A new friend asked if I might share my thoughts on this question, and so, I will ~ What do you think might be the reason for why, these days, we do not seem to believe God says what He means and means what He says. And do you think there might be a cure? I think the church has likely been asking itself this very question in every age. I think we tend to commonly romanticize about the past and recognize our own time as not like it used to be - but in truth, America has experienced other generations where skepticism and unbelief seemed to be smothering the church to a fearful point of extinction. We know historically there have been at least 2 major, national, awakenings, and a numbered of more regional revivals - what not many realize is that these periods of Christian renewal came during times when the church, when Christian influence, had declined to be a seemingly insignificant part of American culture. At the time of both Great Awakenings, (roughly speaking) the periods of The Revolutionary War and The Civil War, people of notoriety and influence (political leaders, authors, thinkers, etc) publicly mocked Christianity and advanced humanistic philosophies. By the mid 1800s Christianity in America had largely become lifeless religion (hence the birth of the hyper-spiritualized movements of Mormonism, Adventists, Jehovahs Witnesses, etc) and the 1940/50s were marked by religious hypocrisy. But, as I say, we tend to look at, like personally witness, the public disdain for Christian truth and the promotion of ungodly philosophies of our own time and, romanticizing the past, we assume we are observing a fall from a better Christian station. Now, that being said, in the bigger picture I think we are living in a post-modern era . . . when I was young (Im 60 now) America seemed to be in a post-Christian era, meaning our culture dismissed Christian teaching as having any validity in the modern world - but you could still engage people on ideas of truth, you could still reason with people and examine questions seeking legitimate answers, etc. In the post-modern world of today, the idea of truth itself is suspect . . . people are less willing to honestly consider ideas, claims of truth, because they no longer count the idea of there being a true truth as valid anymore. Years ago a Christian could talk with an unbeliever and the discussion was useful, the unbeliever might disagree with you but he recognized you disagreed, that you thought one thing while he thought another - today a Christian is too often eliminated from the discussion, he is discounted before he speaks because the idea of truth and knowing truth is discounted . . . the Christian is considered a throwback, a non-modern man, a fool, and so is unworthy of any attention at all. A Voodoo practitioner is more respected today than a Christian . . . the Voodoo guy seems unconventional, exotic, etc - the Christian is just lame, too dull of mind and character to have escaped the dumb old American religion of the past, the modern man feels stupid to even consider what the Christian has to say (Christians are all anti-science racists to many). As to a cure; only God is the only cure, and that means the church, todays Christians, need to turn away from its own schemes and ploys (hip church music, friendly Sunday services, new teen girls with pink mohawks Bibles, etc) and return to trusting in God and His work in His church for His purposes in His world. And to me that means that what we need to do is return to the Bible, not as a guide for life, not as a comfort in the storm of life, etc, but as Gods revelation of the truth. We need to study the Bible, not for easy application, but for the real truth - like, what was Paul telling the Galatians in his letter to them and what did they understand him to be telling them . . . the point of the Bible is not for us to have our best life now, the point of the Bible is to provide Gods people an account of the truth of who Jesus is and what He did. The gospel isnt about the stone of our heart rolling away from the tomb of our misery so we can defeat depression - the gospel is about the real stone rolling away from the real tomb where the dead Jesus defeated death and is alive today. If the church returns to the truth of the gospel and rests fully on Jesus alone as our only hope, I (personally) believe we have every right to expect that Gods own Holy Spirit will revive His people again . . . we could, through Jesus, experience the greatest great awakening yet.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 01:16:15 +0000
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