Tag Archives: culture

Only So Much For So Long

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Are you a Star Wars fan? I am. Well, I kind of am. I’m not so sure anymore. The films of the original trilogy will forever be favorites. But then again, I was there in the ’70s and ’80s when they were let loose on the world. The prequels, I can take or leave them. The sequels—puke. Although there was that one scene in Episode VII where the Millennium Falcon was reintroduced. I’ll admit to having enjoyed the chase. The endless spin-offs? Just stop already. By the way, have you seen the box office results for the new The Mandalorian and Grogu film? They’re not good.

But I didn’t come here this morning to talk about how Disney murdered Star Wars. At least, not directly. In truth, Star Wars comes to mind because I read something last Wednesday that reminded me of the crime scene. And the Thoma family talked about it during dinner that same night. After that discussion, I’ve convinced myself we may have a serial killer on our hands.

Gallup keeps track of lots of things. Its latest numbers concerning LGBTQ Inc.’s acceptance in America are telling. I’m not necessarily surprised. Although I’m willing to bet that the people who thought they could force consent through exhaustion are a little bit nervous. That’s because, after years of rainbow-branded everything, Americans appear to be pulling back. Even some major corporations are taking a stand. I read last week that a few NFL teams bowed out of Pride Month. Parades in different cities can’t get the funding they used to get. Some businesses are actually putting out statements saying they were sitting it out, too. Jennifer read to me Chick-fil-A’s public statement. Take a look. It’s good.

But again, Gallup’s numbers. The findings sure seem to suggest that the public is tired of being re-educated. Support for same-sex marriage has fallen from 71% to 65% since 2023. That’s a huge shift in a very short period of time. Moral acceptance of gay and lesbian relationships has dropped from 71% to 62%. The trajectory is the same relative to gender transitioning. Its favorability dropped from 46% to 38%.

The partisan split was somewhat interesting, too. For a time, LGBTQ Inc. seemed to be gaining traction in the Republican Party. But now it’s slipping. Republican support for same-sex marriage has fallen from 55% to 37%. It’s no surprise that the Democrat Party’s numbers didn’t move at all, remaining at 87%. On the moral acceptability of LGBTQ relationships, Republicans are at 35%. Democrats are at 81%. On changing one’s gender, only 5% of Republicans consider it morally acceptable. Democrats have far more weirdos. They’re at 60% in that category.

Regardless of anyone’s opinions, these show a vast distinction. If anything, I think these numbers show that the two main political parties in America are indeed living inside very different moral worlds. I’ll bet the LGBTQ Inc. element in both looks at these numbers and sees unfortunate regression. I look at them and see a nation rediscovering its gag reflex.

Again, as a Star Wars fan, this feels familiar. And I should probably add Marvel to the mix, too. Genuine fans who watched what happened to these two franchises will know what I mean.

At dinner on Wednesday, I made the point that both franchises were once strong because they respected the worlds they inherited. Born in the ’70s, Star Wars had myth, fathers and sons, sacrifice, redemption, darkness and light, and an almost religious awareness that power without virtue destroys the soul. Many of Marvel’s characters emerged in the ’60s. They swooped in with courage, friendship, and dutiful loyalty. Then the films began, and they held to the original concepts.

But then Disney bought Star Wars. Then Disney bought Marvel. Then came the ideological machinery designed to rework everything fans knew. But it wasn’t just slight creative enhancements. It was a complete reworking delivered in a tidal wash of political ideology. The whole thing was designed to smother all the original premises.

With that as the goal, film followed film. Spin-off followed spin-off. Streaming series followed streaming series. At dinner, I told the family that after Disney took charge, everything in the Star Wars world started to feel as if it had been processed through a lesson plan.

The box office has now supplied some interesting receipts. The Mandalorian and Grogu is a huge flop. Some estimates say it cost $500 million to make, which includes international marketing. It’s been out for a few weeks, and it’s only at $248 million in worldwide sales. It wasn’t that long ago that people were calling the new live-action Snow White film the worst flop in history. By comparison, it lost about $170 million.

Again, I told the family during dinner that Disney seems to be in the business of losing any and all money it made before it got into the business of re-education.

I think the Star Wars sequel trilogy made the forthcoming demise obvious. By the time episodes VII, VIII, and IX arrived, original fans like me (and I should include my sons, who were raised in the lore) noticed a managed demolition of our inheritance. Disney could have stewarded the franchise’s lore with humility. Instead, they treated the old world as needing renovation. All of it—the Force, the Jedi, the moral architecture that made the story resonate with billions of fans—directors and executives spoke as though the old ways needed to be challenged and remade. A line from Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi captured the new spirit. I haven’t forgotten it. He said, “Let the past die, and kill it if necessary.”

The thing is, the real caretakers of the Star Wars legacy and the source of its genuine success—billions of fans like me—we can endure a fresh story. We can endure new characters. We can even endure surprises. What we resist is contempt for received things. We resist the smugness that looks at inherited loves and assumes those loves are flawed and need to be demolished.

Disney followed the same path with Marvel. It received a massive story arc that rewarded patience and devotion. Then they began adding ideological obligation. Audiences began to drift. Why? Because the people who love the films weren’t interested in beloved things being rewritten to scold them.

I think that’s the real cultural context for Gallup’s numbers.

For a long time, Americans were told that every new moral demand represented compassion and inclusion and diversity and progress and whatever other syrupy word could be used to impose guilt. The first ask was tolerance. But very soon tolerance also meant affirmation. Affirmation demanded celebration. Now it has become compelled speech, pronoun rituals, men in women’s sports, parental rights being stripped away, and public shaming for anyone who disagrees.

I suppose this is also where tradition comes to mind. When I teach about tradition in my catechetical classes, I try to make the point that tradition is, in at least one sense, the accumulated wisdom of people who learned, sometimes painfully, that certain things are built into reality. God’s moral and natural law are exactly this. They are the deepest structure of creation. Male and female, marriage, fatherhood, motherhood, the human body, the boundaries of acceptable human desire—these are simply givens, and they are far more durable than anyone with other ideas might think.

Of course, these givens do not grant permission to be cruel to the confused. Christians owe every neighbor patience, and most importantly, kindness. But kindness doesn’t require us to pretend that Disney—or anyone else for that matter—has some sort of authority to overrule creation. Kindness doesn’t require us to surrender reality. People are actually being kind—even loving—when they hold the line on what is real and what isn’t.

In the end, I’d say the Gallup numbers suggest that many Americans have reached the same point audiences reached with Star Wars and Marvel. They’ve had enough. They’ve been lectured enough. They’ve watched enough traditions get mocked and replaced by people who seem far more eager to deconstruct what human history knows to be true.

And so, in the end, the lesson is relatively simple. You can push people for a while. You can shame them for a while. You can flood every institution with the same message for a while. You can even persuade many of them that resistance will be embarrassing and costly. Still, creation has a way of reasserting itself. Reality will always outlast propaganda. And because tradition is built from real things, it has a way of surviving the people who sneer at it.

A Steady Voice

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Typically, by the time I’ve arrived at my office on Sunday morning, I already know what I want to write about. When I arrived this morning, I wasn’t sure. I thought I might scribble something about the wedding I preached at yesterday. But it only took a moment for something else to catch my attention, and if you’ll bear with me, you’ll understand why something so simple could be so important.

I’d only been in my office a few minutes when I heard a bird singing somewhere outside my window. Well, singing might not be the best description. It was calling out, and its voice was distinctly rhythmic. It made the same sounds in the same patterns for quite some time. Essentially, it made two longer calls followed by six shorter ones. Three or four seconds would go by before it repeated the pattern exactly.

It started as little more than background noise. Birds sing in the morning. And others were. Who cares? But then, it became more distinct among the other birds’ tunes. And because I know very little about birds, after a minute of focused listening, I went outside to find the one that had my attention.

There, on one of the tree branches not far from my office window, was a cardinal. I tried to get a little closer, but he stopped mid-song and flittered away.

I went back inside and did a quick Google search on cardinals and their reasons for singing. It turns out that cardinals typically sing in the morning, often well before the sun rises. Their chirping serves one of two purposes—either to attract a mate, which usually happens in the spring, or to announce their presence in their territory, sending a clear message to any rivals that they’ve staked an official claim on the space.

Now, as I tap away at my keyboard, I realize that seemingly small melody was far more than part of the landscape’s noise, random and of little interest to me. First, it was deliberately communicative, carrying a message of invitation or warning. As a preacher, that’s familiar to me. Second, even though more than a few birds were singing, the cardinal’s message remained steady and consistent. That’s familiar to me, too. Third, I suppose the cardinal wasn’t necessarily concerned with whether I, or anyone else, was actually listening. Still, it sang because it had a reason to sing, and it kept singing until its message had been delivered to the right audience. Again, something very familiar to me.

In one sense, I suspect all of this suddenly mattered to me because I just told someone on Friday that I sometimes feel like my words are little more than background noise being drowned out by the louder, flashier sounds of everyday life. I imagine many pastors feel that way. The culture shouts. Entertainment blares. So many things clamor for attention. When it comes to what pastors are to be, do, and deliver, temptations to compete with these things increase tenfold.

Maybe we should change worship styles to be more entertaining. Perhaps we should shorten the sermon, or at least deliver it in a way that seems more like a TED talk than preaching. Maybe we should thin out the Gospel a little, too, so that it’s less offensive. I mean, preaching about a God who was crucified isn’t all that attractive. It just doesn’t seem to compete with the world’s message of success. In fact, maybe we should avoid speaking about sin while we’re at it. Preaching repentance can get somewhat uncomfortable. Perhaps we should first focus on attracting the crowd. We should trade theological depth in doctrine and practice for a less demanding piety. Even better, maybe we shouldn’t be so creedal, so strict with our boundaries. The culture will never accept us if our expectations are too rigid—if we require the culture to assimilate into us rather than the other way around. The same goes for consistency. Everyone knows that flexibility and innovation and newness are the ways to keep people interested.

But then there’s the cardinal. He simply is what God has made him to be.

The cardinal doesn’t change his tune depending on who’s listening. He doesn’t speed it up to keep up with the noise around him. He doesn’t change his pattern. He sings of warning and invitation, sin and grace, Law and Gospel. He sings the song he’s meant to sing, over and over again. It’s as if he does it without concern for the results—as if he’d been sitting on a tree branch listening when the Lord said, “He who has ears to hear let him hear” (Matthew 11:15).

In the same way, the truth a pastor speaks—whether in the pulpit, in a counseling session, across the table with someone at lunch, or before this world’s kings—doesn’t have to out-shout the chaos (1 Corinthians 2:1–2). This morning, the cardinal was a reminder that consistency definitely matters more than volume (Galatians 6:9). The call that seems ignored in one moment may be heard by exactly the right ears later.

In the end, my calling as a pastor—and in a sense, yours as a Christian parent, friend, co-worker, or neighbor—is to be clear, steady, and faithful to God’s Word. We may feel small or irrelevant, but our task is not to dominate the air. It’s to fill it with the sounds—His Word—trusting that He will make sure the right ears hear it at the right time. Interestingly, some will receive the words as invitation. Others will hear them as warning. But either way, the message will reach its hearers and cut through the noise (Hebrews 4:12). How could it not? The Gospel is the most potent message there is. That’s because it isn’t just words. It’s the means by which the Holy Spirit works to convert and convince the human heart and instill faith (Romans 1:16, 1 Corinthians 2:4–5, Romans 10:17). Unlike all other messages, its delivery is actual presence, and its truth marks very real territory.

To close, I suppose I’ll simply say that while the world may shift its tune a hundred times over, the Gospel never changes (Galatians 1:8–9, Hebrews 13:8)—and neither should the voices that carry it. Sing it in season and out of season (2 Timothy 4:2), in joy and in hardship (Philippians 4:12–13), in full confidence that the Lord who gave you the song will see to it that, in His time, it will be heard (Isaiah 55:11).