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Aug 13, 2025 06:00am

Counter Culture Christianity: Living by God’s Standards, Not the World’s

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Counter Culture

We hear it often these days. So, what exactly does it mean? “A way of life and set of attitudes opposed to or at variance with the prevailing social norm.”

Plainly speaking, it’s going against what the world says is okay or no big deal.

In many cases, we’re talking about society versus biblical values.

Look around. Is anything left untouched by immorality? From schools to Disney, the home, television, and music, all of society is plagued by sin. Why? Because we allow our flesh, our desires, to rule our decisions and pursuits. It’s been happening since the Garden of Eden.

Not even the church is exempt.

Counter culture combats the social norm. It takes a stand against what the world says is fine by following a set of guidelines—many times, based on biblical truth.

Want to talk counter culture? Just look at Paul.

The Book of 1 Corinthians is Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth. As we’ve mentioned before, the city of Corinth was a melting pot of culture, driven by wealth, intellect, and pleasure. So-called religious temples had prostitutes available to service men and women for “worship” to their false god of fertility. Paul’s letter addressed this issue and many others for the believers in the church. The first six chapters of the book addressed what he heard was taking place within the church. The second half answered questions the church had sent him that covered marriage, food, rights, idols, worship, spiritual gifts, and the resurrection.

His statements went against the culture. But it wasn’t just an idea from Paul or an opinion. He was sharing biblical truth.

Here’s an example:

1 Corinthians 7:1-4
“Now regarding the questions you asked in your letter. Yes, it is good to abstain from sexual relations. 2 But because there is so much sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman should have her own husband.
3 The husband should fulfill his wife’s sexual needs, and the wife should fulfill her husband’s needs. 4 The wife gives authority over her body to her husband, and the husband gives authority over his body to his wife.”

The culture said, “It’s your body, fulfill its desires and pleasures with no restrictions.” These believers knew that it was wrong according to what they had been taught, so some went to the extreme. There were some who thought that if lust was wrong, then sex was wrong, so they even went as far as excluding it from their marriages. Some went another direction, like the Greeks, who believed that the spirit and the body were completely separate. They could worship God in spirit and then do what they pleased with their body. And to top it all off, the cultural norm was that women were inferior to men and treated as such.

Can you imagine Paul shaking his head?

When he said women gave their husbands authority over their bodies, I’m sure he received a great deal of applause from the men. Maybe some cheers rang out. Heads nodded. Chests puffed out. This is exactly what they wanted to hear.

But then he dropped the counter culture statement that shook everything.

And men likewise.

Jaws dropped. Faces turned red. Tempers flared. Hands balled into fists.

If they didn’t like that, they sure weren’t going to like the rest of what Paul had to say.

Listen. We cannot fill our minds with the things of this world follow the norm of society and ask the Lord to bless it.

But what we can do is seek the truth from God. When faced with opposition to what we’ve heard, what we’ve seen, even what we’ve always believed, go to the Word.

Seek the truth from the Source.

Paul was counter culture because he followed the greatest example, Jesus Christ.

May we be found standing for His truth too.