At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak that
speak with equal power in the human soul: one… tells a man the nature of the
danger and the means of escaping it; the other… says that it is too depressing
and painful to think of the danger… and it is better to disregard what is
painful till it comes, and to think about what is pleasant. Leo Tolstoy
I must confess that I am neither a historian nor an expert
in cultural changes. The opinions expressed in this post are decidedly … my
own. Yet, I think that few Christians would disagree that the last 50 years
have seen incredible and degrading changes to the American (World?) culture.
I just sure hope that my fellow Christians are awake to the
fact that we are again… knee deep in the second wave of a contemporary cultural
disintegration in U.S. (World?) history and that this disintegration is not
only reshaping our nation, but the rest of the entire world as well. I can see
the reverberating effects here in Nakuru, Kenya.
The first wave began somewhere around 1964 and was called the
… ‘Hippy Movement’, of which I was, most regrettably, an active participant.
Some might ask …. Just what was that ‘Hippy Movement’? Here is the Wikipedia explanation and can be
found by clicking…
Here .
The term for the
participants of this movement was called hippies.
hip·pie also hip·py (hĭp′ē)
n. pl. hip·pies
A person who opposes and rejects many of the conventional standards and
customs of society, especially one who advocates extreme liberalism in
sociopolitical attitudes and lifestyles.
This movement,
perpetuated by the greatest information spewing technology of the time (that
would be television with its advanced psychological marketing techniques that
were used to brainwash young minds worldwide) undermined and weakened thousands
of years of collected human wisdom. And the changes it advocated have been
devastating to the proven and sustainable concepts of human decency, integrity,
morality, family and so forth.
The moral revolution with its ‘Free love’ proved to be very
costly. The ‘Do Your Thing’ mindset of the sixties and seventies produced a
narcissistic society. The setting aside of time tested societal standards and
customs with nothing reliable to replace them, has created a moral black hole
that American youth are constantly falling into. The result has been the
downward spiral of culture that most American people are experiencing. Does that really need any further an
explanation? Isn’t it obvious?
Now a good argument from skeptics could be made by saying that
many of those standards and customs needed to be replaced… and that is also regrettably
true. Yet, shouldn’t those standards and customs have been replaced with
something more socially sustainable and morally better… and not decidedly
worse? And just who is to blame for the
decline of moral values and integrity… the government? … Hollywood? Come now… America is supposed to be at least eighty
percent ‘Christian’. The ones responsible are the ones who are supposed to have
the light.
Over the last fifty years all these elements came together
to form … a perfect cultural storm that has been steadily blowing away biblical
Christianity in America.
The Perfect
Cultural Storm
Recently, a dear brother from America wrote us and said… “I
sense there is a major storm brewing and we will need to lean even more heavily
on one another to get through it.”
If he was referring to what’s happening in his country …then
what he said should win an award for being the biggest understatement of this
New Year.
We wrote back and said… “Living
away from the United States and its cultural norms has given us a much clearer
perspective of America and her spiritual condition. You mentioned a great storm
brewing. From our perspective the storm is not just brewing... it has already
hit. The damage has already been devastating and this is just the storms outer
edge. It will get much, much stronger and
the effects on America’s Christian youth will be spiritually catastrophic.”
Here’s a page from a book called…
‘Why Christianity has
Failed in America’, by Philip Neal
Duin, who has spent
much of her career researching Christianity in America, writes: “It’s no secret
that the percentage of Americans in church on any given Sunday is dropping
fast.” …”According to Duin, research
suggests that, at current dropout rates, only about four percent of American
teens will end up as Bible-believing adult churchgoers (compare this to 35
percent of baby boomers and 65 percent of their World War II-era grandparents).
As a lead researcher for Christianity Today,
Drew Dyck writes that the May 2009 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
reports that “young Americans are
dropping out of religion at an alarming rate of five to six times the historic
rate.” Dyck also notes that, according to Rainer Research, approximately70
percent of America’s young people drop out of church between the ages of 18 and
similarly, the Barna Group estimates that 80 percent of those reared in the
church will be “disengaged” by the time they are 29.
This storm will not only require each of us to lean on each
other, we had better run to the storm shelter of leaning on Christ Himself as He
is revealed the scriptures.
Hurricane
Sandy
When Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast of the United States
everyone could feel it coming. There were constant warnings posted to the
public by every conceivable means. People boarded up their windows and battened
down the hatches.
When it finally did hit, with all its fury and rage, people
were saying they could hear outside its terrible power and see its destructive
force.
Even so, most people had little or no idea of how much
damage was really taking place…that is… until the winds stopped. Then the terrible
extent of the damage became known.
Sandy caused 250 deaths, billions of dollars of damage,
displaced thousands of people and America is still trying to recover from its
rage. It turned the peaceful Atlantic Ocean from a wonderful place to vacation …into
a devastating and deadly monster.
Kind of like what the current spiritual storm is now doing
to America’s culture.
We believe the spiritual storm our friend alluded to is more
deadly in terms of human development and society than any other moral storm
recorded. The spiritual storm that has been going on for the last fifty years has
already destroyed America's moral leadership among the nations and caused
irreparable damage to the moral infrastructure of its own culture. And unless
America’s Christians wake up…its effects
will devastate America’s future, because this storm… is just getting started.
They Eye of
the Storm
Let me correlate some similarities between Hurricane Sandy
and the current moral storm raging in the United States. Having lived on the
coast of Florida I experienced several direct hits by Hurricanes and their destructive
power.
Let me explain a little known fact about how the winds of a
hurricane utterly devastate things near the ‘eye’ or center of the storm and then
apply it to what’s happing in the United States. We believe that America has currently
been in the eye (center) of this storm for the past ten to twenty years.
When the leading winds of a hurricane hit land everything is
blown in a certain direction and becomes very weakened or destroyed by the
forceful winds. But when the center or ‘eye of the storm’ passes over a
particular location, there is a strange occurrence. The hurricane’s winds will
stop blowing and sometimes the sun will even come out. To those in the ‘eye’ it
seems as if the storm is over. I have watched during this occurrence inexperienced
surfers head down to the beach to surf the big waves produced by the storm.
Tempting, yes… but a major mistake. Twenty or thirty minutes later the sky darkens
again and suddenly the winds begin blowing from the other direction. Everything
already weakened by the initial winds constantly blowing in one direction are now
blown from the opposite direction and in their weakened condition snap back and
are completely destroyed.
After the initial effects of the Hippie Movement died down,
the worst seemed to be over. But in reality, the last five to ten years the
winds have been coming back with a vengeance.
Just a few of those destructive winds are… the rise of
homosexual activists backed by Hollywood and the government, the legalization
of marijuana, the proliferation of
atheistic terrorism and the governmental antagonism toward Christianity through
eradicating all things Christian… are now reshaping society.
These winds of hell are ripping off the already weakened
roofs of most American family’s spiritual dwelling places. Leaving the
inhabitants nowhere to seek shelter from the pouring rain of immorality or the
destructive winds of cultural pollution that howl through Christian houses from
the open ‘windows’ of the internet and television.
Within Christianity’s own ranks there are highly sought
after false teachers armed with anti-Christ self-gratifying teachings that blow
through thousands of family friendly churches and tear down the pillars that
supported the reality of the Christian faith. Godliness, holiness, sacrificial
love (taking care of one another) and standing up for biblical truth…
irrespective of the repercussions… are fast becoming things of the past.
Yet, all the while this storm is happening… many (not all of
course) Christians are still outside flying religious kites and enjoying the
wind. Life goes on as usual. What will it take before the majority of
Christians wake up and see what’s going on?
A History
Lesson from the Second World War
Now I have some good Christian friends that wish I would shut
up and only speak about the positive things and not be such a ‘prophet of doom’.
Maybe they’re right and maybe I should. They argue that there are still some
good things happening in Western contemporary Christianity and I couldn’t agree
with them more.
But, in retrospect, there were some wonderful things
happening with Christians and Christian churches in Germany during the Hitler
regime. There were even a few people and churches that knew exactly what was
happening and responded by laying down their lives to warn others and save whomever
they could. Dietrich Bonheoffer is one of my favorite Christian teachers and in
my estimation is right up there with Jim Elliot and Amy Carmichael. But those
few churches and people did not reflect the norm.
Most of the German churches and Christians were outside
flying quaint religious kites and had no idea what was really happening… that
is… until the winds stopped… (or the war was over) and the damage was done. Then they were
made to face the horrible destruction of six million Jews along with the other
equally devastating effects of war and try to reconcile in their hearts the
validity of a church that did little or nothing to oppose it.
The same thing happened in Kenya with the Post Election
Violence of 2007/2008. The storm hit and ‘Christians’ began slaughtering ‘Christians’
of different tribal affiliations. Those affiliations trumped Christian unity. The
country was almost lost.
The storm we face … is worse yet. During these stormy years that
we are talking about… approximately 49 million babies have been killed by
abortion. Click ...
Here
for the facts. Yet, we have been
desensitized to that horrible reality. Let’s focus on the good things they say.
Do Christians really think that sitting in their living rooms doing bible
studies is going to make a difference in an all out spiritual war?
So… are things really hopeless? No they are not. Yet,
without God’s intervention through enlightenment of what’s real in our lives, we
too, without even knowing it… will be blown away while enjoying the wind and
flying our kites. Spending our lives pursuing the same things that the world’s
inhabitants pursue and expecting significant change … is ludicrous. Nominal
Christianity will not survive this storm. And to keep thinking …
“… That it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger… and it
is better to disregard what is painful till it comes, and to think about what
is pleasant.” Leo Tolstoy … is worse.
I have lived with people who allowed the Kingdom of God to
invade their personal lives and remove them and their families from the
darkness of their culture. The promise is to every born again person.
Who hath delivered us
from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: (Col 1:13)
The power given them from Heaven to live detached and
undistracted lives while seeking the Kingdom of God and His Culture… was off
the scale.
During that time there were plenty of problems and many
mistakes made; but with an undivided heart they sought and found refuge from
the defiling darkness of their culture. And in Christ, they tasted the powers
of the age to come. And they are not the only ones…we believe that there are
other Christians in the West currently experiencing that same power and for the
same reasons.
We would like to make it clear that we are not advocating
selling everything and creating a Christian community as we did. The answer to
this and every storm is in knowing what He wants to do with you and join Him.
But… we are very much advocating that there come a radical
seeking of His Kingdom and His values. We are very much advocating through
thorough
Examination
of our everyday lives finding out which culture we are trying to emulate and
seek shelter from this storm in Him.
May all of us reel in our kites… rise up and oppose the dark
storm winds while saving whoever we can.
Here's a link to another post asking all the right questions. Doesn't seem to be any kite flying here. Click
Here .
The StoneHouse Family
Nakuru, Kenya
