WHERE ARE WE GOING AND DO WE KNOW WHY?<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

         8 September 2009
 

Job 12:12 (KJV) tells us: 'With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding.'  While I will not try and take it upon myself to claim to have all of the promises of that Scripture, I do believe that the past few months of my, now growing ancient, life have revealed to me many things in a different perspective.  I want to share some of what these events have been and how they are reshaping much of my thinking.

The key events in these past few months have been a trip to Finland; Jean sharing with me about her attending the Wisconsin church where she grew up; being in charge of planning for my 60th, yes, I am that ancient, high school reunion; several devotional readings and most importantly, the culture that surrounds me.  Some of the lessons learned are not easy to either explain or digest but there is a truth that must be at the foundation of our worldview or it will keep us from being able to correctly understand the things that Job and his companions learned, what the teacher in Ecclesiastes wrote about and what Proverbs tells about how to live a glorious life.

Who in America has not been aware of change?  That was the keynote of the Obama 2008 presidential campaign, it is the substance of our evolving economic system, it is the touchstone of our electronic world, it is the center of controversy in our judicial system, it is the centerpiece of the argument over what a marriage is and the list goes on to include most, if not every, aspect of our lives.  But, the question is, are we managing the change or is the change managing us?  Are we able to control our lives or must we surrender to what the world would have us be?  And finally, how does our relationship with God and living for Him relate to change?  The Psalmist, in Psalm 90:12 warns us thusly, 'So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.'  But, is it truly wisdom that we are seeking in our dwindling days or is it compatibility with our surrounding culture?

This is being written from a United States perspective because I have begun to understand just how different we Americans think and act from the rest of the world.  We do not spend enough time going out of our house and looking back into the windows to see how others see us, either physically or philosophically.  We have a cultural presence about us that has set us apart from most, if not all, of the world because of the bountiful blessings that God has bestowed upon our nation.  Instead of using those blessings to God's glory we have too often consumed those blessings on our own excesses.  I am not writing this so much to condemn the United States as I am to suggest that it is now past time for us to take a very deep breath and to look at where we came from, where we are and where we are going.  Even more importantly, do we know where we are going, and if so who made that decision?

Not only did God create us in His image, He gave us two attributes, which He knew to be necessary for us to live the life that He had prepared for us.  Those are memories and time.  Throughout the Bible, God is hearkening to us to remember what He has done.  The reason that God left the Israelites to wander in the wilderness for forty years was their failure to base their trust in Him for tomorrow upon their memory of what He had done for them yesterday.  Numbers 15:39 (KJV), 'And it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the LORD, and do them; and that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes,' is just one of many references about God reminding His people to remember His law and the path that they were to follow.  God also had His servants imbed monuments as a reminder of His faithfulness, Joshua 4:21-23 (KJV): '…What mean these stones?  Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land.  For the LORD your God dried up the waters of Jordan from before you, until ye were passed over, as the LORD your God did to the Red sea,…'.  So, if benchmarks and memory devices are so important to God, shouldn't they be important to us?  After all, isn't that what is behind the celebration of birthdays, Easter, Christmas and especially our preparation before we partake of communion?

Without time, how would we mortals be able to judge who is the fastest, if a loved one's critical surgery is proceeding as we expected, to plan for how we will spend our lives here on earth, or even to know when to expect our loved one to arrive?  Yes, God, who has no need for the dimension of time because He sees all of the yesterdays just as clearly as He sees all of the tomorrows, has given us a method of regulating our lives so that we can be orderly and properly prepared for future challenges.  Who amongst us would even consider living the rest of their life without any form of a clock or calendar?  That was one of the most difficult issues for those Americans who had to spend years of isolated captivity as prisoners of war in Hanoi.  They carried on by remembering segments of Scripture and hymns.  They also marked their walls to count the passing days so they could envision the changes taking place in the lives of their children and loved ones.  Yes, God is a perfect planner and has given us the tools to prepare ourselves for His service.  Only those who are in perfect accord with God can properly bring together memory and time to trust Him for their future because they remembered His faithfulness in the past.

Change is a necessary process in our lives, but we should be cautious about how we allow change to be a part of our lives.  Could a parent live without deep concerns if they did not see any change in the first year of their baby's life, or could we have gone to the moon if our technology for computational processes had not changed from the Abacus, or could we have people living after heart failure if the medical profession had not developed a method for heart replacement?  These, and many other changes are vital to our ability to take advantage of what God has given us in the form of such things as mental capacity, the earth's resources, strong and healthy bodies, relationships, productivity and fulfilling the Great Commission.  But, we are experiencing changes that my summer experiences have made me question whether we truly know where we are going and why those changes are causing so much distress among our fellow citizens.

If I only go back sixty years, I find an entirely different culture and I am not certain that I like what I see.  About a quarter of a century ago the Air Force required me to attend a two-week traveling program they entitled Charm School.  It was designed to acquaint all of the newly selected Brigadier Generals with a broader view of the Air Force than what they had learned in their relatively narrow professional field.  A presentation by one of many four-star generals has remained with me because of one major point he stressed, Meaningful Measures of Merit.  The purpose of his topic was that too often the Air Force was choosing those Measures of Merit that would provide them with the answers they wanted, whether those measures were truly significant to the big picture or not.  I think that the United States is living in a culture where the leaders and cultural shapers are choosing to use that very same process to satisfy their own egos.  But, I have become certain that we should be looking back to God's standards, the memory monuments He has established and the time that is in His hands for evaluating change.

My most recent trip to Finland was one of the most culturally relevant experiences that I have had because it brought into sharp contrast two different life styles.  After my return landing in London, I quickly realized that I was going from the tranquil to the turmoil.  That realization was reinforced while watching television during a long layover in Dallas.  What I saw was a country that had radically changed just in the last sixty years, let alone the two hundred and thirty since it was established.  I saw a nation where most, if not all, cultural segments were in a state of divisiveness.  Just to name a few:

• The political process has become so divisive that ideas are rejected not because of their value but because of who presented it – a situation where governing for the well being of the nation is no longer possible.
• The government run schools have become so anti-Christian that the leaders are not willing to let students and faculty enjoy those residual constitutional rights that the courts are regularly reconfirming.  Because of the possible connection between creation and the Bible, the content of teaching science has become so volatile that even the suggestion that evolution is a theory provides the basis for legal repercussions.
• The divisiveness over such things as the legality of abortions, up to and including the moment of a live birth, and whether marriage is an institution solely between a man and a woman, topics that were not even imagined sixty years ago.  Where in history has any culture survived when the answer to that last example is that marriage is anything that you want it to be, just to make sodomy socially acceptable?  This nation has seen over fifty million babies killed in the womb since 1972 and the politicians wonder why there is a personnel shortage in the work force, which has dwindled to the point where there are not enough young people supporting social security to sustain the program. 
• The longstanding benchmarks of the nation, the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, are no longer considered to mean what the authors meant them to mean.  Just a cursory review of their writings, speeches and legislative proceedings will reveal that they were very clear about not just the content but the philosophy.  Throughout the Twentieth Century, there has been a series of revisionist efforts to destroy the meaning of the original texts and to transform the nation from reliance upon the Bible to trusting only in the religion of Humanism. 
• The courts have taken it upon their own shoulders to determine when the democratic process will be permitted to stand and when it will be set aside to fulfill the desire of any one person who might want to disrupt the system, even though the issue does not impact upon his own personal life.  No longer are the eyes of the lady holding the scales of justice blindfolded. 
• The excesses of greed have become so prevalent that no longer can the economy sustain a growth rate that will insure future generations the same opportunity for an improved life-style that was enjoyed by their forefathers.  Corporate and financial leaders are given hundreds of millions of dollars in annual compensation packages that can only be justified by their insatiable appetite to see how full they can make their toy box.  Unfortunately, those gains are only temporary as none of them will be able to enjoy them once they depart this life.
• Highly visible sexuality has become the centerpiece for all forms of advertising.  The prevalence of ladies, or should I more correctly say women's, plunging necklines regularly reveals cleavage that was not known amongst the graduation pictures of my female classmates.  Such boldness and suggestive situations would not have been acceptable at a time when the local churches were still able to stop the showing of films that today would only be rated slightly more suggestive than the PG level.  But, sixty years ago the churches were more willing to shape the culture than they are today. 
• Turmoil in the United States family structure has reached epidemic proportions.  Divorce is rampant.  My graduating class had one hundred members from families in a gold mining town.  Miners have never been known to be 'Sunday School' people, yet there was not a classmate from a broken home.  Today, my three grandchildren attend a Christian school and each one is in a class where nearly one-fourth of their classmates are from broken homes.  That change has not only impacted thousands of young people with a life long question of worthiness, it has become a social and financial burden to the culture.  
• The overall church scene has experienced a devolution that has left too many members with a feeling of loss and a competiveness amongst high profile leaders seeking to amend structure and belief systems at the expense of adhering to the Scriptural standards that were the foundation for well-documented and heralded revivals.  What was successful then is not considered acceptable today.
• The list could go on but it would only require additional reading time with no added value.

How does God's Word, Meaningful Measures of Merit, memory and time tie together to cause me to question whether we truly know where we are going and why?  Because when I look at our culture through a different lens I see a different set of values.  The United States has become a massive consumer culture.  We have more toys than we can ever play with or take to our next residence.  Our clothes closets are larger than the bedrooms in many, if not most, homes in foreign countries.  Our excesses have come to control us instead of us controlling our possessions.  That same insatiable appetite is having major consequences on the overall health of the nation.  I lost over eleven pounds in less than two weeks in Finland, without any conscious effort of dieting,  because of their food preparation and diet selections.  While in Finland, I enjoyed a period of tranquility and observed a people who could joyously survive with far fewer toys than what we demand.  Our need to have all of the latest toys has led to an unsurvivable debt because the nation has purchased more goods than it has been able to sell or export.  We have used massive amounts of resources to satisfy our own urges that could have been used to fulfill the Great Commission and to feed countless starving humans. 

We have lost some of the most stabilizing requirements of a healthy culture.  At one time or another, we all need a haven of rest and security, but those are disappearing.  It used to be that we could find that shelter in the permanence, warmth and security of our church, which is becoming more difficult.  Can the church be considered a community benchmark if it is always changing?  Surveyors establish a benchmark to be a proven and true point where they can return to start a new survey.  Does God intend for the church to be such a benchmark,?  We have seen the benchmarks of revival success and tradition washed away by change so that it is almost impossible for me to take my grandchildren to the Baptist Church we joined just forty years ago and show them any worship semblance to the history of that time.  Yet, while I was in Finland, Jean attended the church where she grew up and found it to be almost identical, except for some modern architectural trimmings, to the church she knew as a grade school student.  For her, that was a source of peace to know that she still had a place where she could 'go home'.  A place where she was connected with her past.  And we wonder why so many people wander about without roots or have no feeling of accountability.  Are we certain that the measures we are using to justify all of this change are truly Meaningful Measures of Merit?  We have replaced much of the Scripture learning acquired through the singing of those hymns that had weathered several hundred years of giving comfort and bringing people closer to Christ and are accommodating a new genre of music and justifying the change with the idea that it is necessary to bring in the younger generation.  But, what are they learning and are we maintaining their attendance?  Both Barna and Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis say no.  We are losing them faster than we are gaining them because the preaching of today does not counterattack the damage they are experiencing in a godless education system, which causes them to doubt the veracity of Scripture and the pulpit message.  The message of Romans 10:14(KJV): 'How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?' tells us that the key to having people call upon Christ is to send them a preacher, not a pop combo playing loud music with a heavy drum beat.  Thirty years ago the Evangelical movement was urging their young people to resist the cultural music partly because of its heavy drum beat.  They said that many missionaries to Africa had found it increasingly difficult to study their Scripture as their power of concentration had been clouded by the incessant heavy drum beat coming from the jungles. Today, we have brought that which was deemed counter to solid living into the church as a stage show. 

In conclusion, the nation has lost its bearings and slipped from its moorings as it has turned away from the one and only central factor in the founding of the United States, a belief in the God that provided the Text where we find thirty-five percent of the words used in the founding documents.  That same Bible is the basis for another sixty percent of the ideas proffered by those founding fathers.  Even today's tea parties, while notable in that it has finally marshaled many of the silent majority to become active, only treat our relationship with God as a side issue and not the core issue.  Going back to the time period of my high school graduation the sin of greed was not nearly as prevalent and culturally devastating as it is today.  There was still a common sense of civility, accountability, modesty, regard for the traditional values of marital fidelity and sanctity of life.  Yes, I do wonder if the leaders in the various segments of our culture have turned to using truly Meaningful Measures of Merit to evaluate those changes they are leading or are they merely using those measures that will give them the answer they desire to salve their own conscience?  It took a life changing trip and several other events to cause me to step back and ask myself, are we truly doing these things for the glory of God or to satisfy our own egos?  If we confess to be Christians, aren't we confessing that we have been bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ?  Then, aren't we slaves to Christ?  If so, then should we not look to God for any changes that we make?  After all, God hasn't changed, the message hasn't changed, and the history of success can't be changed so why are we changing?