Recently I was watching an old rerun of the Brady Bunch on TVLand. (Yes, Cindy Brady and I are the same age) I really wasn't paying attention until one of the kids got hurt and said "rats". I was struck by how foreign that expression would be today in the media industry. My mind began to wander to the words we say when frustrated or hurt and that led me to think about our culture.

No one would disagree that our culture as represented through our media has become a vulgar cesspool over the last fifty years. To blaspheme or use the most base and disgusting terms is common and normal in all forms of media today. We have become anesthetized to it.

You see, blasphemy is using the name of God in a common or vulgar manner. This is why people say God's name when mad or amazed while never mentioning Satan's. Blasphemy makes God into something average and normal. It reduces Him so He is not One to be feared or be in awe of. This is also why words that are not technically blasphemy like "hell" or "damn" have also come into common vernacular. Through common usage a word that is extremely serious (hell) and a word that represents a choice only God can make (damn) are reduced from real concerns to everyday expressions. This is one reason believers should never use these words. Only God has the right to damn a person. No man has that power or right.

Those who love the Savior should be rightly upset when their Lord is made common or His prerogatives reduced to the mundane and common.

Today's media thinks nothing of engaging in this type of blasphemy, but now there is a new blasphemy which you will rarely hear uttered on the airwaves. This new blasphemy is directed at a god, but not the God of the Bible. Those who are upset at individuals who engage in the new blasphemy often participate in what most people would consider blasphemy—the old blasphemy. You see, the god that is the victim of the new blasphemy is the god of man's independence from the God of the Bible. So the new blasphemy is saying that homosexuality is a sin. It is saying that abortion takes an innocent life. It is saying that pornography is wrong or sexual relations outside of a male/female marriage are sin. That is the new blasphemy. The god of this age is man himself and his desire to be free from the God who created him. Its priests and priestesses are those who teach that humanity is a cosmological accident and live life bereft of anyone to be accountable to except themselves.

The new blasphemy is met with the same rage that the old blasphemy experienced two generations ago from godly people. The next time you hear, read, or see people attacking an individual for adopting a godly position on issues like homosexuality, abortion, sexuality outside of marriage, gambling, drunkenness, etc., just remember, they are angry because their god is being blasphemed by a Christian. The reason their anger is so intense is because their god is themselves.

Michael D. Sproul, D.Min.
Senior Pastor