“There’s nothing new under the sun.” This powerful and timeless Scripture from Ecclesiastes 1:9 can often slip Christians’ minds, especially in the wake of a chaotic and distracting culture.
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But what, precisely, does this verse actually mean in practice?
Dr. Albert Mohler, Jr., a prominent theologian and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, recently detailed his take on the cultural crises of the day and how to process contemporary events in light of this timeless Scripture.
“There’s a sense in which there is no new sin, but there are new forms of sin,” Mohler said. “And even technology is given, unfortunately, new ways to kind of drive sin throughout the culture and seek to make the transformation of the culture a transformation into sin rather than in resistance to sin.”
Mohler said some of what is being experienced today is also “fairly unique in human history,” citing some of the current battles surrounding LGBTQ issues, particularly the transgender discussion.
“You simply do not have babies without understanding the basic ontological, biblical truth that God made us male and female,” he said. “And it takes one of each … to reproduce.”
Mohler continued, “The modern attempt to separate gender and sex for one thing, it’s just one of the situations in which you say, ‘OK, that has really not happened in human history before.”
Despite past individuals’ confusion over these issues throughout human history, he said it’s a new dynamic to see society “giving itself over” and using the state’s power to enforce it.
“What we’re witnessing right now is unique,” Mohler said. “It’s not just an illusion. It’s really unique.”
He speculated the gender conversation is headed into a confusing place — one in which people might try to operate as though “gender’s not even a thing.”
In such a dynamic, Mohler believes society ends up with the “inability to have any coherent conversation.”
But while gender chaos might persist, he said there could eventually be a dynamic in which many people come to secretly believe the truth, even if they play along with the cultural whims of the day.
“There’s another principle of the way cultures operate,” Mohler said. “When you get ideologies that get this far out on a limb, people may, due to social or, for that matter, legal coercion, give kind of lip service to them, but increasingly people don’t believe them. They understand The emperor has no clothes.”
Watch the full interview for more from Mohler.
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