Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life.

In the time it takes to get to work, I'm Keith Simon.

In 2005 the popular novelist David Foster Wallace gave a commencement speech to the graduating class at Kenyan

college. He started the speech off with a short parable that goes like this.

He said, there are two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way.

Who nods at them and says, morning boys, how's the water?

And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually, one of them looks over at the

other and goes, what the heck is water?

You see, the two younger fish who've spent their whole lives swimming around in water don't know what water is.

Why? Well, because they've never known anything other than water. They've never needed to define water.

What could life possibly be like without water?

Later in his speech Wallace explains his parable, he says,

the point of the fish story is that the most obvious important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about.

I think Wallace is on to something. I think the parable forces us to ask an uncomfortable question about our lives.

As 21st century Western Americans, what's the water we swim in?

What are the realities that are so obvious that they're hard to see and talk about.

What are the world views and habits that we've adopted without even realizing,

much less examining?

Well, today we're going to look at Psalm 36 which has a lot to say about the cultural water we swim in

but to do this well I think we're going to need to step out of the water for a second so that we can examine it and compare it to the truth we find in the Psalms.

So what is the water that we swim in today?

Well, in the past few years, many people in the academic world have taken a swing at answering

...