The Inescapable Culture

Genesis 19:1-17

God and the Media - Week 1

People are Crazy – Billy Currington

1984 – George Orwell – Free people will be overcome by ______________

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley – Free people will be overcome by _________________

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books.  What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.  Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information.  Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.  Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us.  Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.  Orwell feared we would become a captive culture.  Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.  As Huxley remarked in “Brave New World Revisited”, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”  In “1984”, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pleasure.  In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us.  Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.   

Neil Postman Amusing Ourselves to Death

The impact of Sodom’s culture upon Lot:

v. 3 - But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house.

v. 8 - Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them.

v. 14 - But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.

v. 16 -When he hesitated…

v. 19-20 - But I can't flee to the mountains; this disaster will overtake me, and I'll die. ²⁰ Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it—it is very small, isn't it?

The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you…. So Abram left, as the LORD had told him… Genesis 12:1;4

and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men ⁸(for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— 2 Peter 2:7-8

v. 26 - But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

v. 32 - Let's get our father to drink wine and then lie with him and preserve our family line through our father."

Richard Niebuhr – Christ and Culture (1951)

Culture is the "artificial, secondary environment" which man superimposes on the natural. It comprises language, habits, ideas, beliefs, customs, social organization, inherited artifacts, technical processes, and values.