How do we look into our past?
I think people are essentially conservative. They love stability. Some of the most conservative people I have met are some uni students who, while appearing to be radical or associating with such people, often had some very conservative views on some aspects of life.
People will say ‘I like things the way they were’. But often, I think more often than not they’re saying ‘I like like things they way I thought they were’ We look back into the past and yearn for those good times, even if they weren't good times. We pluck out that which we found good at the time and turn it into the normative experience of the past. We blot out unpleasant past experiences. This has lead to a whole new industry ‘Healing of memories’, dealing with events from the past that the mind blots out because they are too painful.
Sometimes the past is not what we expected. Take our example of king
Josiah. (2 Kings 22). His father and grandfather ruled the Southern kingdom
in a very ungodly way. His fathers death led him to kingship aged only
8. Somehow, by the grace of God, Josiah took a very different outlook to
his forefathers and sought to live under God’s authority. By the time he
was 20, he had begun the task of purging the land of its idolatrous practices.
The temple of the Lord was to be returned to a usable state. While cleaning
out the temple, the book of the law was discovered (most probably the first
5 books of the bible - Pentateuch). These books had been lost and forgotten;
a record of God’s leading of his people, his great and mighty works, gathering
dust in a disused corner of his house while generations of kings engaged
in idolatry, murder, and adultery and general doing of evil in the eyes
of the Lord.
I don’t know what Josiah thought to himself as the books were opened
before him. What would they reveal - a great and glorious past, or had
the past been pretty much like it was for him on that day. What would God
expect from his people? What would God want to say to his people today?
Would this be good news for all people? Well. . . Josiah didn’t get too
excited. God had made a covenant with his people. Deuteronomy 28 - if you
are obedient to this then you will be greatly blessed in every way, your
enemies will be crushed before you. ‘Yeah’ he may have thought to himself,
‘we haven’t kept it. What’s next’ v15 However, if you do not obey the Lord
your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am
giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you’
Curses go from v16 to v68. He knows they’re in trouble.
The past hadn’t been something to brag about. The people had conveniently forgotten their rights and obligations. There may have been Good times before, but they had slipped outside of the will of God. They were not necessarily being asked to go back to the old ways, but they were asked to get right again with God.
I’m not sure if our past has all that much to brag about. It would be
true to say that most of the first convicts and troops to settle in Australia
were at best irreligious. We may have based our society on Christian ethics,
but while our churches were once fuller than they are now, I wouldn’t have
called us a Christian society. How many people in our pews back then were
there because it was the right thing to do. We said ‘my religious is private
and personal’ which often came to mean that God had become a distant reality
if a reality at all. We said ‘I’ll let my child decide for themselves’
when they often meant ‘I’m not going to do any of it myself’ God gradually
began to fall out of societies frame of reference. God was no longer a
reality.
So where is society at now?
I think we inside the church need to stop and think about what’s happening out there. What are the forces that shape the way society thinks? cause they aren’t the forces that used to shape society
The word SMUT sums up 4 forces at work today. Sometimes these forces contradict each other, but they are bound together by their potential to act against Christianity.
Secularism
Secularism is a way of looking at life that rejects all forms
of religious faith or worship in the social and political affairs of society.
One becomes purely focused on the ‘here and now’, and is completely bound
by time. Behind everything that goes on is a belief that that the world
is coming of age; mans powers are increasing and the world is becoming
one (cross reference to Genesis 11)
Here we can identify two alternatives to Christianity
Humanism - The basis of humanism is human reason. That which
cannot be proved beyond all doubt cannot be true. One result is that a
supernatural God cannot exist.
Marxism - Marxism believes that societies will eventually grow out of needing religion. They believe that religion arises out of fear of the unknown, and is used as a tool by the elite to maintain a power hierarchy.
The secular attitude views science as supreme, placing a high degree of importance on reason and logic. If you can’t explain something, you dismiss it. => Miracles and the supernatural are out. But if you can prove something did happen, it only proves that those who witnessed it pertain to a particular psychological state.
Science is not understood as a set of theories and hypothesis, but a statement of facts of how things are. You would probably be hard pressed to find scientists that would tell you that everything in science that is presented as a factual truth is set in concrete. Scientists have had to correct ‘common knowledge’ before, they’ve been wrong before and they are likely to be wrong again. One cannot be saved through science
A further, any highly obvious problem with a secular world view is the
issue of ethics. Traditionally, society has taken a revelation of God’s
will (10 commandments / sermon on mount) and used that as a basis for how
people should act. The secular view is that we can leave value judgements
to the individual who will work out for themselves what is right. This
assumes that people are generally good, negating doctrines of original
sin, concepts of evil and basically denies that selfishness and greed are
reasonably universal human characteristics. In the end, people have no
idea what they are basing their moral decisions on.
In a strange way, secularism functions like a religion; it has a specific closed world view, with science and the ultimate supreme God and human reason as a path to salvation.
Multicultural
Multiculturalism is not necessarily a bad thing. The problems
arise because we don’t understand how other cultures operate. We say ‘lets
have lots of different cultures living and working together.’ But how would
you feel if a Muslim was to say to you that they wanted Australia to be
an Islamic state in say 10 years. Some other cultures take their religion
very seriously. If you start talking to a Muslim about religion, chances
are that he’s trying to convert you. Islam is highly evangelistic, as is
modern Buddhism and Bahai.’ If you’re a religion, you’re entitled to be
in schools as much as we are. You may say, that’s OK, but you must realize
that these religions are often anti Christian.
We are not a ‘Christian country any more.’ We are a mixture of cultures
and religions where the potential exists for inter religious and cultural
conflict. Multiculturalism needs to be approached with a great deal of
care. Being aware of the possibilities that unchecked multiculturalism
leads to the formation of ghettos, we need to look at ways in which we
can relate to each other in a cross cultural way.
Ultimately Pluralistic
Today society recognizes more than one ultimate principle. What is
truth (Pilate)? Who says you have the truth? A previous New South Wales
state premier stated that if enough people believed something, then it
would become the truth (Neville Wran). This type of thinking is a by-product
of secularism. As a society, we are open to the possibility that Christianity
could be wrong, that there could be something more.
As a Christian I have a lot of problems with pluralism. If I believe that Christianity is founded on a unique historical event where God revealed himself and that Jesus was THE ONE, then religious creeds of philosophical systems that go against this can not be correct as they plainly contradict Christian teaching. This is of course, naturally offensive to most other religious groups. Is it hard line? Yes, and we shouldn’t feel guilty about it. Other religions are just as hard line, but the command to take the gospel out into the world still stands. That command relies on the fact that the gospel is unique.
Tolerant
Another by-product of secularism. In the 1990’s tolerance is the highest
virtue we can aim for, and must be protected at all costs. It’s a funny
western type of concept. I naturally thing of ‘tolerating fools’, putting
up with stupid people. I think it’s sold to us as the ‘nice Christian thing
to do’, but when I look at Jesus, I see one of the most intolerant man
in history. If people we wrong, he put them straight. If people got upset
at him for it - too bad, there’s more than being popular to life. This
example doesn’t give us permission to go around being obnoxious, and I’m
not calling for a return to the crusader days of killing infidels. Jesus’
prime motivation was that of love. It was his fathers will that all should
hear and be saved, but if people are in darkness, then they need to be
brought out of it.
A majority of people have become indifferent to Christianity and largely
ignorant of it’s claims, rather than opposed to it. This can make evangelism
a harder task in that they also are unaware of their own beliefs. If a
message comes along that is nice or popular, then people will stop and
take notice.
These are my thoughts on how Australian society has been shaped. There are probably others, but I hope that this will stimulate our thinking on the subtle forces that can work against the gospel message.
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Outline for overhead transperancy
Whatever happened to our Christian Society?
1. King Josiah and the temple of Doom
2 Kings 22
2. Our Smut generation
Secular
Multicultural
Ultimately Pluralistic
Tolerant