You don't own the truth. Let me stipulate that what I write today pertains to the cultural climate in our country, although I believe it applies to the West in general and certainly Europe. It doesn't take keen powers of observation to see that our culture today is defined today by a disparate group of voices, all clamoring for attention and claiming that their world view is the one that distinguishes itself above others. We are a culture and nation most accurately described as intensely polarized by moral and political disintegration. Our moral fiber has been steadily unraveling before our very eyes at an accelerating pace. Starting with the coming of age of the baby boomers in the decade of the 1960's, American society began to question the foundations of truth. This expression found its voice in the lives of hippies who distrusted the government, and the civil rights movement which rightly questioned the fabric of the order of race. It accelerated with the sexual revolution in the 1970's, and was fueled by the growth of material success and widespread growth in the prosperity in the 1980's. The 1990's brought us the advent of technology and the increasing isolation of individuals from their peers, as we entered into cyber-worlds of our own choosing. The internet gave us the freedom to access information and order our lives around belief systems that increasingly became postmodern and self-indulgent. We arrived in the 2000's with the rise in terrorism, brought to our shores first in the early 1990s and then with devastating effect on 9/11. Suddenly, we were not safe. In the six years since we elected the current president, our country is more polarized, angry and divided than anytime in my lifetime. This is not an imagined fiction; it is institutionalized in the shrill and dissonant discourse in the media. It is exemplified in social media, which gives us all a platform to express our views, at any time and gain the attention of friends or of viral millions. The National Security Council of the White House has a Twitter account. The president takes a smiling selfie while at the funeral of a world respected leader. Not much gravitas in the Oval Office. In our colleges, deans and chancellors bend to the will of special interest groups, who demand trigger warnings in the descriptions and syllabus of courses that advise potential students that certain points to be discussed could offend their narrowly held individual belief systems. The left has overtaken free speech, re-defining ordinary disagreement, even in the most measured tones, as hate speech. No one is safe from being branded as guilty, and with no justification. Anyone who disagrees with them is publicly excoriated by a willing cabal of the three mainstream television networks. Our culture is best described as self-focused, entitled and demanding. Demanding of individual recognition, unlimited personal autonomy and the endless awarding of 'rights'. How did we get this way? Our institutions have lost their elasticity to allow people within our culture to live in tolerance, individual expression and self-actualization. All in the name of allowing people within our culture to live in tolerance, individual expression and self-actualization. We no longer have a shared set of moral values that define a broad sense of cohesiveness and unified vision of America. Instead we have replaced these ideals with a rigid and emotionally violent vision of elevating the individual above all things, where the government, our beloved guardian, is the supposed enforcer and answer to all things. In the word of God, we see Satan offering Jesus the three lies of self. The enemy of our souls asks Jesus to make bread from stones, offering Him the lie that what we do makes us valuable to others. Satan then offers Jesus the kingdom of the world, fostering the lie that what we have or possess gives us meaning and purpose. He finally tells Jesus to throw himself down from the temple, knowing that if Jesus did, he would be saved by the angels and all would worship him. This third lie is that we are valuable because of what others think of us. In a world overcome by the value of self, let us remember that we don't own the truth. We cannot bend the truth or redefine it. God is truth and He created it; we are simply custodians of His truth. And the greatest of these truths is that we are a wisp of vapor, a minute ray of light through a prism, a droplet in an endless ocean. All subject to the majesty, power and omnipotence of an infinite God. Jesus rightly resisted the enemy's urgings to place Himself above God, honoring and worshiping God in His responses to the temptations. In a world gone mad through self -absorption, should we not do the same?