Yesterday I posted some thoughts on The Loss of Absolute Values. This phrase, as well as the one today and several others, came from a document known as the Cambridge Declaration.

The Cambridge Declaration was prepared by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals on April 20, 1996. The men who prepared and signed the document were: Dr. John Armstrong, Rev. Alistair Begg, Dr. James M. Boice, Dr. W. Robert Godfrey, Dr. John D. Hannah, Dr. Michael S. Horton, Mrs. Rosemary Jensen, Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr., Dr. Robert M. Norris, Dr. R. C. Sproul, Dr. G. Edward Veith, Dr. David Wells, Dr. Luder Whitlock and Dr. J. A. O. Preus, III.

The Cambridge Declaration is simply a document that identifies problems facing the church in our modern culture and states what this Alliance believes are vital truths that are needed to return to sound doctrine and true spirituality.

I recognize that there are those who won’t have any document other than the Bible and feel that any system or declaration of faith that can be viewed alongside the Bible is merely man made and meant to be ignored. I understand this sentiment but I believe it is a bit naive. If the Bible itself is a compilation of books and doctrines and God commands us to study to show ourselves approved, workmen who can rightly divide the Word of Truth, then the effort to organize and systematize the truths that we find in the Bible should not be misunderstood as extra-biblical or heretical. The Cambridge Declaration is not an attempt to re-write the Bible. It is a representation of what the members of the ACE believe. For the record, I agree with it.

I took a quote from the statement and posted it for our consideration. I am now posting a few thoughts of my own as somewhat of a commentary of that quote. Here it is again:

As evangelical faith has become secularized, its interests have been blurred with those of the culture. The result is a loss of absolute values, permissive individualism, and a substitution of wholeness for holiness, recovery for repentance, intuition for truth, feeling for belief, chance for providence, and immediate gratification for enduring hope. Christ and his cross have moved from the center of our vision.

Documents such as the Cambridge Declaration need to be updated from time to time because language and culture are constantly changing. Yesterday’s “Modernism” has been replaced by today’s “Post-Modernism”. However, I believe the paragraph we are considering is as relevant today as it was in 1996.

If any of the expressions found in the above paragraph have escalated or skyrocketed it is certainly true of Permissive Individualism. These two words are so powerful in their description of today’s society that volumes could be written to express their relevance. I wish I were a more skilled writer so I could do so.

I will forever be indebted to my first spiritual mentor. He was the music and youth director of the church where I was baptized and held my first membership. For more than thirty years now I have heard his words again and again. He would say, “Get your mind off yourself.” Today’s culture only knows how to dwell on themselves. Today’s culture has surpassed the I, Me, My culture by leaps and bounds. I, Me and My are kindergarten platitudes in light of today’s Permissive Individualism. You don’t know me, you can’t judge me and that’s the way I like it rule the day. People live in sin, cater to sin and excuse sin with the expression; “That’s just the way he/she is”. Society has bent over backwards to overlook flagrant sins and moral decadence for the sake of preserving individualism.

We do not live in a vacuum. Our actions affect others. Our sins are not without consequence. The chief end of man is not to do as he pleases and to get everything that he wants. The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.

Get your mind off yourself.