Savage Lesson

Some of my more recent posts have been from a book called Brave New World. This is a novel by Aldous Huxley in which he looks at the lifestyle of the 1930’s and tries to condemn them for what they are doing. It’s a social satire, but its implications can still be used today.

I want you to think of the world as it is now. Where shampoo commercials use sex to sell their products. Where people try to lose weight by doing the minimal amount of work and eating the maximum amount of food. Where pleasure is misunderstood as correctness.

It’s the same as what Aldous Huxley wrote about. In his book he created a world where desire automatically led to pleasure, people were engineered and conditioned to only be happy. They sacrificed individuality for stability.

In it though, the lone voice of reason was The Savage. He understood that behind all of their freedoms, their free sex attitudes, their soma holidays, their conditioning to consume the maximum amount… behind it all, they were really enslaved. They were enslaved by desire. They were enslaved by society. They were enslaved by society.

The Savaged stood out among the crowd because he saw that entrapment, and avoided it. He was exiled for his belief in freedom.

How does this apply to us Christians?

Look at the world around you. We live in a world driven by desire and pleasure. That is not the world that God wanted for us, and he tells us not to conform to this world. “Do not be conformed to this world.” – Romans 12:2.

We are to stand out in this world as The Savage did. We are to stand out for God in this secular world, even if it brings upon us persecution and tribulation. That is our Christian call and credo. That is a radical discipleship.