When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land He has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe His commands, His laws and His decrees that I am giving you this day~ Deuteronomy 8:10-11 NIV
It is painfully evident that a moral and cultural sea change has taken place in Western civilization over the course of the last five decades. Some of the changes have been tremendously positive (civil rights for minorities and women, advances in communication, a decrease in hunger, etc.).
Others not so much.
The divorce rate has nearly doubled. Abortion has gone from being an infrequent and mostly prohibited event to legal and appallingly routine all over the country. Marijuana has become legal and normalized nearly everywhere. Our baffling obsession with the nonsensical political views of celebrities has grown while the health and wellbeing of the family has tanked. After a quick look at any newscast or social media feed it is difficult to believe that there was ever a time without reality television, school shootings, terrorist attacks or sexting. Or that there was ever a time when people knew what gender they were simply by looking at the box the doctor checked on their birth certificate.
Sigh.
The real question (and the one that is seldom asked) is how did we get here? What caused this massive sea change in cultural norms?
Finding people and things to blame for the societal madness is not difficult. Value-neutral public education, self-serving politicians, violent and sexually explicit entertainment, materialism, social media, and liberal churches are all convenient scapegoats for our rapidly declining standards of morality and good sense. As bad as all of those things are, they are simply unpleasant symptoms of a much bigger and more pernicious malady.
The real problem is with the deep sense of complacency that has overcome the Western world. Complacency (according to dictionary.com) can defined as:
A quiet feeling of security, while unaware of some potential danger.
Complacency overtakes us when we forget that life is full of danger, especially from a spiritual perspective and begin to let things happen rather than make things happen. The nature of humanity is such that complacency is something that must be fought or it just naturally takes root in our lives. We must shake off our lethargy in the following four areas or we will lose the culture and the church in the next decade. The first is:
Politics-
I have never believed Christians are called to transform the world through political means. True and lasting transformation is a result of heart change. Heart change is something only God can make happen (Ezekiel 11:19, Ezekiel 23:36). That being said, Christians are called to pray for those in political leadership. (1st Timothy 2:1-3). God would never expect His people to pray for anything out of complete ignorance. We are called to be informed and politically active on whatever level God allows. We can all vote. Therefore, at the very least, Christians have an obligation to pray for political change and to work to vote out those opposed to the rule of law, who support evil or are who are openly anti-family.
Parenting-
For all intents and purposes, Christian parents have lost the better part of a generation to secularism, humanism and hedonism. If this trend continues we will lose another generation to the same stupid stuff. The trend will change when parents get serious about God, discipline, marriage, and being grown-ups again. If you’re unsure about how to parent from a Christian perspective, read a Christian parenting book that was written by someone whose kids are actually grown or find an older person who raised their kids well and learn from them (Titus 2:4, (Deuteronomy 6:6-7, Matthew 5:19).
Education-
Value-neutral education is devastating the moral fabric of the Western world. Christian parents must get actively involved in the education of their children. This means either removing our kids from the public system or doing the hard work of finding out what our kids are being taught and fighting the battles that need to be fought within the system. I have learned from personal experience that fighting these battles is never easy or fun, and it won’t make you popular. That said, it is the only way to make education better for all children.
Our spiritual lives-
Weak spirituality manifests itself in cheap grace and the belief that repentance is only something unsaved heathens need to do. We become spiritually strong by relentlessly assessing our own spiritual health, repenting when necessary and making God the center of every part of our lives.
Sadly, because we have a Republican President, American Christians are becoming increasingly more complacent. We need to remember that there will not be a republican in office forever and this is not the time to give into complacency. This is the time to pray, repent, share our faith and seek the Lord before it’s too late and we can’t or don’t want to anymore.
