In 1939, a line spoken by Rhett Butler to Scarlett O'Hara made movie history. Recently, "The Wolf of Wall Street" has also made movie history for its use of a record number of obscenities in the dialogue. It reflects the point to which we've come in seventy-five years, just one life span of the biblical "three score and ten."
One screen writer had such a visceral reaction to "The Wolf of Wall Street" that he confronted its director and lead actor, screaming, "Shame on you! Disgusting!" in their faces as they exited from an elevator. Others have called it "smut." It's a movie which has driven people out of the theater, because, as one woman said, "I couldn't take it anymore." Some have reported that it's so disgusting, they walked out in the first two minutes.
One reviewer wrote: "The Wolf Of Wall Street" – three hours of torture – same disgusting stuff over and over again."
Another writes, "["The Wolf of Wall Street"] is a world in which nobody knows anything and the product is vapor." That sounds as if the reviewer has read Ecclesiastes.
It features scenes of chaotic immorality and drug-fuelled parties. Even its director says, "It's brutal."
Yet, there are reports that "The Wolf of Wall Street" is playing to packed theaters and receiving applause, accolades, and awards for the best movie of the year.
Let's probe more deeply into this subject and ask, "What's going on?" I would suggest what's going on is effecting us and our way of life. I would suggest that what's going on is fundamental and is escaping the attention of many.
Let's start with the observations of a historian, one Arnold Toynbee who studied 26 civilizations and concluded that the great civilizations of history died by not by murder from an outside hand, but by suicide, because of an internal collapse of morality. (You may be thinking, "I've heard this before, but humor me; read on.)
He made this observation: "To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization." Food for thought. One wonders if the filling of our leisure time with "The Wolf of Wall Street" is an intelligent choice.
Toynbee gives us more intellectual and spiritual nutrition. In his study of the great civilizations and their suicides, he concludes that they soued their own death knell when they begin to fail to respond to challenges creatively and, instead, their elite became occupied with imitating the under classes in speech, dress, manners, music, attitude, and outlook.
Our word today would be that the various civilizations died because their leaders, teachers, writers, celebrities and the influential began to consider it "hip" to talk like, dress like, think like, behave like, and listen to the music of the lower classes.
Professor Walter Williams, quoting Dr. Charles Murray, puts it this way:
"In disintegrating civilizations, the creative minority (elites) are no longer confident and setting the example. They "lapse into truancy" (reject the obligations of citizenship) and "surrender to a sense of promiscuity" (succumb to vulgarization of manners, the arts and language). Until a few decades ago, the groups we used to call "low-class" or "trash", are now called the underclass. The upper-class, instead of challenging trashy behavior, often imitates and placates it."
He cites the following examples:
"As late as 1960, four-letter words were unknown in public discourse and among the elites and were used sparingly even in private discourse. Today, vulgar language knows no class, sex, age or place. As late as 1960, sleeping with one's boyfriend was mostly a lower-class thing. It was deemed trashy and something to be kept secret; today it's open and assumed to be normal.
"Our new language demonstrates an essential part of the process - non-judgmentalism. People used to shack up; now they "cohabit" or they're "living partners." Unmarried women used to give birth to an "illegitimate child;" today it's a "nonmarital birth." In some instances, unwed mothers proudly hold baby showers celebrating their illegitimate offspring.
"Homosexual marriages were unheard of; today, in some jurisdictions, homosexual marriages have legal sanction. To be judgmental about the new codes of conduct is to risk being labeled a prude and possibly a racist, sexist or a homophobe.
"In earlier days, to be an American gentleman meant: one was brave, loyal and true. When one was wrong, he admitted it and took his medicine like a man. Taking advantage of women was totally out. A handshake and one's word were more binding than any legal document. The code of the gentleman has collapsed just as the code of the lady has collapsed.
"Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky and the nation's response is yet another example; after all, "it was just about sex," and so what that it involved witness tampering, perjury, obstruction of justice and a presidentially organized attack on an officer of the court.
"We make excuses and apologies for failures and make mascots out of social misfits such as bums. We call bums homeless people; thus, a moral equivalency is created between those who might have lost their homes in a flood and social parasites."
We see this disintegration in the history of Israel. Israel became the Canaanites: their elites worshiped the Canaanite gods in the halls of power; they fashioned idols of the Baalim; they treated their children as the Canaanites treated theirs by sacrificing them to idols. Their outlook and their behavior became Canaanite.
And this leads us to the question hoary with age: "Does art imitate life or does life imitate art?" In other words, are we changed by what we read and see in the media? Or does the media follow the lead of the culture in which it finds itself.
I want to suggest: life imitates art.
If a society is immune to being lead by art, then the advertising industry would collapse overnight; it would never have been born. If the best basketball player wears $200 Nikes, what brand of shoe does your child want? The first lady in 1963 wore a pill box hat, what do you think millions of women bought when they went to Macy's?
Who wins the awards for the best music? Whose tickets do the masses buy tickets to see and hear? The "artists" who are the most egregious. Which singers get the most publicity which, of course, sells their albums? The egregious. Who do little girls want to dress like and talk like and act like? You guessed it, the deviant they see promoted to wealth and fame.
Life imitates art, and there's the rub. By having our ears assaulted by the obscenities millions hear at the movies or on TV, what's happening? By having morality, courtesy, decency, decorum, and modesty both under attack and ridiculed, what's going on?
What's going on is "cultural permission." Cultural permission is being given to vulgarize mores and manners. The movies, the music, the arts are making it permissible and hip to do so.
When movies and television, magazines, books portray and glamorize a chaotic morality, they are giving us cultural permission to behave that way. What was once the morality of the plebeians is the moriality of the elites and then it's diffused into the culture.
This is hardly new. Although I've never read it, J. D. Salinger's, Catcher in the Rye is hailed as a masterpiece of literature. Hardly. But no one dares to say, "The Emperor has no clothes." The elites will smear you from here to kingdom come if you dare to say that such a literary emperor strides naked.
I mentioned Toynbee earlier. It's said of Toynbee that there was no scholar living as well read, more translated, more discussed than he. But when he began to publish the conclusions of his study of the fall of 26 civilizations, saying that they collapsed from internal spiritual rot, the educated elites abandoned him like last year's losing coach. When he wrote that America gives evidence of the same internal rot, they criticized him and then ignored him until his death on October 22, 1975.
Cultural permission gives every man, woman, and child the OK to "talk that way," to "dress that way," and to "act that way."
Let's wash our eyes out with a Pauline admonition to the believer: Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe."
And you and I? We're to be the contrast. Salt and light. We challenge the vulgarization without being shocked at it. What else would we expect from the world? I John 5 says that the world lies cradled in the arms of the wicked one. God says that fallen man's intent is "evil from his youth" (Genesis 8). The wolves of Wall Street and Main Street act what they are: wolves.
The wolves of Wall and Main Streets will always be wolves until their trust meets the right object. The wolves need to meet the Lion, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. The wolves must become the sheep of His pasture and let the growth process of discipleship begin. A process which will lead them, not to the ethic of the underclass, not to the ethic of the elite, not to the ethic of the "good' elite , but to the ethic of Galatians 5:22-23.
Instead of wringing our hands over this, let's listen to Jesus:
"Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves [of Wall Street and Main Street]; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves. . .
"A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master. 25 It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher, and the slave like his master. If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign the members of his household! Therefore do not fear them . . .
"Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. 33 But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven . . . .
"He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. 38 And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. 39 He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it." (From Matthew 10)
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Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, and the author of Truthspeak, available on Amazon.com. A copy of his book, Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church, is also available as an E-book on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing sue.bove@gmail.com and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Journal."
If you would like to contribute to his ministry according to the principle of II Corinthians 9:7, you may do so by making your check out to Hangar Bible Fellowship and mailing it to 65 Teal Ct., Locust Grove, GA 30248. All donations are tax deductible.
Come visit the Hangar some Sunday at 10 AM at the above address. You'll be glad you did.
Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:
notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org
clarityministries.org
Also:
Biblical Ministries, Inc.
C/O Dr. Richard Grubbs
P. O. Box 64582
Lubbock, TX 79464-4582
There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has one talent, for a genius.
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/h/helps_arthur.html#mpzMv1GyXYdlOVbq.99"There is
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/h/helps_arthur.html#mpzMv1GyXYdlOVbq.99"There is
There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has one talent, for a genius.
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/h/helps_arthur.html#mpzMv1GyXYdlOVbq.99
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/h/helps_arthur.html#mpzMv1GyXYdlOVbq.99
There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has one talent, for a genius.
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/h/helps_arthur.html#mpzMv1GyXYdlOVbq.99
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/h/helps_arthur.html#mpzMv1GyXYdlOVbq.99
Of
the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of
them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is
in now.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/arnold_j_toynbee.html#2jlKMVFLB2IvAJXw.99
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/arnold_j_toynbee.html#2jlKMVFLB2IvAJXw.99
Of
the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of
them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is
in now.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/arnold_j_toynbee.html#2jlKMVFLB2IvAJXw.99
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/arnold_j_toynbee.html#2jlKMVFLB2IvAJXw.99
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