So I found myself in a rather melancholy mood today. More so than usual. I found myself reflecting on the future, and not just my future, but the collective future of America, of the culture, of the church, of my friends, etc. Big Picture kinda stuff. I am troubled by what I see as a general attitude being accepted and fleshed out by the current culture, the country, and yes, even the church. That trend I detect is a desire to flee from tradition and history and forge a new path of unexplored territory. Now don't get me wrong... I know change is inevitable. I know change is not always bad. I read "Who Moved My Cheese" back in the day, I know you have to accept change as inevitable and role with the punches sometimes. I know my history. But I also think that all change is not always good, and change for the sheer sake of change itself is almost always dangerous to some extent. Am I even making sense? Let me break it down a bit more: Our culture has forsaken our past and thrown 200 years of American History, 2000 years of church history and theology, and who knows how many years of truth, virtue, beauty, and dignity out the window. We've thrown it out the window and decided to redefine everything based on the current moods of the times. Well I think it's dangerous. Ravi Zacharias makes a pleas for absolute truth in culture in his book Jesus Among Other Gods when he says "Judge the words of this book not by the mood of the times but by the truth of the scriptures. Moods change. Truth does not." We've entered an age where everyone is right and everyone is wrong as they see fit in their own eyes. I'm pretty sure the Bible warns against this when we read in the final closing statement of Judges 21:25: "In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes." Is this not too far detached from where we are today folks? Judges is a book that chronicles the downward spiral of the nation of Israel, indeed, parts of it read like they were torn right out of today's headlines. I'm not trying to bash the country, I'm not all "fire and brimstone and hell for America!" or anything radical like that. I have optimism and hope for the future to be sure, but I'm simply reporting now what I'm seeing folks. I love my God, my family, and my country, though not always in that order and not always as I should. I fully admit that. I'm just concerned by the severe lack of standards I see today. We have no objective reference point for truth in the modern age, because hey, truth is relative, right? Wrong. Truth, by it's very definition excludes. If some things are true, then naturally some things must be false or wrong as well. What is this reference point for truth you ask? I would submit that it is Jesus Christ. (Uh oh, I'm dropping the J-word. Guess I'm ignorant, narrow minded, and you can tune me out now huh? Listen to yourselves sometime people, then ask me if I'm crazy for believing what I do. Be honest now.)
Lets look at where the country is. Better yet, let's look at what Edmund Burke had to say about the French Revolution. Because it directly applies to where we are today. The intellectual wellspring of modern political conservatism, Edmund Burke is also considered a significant figure in aesthetic theory and cultural studies. As a member of the House of Commons during the late 18th century, Burke shook Parliment with his powerful defense of the American Revolution and the rights of persecuted Catholics in England and Ireland, his indictment of the English rape of the Indian subcontinent, and, most famously, his denunciation of the French Revolution. Listen to what he said in reaction to the famous revolution in France:
When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment we have no compass to govern us, nor can we know distinctly to what port we steer. Europe, undoubtedly, taken in a mass, was in a flourishing condition the day on which your revolution was completed. How much of that prosperous state was owing to the spirit of our old manners and opinions is not easy to say; but as such causes cannot be indifferent in their operation, we must presume, that, on the whole, their operation was beneficial.We are but too apt to consider things in the state in which we find them, without sufficiently adverting to the causes by which they have been produced, and possibly may be upheld. Nothing is more certain than that our manners, our civilization, and all the good things which are connected with manners and with civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles, and were, indeed, the result of both combined: I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion. The nobility and the clergy, the one by profession, and the other by patronage, kept learning in existence, even in the midst of arms and confusions, and whilst governments were rather in their causes than formed. Learning paid back what it received to nobility and to priesthood, and paid it with usury, by enlarging their ideas, and by furnishing their minds. Happy, if they had all continued to know their indissoluble union, and their proper place! Happy, if learning, not debauched by ambition, had been satisfied to continue the instructor, and not aspired to be the master! Along with it's natural protectors and guardians, learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.If, as I suspect, modern letters owe more than they are always willing to own to ancient matters, so do other interests which we value full as much as they are worth. Even commerce, and trade, and manufacture, the gods of our economical politicians, are themselves perhaps but creatures, are themselves but effects, which, as first causes, we choose to worship. They certainly grew under the same shade in which learning flourished. They, too, may decay with their natural protecting principles. With you, for the present at least, they all threaten to disappear together. Where trade and manufacturers are wanting to a people, and the spirit of nobility and religion remains, sentiment supplies, and not always ill supplies, their place; but if commerce and the arts should be lost in an experiment to try how well a state may stand without these old fundamental principles, what sort of a thing must be a nation of gross, stupid, ferocious, and at the same time poor and sordid barbarians, destitute of religion, honor, or manly pride, possessing nothing at present, and hoping for nothing hereafter?
Wow. OK, to break it down simply, Burke is saying the Revolution in France is doomed because they have thrown out the window the age-old compass of tradition and rules of life, and put nothing in their place to guide the hearts and minds of the people. The spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion, he claims, are two of the main pillars on which every clear thinking free and prosperous society was built on. Look at America today my friends. See much acceptance of these pillars of tradition? In fact the opposite is probably true: gentlemen and religion have been declared a dead thing of a past, an old superstitious relic leaned on by those not ready to progress forward. I would point out simply, to remove the pillars is to remove the foundation, and then what kind of country, society, culture, etc, are you going to be able to build? The Church is doing it too, throwing out ages of doctrines and history to claim a new "emerging church" where we re-evaluate everything in today's cultural light. Well guess what? Where is it written that you can do that without possible dire consequences? It's foolhardy, dangerous, and stupid to claim that we must wipe the slate clean and start over. It's the height of arrogance really, and as George Santayana put it: "those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it". We've fashioned ourselves to be smarter, faster, more capable, and more clear-minded than all our predecessors, and it's only led us to reject truth, standards, decency, virtues, and integrity as we seek to claim the ultimate revelation that escaped generations of others. Well all I know is that the last time mankind got so full of themselves, they tried to build a tower to heaven and God struck them with mixed tongues and languages, thus giving the Tower of Babel it's name. Look it up, in Genesis 11.
I guess all I'm trying to say is we need more open table discussions on the matters of how we as a church, a culture, and a country are to enter the new century we're still standing at the front edge of. To simply discredit and reject the lessons and work down in the past is a bad idea that will reap dour consequences. Don't be so hasty to thumb your nose at traditions, doctrines, ideas, and theories that have been around long before you have, and probably will exist a long time after you're gone too. Take a lesson from Edmund Burke, and let's get back to the roots of the issue, using the past not as a punching bag, but as a tool for understanding the future. It's a bright dawn ahead of us, yet we ought not forget the wisdom gleaned from many sunrises of the past as well, nor forget the source of such sunrises... with a little reflection, you may find that the 'ole "J" word may just be the man you're looking for to make sense of everything. In fact, I have faith you will. He's holding it all together folks, he's laid down the lessons and foundations from which we can decipher what is true and what is not. Give Jesus a chance sometime, will ya?
So thanks for reading, I'm curious to know what you guys think of all this. Did I make sense? I blog because I care...
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