From what I’ve read and heard, almost every generation of older people think things are worse now than before. It’s almost a rite of passage into old age to complain about what young people are doing now, comparing it to the way things were done. This expectation of each succeeding generation of old people is so anticipated that it might be assumed that things aren’t actually worse, it’s just the familiar protestations of the next crop of spinsters. The postulation becomes, “don’t trust the notions of the aged.” Except. Things really are much worse now. Take that from someone who still hasn’t started ordering off the senior menu, even though in spirit a card-carrying old-timer.
Mitch Albom, New York Times best-selling author and popular newspaper columnist (Detroit Free Press), albeit not credible at sixty years of age, reports on Sunday that things indeed have changed regarding religion. He starts by writing:
A recent survey showed there are now as many Americans who claim “no religion” — 23 percent — as there are who identify as Catholic or evangelical, the two largest affiliations.
This trend has been rising steadily, reportedly growing nearly 270 percent in the last 30 years. Which means next time they take the poll, America’s most popular answer to “What is your religious tradition?” will be “None.””
Without any curmudgeon bias, this constitutes measurable figures suggesting things really are worse than they were. “None” is different at least, and estimable bad news whether expressed by creaky oldsters or not. Maybe they do know what they’re talking about.
The Apostle Paul, who was probably younger than me when he wrote this, commended the Thessalonian church “because that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the charity of every one of you all toward each other aboundeth” (2 Thessalonians 1:3). By key quantifiers, a church had gotten better than what it was, which someone might call a rarity. It can happen, but it usually doesn’t. Overall today, churches have gotten worse all over, even though sometimes publicizing that they are doing better than ever.
If faith isn’t growing and love abounding, then that would be a way of saying that things are worse than before and that something is wrong. One should want increased faith and love as a computation of improvement.
Albom in his article says that it makes sense that “nones” are multiplying in light of (or maybe darkness) a provided sample list of what’s gone wrong with religion. One might ask Albom, however, is this a cause or an effect? Did things happen because of this list or is this list many of the things happening? I choose the latter. I choose, these are some of the symptoms and not the disease, and this is something I’ve been writing about ever since I started writing here.
Albom argues for religion. He ends his column with this question: “Is it God that you are disillusioned with, or man?” It’s a good question, which should bring other ones.
If someone can judge religion or at least “organized religion” to be bad, then he himself must have some objective standard of judgment by which he assesses it. At the very beginning of the church, which was founded by Jesus Christ, God put to death two members of the first and only church in Jerusalem because of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy can only exist where something true and real exists. What is true? Or, what is truth?
I’ll assume that you know the last question is the name of and always has been the identity of this blog. What is truth? An increase in faith is a stronger belief in the truth. I see faith waning and weakening because of attacks on and then uncertainty in the truth.
As bad as it is out there, in my lifetime there has never been a better basis for believing. We don’t have any new scripture, but so much today validates what we already know from the Bible. Nothing in science or archaeology or history contradicts what God’s Word teaches. Some of the best arguments from scripture have been formulated and are easily available. Sound exposition of the Word of God is available to a wider audience. And yet it is also true that things are much worse.
What is happening? It seems that even solid, faithful families have lost some children to the world. The “nones” are some of those pushing the eject button. I propose two major reasons for things being much worse today. They are both scriptural. One that I’m not going to suggest as a reason is the prophecy from the Bible that things will get worse before they can get better. We might be in the midst of that, but there are still reasons why things get worse, and I don’t think they’ll be much of a surprise.
First, the world is a harder place than ever to keep the faith. The world is a more deceptive place. It’s hard to keep your children away from the world. You can’t do what Mark Twain apparently suggested and put them in a barrel and then at some point put a hole in it. Churches are less separate than ever and yet the world is worse than ever — that is a lethal combination.
Everyone today has the easiest access to the worst possible materials. It makes truth easier to spread, but it’s just as easy to disperse error of all kinds. Most dangerous in my estimation, but matching what I see in scripture, is lust. Television, internet, radio, mobile electronic devices, social media, and travel broadcast the most alluring, destructive information and pictures at light speed. It seems impossible to stop. I’m not saying that we can’t, but it is very difficult.
Peter wrote that “fleshly lusts war against the soul” (1 Peter 2:11). Sadly, churches use fleshly lust as a part of the church growth movement. I think most churches today then propagate a counterfeit grace of God that validates the fleshly lust. Young people feel entitled to belly up to the trough of this world with full forgiveness and acceptance. Churches actually provide it and those are counted often as spiritual because of their use of mysticism. This also redefines God in people’s minds.
So, the world provides lust and churches provide lust. It’s everywhere. The world itself is better and faster at it. Young people are deceived all over. Parents try to step in, and they just don’t think the parents get it. They’ve been introduced to and offered something that they just don’t think the previous generation understands. They don’t want to give it up. However, it isn’t God. It is a placebo that will send almost all of them careening into Hell forever.
Second, closely related to one, churches stopped being about the truth. If the truth is why people are in the church, then it is also what will keep them in church. They are leaving, because it has become about something else. Even if people have offended the young people, who are now becoming “nones” and think justifiably so, it doesn’t change the truth. Is the offense, based on the truth or not? There’s got to be some basis for the offense, those kinds of things Albom has listed, if it is offensive, unless it is only about self.
Our church hasn’t lost much through decades now, because it has been based upon the truth. If a young person goes elsewhere, and it becomes apparent through other churches that lust and the truth can coexist, that has become a problem. They’ve never been exposed to the false version of Christianity either adopted by extended family members or around new places of employment. They didn’t know you could be a Christian and worldly or a Christian and pagan. They saw something where someone could be both because of a perverted view of forgiveness, love, grace, and sanctification.
When someone becomes a “none,” he was never saved in the first place, but something still took him over to apostasy, where he deserted the truth, like a Judas or a prodigal. Peter compares it (2 Peter 2) to a dog returning to its vomit. A very influential false version of Christianity tangles people and then finally bounces them into the world Those religious institutionas won’t last. Before my life ends many, if not most, of them will be gone, completely turned away from the faith. They are not based upon the truth.
Almost every church in America has degraded. I can’t usually find a place to attend when I’m on the road. There is either something wrong in the preaching or the worship. I’ve described the process in previous posts. If they don’t think God’s Word is inspired, then it wasn’t preserved, and then they aren’t sure what it means. Capitulation in any of these areas is a death knell. At the same time, the churches become about something else about the church that is attractive to people to try to keep who they’ve got. None of that is right. Neither will it work.
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