God’s truth doesn’t stop anywhere in the world.  It applies at some center point and in every place proceeding from that center, marking the center anywhere you want to put it.  It doesn’t matter if there is a center, His truth covers everything.  Some might put a center to it in order to emphasize that center, but the truth still applies everywhere else.  One doesn’t help the center where the truth is applied by not applying the truth in those areas further out from that center.  We can argue all we want about what the center is, but the whole world is still His world and integrity requires applying His truth everywhere.  Just because you picked a center and apply it there doesn’t justify not applying the truth to all other areas in His world.

Not applying God’s truth everywhere challenges the sovereignty of God over His creation.  It can’t be justified by emphasis, which by that I mean that one doesn’t emphasize the chosen center by disregarding the areas not in the center.  Let’s say the gospel is the center.  If I apply the truth to art, I’m not deemphasizing the gospel.  If I apply the truth to music, I’m not deemphasizing the gospel.  If I apply the truth to business or science or education or nutrition or architecture or lawn care, I’m not deemphasizing the gospel.

In fact, just the opposite, every other truth is diminished when another truth is diminished.  God doesn’t pick certain truths not to keep.  The gospel changes someone into a total truth keeping person.  Jesus said that in the Great Commission.  Every truth ignored creates a ripple.  All the truth is one.  Every truth fits into all the truth.  Not keeping one has some effect now or in the future on other truths.  This is because God is One.  When we talk about His attributes, we are talking about such perfection of harmony that never does a single attribute ebb at the flow of another.

Breaking truth into truths to emphasize one over another is like breaking God up into parts and emphasizing one part over another.  The truths are like the circulatory system.  Someone might bleed out faster by a violation of a major vessel, but he will bleed out with the violation of any vessel.  I’m just going to let it bleed, because it’s just a trickle is still death.

An obvious practice in professing Christianity today is conceding truth, looking for what’s important, what’s really important, what’s only important, and conceding other things, meanwhile perhaps saying no one is conceding anything, when they really are.  The world isn’t going to accept everything, so diminishing much of what the world doesn’t like and highlighting those parts that the world might like.  What this serves to do is like in ages past, the bifurcation of truth.  A dichotomy forms as occurred with gnosticism and neo-platonism, honing in on the sacred versus the secular realm.  Truth touches only certain spheres, bifurcated from others, because truth doesn’t have to touch those — they’re off limits for truth.

The most obvious bifurcation of truth in God’s world today is, well, the world today, that is, the culture:  music, dress, entertainment, friends, business, nutrition, art, architecture, etc.  Everything takes on a sameness, where Christians are no different, because there isn’t a Christian anything out there.  It’s kept only to the church setting.  Christians, true believers in churches, should be bringing the truth to everything in the world.

You are not living the Christian life, which means the gospel isn’t even saving you in the sense that it saves you right now on this earth, if it doesn’t change your music, dress, entertainment, friends, and every single other thing on the earth.  The prince of this world wants to protect the world like it’s his, from whatever God would want to do to it through His people.  And God’s people say, no, let’s just keep it to the church, among the actual assembly, and blend everywhere else.

The truth is not therapy, that is there to work only in the assembly of believers, to help them get through the world without giving up — feel good about one’s self, give hope, make happy, and learn some biblicalish things.  The Bible deals with everything.  It is to be applied to everything.  Christians have decided to be fine with the separation between secular and sacred.  This is our Father’s world, not Satan’s.

As an example, I just watched a youtube video, where a professing Christian presented a fun outing on youtube.  I think it’s fine, great, for a believer to use youtube as his medium.  Christians should use God honoring music in the background.  That doesn’t mean a hymn or a psalm, but what would conform to the nature of God, like Paul commanded (Romans 12:2).  He used a country-western song with a fitting title, Good Times, but here is the chorus:

We just tryna catch a good time
Even if it takes all night
Pass that bottle ’round the campfire
Sippin’ apple pie moonshine

For a true believer of Jesus Christ, passing a bottle of moonshine around all night shouldn’t be or be thought to be a “good time.”  It isn’t good.  And that matters.  It is conduct unbecoming of the gospel, conflicting with the truth.  It is however an example of how an avowed Christian separates his life in the world from the truth.  It’s a lie accepted especially today by evangelicals, misrepresenting biblical living.  I rarely see an evangelical podcast or other presentation that does not use ungodly music to introduce or in the background.

Engaging or integrating the truth all over, including in the places people might want it kept away because of lust or darkness, relates to the words of Ezekiel 44:23:

And they shall teach my people the difference between the holy and profane, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean.

God is holy.  He commands, be ye holy as I am holy.  To retain holiness in the world, the truth must engage to differentiate the holy from the profane.  There are profane “good times,” which are not good, and holy “good times,” and those need the light of truth out in the world to transect God’s world for His glory.

Just because professing Christians bifurcate truth doesn’t mean that God or the Bible do.   These “Christians” really don’t have it both ways now.  They don’t.  God is the judge of that, because God owns this world.  It’s His world.  He’s also judging this world.  But they act like they do.  It isn’t Christianity.  Even if they bifurcate the truth, separating from the world where it exists, God doesn’t.

A believer is to and will bring the truth to every area of life.  The word “integrity” comes from a Latin root, which means “whole.”  A believer’s integrity requires integrating the truth into everything.  The truth shouldn’t clash with anything in a Christian’s life, or in that aspect he is lying to the world or at least to himself or God.  Nothing is out of bounds.  It’s all God’s.  A believer is going to treat it like it is and not some separate entity outside of divine dominion.

“See what you made me do!”  A manifesto follows that blames bad behavior on someone else.  Old Testament prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel both convey a now millennial anthem:  “my parents ate sour grapes, so now my teeth are set on edge.”  Blame empowers bad and then worse behavior.

God said, “No, the soul that sinneth, it shall die,” that is, you are completely responsible for your own deeds and attitude.   In contrast, you know today how this pathology works, especially with now regular mass shootings at the center of which is a troubled figure, someone who hasn’t had enough “love” as a child.  He’s the victim.  Sigmund Freud provided modern justification with his earlier twentieth century psychological theories and terminology.

The effect doesn’t follow the cause.  A parent eating sour grapes doesn’t cause a child’s teeth to be set on edge.  It’s a phony excuse that should fool no one.

If it is a parent’s fault (or some other authority figure), that assumes the parent did something wrong.  Maybe it wasn’t wrong, but let’s assume a parent sinned.  If the concern is sin, is concern over sin substantiated by more and worse sinning?  Like Jeremiah and Ezekiel said, the parent’s sin isn’t the concern.  It’s just an excuse.  The cause, like James and Peter teach (James 1 and 2 Peter 2), is lust.  If the parent’s sin was a concern, the reaction wouldn’t be more and worse sinning.  The child just wants to do what he wants to do and justifies it:  “See what you made me do!  So I’m going to do far worse!”

I’ve seen this in church through thirty-two years of pastoring.  Most people who leave a church blame the church for doing things wrong and then go to another church that’s worse.

What does someone do, who is really concerned about wrong or sin?  Scripture is very clear.  He tries to help.  He attempts reconciliation.  He seeks mediation.  Paul wrote that he tries to restore someone in a spirit of meekness.  He doesn’t say or think, “Hey, I know, I’ll go out and do more and even worse and justify it with I’m saying was someone else’s wrong.”

Prominent in Freudian psychology and still used by modern psychologists is the is the idea of defense mechanisms.   According to a Freudian psychologist, one of the mechanisms for a victim to defend himself is “acting out.”  He does puzzling things and makes peculiar decisions contrary to his own well-being.  People are afraid that he might “snap” and do something even worse.  His trajectory is in a downward spiral and he is in need of an “intervention.”  He also has his “enablers,” those who confirm his excuses and blame, because they also dislike authority and standards that clash with their own lust.  They are confused and misguided sympathizers.

According to God, no one is a victim.  If he dies, it’s because of his own sin, not his parent’s.  He owns what he is doing.  Paul said, someone’s body parts are either instruments of righteousness or of unrighteousness.  He should mortify, put to death, his deeds of the flesh.  John says he either loves God or he loves himself and the world.  Jesus said that those who enter not the narrow gate did not agonize or at least seek to get in.  They will have no one to blame but themselves.

When someone does more sinning and far worse, he exposes his excuses for what they really are, blaming his sin on someone else.  There is an axiom here, that to the degree someone blames his own wrongs on what he perceives are the wrongs of others, he will do more and worse.  The good news is that he thinks something is wrong.  He would only blame someone else if he thought something wrong was to be blamed.  In other words, he hasn’t totally lost the ability to know and identify what is wrong and what is right.  Now it’s just a matter if he is also willing to do something about it.  Does he love his sin so much that he will keep blaming other people for it?

Some of what Freud wrote smacks of some truth if someone places it in the context of truth.  Everyone who sins needs intervention.  Anyone who continues in sin without repentance will get worse, which could be described as a downward spiral.  A person who is not surrendered to God or controlled by the Holy Spirit will act out of the nature of the depravity that characterizes fallen human flesh.

What the world needs today is a message of repentance, like Jesus and John the Baptist preached.  Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.  Relief is available for someone who will turn to God and like with all those who do in scripture, it will be accompanied by great joy.