World Views

The Silent Pandemic

In 2020, The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine published a report entitled, "Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults." Two facts that show the significance of the threat to public health as outlined in the study are as follows:

Social isolation significantly increases a person’s risk of mortality from all causes, a risk that may rival the risks of                smoking, obesity, and physical activity (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2017);
Being socially connected in a variety of ways is associated with having a 50 percent greater likelihood of survival, with some indicators of social integration being associated with a 91 percent greater likelihood of survival (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010)

Loneliness is not a new problem nor is it exclusively a problem of just the elderly, it affects all age demographics and has been particularly been exacerbated by the covid-19 induced isolation as a public health measure. In 2018 the UK acknowledging the problem and appointed a Minister of Loneliness citing a study that documented approximately two million people over the age of 75 across England reported going  weeks without any meaningful social interaction.

Man is gregarious by nature because that is how our Creator made us to be. We are not meant to live apart from meaningful community. The life of faith always takes place within a community, the body of Christ. C.H. Bullock made the following observation about the Psalms, "The Psalmist could not see himself as an individual apart from Israel. His self-identity was bound up in his participation in the community of faith." What is your self identity bound to? Have you even reflected upon it? Do you have a meaningful community? One of the positive outcomes from the covid -19 pandemic was that it forced us as a Church to reflect on the importance of the community of faith and worshiping together as believers We concluded that worshiping in person amongst the community of believers was our priority and we acted with that in mind.  Watching a service on line leaves much to be desired as a realistic long term substitute for worshiping in person. Yet, some churches are considering going online exclusively. That is akin, from my perspective, to going through a drive by viewing at a funeral home.

The American lifestyle has fostered the ideal of the "rugged individualist," neighborhoods have lost their sense of community and are becoming more isolated from their neighbors, soaring divorce rates, broken and scattered families, and the loss of the church as a meaningful part of people's lives, all contribute to the loneliness problem today. Mother Teresa  purportedly said, "The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved." The church has the answer, the Body of Christ, it is the most meaningful answer to loneliness. It is a community where we pray and worship together, grieve and rejoice together and love one another. 

The Worldview Dilemma of American Parents

The Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, headed by George Barna, released  its American Worldview Inventory Report 2022, on March 8th. According to the Barna report, this years initial wave of focus was on the life-defining beliefs and behaviors of parents because of the substantial influence they have on the worldview developed by their children. Before I  delve into the statistics of the report, let's define exactly what we mean by worldview.

A "worldview" is a comprehensive conception of the world from a specific standpoint, it is the harmony of all your beliefs about the world and your way of understanding reality. A worldview deals  with at least the following questions: Where do I come from and why am I here; What is wrong with the world and how can we fix it?                                                                             

Every adult has a world view. That worldview is fully developed and operational before a person becomes a teenager. A Christian worldview answers the above questions from a Biblical perspective. It covers everything from morality to finances and our views about the past and the future. Our lives and everything in it falls under the umbrella of the Bible. John M. Frame defines a Christian worldview as such: "As a Christian , I am committed to a worldview that comes from the Bible: God the Creator, the world as his creation, man made in his image, sin and its consequences as our predicament, Christ's atonement as our salvation, his return as the consummation of all things."

The big takeaway from my perspective, of Barna's study is that 9 out of 10 parents of children under age 13, have a muddled worldview. Less than 1% of the parents embraced any of the alternative worldviews tested for which included, Secular Humanism, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, Nihilism,  Marxism/ Critical Theory, Postmodernism, and Eastern Mysticism/New Age. Two-thirds of the respondents claimed to be Christians but only 2 % of  the parents of pre-teen childrenal actually  possessed, a Christian worldview. The old adage, "If you don't stand for anything you will fall for everything," seems to be proven true. What we have are, "a full 94% that have a worldview that is a blending of multiple worldviews in which no single life philosophy is dominant, producing a worldview that is diverse and often contradictory," according to Barna. This world view in known as Syncretism, a pot-pourri of ideas that has little thought behind how or why it is strung together into anything meaningful.

I know personally of married couples who have not brought up their children to believe in anything because they didn't want to force their beliefs on them, sadly their children have become today's parents and they are  now raising their children to be rudderless, lost and think nothing of it. These children are tomorrow's future and it doesn't bode well for Christianity. Count on bumpy roads ahead.

You may wonder and ask yourself, "How did this happen to our country?" There are many reasons, it didn't happen overnight and it is beyond the scope of this article to take on. I will tell you this, if you are serious about understanding our society and how we got where we are today, please read Carl Trueman's book, "The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self." Trueman spells it it quite clearly and if you had read his book before Barna's report came out, the statistics would not be a big surprise or a shock to you.

Barna does point out that one might from his statistics predict the end of Christianity in America, but he asserts that, " The reality is that culture-changing movements  can transform a nation with as little as 2% of the population on board."  That being said, I think the number could be far less than the approximately 6.7 million people that make up the two percent with Biblical worldviews. Remember, Christians started with only 12 apostles and spread their faith throughout the known world! We need to pray for revival in our country. 

The Evil in Our Midst

The Apostle Peter's warning to us, "Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being  experienced  by your brotherhood throughout the world," (1 Peter 5:8-9) still needs to be heeded by us today. It's not hard to spot the prowling lion, he's responsible for the millions of innocents slaughtered by the abortion industry, social justice prosecutors, judges and politicians who have eliminated bail and  do not uphold the rule of  law and therefore, allow criminals free to rape and pillage over and over again. The Supreme Court ruled to change the definition of marriage that has been in place for thousands of years. Politicians have allowed porous borders making it an easy opportunity for criminals, illegal drugs and sex trafficking to enter our country and victimize our citizens. Companies in the US are able to take advantage of illegal aliens by employing them and paying them low wages to increase their profits and drive honest competitors out of business. Politicians greedy for votes and power turn a blind eye the chaos they have created. The leading cause of death for young people under the age of 30 is from  fentanyl overdoses, which is manufactured in the PRC and smuggled into our country from Mexico. Left leaning Attorney General's  ally themselves  with predatory LGBT+ activists who sue and attack the businesses of Christians that decline service to customers who would have them betray their beliefs. Today, we watch the unprovoked  invasion of Ukraine and the systematic destruction of a country's infrastructure and its people on our cable news channels. Western leaders capitulate and do little to stop Putin's "blitzkrieg." I have heard secular European leaders denouncing Putin and his attack on Ukraine as evil. Ironic isn't it? Admitting to the existence of evil, kind of uspsets their relativistic philosophy. I guess pictures of tanks rolling through residential neighborhoods and destroying them is a reality check, when they realize it could easily be their neighborhoods. All of a sudden countries are opening their purses to give their fair share to NATO, but politicians including ours, are unwilling to make the sacrifice of cutting themselves off of Putin's oil, which is enriching him and funding his war. This past week in Mt Lebanon there was a public speaking event proselytizing for the inclusion of critical race theory in our schools including nursery schools. The event was funded by several area churches, nursery schools and our own Mt. Lebanon High School using taxpayers money.

Why are so many blind to the evil in our midst? As Christians we should not be, yet many who call themselves as such are. God was declared dead, removed from the public square and relegated to one hour on Sunday mornings for the people who still cling to their guns and Bibles .Many have been blinded to the extent that evil is called good and good evil. So as Christians do we throw are hands up in the air and bury our heads in the sand? What can we do? Fortunately, Peter gave us the remedy, to be sober-minded, alert  and we are to resist and stand firm in our faith. The Church is God's plan for us, and it is where we are equipped and strengthened in our faith to go out into the world and stand firm for the gospel. Our job is to help open the eyes of the blind by leading them to Christ. We will be violently resisted, shunned, made to be fools, lose our livelihoods or businesses,  be jailed and even  martyred. Picking up our cross to follow Christ is not without  personal struggles (2 Timothy 3:12)  We also know that the battle has already been won for us by Christ through the cross and his resurrection from the dead. The victory over evil has already  been won, if God is for us who can stand against us? Let's roll!