Dad: Light Up Your Pulpit and Fight Truth Decay!

September, 2006

by: Walt Bertelsen

Young people absorb information from the media around them at an astounding rate. Witness: my mastery of this tag line from a 1960s toothpaste commercial: “Crest can be an effective decay-preventive dentifrice, when used in a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care.” It leaped upon my developing, impressionable young brain—without effort to memorize it. It just sounded “cool.”

The media around us reflects our culture—the good, the bad, and the indifferent. Your young people are ingesting mega-doses of information, values, and attitudes. Two of the mind-sets that pervade our culture are “Postmodernism” and the “new Gnosticism.” What are they? Postmodernism is the mind-set that sees all truth as relative: no truth is absolute or universally valid for all. What is true for you may not be true for me. If there are no absolutes, if we must be tolerant of all viewpoints, then there can be no absolute standards, so what “God” says in the Bible doesn’t really matter. Doesn’t apply to you? Listen: according to pollster George Barna, 70% of Christian young people do not believe there is any absolute moral truth (Josh McDowell, Beyond Belief to Conviction, p. 11).

As for the “new Gnosticism”: it’s a recurring way of thinking (sometimes called “New Age” thinking, it underlies much of secular psychology). Its claim: “the truth is in you.” You simply need a guide to help you bring it out to find wholeness. Facts aren’t important so much as the “spiritual reality” lying behind them. And, in case you haven’t guessed, all the factual error found in The Da Vinci Code is irrelevant to people who think this way.

Allow me to help you think through how to combat this in your young people by explaining the title of this article, “Dad: Light up your pulpit and fight truth decay.”

Dad: I’m speaking to you, dad, as an individual. YOU—not other men—it’s your job. “Fathers,” Paul writes in Ephesians 6: he tells them not to exasperate their children, but—by contrast—raise them (i.e., from childhood to adulthood) according to the principles of the “nurture and admonition” or “discipline and instruction” of the Lord.

In light of that 70% number given above, does that give a little more urgency to this command? Oh yes!

Light up your pulpit: In making this statement, I had two things in mind: let your light shine to proclaim the truth, (i.e., God’s truth), and sacrifice self for the sake of your kids. First, light up, or magnify, the truth—let it shine! Second, be ready to put aside fear by dying to self and tell them the truth—just as the Reformers refused to cower in order to proclaim the truth—and were “lit up” at the stake. Their faith was worth dying for—thus, worth living for.

Pulpit: Last Father’s Day, I said to you (from the pulpit) that “you have a pulpit bigger than Jack Hughes.’” You have a God-given position from which you will have a much greater impact on your kids than any preacher: it’s called “fatherhood.” The question is not WHETHER you have influence and impact, but HOW you use them.

Fight truth decay: “Fight” is a command: be ready to take on the enemy by speaking the truth. Do it by magnifying and modeling truth—teach it and let them see you living it. The enemy (in context) is the process of truth decay in your children. Truth decay is happening, whether you are aware of it or not, just like tooth decay in the mouth. However, a “conscientiously applied program” helps prevent decay. You can’t monitor every bit of the culture that seeps into your child’s brain. But, remember: God, who gave you the job, provides the weapon, empowered by the Spirit: His Word (remember the Compass). Be encouraged and mentored by other believers (the Church). No matter how wobbly your pulpit, no matter how imperfectly your message is preached, your children need to hear it from you—it’s the only way that they will know that you, dad, truly love them, and that there is truth worth living and dying for.