What Robin and Miley Really Showed Us

Discipleship should not wait until our culture shocks us into action.

It seems really naive for Christians to be so shocked at the recent performance of Robin Thicke and Miley Syrus. Seriously? You're surprised? I can think of a lot of appropriate responses to this situation, but instead I get the sense that in typical fashion parents are frantically scrambling around grasping for ways to explain what just happened.

That spectacle was simply the consistent expression of a culture that has for the past couple generations been progressively disconnecting itself from any of the biblical moorings that kept the storm of relativism from sweeping us out to die at sea. That performance was simply the death throw of a culture that has given itself over to the god of self. Responding in shock only makes us look like we haven't been paying attention.

But wait ... maybe that's the problem. Maybe we haven't been paying attention. At least not in the ways that count. If our kids somehow got a glimpse of that show and weren't automatically appalled, then we have not talked with our kids enough or about the things that matter. 

Discipleship should not wait until our culture shocks us into action. Christians are guilty of waiting until our hand is forced by the cultural influences around us, but by that time it is basically too late.

What is needed are parents who see every moment as an opportunity to disciple their children. From the baby seat, to the driver seat, and beyond. A culture of discipleship in the home that so saturates life that they are savvy enough to know the ugliness they can expect at the Video Music Awards and thus simply avoid them. And when the ugliness of a godless culture lands square in front of them, they have seen so much beauty placed before them that they are repulsed, though not surprised that this is what a fallen world is producing and placing before us as art.

We should be producing girls who have been taught  in word and by example that they are special, their bodies are special, and that they are not objects to be consumed. And young men who we have intentionally taught to recognize the counterfeit of pornography and who view women not as objects to be consumed but rather as image bearers of God to be honored.

If any good can come from the shocking display the other night let it be a shedding of the lethargy that so often constitutes the bulk of modern parental discipleship. If you are not still talking to your children about this subject next week and all the weeks that follow then for all your shock you are still only a part of the problem.