New Attitude, Session 3

The second session on Sunday featured Al Mohler as speaker. I have benefited greatly from Dr. Mohler's ministry, who is the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where our good friend Gretchen is employed and her husband, Josh, is a student. I am most familiar with Dr. Mohler from his blog, which handles current issues with such clarity and Biblical truth it excites me! He is incredibly wise and isn't afraid to speak unashamedly about what God wants in the midst of many controversies. It seems he is the evangelical "go-to-guy" for shows like "Larry King Live" and I have never once felt embarrassed as he acts as our spokesperson. In case you can't tell, I really respect him and was very excited to hear him speak!

He was incredibly witty and had the house pealing with laughter on many occasions. He was engaging and informative, but, unfortunately, very hard to take notes on. And I'm not the only blogger who said this! But I still greatly appreciated his talk and benefited from his wisdom.

His topic was was Discerning Culture and he gave a great picture of what it is like to be submersed in our culture. He appealed to an analogy from Aristotle, who said the worst being to ask about what it is like to be wet is a fish. It's all he knows, he can't describe it. And that is how we are with our culture. It is such a part of who we are and how we think, it would be ridiculous to try to withdraw completely (after all, what would we wear or drive?) and it would be equally silly to jump in without any thought (it is a system with an agenda and we can't assume it is amoral).

It all comes down to Matthew 23. We have to love God and our neighbor, who is probably entrenched in the culture, as we are, to an extent. We have to filter our culture through God's Word and realize that we are not bound by what the culture tells us. We are fish in toxic water and we need to learn how to discern our culture and still swim to the Glory of God!