I was standing with some young people at the intersection of University and Markham in Little Rock, Arkansas. It was morning rush hour and we were welcoming commuters to a new day with signs containing Bible verses.
Up pulled a fellow in a Porsche Targa. His T-top was open. “Good morning, sir. Are you going to heaven in your Targa?”
“I don’t believe in that stuff,” he replied, “but if it’s true, I hope it’s a long time in coming.”
The light turned green. “Well, drive VERY carefully, sir,” was all I could say.
That’s where we are—rolling along in the latest technology, but headed where? Who will tell us? What we need is an old-fashioned prophet who calls it like GOD sees it.
Here we go: “In the last days perilous times will come: for men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” (2 Tim 3:1-4)
This first century description by Paul is becoming 21st century America. To pretend otherwise is self-delusion. Yet the erosion of biblical Christianity hasn’t led to the diminishing of religious fervor. Instead, Jesus’ teachings are being replaced with beliefs of human concoction.
There’s scientism, the notion that science can answer all of life’s questions. But science tells us what we can do, not what we should do. Professing to explain how, it’s stymied by the simplest childish “Why?”
Here’s another option, what Andrew Sullivan calls “The Great Awokening,” where many are “discovering a new meaning in the midst of the fallen world…And social-justice ideology does everything a religion should. It offers an account of the whole: that…society and any kind of truth must be seen entirely as a function of social power structures, in which various groups have spent all of human existence oppressing other groups.” It’s the wrecking ball view of history.
For those not quite ready to sever ties with Christianity, there’s Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. “Christianity in this nation is rotting from the inside out,” says pollster George Barna. “MTD is essentially what I would call fake Christianity.”
Barna explains: “The moralistic perspective is we’re here to be good people…The therapeutic aspect is everything is supposed to be geared to making me feel good about myself…Deism is the idea that God created the world but has no direct involvement in it.”
This is Selfism, replacing ancient idols with a mirror. It is the spirit of antiChrist, when people are worshiped as gods. The end result? Self-lovers, money-lovers, pleasure-lovers, and no God-lovers.
So how’s it going, America? The need of the hour is not for the world to act like Christians, but for Christians to act like Christians. To make Christ our dearest Friend. To pray like we mean it. To take the Bible as God’s voice to us. To walk in holiness. To care for the needy. To share the Good News at every opportunity. Here is Paul’s précis: “be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity…give yourself entirely to them.” (1 Tim 4:12-15)
The world’s wide way (Mt 7:13) leads to destruction. One good thing about it, though. It’s wide enough to make a U-turn.
Article by Jabe Nicholson first published in the Commercial Dispatch, Sunday, August 14, 2022