Welcome to the first Sunday of January, 2021 and happy new year. Today, we are starting another series titled Perverse Generation. The Bible often describes a people as perverse when they are rebellious, corrupt and willingly turning against God’s ways and commandments (Deut.32:5). The concept of ‘perverse generation’ or ‘perversion’ is as old as mankind. It has its roots in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve compromised the standard that God set for them and embraced the evil suggestion of satan, whose aim is to misrepresent God and His commandments (Gen. 3: 1-5). The rest is history, as it is often said, but they paid dearly for this!Eventually, they lost the Paradise, an eternal haven of bliss. Afterwards, a life of hard labour, struggle, suffering and pain became their heritage (Gen. 3:23-24), and this was bequeathed to the entire human race.
What does it mean to be perverse? What do we mean by perverse generation? In what ways does perversion manifest and how applicable are these manifestations to our lives and the contemporary christiandom? What are the characteristics of a perverse generation? Finally, how can we live blameless and untouched “in the midst of a perverse and crooked generation (Act 2:40; Phil. 2:15)? To be perverse is to be twisted, defiant, unteachable, wayward, corrupt, demeaning and unwholesome. Perverse generation refers to a people or a group of people who, consciously and willingly, choose to pervert or misrepresent the truth, the ideal or what is morally or scripturally acceptable, especially with respect to God, His word and His ways. The goal of this iconoclastic or free-thinking individuals is to initiate a new way of thinking and behaviour contrary to God’s laws, and one of the outcomes is negation of societal values. Thus, they tend to institute a new social order in which the abnormal becomes the new normal.
The present world system is corrupt and twisted, depraved, degenerate and encased in darkness, under the control of satan (1 John 5:19). Christians and non-christians alike, are products of the world system because we were all born and raised under its influence. The good news is that, as christians, we are endowed with the grace (and therefore expected) to be insulated by the blood of Jesus Christ against the sweeping influence and traits of a crooked generation. It is therefore, our duty as christians to always be conscious of these as well as our responsibility to be different in an environment where perversion becomes the norm (To be Contd). Please, enter into your new season as I wish you a prosperous year 2021. SHALOM
