"Trendy sin" isn't new. In the first century, wasn't one of the trendy sins emperor worship? As our culture reverts back to a more Pagan mindset (seen in the homosexual/feminist agendas), it seems we're returning to the relationship the church had with the state around the time of the early church. How did the early church battle trendy sin? I think we can learn from their emphasis on committed Christian character and virtue (basically the answer given in Wells' Losing Our Virtue).

The modern church (broad evangelicalism, and all of us to a degree) suffers from an inability to distinguish the church from the world (I'm not talking about theonomy vs. two-kingdoms here; Scripture makes this distinction when it says we're to be in the world but not of it). I've met many well-meaning Christians who have equated America as being a Christian nation, then equating "Christian America" with OT Israel, and thus the "foreign nations" of the OT are the foreign nations surrounding America -- we're to not be influenced by them (not realizing that "foreign nations" are our next door neighbors now). This may not be as much of a problem in Reformed circles, but it's still a problem.

I remember what Ken Myers wrote in a book of his. We're told in the Word of God to be in the world but not of it, and it seems much of the American church is of the world but not in the world! We take our cue from the unbelieving culture around us and then stay in our holy circles, not influencing the culture but allowing it to influence us. And the media plays no small part. It influences us, but we don't influence it. And while the TV is what propagandizes these "trendy sins," the solution isn't to simply throw the TV out (the fundamentalist answer) or to start "Christian TV stations" (the broadly evangelical answer) (I'm not saying things things shouldn't be done ever, perhaps certain families should throw out their TVs!).

The answer is wisdom, moderation, and discernment, or, at the very least, that's part of the answer. The rest of the time we pray that we might remain faithful and be ready for persecution -- something I don't know that I'm ready for, but it seems it's going to be coming. The other factor is instructing and praying for our children because the culture is trying to influence them more than ever before (when was advertising directed at children first started? And now it's everywhere, even with their own singers and bands).

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Casey Bessette
Westminster OPC • West Suburbs of Chicago • My Blog: Paradise Regained

"It is part of the calling of the ekklesia to learn to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge and also to make known within the world of science 'the manifold wisdom of God' in order that the final end of theology, as of all things, may be that the name of the Lord is glorified. Theology and dogmatics, too, exist for the Lord's sake." — Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1, p. 46