One Thing Remains the Same

Life in this country looks quite different back at the time of my birth (1958) and my early childhood than it does today. Cultural and societal norms have changed. I did not come home from the hospital in a car safety seat. Instead, I likely came home in my mother’s lap, as she smoked a cigarette. Child safety seats became available in the 1960s, but few parents used them, and it wasn’t until 1985 that federal child passenger safety laws were enacted, requiring children to be restrained in a safety seat. The safety seat we brought our oldest daughter home in back in 1987 looked and operated very differently than the child restraint systems in place today. You need an advanced engineering degree just to install them in your car.

Seatbelts did not become required in all designated seating areas of vehicles until 1968. In was commonplace to have passengers sit unrestrained anywhere in the vehicle. In fact, on long trips, my brothers and I used to alternate laying on the floor of our car’s back seat, using the middle hump as a pillow. This floor space also helped us avoid much of the smoke cloud that filled our car, as our parents puffed away. Today, New Hampshire is the only state without seat belt laws.

As a youngster, I remember my father and other neighborhood men taking their wives to the local Playboy Club, because it had the “best steak in town.” Right Dad, and I suppose you subscribed to Hugh Hefner’s magazine for its literary excellence. I cannot imagine getting all dressed up and taking my wife to an establishment where the hostess and servers all wear skimpy outfits or white bunny tails.

In the sexually charged 60s, if a woman decided to go braless, she was making a political and cultural statement, and was considered “liberated.” Today, going braless is often more for health or personal reasons than the freedom from patriarchal norms imposed upon women throughout history.

Clothing styles and trends come and go. Some thankfully so. Men, any of you still have a leisure suit and matching silk shirt in your closet? Not that long ago, men wore suits and ties, and women wore dresses and pearls, when going out of the house or being seen in public. For those of you old enough to remember the television show Leave It to Beaver, June Cleaver wore pearls to cook and clean the house. 

Cultural and societal norms change all the time – century to century, generation to generation, decade to decade, year to year, sometimes even week by week. What was viewed as acceptable yesterday might no longer be acceptable today. As the world around us constantly changes, we have a good, good God who never changes. James 1:17 tells us, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from our Father of lights, with whom there is no variation of shadow due to change.” The writer of Hebrews says this, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (13:8). God makes this promise in the opening words of Malachi 3:6, “For I the LORD do not change.”

Not only does God never change, but what He expects of those who call themselves Jesus-followers never changes either. Here is what we find in Micah 6:8, “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

So, in a world of never-ending and constant cultural and societal change, imagine the impact we could and would have if we simply remained unchanged in our desire to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our good, good Father. Now that is something to never go out of style.

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