Perceptions #200024

"What's Happening to Our World?"

by Norman Bales

Sometimes I think the world is in a first class mess. Families break apart at alarming rates. Alcoholism and drug addiction continues to destroy the productivity of a large percentage of our young people. Homosexuality, abortion and cohabitation are accepted as normal forms of behavior by an increasing number of people. Divorce has almost totally lost its stigma. Civility is practically non-existent. God has not only been removed from our schools; He has been removed from the thinking of an enormous number of people. I keep wondering what kind of crazy thing is going to happen in our world next. At this point I almost sound like Job's wife - someone who would counsel, "Curse God and die."

But if you think that, then you don't know me. I'm a wide-eyed optimist and a romantic to boot. When I look at the darkness in our world I go searching for a flashlight. An enormously impressive event took place at the Southern Hills church just recently. Mark Pugh, our pulpit minister, walked into the pulpit his usual effervescent self. He even told a joke, then confessed that it was an attempt to balance the heaviness of what he was about to do. The house lights were turned down and he lit a single candle. He mentioned that he had heard discouraging talk in the church. Some had discouraged others by cursing the darkness. He held the candle up to remind us of the old saying, "It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness." I'm not suggesting that we deny the existence of the darkness and I'm not saying we should pretend that it's not there. I'm not that much of a romantic. Instead, I want to echo Mark's sentiment about lighting a candle.

Several years ago I heard someone say, "The early Christians never said, 'Look at the awful things happening in our world.' Instead, they said, 'look at the wonderful Savior who has come into our world.'" They lived in an environment that was probably more decadent than our own. The world was not only decadent; it was far more hostile. Physical persecution was a daily fact of life. Somehow they overcame the opposition. Paul said they proclaimed the gospel, "...to every creature under heaven." Their influence was so pervasive that some historians estimate that ten percent of the population of the Roman Empire had embraced Christianity by the time of Constantine.

Gibbon the historian, said of the Empire, "While that great body was invaded by open violence or undermined by slow decay, a pure and humble religion gently insinuated itself into the minds of men, grew up in the silence of obscurity, derived new vigor from opposition and finally erected the banner of the cross on the ruins of the Capitol."

We shouldn't view the present moral and spiritual environment as a grim specter of destruction. Several years ago, a handwringer said to me, "If the Communists take over, you can kiss Christianity good-bye." Baloney! Christianity is indestructible. As a matter of fact Communists are having more than a few of their own problems these days.

How are we to regard the current problems in our moral and social environment? We should accept the fact that such problems are both serious and dangerous, but hand wringing is a useless response. The environment provides us an opportunity to demonstrate the beauty of Christ like living against the backdrop of the ugliness of human depravity. From that point of view, our opportunities were never greater.

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