"Culture Shift" is one of those books that when I read it, I had a hard time putting it down. I heard Dr. Mohler spoke the first time at Desiring God Conference in 2004, but not until I read his address in Together for the Gospel (T4G) in 2006 did I start to be stunned by the acuteness of his views on culture. Now what he talked about there at T4G is a subset of other challenges covered in "Culture Shift". Here he not only shows the reality and ugliness of what he calls "cultural seismic events" but he also lays out plan of actions; legitimate and urgent.
Mohler begins with the importance of Christian engagement in culture, by learning from Augustine's "City of God" with a caveat in mind, that is, Christians are to love the people of the City of Man with the gospel, not for the sake of city and culture themselves, but the sole concern ought to be for the greater glory of God. This is important because there is indeed a tendency to subordinate the gospel to personal agenda that may come in the forms of ethnicity, family, prosperity and country unless we are reminded that the City of Man is passing away, while the City of God is eternal. Nevertheless, "even as we know that our ultimate citizenship is in heaven, and even as we set our sights on the glory of the City of God, we must work for good, justice and righteousness in the City of Man" (p.3).
Then the discussions take on different themes, beginning with the idea of purely secular principles in driving public law; reasoning, motivation and religious neutrality, all of which Mohler defies as impossibilities and establishes a counter proposal, the reason being public law involves matters that go beyond individuals . But in addition to Mohler's refutation, any reasonable individuals would also ask, to challenge the purely secular manifesto, that first, whatever happens to the freedom of speech? And second, one only needs to look at the communist and other tyrannical states to understand the intention behind the drive toward a purely secular state.
Next, secular humanism leads to decay, not only in morality, but also inevitably in education. The popular talk these days in both camps, coming out of the perennial battle about abortion, centers around reducing the number of abortions. This is excellent because it exposes the true agenda behind many pro-choicers, to the point that even General Electric was accused of promoting pro-life agenda by selling 4D ultra-sound imaging systems because this technology "isn't a matter of providing more knowledge, but an attempt to manipulate women" (p.117, 119). In the education world, while students in Asia get busy learning calculus, physics and chemistry to prepare them for college, students in most American public schools are getting choked and brainwashed by the sexually-loaded indoctrination of the normalcy of homosexuality, promiscuity and cults. No wonder Mohler said exit strategy is needed (p.65-72) from this pathetic system, which actually doesn't have to be this way if managed properly. Sometimes I even wonder if American K-12 students need to start studying overseas, unless the domestic system undergoes a major reform, to keep up with the rest of the world, particularly to prepare them in science, as I think of Japan, Korea, India, Singapore or Europe, though I have to admit that some American universities are still among the best in the world. In research and development, a God-less pre-supposition leads to a discovery of the so-called "God-gene," that is, "a genetic explaination for belief in God that provides evolutionary explaination for faith" that Mohler hilariously but correctly describes as "Bad Theology Meets Bad Science." Here is how absurd science with false presuppositions and worldviews has become, where "humans are [soul-less] collections of atoms and molecules, and all consciousness, belief, emotion, and moral judgment must be explained by nothing more than biochemical processes within the brain" (p. 74).
Other interesting reflections and call to actions are in foreign policy dealing with terrorism and an attempt to explain the problem of evil, the case studies of which are the 2004 Tsunami and the 2005 Katrina.
Words can not describe the urgency of the matters that Dr. Mohler covers in "Culture Shift" in which he provides true and fair analysis as well as valuable recommendations. Upon learning the cultural landscapes we are in today, I can not help but observe that rational apologetics is not likely to do much good to answer post-modern issues. One needs to start getting into pre-suppositional apologetics; of which at least two books come to mind, "Always Ready" by Greg Bahnsen, and "Defense of the Faith" by Cornelius Van Til.
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