Greeting
I have kids. Fingertips. And it burned like fire Of this burning desire. Yeah, yeah. But I feel, have enough. But I’m looking for, what I’m looking for. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What I’m looking for.
Um… Well, good morning. My name is Conrad. I am one of the pastors here, and I’m excited to kick off this August series, where we’re looking at pop culture phenomena, and asking, where can we find God in there?
Opening Prayer
So I’m going to pray first, and then we’re going to dive in.
God, thank you for your word. Thank you for today. Thank you for your truth, and that we can find it when we seek to find it, God. So I pray that you would illuminate that truth to us. Even if it can be hard to hear at times in your name. Amen.
Introduction: Series and Pace
So before I jump right in, I just need to know we have 2 options. I could either talk at a normal rate and we could go for 45 minutes or I could talk like one of the characters in the Gilmore girls, and we could be out of here in about half an hour. Anybody for 45 minutes? Anyone for Gilmore Girls? Okay. Buckle up.
So I will say that for this message, I spent over 35 hours in prep time for this message. I know that because that’s how long it took me to watch all 4 seasons of Stranger Things.
Stranger Things Overview
And in terms of the series itself, it was pretty good. The 1st season was really good. The 2nd season, I feel like they sort of copped out. They could have made some tough decisions with characters like 11. They didn’t. They played it safe. That’s fine. Season 3 was like an action cop comedy sort of thing, which I guess is appropriate since the show is set in the 80s. But season 4 was a Tour de Force. Really, stick through it, stick through the goofiness of season 3 because season 4 is quite good. And I know that because it was longer than any other season. It felt like it went by much faster.
So I will say also from the outset, spoiler alert, I did my best to avoid spoilers for the show, but it’s impossible to talk about it without spoiling small things. I edited clips to remove things, so I won’t spoil too much.
And the other thing I want to offer this morning is a content warning. It is possible that I might offend people with what I’m saying this morning. And just know, I’m going to talk about this later, that if I offend you, it’s not because I wanted to offend you. It’s just because I’m preaching the truth and sometimes the truth hurts our feelings when we’re in contravention of it. So give me some grace this morning. Stick with me to the end and let’s dive into this.
Plot Summary
So, what is Stranger Things about? It said in the early 80s and a little town called Hawkins, Indiana, and it opens up the 1st episode, opens up with this kid named Will Byers, who is missing. He’s vanished. And it’s assumed that he’s dead, but there is, some shenanigans go on, and it leads some people to believe that he is not dead, but he is in a place called the upside down.
And the upside down is sort of like our world, but it’s different and there’s all this evil that lives in the upside down that’s trying to get out into our world.
And so what is the upside down? I will let the kids from Stranger Things try to explain it because they do it better than I would.
What was Bill saying? Like, home? Like home. But dark? And empty. Like home. Like this house? Upside down. What’d she say? Upside down. What? Upside down. When El Shred is where real was, she put the board over. Remember? Upside down. Dark, empty. Do you understand what he’s talking about? No. Wennell took us to find She took us to his house, right? And he wasn’t there. Well, what if he was on the other side? What if… this is Hawkins? And… this is where Will is. The upside down. Like the Veil of Shadows. Yeah, there’s lots of D&D content in this also. So if you were a D&D fan in the ’80s. Youll find some comfort there.
But what I find interesting about this whole concept of the upside down is the implication. Because if something is upside down, that means that there is a right side up. In the same way that you can’t say something is wrong unless you know what right is. You can’t say that something is incorrect, unless you know what correct is. There needs to be a standard of truth in order for there to be a difference, an inversion of that truth.
And I think that this is something that we all know. If you watch the show, when you see the upside down depicted, you recognize it immediately, you’re like, oh yeah, I see buildings, I see streets, I see cars, I see things, I know what’s happening here, but it’s wrong. There’s something wrong about it. And you can tell just by looking.
That’s that intrinsic gut feeling we have, and we’re going to talk more about that gut feeling later. we’ll put that in our pocket.
Cultural Shift: “My Truth”
But our culture has shifted. And if you’ve been paying attention over the last couple of years. You’ve noticed a phrase pop up a lot, and it goes like this, my truth. Have you heard about, have you heard about my truth someone has?
And this is not some fringe theory on the edges of social media. Like people like Oprah are talking about this. This is very mainstream. My truth, right?
And the whole idea of my truth is that you can believe something, and you can, and you can, and we can all believe these things, and it’s all true because truth is relative to me.
Um, and our culture says my truth wins. It is the ultimate Trump card.
But my truth, I think, is absolutely the utter and complete destruction and desolation of the word truth itself. We’re going to talk about that in a 2nd too. We’ll go with the other pocket for that one.
My truth means everything is relative, and that’s called postmodernism.
Postmodernism
And in order to understand postmodernism, we have to take a look at some philosophical concepts. So let’s get nerdy. Nerd alert. You have been warned.
So post-marinism started in the 1960s. Okay? I am not sure how many of you were around for the 1960s or I’ve heard about it, but it was a fairly tumultuous time, right? We have the war in Vietnam is causing all sorts of cultural backlash, right? And people, the soldiers even who went to Vietnam were hated. It wasn’t like Korea or World War 2 or one where they were seen as heroes. These people were seen as villains. They were hated.
There was a big cultural ship that happened there. There was the sexual revolution. Right? As birth control and things like that became more common. women were like, hey, we want these other roles that have been traditionally reserved for men. There was a huge sexual revolution.
And there was a, um, the word escapes me, but the civil rights revolution, right? As people of color was saying, hey, I don’t want to drink in a separate fountain anymore.
And so we see all of these things happening through the 1960s. That is when postmodernism started to really take a hold in our culture.
And people said, I’m going to reject this thing that you’re proposing, and I’m going to introduce this new thing that I want instead. Some of it was good, some of it wasn’t good, some of it was mixed up. I’m not making a judgment about any of these particular movements. I’m just saying that this is what happened.
And so what is post-modernism? It rejects what we call the meta narrative? Just last night, my six-year-old was saying, Father, why do you think that cultural Marxism is affecting the meta narrative in modern Western society? And I said, son, that’s a good question. Let’s discuss that. Obviously that didn’t happen.
No one talks about the meta narrative, but it’s really simple, right? Meta means big. picture, big picture, the big story, the overarching truth that we look to and say, this is where we get truth from.
Okay? That’s all meta narrative means. It’s an objective, universal truth that applies to everyone.
But for the post-modernist. The meta narrative is oppressive, rigid, inflexible, and unfair.
The postmodernist says, no, no, no, none of these things mean anything except the meaning that we give it. You’ve heard the phrase beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the post-modernist says, meaning is in the hands of the beholder. It means what I say it means, nothing more, and nothing less.
So back to the destruction of truth. I think I put that over in this pocket. You guys remember, I think it was 2004, a movie came out called The Incredibles. And there’s a character, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Incredible, who wants to show off this incredible superpower he has and he can’t, and he says to his parents, if everyone is special, no one is.
That’s what postmodernism is. If everything is true, nothing is.
You can’t believe that the sky is blue. Well, I believe it’s black. Well, you believe it’s red. Well, you believe it’s purple? Well, you believe it’s yellow, and we cannot all be true because those are mutually exclusive claims.
But postmarinism says, no, there is no meta narrative. There is no objectivity. There’s no rationality. You can’t say that something is better or worse than something else. It’s just different. Whatever I want is true.
And so you might say, well, Connor, we don’t live in a world like that. And I think you’re probably right.
And philosopher William Lane Craig specifically says he does not believe we live in a postmodern world, and he gives some examples. I think demonstrate that this is true.
Imagine a postmodern doctor. Who doesn’t believe words have meaning, and you go in and you say, doctor, I have a headache, and he’s just as likely to give you a box of Tylenol as he has a box of rat poison because words don’t mean anything. It’s whatever meaning we impart to them.
Or the postmodern architect who looks at the engineer’s drawings and say, well, I know that you say we need to call them in the middle of this building or it’ll collapse, but that’s not my view of gravity. No posts for me.
Or the postmodern banker who says, you know, your oppressive monetary hegemony has been keeping me down for too long. When your money’s in my bank, 2 +2 is three.
I don’t think that would last very long.
And postmodernism is totally incoherent, because we call can’t have the same truth. It’s logically ridiculous.
So what does postmodernism do? It rejects logic. It kills logic.
So when we say that, we say, well, we live in a world where people still respect and value logic, I don’t think that that’s a world we live in, and I think that that’s true.
I don’t think we live in a postmodern world, but I do think that we adopt postmodism. We, me, you, everybody. Adopt it whenever we feel like it will be convenient for us.
Okay? Words mean what we decide they mean when it’s convenient for us.
I’m gonna give you some examples, all right? Intolerant. Used to mean that I hated you, and I would not let you think what you wanted to think, but now intolerance simply means that I do not support every decision you make unequivocally. That’s what intolerant means now.
How about fascism? It simply means that I disagree with you on a political issue.
Or bigotry. Maybe we have a different belief about sexual ethics, and now we’re bigots because we disagree.
Or maybe you have a different view on some racial issue and that makes you a white supremacist. I’ve even heard black people called this.
So, at some point, you have to say these words had meanings. We’ve removed those meanings, and we’ve replaced them with whatever it is that we want them to mean instead.
I think if you are honest with yourself, you’ll recognize that this has happened in our culture. I hear that, amen.
Here’s another one. Postmodernism. Abortion. This is a pretty hot topic right now. Roe v. Wade was just overturned in the United States, which returned abortion rights back to the states to decide if or how they want to move forward on that, but this woman was out of protest at the Supreme Court. And she became quite viral.
So here she is with her child. And she is 9 months pregnant, and written on her abdomen is not yet a human. Not yet a human. What is it? What’s in there if it’s not human? When does it become human? She’s probably 33 weeks, something like that, 34 weeks.
Friends of mine had a baby at 24 weeks. When did he become human? Do you see how postmodernism destroys everything that it touches? We have to have a standard of truth. Otherwise, who’s to argue with this lady?
God tells us that each of us was knit together in our mother’s womb that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and God has a plan for this child, whether or not it is a human yet.
Anyway, I don’t want to camp on this because it becomes a pet thing for me.
Here’s another one, and possibly even more contentious than that, because I just like setting off fire bombs, I guess. But we have recently rejected the idea of a gender binary. Have you heard this phrase gender binary, male, female, right? A or B, and there is no other option A or not A.
We’ve rejected this, and we’ve replaced it with what we call the gender spectrum. Now, this position holds that sexual organs, bodily functions, even our chromosomes have no bearing on our sexual or gender identity.
And if this is true, that means that there really is no such thing as gender at all. Because man or woman are just defined by whoever uses the word. It’s a circular definition. What is a woman, someone who identifies as a woman? Who is that? What is a man, someone who identifies as a man? What does that mean?
And I don’t want you to think that this is some fringe thing at the outskirts of TikTok or something. This is mainstream stuff, and I want to give you an example, okay? This is an excerpt from the confirmation hearings for the latest American Supreme Court justice, Katanji Brown Jackson.
Can you provide a definition for the word woman? Can I provide a definition? Yeah. I can’t. You can’t. Not in this context. I’m not a biology.
So the meaning of the word woman is so unclear and controversial that you can’t give me a definition.
Senator, in my work as a judge, what I do is I address disputes, if there’s a dispute about a definition, people make arguments and I look at the law and I decide.
So I’m not. The fact that you can’t give me a straight answer about something as fundamental as what a woman is underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education that we are hearing about.
Now, obviously, the senator interviewing as Republican and the woman being nominated as Democratic, Democratic Democrat. And I don’t want to get into a political issue. That’s not what I’m talking about here.
I’m just talking about this postmodern idea that even defining what a woman is, is such an impossible task that no one could hope to do it.
Do you see how postmodernism destroys everything? It’s so dangerous, but it’s coached in this language of self-love, and so we think, that sounds great.
Now I do want to say, if you are experiencing this sort of incongruity between what you feel and what is physically happening in your body, if you’re someone who has maybe had an abortion, this is not me judging you. This is not me saying you’re a bad person, that God hates you, God does not hate you. God loves you deeply. And God calls us as the church to love you deeply, and that is my call as well.
And God wants to make you whole. The thing that you’re chasing after by pursuing what the world is offering, this self-indulgent love, God has something that will actually make you whole.
So hear that from me. I love you. God loves you and God wants wholeness for you. He does not want judgment for you. Okay? Can I get an amen from the Christians in the room? Thank you.
But this is a slippery slope. Now, this is the fringes of TikTok. TikTok, by the way, is a breeding ground for monsters, if you’re not familiar. I have seen people who are trans age. Just a couple years ago, I saw a man 65 retired. as children are grown up. He identifies as a six-year-old girl. He’s been adopted by a family, lives in their 3rd bedroom, plays with dolls and has tea parties. He’s 6 year old girl.
There are people, white people who are transracial. One guy, try, is trying to pass himself off as a black guy, another lady is trying to pass herself off as an Asian woman.
People are trans species. I saw a fellow on TikTok who claims that he can, you know, he’s on the spectrum between human one day and wolf the next day.
And you might say, Conrad, that’s kooky out there crazy, far nut job TikTok stuff. Well, I bet you that if you went back 30 years and talked about some of the stuff that’s happening today, people would tell you the same thing.
When these when these people are presenting this sort of thing. And the idea here is not to make fun of them or chastise them, but to say like, you need the truth of Jesus. There is truth, it can be found. Let me tell you about it.
Anyway. This is a real thing.
And at the end of the day, this is why postmodernism has to destroy logic and reality and truth because science, as the teacher from Stranger Things says. Science is neat. But I’m afraid it’s not very forgiving.
Science is neat, but it’s not forgiving, so we have to kill it.
Modernism
Now, I was a big Apple fan for a lot of years when Steve Jobs was in charge. I don’t want to get into that too far, but I remember reading books about how he led and he was a bit of a sociopath, so I don’t want to go down that trail too far.
But he said that he would surround himself by alphas, like people who really fought for their ideas, and they would have these heated exchanges in the boardroom when they were launching some new product or some new marketing campaign, and they would fight and fight for hours until the best idea rose to the top, and that’s what they’d move forward with.
And that was a very successful strategy for them. I mean, they’re the most valuable company in the world.
So, But this is the idea, the war of ideas. This is what traditionally we would look for and say, well, we will fight over ideas and the best idea will naturally rise to the top.
But post-modernism can’t do that because it doesn’t adhere to logic or reason. So what does postmodernism do? It silence dissenters. If you disagree, you need to shut up.
And the only way I can force my view on you, because everything is relative to everyone is if I have more power. So post-modernism strives to have as much power as possible because that’s how it wins. And it wins with a war of attrition. It’ll beat you down over and over with people calling you the names we talked about, right? You’re a fascist. You are intolerant, you are whatever. I forget the names now.
And I don’t want to oversell it, but I’m not sure that I can. Postmodernism is an absolutely destructive force, and I’m going to illustrate that with this clip from the Terminator.
Listen, and understand. That postmodernism is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
It’s a little bit funny. It’s mostly tragic. Um… But here, why then? Why if postmodernism is so dangerous, do we love it? Why do we love it so?
Because postmodernism puts you at the center of creation. I am the ultimate source of truth and authority worship me. I’m in charge.
And as soon as you hear it put that way, something inside you says, that’s upside down. That’s upside down. That’s not right.
Because each of us can’t be the ultimate source of authority to be worshiped.
And the funny thing is, we look at this postmodern ideology and we say, look at what we have done. We are so creative, we have come up with this way that we have made ourselves the ultimate authority. Like congratulations, you fell for the oldest trick in the book.
When Satan tricked Adam and Eve. What did he say? You can be like God. Welcome back to the garden. There’s nothing new under the sun. We think we’re so clever. We’ve just fallen for literally the oldest trick in the book.
So then you say, okay, okay, I get it, Conrad, you’ve beat me over the head enough. Postmodernism is a disaster. What do we do? It started in the 60s. Let’s go back to the 50s. It’s a simpler time, a more idyllic time before post-modernism, which of course, before post-modernism would have been modernism.
Modernism
So what is modernism? Modernism is so different. So it arose around the 1800s around the Industrial Revolution. And basically, what happened is all these people were raised up out of serfdom, out of poverty, and the middle class was essentially created out of thin air, by the Industrial Revolution and the spread of capitalism across Western world.
And so all these people looked and said, well, life is so much better now, and it was so much worse before. We went from worse to better. So if we can go from worse to better, we can go to better yet, maybe even perfect. Maybe we can achieve perfection.
And so they said, by measuring how things have changed, we can achieve perfection, and what did they turn to? Science.
Science bolstered by logic, but the evidence of historical progress, and they said, we can achieve this perfect ideal.
Modernism was really optimistic. It was a really forward looking idea. And it placed a high value on truth.
So you say, Conrad, that sounds great, a high value on truth, optimism. I like this. Let’s do modernism. Maybe some of you are catching where modernism is going, because modernism says, yeah, we value logic and historical progress, but only insomuch as science can verify it.
If you can’t prove it with your 5 senses, then it’s just personal expression or opinion. So logic is necessary, but not sufficient.
So what does this do? This makes science, God?
So we got rid of science, we put ourselves there. If we try to go backwards, we’re still not putting God first. We’re putting science first. All bow down before science.
And you know what’s funny is that we probably thought we were being really clever, right? Look at this new thing we’ve made. We’re so clever, modernism. We’ve made a way for humanity to prosper and grow.
Well, when Satan said you can be like God. What did you have to do first? Eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. So if you just pursue science. then you can be like God. One leads into another.
Again, we try to be clever and we’ve fallen for the oldest trick in the book. It was a one, 2 punch from Satan, and it’s the same one, 2 punch today.
The Need for God
So we look at this, and we come back to our intrinsic knowledge of what’s right. We look at these things and we go, that’s upside down. That’s wrong. That’s not right.
And so we say, okay, well, can we then trust our heart? The Bible calls our heart. Today we use the word gut, like your instincts, the core of you.
So we can trust our gut to lead us through these tough situations, right? Oh, foolish earthlings. Romans 212, right? Paul says that the law of God is written on the heart of even the Gentiles, so that when they’re conflicted, they’ll know. Or when they sin, they’ll be conflicted and know.
So can we trust our gut? Can we trust our heart? Nobody? The answer, of course, is no, because what does Jeremiah tell us? The heart is deceitful and wicked above all things.
So you say, Conrad, if God’s written the law in our hearts, but then our hearts corrupted, that doesn’t make any sense. Well, why is our heart corrupted because of sin?
Satan came in and said, hey, pursue science, and then you’ll be like God, and we’re still doing it today. We’re still doing it today.
But Satan is losing. He knows he’s losing and he’s just trying to do as much damage as he can on the way down.
So I pulled this heavily edited monologue to remove any spoilers, but this is the big bad villain monologue from season 4 of Stranger Things.
It is over 11. Your friends… have lost. There is nothing. Nothing you can’t do to stop this now. Hawkins will burn and fall in the rest of this sinless, broken world, and I will be there. Okay!
Now I just want you to watch. You’ve lost. It’s over. Just sit back and watch the show.
That’s what Satan would have you believe.
And so you say, well, I don’t understand. So postmodernism is bad because it’s all relative to everyone, but modernism plus my gut maybe isn’t so bad.
The problem with both of these is that they have no answers for morality. They have nothing to say about what is good or what is evil.
Right? Like you look at Thanos in the Avengers. Now I’ve never seen it, but I get the impression that he kills half of the population of the earth in order to save the earth. This is his thinking.
So if we’re saying, well, you know, the earth is overpopulated, we’re running low on resources, I think that we should kill half the people, science might tell you, yeah, solid, solid choice there.
Right? Well, I don’t want to have this baby because that’s going to hold me back from doing thing X or Y that I want to do. So even though it’s human, we can go ahead and kill the baby. That’s fine.
Because I need to pursue this other thing, and science might go, yeah, that’s fine with us.
But God steps in the gap and says, human beings, you all are created in my image. And you have ultimate value because of that thing. And that is why we need God.
That’s why we need the morality that he offers. That’s why we can’t embrace modernism as reasonable as it seems or postmodernism, as ridiculous as it is.
Application
So what do we do? As Christians. First, don’t get weary in doing good. That’s what the Bible exhorts us, right? Don’t get weary and doing good. Stay the course. Keep on keeping on.
The other thing I’ll encourage you, and this might sound weird, but is offend in love. Offend in love. Okay?
Now, if you’re offending someone to gotcha or because you don’t like them or you want to show them up or whatever. Check your motives. But offend and love, in love, in love, and love.
Because Satan wants to wear you down, to wear you down. Don’t keep fighting. Oh, it’s such a hard, it’s such an uphill battle. Just take it easy. You know what? Don’t worry about this one. It okay. Just compromise the truth a little bit. I mean, you don’t need to make a big deal about that thing. Leave that thing alone. That’s fine.
A little bit, a little bit, a little bit. And you know what? When you end up, uh, like homeless and addicted to drugs and living on the street, that didn’t happen because you woke up one morning and thought, gee, you know what, I’m awfully tired of this house and being healthy, I think I’m going to go get addicted to hard drugs and live on the street.
It’s one choice after another after another after another.
And in the same way, we can make one choice after another after another that leads us to a place where we reject Jesus.
And Hebrews warns us. You remember this? In 66, that those who know the truth of Jesus, but then reject it, nail him again to the cross and hold him up in public shame and scorn.
We’re called to be faithful.
Closing: 1 Corinthians 15
So as the worship team comes up, I’m going to close with the words of Paul, because I think that he sums this up really well. We’re going to jump into one Corinthians, starting in verse one and going all the way to 58, but not all of it. I’ve picked it and chose in between.
Paul says, now let me remind you, dear brothers and sisters, of the good news I preached to you before. You welcomed it then, and you still stand firm in it. It is this good news that saves you if you continue to believe the message I told you, unless, of course, you believed something that was never true in the 1st place.
What I am saying, dear brothers and sisters, is that our physical bodies cannot inherit the kingdom of God. These dying bodies cannot inherit what will last forever. For our dying bodies, must be transformed into bodies that will never die. Our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies.
Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this scripture will be fulfilled. Love this. Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?
For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power, but thank God, he gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.
And here’s what I’m going to send you home with. So my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless.
Amen.