A few weeks ago, in a Sunday school class discussion, an older member of my church described evangelism as “sharing my truth.” I was taken aback when I heard it, as this was no Millennial or Gen Z “woke” culture warrior, but an older Boomer. It’s quite possible they didn’t understand what the phrase meant in modern parlance, but it brought home to me how far our culture has moved when it did not even register to this dear older saint that the significance of the gospel is found precisely in the fact that it is not “my truth,” but “the truth.”
Like it or not, we’re all swimming in the cultural waters of expressive individualism. This is more than simply radical moral relativism. It’s the rejection of essential human nature for untethered subjective sentiment. It’s the replacement of ethics with personal preference and the meaning of life with the self-creation of identity. Its most extreme expressions are seen in transgenderism and modern identity politics, but its impact is far more subtle and insidious, as the opening example shows. If even our older, more mature church members are affected by the habits of thought of expressive individualism, what’s a pastor
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