of homosexuality. However, all this shows is that moral progress is being measured with a very faulty moral compass. The Apostle Paul explained to his multi-faith, multi-cultural, multi-moral society that unless God had left a small group of believers in that society, they would have been like Sodom and Gommorah (Rom 9:29). In other words, a homosexualized society is only prevented from being reduced to ashes by the continuing presence of Christians.

Pride comes before a fall
Lastly, I’m always very concerned when people start speaking proudly of “new world orders,” of humanity having “turned the corner,” of our “moral growth,” or of our “remarkable progress.” The Bible does warn, and history goes to show, that pride comes before a fall. Eerily similar statements were made by politicians, journalists and academics before both world wars.  More recently, the “peace dividend” everyone spoke optimistically of at the end of the Cold War has also evaporated in Washington, New York, and Pennsylvania, as well as in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan.

So let’s accept the blessings of peace with grateful hearts. Let’s trace every life spared and all moral growth to the goodness of God, not man. And let’s beware of placing too much confidence in humanity’s progress; that’s very thin ice. Far safer to believe the Bible’s graphic and rather gruesome description of the human heart (Romans 3:9-20).  And believing that unchanging truth, rather than ephemeral statistics, let’s keep speaking and publishing and broadcasting the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and look to God to change the world, one regenerated heart at a time.

George Will has an important article on Vanderbilt University’s decision to forbid certain student groups, including Christian ones, from precluding someone from leadership positions based on their religious belief. As Will puts it: “To ensure diversity of thought and opinion, we require certain student groups, including five religious ones, to conform to the university’s policy that forbids the groups from protecting the characterisitics that contribute to diversity.”

Will surveys the historical momentum behind these increasingly common moves to limit freedom of association, and traces it to progressivism’s convenient abolition of the public-private distinction:

First, a human right — to, say, engage in homosexual practices — is deemed so personal that government should have no jurisdiction over it. Next, this right breeds another right, to the support or approval of others. Finally, those who disapprove of it must be coerced.

Sound familiar? It should. First, abortion should be an individual’s choice. Then, abortion should be subsidized by government. Next, pro-life pharmacists who object to prescribing abortifacients should lose their licenses. Thus do rights shrink to privileges reserved for those with government-approved opinions.

Will argues that Vanderbilt’s concern should not be whether a particular religious viewpoint is right, but whether people have the freedom to associate and believe such things. He concludes.

Vanderbilt’s policy, formulated in the name of enlarging rights, is another skirmish in the progressives’ struggle to deny more and more social entities the right to deviate from government-promoted homogeneity of belief. Such compulsory conformity is, of course, enforced in the name of diversity.

Read the whole article here.

In The Media and “Bullying” Thomas Sowell notes how:

• Over the last 90 years the media have frequently given disproportionate attention, support, protection and promotion to different groups depending on which was in vogue at that moment in time.
• The media have at various times favored communists over African Americans, then African Americans over Asian Americans, then women over men, and now gays over everyone else.
• The current anti-bullying campaigns in various states is focused almost entirely on words against gays, while ignoring serious physical violence being suffered by other groups like Asian Americans.
• College Campus “speech codes” protect some groups, especially gays, from any words that may hurt their feelings while effectively declaring “open season” on others not in vogue with the media.

My summary: Under the cover of “anti-bullying” crusading, the mainstream media has effectively itself become the biggest bully. And in its deliberate ignoring of serious violence against non-trendy groups it has become the friend of other bullies too.

UPDATE: Juan Williams on a similar theme.

“Okay, now I don’t want to alarm anybody in this room, but it’s just come to my attention that the person to your right is a liar. Also, the person to your left is a liar. Also the person sitting in your very seat is a liar. We’re all liars”

“What I’m going to do today is show you what the research says about why we’re all liars, how you can become a lie-spotter, and why you might want to go the extra mile and go from lie-spotting to truth-seeking, and ultimately to trust-building.”

A fairly dramatic sermon introduction, don’t you think?!

Actually, that’s the way Pamela Meyer introduced her TED talk, “How to spot a liar.” (But there’s certainly plenty of sermon material here!)

Meyer provides some frightening stats (e.g. on any given day we’re lied to from 10 to 200 times;  strangers lie to each other tree times in the first ten minutes of meeting, etc.) that powerfully illustrate our our corrupt human nature that starts lying as soon as we are born (Ps. 58:3). So prevalent is lying that Meyer says we live in a “post-truth society.” However, she wants to re-build truth and trust by training people to become lie-spotters (good luck with that!). Here are her tips.

• Liars like to distance themselves from the subject. Taking Bill Clinton as an example, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” has the two giveaways of “that woman” and ”did not” (instead of the more informal “didn’t”)
• Liars use qualifying language, like “to tell you the truth.”
• Repeating the question before answering it dishonestly is a common indicator of a lie.
• Liars look you in the eyes too much.
• Liars don’t fidget, but rather freeze their upper body.
• Liars will fake smiles.
• Liars like to offer lots of details.
• Liars are more likely to suggest strict punishments for the “real culprit.”
• Liars are terrible at telling their stories backwards.
• Liars will often point their feet towards an exit.
• Liars will often put barrier objects between themselves and the person asking them about their lie.

In a world so full of lies, isn’t it wonderful that the Christian can pick up the one book in the world that is total truth, and find the One who alone can say, “I am the truth.”

Although most of my life has been spent in the UK, ever since the Reagan years I’ve also taken a keen interest in American politics. I must have read close to a hundred different biographies of various American Presidents, VP’s, Secretaries of State, Generals, “spin-doctors,” and political journalists. And of course there are the daily visits to realclearpolitics, politico, etc. And after all that research, I’m looking forward to when I hope to be able to cast a ballot in a few years time.

So allow me to make one of my rare forays into commenting on American politics with this simple question:

Why are the mainstream media almost completely silent on Mitt Romney’s Mormonism?

I’ve been reading Latayne Scott’s The Mormon Mirage over the past few days, as I prepare to interview her on the Connected Kingdom podcast. I must confess that, with most of my Christian life and ministry having been spent in the Scottish Highlands, I’ve not needed to know much about Mormonism and I’ve had very little contact with Mormons themselves. That’s why The Mormon Mirage has been such a frightening eye-opener for me. As I discovered more and more about the Mormon’s bizarre and outlandish beliefs, practices, and leaders, the question kept popping into my mind: Why are the mainstream media almost completely silent on Mitt Romney’s Mormonism?

I look at the media’s brutal, ruthless, and merciless treatment of political leaders with any kind of evangelical Christian faith (e.g. President Bush, Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, etc.). But when it comes to Mitt Romney – silence! In fact, even more intriguingly, we find increasing numbers of the media, and even of Democratic opponents, praising him! Something very suspicious going on here.

Here’s my theory.

Democratic strategists know that they can use Mitt Romney’s Mormon “faith” to destroy him in a general election campaign. Therefore, keep the powder dry, help Romney get nominated, then repeatedly connect him with the utterly weird religion he is associated with; keep him on the back foot defending or explaining (or rejecting) his beliefs, and wait for sufficient independent (and evangelical) voters to take fright, as they assuredly will. And even if Romney then renounces his Mormonism, that simply plays into the already damaging “flip-flopper” narrative of someone who will say/do anything to be elected

This is nothing whatsoever to do with the American left’s pre-occupation with the so-called “separation of church and state” (which is increasingly being interpreted as no one with faith is allowed an office of state). This is nothing to do with whether Mormonism is a cult or not. No, this is simply about personal gullibility and potential electability. I know that we Christians are mocked for believing in the virgin birth, the miracles, the resurrection, etc. However, even our harshest critics would say ,”Compared to Mormonism, Christianity is a model of sanity and reasonableness.”

I was quite keen on Romney until I read Latayne Scott’s book. Although he’s rather weak and unpredictable on social issues, I thought his business and leadership gifts and experience might be just what America needs at this time. I’ve been impressed with his debating skills and he certainly carries himself well. But this Mormonism is going to sink him.

So, here’s my prediction. If Romney is nominated, the media who seemed to support him will suddenly discover he’s a Mormon, and they’ll quickly and easily render him unelectable.

(UPDATE: The last week’s media “interest” in Mormonism was the result of a prominent pastor’s comments not media investigation of Mormonism. The reaction of most of the media to these comments seems to prove my point: “What do you mean Mormonism is a cult…not Christianity…etc?” Downplay, minimize, etc….until the time is right…)

Thought-provoking (provocative?) quote from James Smith, Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College: 

The Gospel is not a “content” that can be distilled and just dropped into any old “form” that seems hip or relevant or attractive. You can’t distill Jesus from Christian worship and then just drop him into the mall or the coffee shop or the concert: while you might think you’re “Jesu-fying” this medium, in fact you just end up commodifying Jesus. 

Read the rest here.

1840 posts and 452,603 comments later, CNN’s Belief blog reflects on its first birthday with Ten lessons the Belief Blog learned in its first year. Here are the headlines:

1. Every big news story has a faith angle. 
2. Atheists are the most fervent commenters on matters religious. 
3. People are still intensely curious about the Bible, its meaning and its origins.
4. Most Americans are religiously illiterate. 
5. It’s impossible to understand much of the news without knowing something about religion. 
6. Regardless of where they fit on the spectrum, people want others to understand what they believe. 
7. Americans still have an uneasy relationship with Islam.
8. God may not prevent natural disasters, but religion is always a big part of the response. 
9. Apocalyptic movements come and go. 
10. Most Americans don’t know that President Barack Obama is a Christian.

You can read more of the details here. It’s a bit of a mixed bag: some encouragement (# 1, 3, 5, 6), some discouragement (#4), and #2 is just so intriguing isn’t it!