How should Christians effectively discuss cultural issues in a productive, gospel-oriented way? How can Christians provide a gospel-centered perspective on all issues, not just convenient ones? In this video, David Platt advises Christians on how to discuss difficult cultural issues with the right view of sin. The first step in discussing the most difficult cultural issues is to recognize one’s own sin. When Christians avoid the temptation to only look at others’ sin, they more clearly recognize the ways in which cultural issues have infiltrated and shaped the church. With this in mind, David Platt encourages Christians to avoid selective moral outrage – only being angry over poverty and human trafficking, but not being equally angry over abortion and same-sex marriage, for example – and instead be bold and willing to discuss every cultural issue from a Gospel perspective.
- Look at Your Sin
- Recognize Cultural Issues in the Church
- Avoid Selective Moral Outrage
Talking About Difficult Cultural Issues
Our temptation and our sinful nature is always to look at others’ sin instead of seeing our own sin, to look at others’ problems instead of seeing our own problems, to look at issues like they’re external as opposed to internal, and so you take an issue like sexual immorality, I think this is where we have to be really careful in our lives, in the church, in our culture that is pervaded by all sorts of sexual immorality, to not just think, “Well, that’s a cultural issue,” but to realize this is a major issue in the church and even make it more focused.
We are Prone to Sin
This is a major issue in our lives, and if we’re not careful we can easily become guilty of a selective moral outrage where we see this or that in the culture and we see, “Oh, this is the problem with this situation or that situation or this issue,” and we fail to see that at the core of our hearts that we’re prone to sin in the same way that we see sin pervading culture, and we’ve got to address this issue internally and externally.
It’s not that, “Okay, we just focus on ourselves then and we don’t think about what this looks like in the church or the culture around us,” but we’ve got to make sure not to make that an either or. This a both end. We start here.
Just like Jesus said, “When you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, don’t miss the log in your own eye,” so we’re going to make sure to really evaluate our own lives and our own hearts and the process of looking at issues like this in our culture.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
