Cognitive Contamination

Last week I was listening to a podcast from Albert Mohler's website called "Thinking in Public". This particular session was an interview with Peter Berger, and was talking about Evangelicals and Relativity. You can listen or read the transcript here.

One of the fascinating parts of this conversation was a term called "cognitive contamination", where a person is affected most by those influences around them. For example; if a Christian is dropped in the middle of a city of Hindu's, over time, the Christian would begin to syncretize their faith beliefs with that of those around them. Over more time, the person would be likely to abandon their faith in Christ as they have been cognitively contaminated by the thought patterns and beliefs of those around them. This gives credence to something my parents used to tell me growing up; "If you hang around with jackasses, you'll turn into one." This was true on all counts. But it made me think of those Christians that live according to the culture around them right here in North America.

We always hear (at least I hope we do) from the pulpit that we need to have our faces in our Bibles, we need to be reading the scriptures, we need to disciple our wives and children. But in reality, how well are we doing this? If we take the "average" working man, they spend between 40-60 hours a week at work, they spend 2-4 hours a day in front of a TV or computer screen, and spend a whopping 30 minutes a day with their kids and wife. This leaves very little time for reading and praying. It also leaves very little time to lead and disciple our wife and children, who also spend most of their time in the secular world, around secular thinking and watching secular programs. Is there any wonder why there is such a lack of passion for God? Is there any wonder why our churches look and act like the world? Is there any wonder why our churches can't tell you the Gospel message?

A dear friend of mine wishes and prays for an awakening of the Spirit in Alberta. I too, wish and pray for the same. We won't see it any time soon unless we as the church begin to take our walk with Christ seriously. Until we can combat the cognitive contamination that is occurring in our churches, we will continue to walk in very dim light, if there is any light at all.