I've heard it three different times now, from three people whose opinions I care about very much. All three think our society is getting worse as time goes on. I'm just not sure about that.
I've read in the Bible where it talks about people being given over to sin, and even where it says that many follow the wide path to hell, but few walk the narrow path to eternal life.
But...
I've also read where it says God will bless the sons of the righteous to the thousandth generation, but the sinful will only be cursed to the seventh generation
.
And...
I've read nothing that would suggest this current culture is any more or less disobedient toward God than any other revious generation.
The common rebuttal of this is that more sinful behavior has become more acceptable in our "western" society as time has gone on, but this downward trend has only been true for the past 50 years or so. And even then, the whole of American cultural history can only be expanded to the last 500 years at best, thus the whole of cultural history [roughly 4,000 years] dwarfs "western" history greatly.
Still, I'm perplexed, any ideas?
Getting worse?
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5 comments:
i dont think its necessarily getting "worse" as much as certain things are "more accepted" by our culture. There is nothing new under the sun, and all the things that our society deems as issues, or better yet, christians in our society deem as issues, have all been around since the beginning of man, in every culture throughout history. Problem is that a lot of it is new to us as a society, and our american mentalities dont let us look far past ourselves enough to see that others have always dealt with all of these things for a very long time now.
Drew, I *think* I agree with you. It seems to me that a person who says that our society is getting worse is probably only referring to the U.S. or at best, the "western" world. If that is all we are talking about, then maybe they are right. I think the "west" is gradually slipping into sin, complacency and towards humanism (Europe is far ahead of us). However, if we are talking about the entire world, there are huge movements of God in places like Africa, South & Central America, etc. Might it be that certain parts of the world are turning their backs on God more and more each day while other parts are turning their faces towards Him?
I have a book on my "to read" shelf titled "The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity" by Philip Jenkins. His basic point is that the center of the "Christian World" is moving to the Southern Hemisphere. It came really highly recommended to me by several people.
Wow, I sure did use quotes a lot in this reply, didn't I?
I agree, it's all relative. America has slipped since the 50's, morally speaking, but we still have a lot of debauchery and revelry ahead of us to reach Sodom & Gomorrah statius.
Sandy, in reality, some things truly are relative. I've blogged about this fact several times and some are under the Permaposts on the right. No denying the absolute, but I believe we are now seeing a huge rebuttal of the "enlightened" thought that everything can be understood in hard and fast rules. And concerning black and white, I'd rather live in color.
Drew...
Yes, Let's all live *in color*!
Jesus lived *in color* (*colorful* company, *colorful* events and places, etc). It is just my perception that the Holy Spirit says we should live *in color* on this side of that black and white line we cross when we invite Jesus to be Lord of our life. I would continue to *argue* for the case for non relative decisions in light of this model.
Sandy
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