Comments on our Society

Whitney Houston sang, "Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all." We know that. Even Christians will tell you that if you don't love yourself, you can't love others as you love yourself. Never mind that it's a failure to understand "love" or that it contradicts Paul's assertion that we all love ourselves. From Oprah to the church, we know that loving yourself is important¹.

The next important thing we need today is money. You can't make money without having money. Money makes the world go 'round. The biggest problem of the day is the economy. So much of our lives revolve around money -- having it, making it, keeping it. No one really doubts that money is important².

Have you ever noticed that in today's society the general conception is that women are wiser than men, and children are the wisest of all? Watch any movie or TV show with children and you'll get the most sage advice from the little kids. We really like those stories about children who stand up to unbearable parents and make it on their own. That, in today's society, is "good"! If I gave you a quote from a young girl saying, "But, Dad, I love him!", you'd likely already believe that the evil parents are barring her from following her heart, and that she ought to ignore her parents and run away with him. It's just the way we see things³.

One of the biggest maladies of our day is the lack of gratitude. We are not grateful to parents for raising us. We are not grateful to our employers for giving us jobs. We are not grateful to our spouses for putting up with us, let alone being kind to us. We are certainly not grateful to God for His manifold blessings. Gratitude in our society is a rare element⁴.

It used to be that the phrase "America's Pastime" was a reference to baseball. It's not really appropriate anymore, not merely because baseball isn't as popular as it used to be, but because it isn't what Americans apparently like to do the most. It could be argued that today's favorite pastime is litigation. I can't even turn on the television without an advertisement that encourages me to sue someone for something they might have done. Class action lawsuits are on the rise. Medical malpractice suits seem to be routine. In the largest numbers ever the government is being sued for everything from birds endangering planes to the location of the border fences. That's okay because the government itself has engaged in suing its own people. Litigation is our national pastime now. We will not give an inch. We will not talk it out. We will not be appeased⁵.

One of the big conversations taking place is the problem of mean-spiritedness in our national dialog. They were quite sure that the guy recently ruled incompetent to stand trial for the shootings in Tucson was goaded by the slander and abusive speech of the right. It's a big problem, we're quite sure⁶.

One of the key elements in our debates today seems to be our freedom. No, not general freedom. It's the freedom to do whatever we please. It's the freedom to indulge our every whim. If you suggest that there is right or wrong indulgence, you're intolerant. If you recommend that self-control is an option at times, you're narrow-minded. No, no, we ought to be allowed to do what we please when we please however we please and no one should have the right to say otherwise⁷.

Despite all of this, it's an interesting fact that America is a "religious" nation. The Pew Forum says that 78% of American adults classify themselves as Christian and another 5% "other religions". Only 16% classify themselves as "unaffiliated" which includes less than 2% atheist and a little more than 2% agnostic and another 12% "nothing in particular" (which includes 6% "religious unaffiliated"). That means that something around 90% of Americans classify themselves as "religious". Yet, in all these vast numbers of "religious" people, it turns out that something around 5% hold that religion is something serious, something that affects their lives. Religion, it seems, is a good thing as long as it doesn't actually do anything⁸. We appear to have religion, but we deny its power.

Oh, wait ... that last phrase brings to mind a particular passage of Scripture.

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be ¹lovers of self, ²lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, ³disobedient to their parents, ⁴ungrateful, unholy, heartless, ⁵unappeasable, ⁶slanderous, ⁷without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having ⁸the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth (2 Tim 3:1-7).

Oh, I don't know about you, but to me that sounds way too much like a vivid description of the norm today in our society. Arrogant, abusive, not loving good, lovers of pleasure, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. Last days, huh?

Harold Camping's failed prophecies have touched off a whole new set of skeptics -- you know, like Peter writes about. "Scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, 'Where is the promise of his coming?'" (2 Peter 3:3-4). Funny thing is that these scoffers are doing so in the midst of a dead-on description of the "last days". Just an interesting note.