Consider this a tribute to the game-changers among us.

Not all the changes we call “political correctness” or “conventional wisdom” are bad. Some are lifesaving and possible evidence that we may be gaining some sense.

Smoking is good for you? Give me a break.

This week someone posted on Facebook an old cigarette ad in which Ronald Reagan, “film star,” is touting the advantages and pleasures of Chesterfield cigarettes.  Many an ad from the 1940s brags about the medical advantages of their brand of tobacco over their competition.

After burying millions of smokers, we no longer allow those advertisements with their false claims.

Any day now, the New Orleans City Council will pass a resolution outlawing smoking in bars and taverns in our city. That’s the final straw, and about the last place smokers can puff away other than in their home, their car, or their yard.

As a cancer survivor, I say “Good riddance.”  And don’t come in here with protestations that “well, non-smokers have the freedom not to breathe the toxic air.”  How ridiculous.

Here in our city of New Orleans, Dr. Alton Ochsner was in the forefront of the anti-smoking crusade.

We used to sing about dads who beat their wives.

When I was a kid, a “fun” song we used to hear on the radio and probably sang from time to time dealt with wife-beating.  Apparently–I shudder to think–we thought it was all right.  At least, we found it comical.

“Slap Her Down Again, Paw.”  “Make her tell us more, Paw, tell us where she’s been; we don’t want our neighbors talking ’bout our kin; slap her down again, Paw. Slap her down again.”  (It’s on youtube if you wish to check it out.)

Can you imagine?

We don’t sing that any more and would hoot down anyone who tried.

One wonders how battered women felt about that song.  Please forgive us our foolishness, we wish we could say to them.

We used to make jokes about parents killing their children…..

–“Grandchildren are God’s reward for you not killing your children when they were teenagers.”  I’ve actually said that as a joke. I told one of my sons, “You’ll never know just how close you came.”  I meant it as a joke, he took it that way, we both laughed, and we love each other dearly.  What was I thinking?  Some parents actually do kill their children!

–The parent says, “I brought you into this world and I can take you out.”  Bill Cosby made that line famous. He was joking.

We don’t say those things any more, because reality has robbed them of their humor.  A murder trial is going on upriver from New Orleans, in the small town of Edgard, even as we speak. Parents are accused of killing the woman’s 8-year-old son.  (Update: They were convicted.)

Let’s not make any more jokes about beating mama or killing children.

Not everything about so-called “political correctness” is over the top. Some of it is good.

We no longer tell our children bedtimes stories of monsters eating little children, of witches pushing children into ovens and baking them, or of horrible step-mothers driving children into the forest and abandoning them.

What were we thinking?

Some insist that those generations of children who heard such scary stories grew up normal, that they were not warped for life, and that children know how to separate fantasy from reality.  We answer: Some do, and some did. But not all.

Thousands of children grew up to become monsters in their own right.  Some became abusers of little children, tyrants who lock up women in dungeons and keep them as slaves, and animals who boil the flesh of their murdered victims and eat it.

We no longer joke about such insanity.

Thank God. We give thanks for everyone who started the trend toward sanity in these matters.

It takes nerve to be a game-changer.

The way I understand Scripture–New Testament as well as the Old–the Lord sent His people into the world as game-changers.  To turn it around, to wake it up, show it a better way, bring people to righteousness.  To switch the light on.  To raise the dead. To rescue the perishing. To bring them to Jesus.

The metaphors Scripture employs seem endless.

“Before (you came to Christ) you were not a people. But now you are God’s people,” a “people of His own possession (who) proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (I Peter 2:9-10).

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations….” (Matthew 28:19).

Christians determined to fit into the pagan culture will never be game-changers, light-shiners, Christ-bearers, people-helpers.  Wearing the camouflage of the ones we try to reach, we lose the distinctiveness which is our greatest strength.

Only the courageous can turn a culture around.  Only those willing to live as the new creations of the Lord Jesus in the midst of a dying world will be able to speak words of life to it.

And when we do that, sad to say, we quickly learn another fact about the world around us: While our culture is getting some things right in the name of political correctness and conventional wisdom, it also dislikes Christians standing out from the mix and voicing convictions that “all have sinned” and “there is salvation in no one but Jesus.”

There was a day when the doctors who said smoking caused cancer and a thousand other respiratory illnesses were hooted down and ostracized.

There was a day when someone who said a husband does not have the right to beat his wife was laughed at and called a fool.

Only the courageous can be game-changers. Only those willing to take the long view, pay a great price, and endure the hostility of the keepers-of-the-status-quo can pull this off.

“Those who lead many to righteousness (will shine) like the stars forever and ever” (Daniel 12:3).

(I cannot wait to dance with the stars.)