Driving home in the
rain last week with a couple of my younger friends, I was
sitting in the back seat by myself. As I overheard their conversations,
it was mostly about spiritual things, and I thought to myself "how good it
is to know that there are still voices that acknowledge God."
Then it struck me. Putting it
together, "my generation" is unlike any other generation that was ever
lived. For during my 76 years on this planet, my generation is the only
one that saw the disappearance of a way of life that had been basically
unchanged for thousands of years of history and then suddenly leaped into the
modern age so fast it took our breath away. Like it was all planned....
One minute we rode horses and drove wagons into
town, the next thing we knew, a clangy thing called an automobile
arrived. I remember that my father broke his arm
cranking up our Model A Ford with an outside "starter". Then along
came something better: an automatic transmission. It would start with a
key! And he was so proud of the fact that he did not have to shift gears,
he actually drove friends up a hill outside our town just to show he
could climb it without touching a gear lever
My goodness! The car we
drove in a few days ago had a positioning satellite guiding us down
the road, a television showing us who was behind, a computer that gave us a
readout on our gas consumption and how hot or cold it was inside and
outside the car. It even remembered who was in the driver's seat, and
would automatically adjust to their particular comfort level!
Maybe that's what's wrong with this "modern
age"...
"Technology, science, and inventions have
progressed at an accelerated rate during the hundred years of the 20th
century,
more so than any other century. We began
the 20th century with the infancy of airplanes, automobiles, and radio,
when
those inventions dazzled us with their novelty
and wonder. We ended the 20th century with spaceships, computers,
space
stations, cell phones, and the
wireless Internet all being technologies we can take for
granted..."
The
book of Daniel prophesied of it.
"Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased". (Dan 12:4)
This
is so much of an exact prophecy that knowledge is now presently doubling every
twenty-two months! But when it comes to
the knowledge of God we may very well be decreasing. Paul told Timothy
that in the last days many would be “ever learning, and never able to come
to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7).
I
think about my own life: When I
was about seven, we washed our clothes on a rub board with soap had we made from lard and lye.
After that, we hung everything out on a clothes line, including the ones we
starched. Day one.
Day two we sprinkled with water
everything to be ironed and rolled them into individual items.
The third day we
ironed them. No washing machine,
no dryer, no permanent press...not even a teflon-coated steam iron. The
ones I used at my grandma's house were two heavy cast-iron monsters we heated
alternately on the stove!
It is sad that so many of us "lean upon our own
understanding" and that of the unsaved world to determine how to think
and govern our actions. It does prove a point---people are
looking, but not necessarily to the One who is the "author and finisher
of our faith".
There has never has been a time when those who confess
they know God have failed so miserably in walking in His ways. The early
Christians knew what price they would pay to follow the Lord--that was
demonstrated right after the Day of Pentecost. Men and women actually sold
their possessions and left everything for the "Gospels'
sake". Millions paid for it with their lives, not just with that
generation--but in every generation that
followed. Even this day, we mourn the loss of eight
medical missionaries slaughtered in Afganistan who went there simply to help
treat the unfortunant.
Today the "gospel" of many is to possess, acquire, and
live the good life of prosperity "for ones' own sake". The thinking
is that a "successful Christian" is not a person like the beggar Lazarus,
but one more like the rich man. After all, a good father only wants
the "best" for his children. But that is the thinking of the world.
Let's examine this thought: because the wrong concept of
it has led to the disastrous condition of the world and the
church today.
I remember the days of WWII. There were youths who
could think of nothing but enlistment--as soon as possible, though they
were barely old enough to vote. They wanted to fight and defend, even
if the cost was their lives. There are not better words to
categorize that time but as "days of sacrifice", when those who
fought on the battlefronts and those who remained behind were one and the
same. Because of what price the soldier was paying, the
homefront gladly did without, and nothing was considered too great a
sacrifice for victory. After all, those on the battlefields were
their children and loved ones too!
Denial of the things of this world is looked upon by the
majority of Christians as a sign of weakness. And yet the One who had no
place to lay His head also taught his disciples to "deny yourself, take
up your cross and follow Me"--to "love not the world, neither the things that
are in the world".
After the war was over, many of those returning veterans
were so traumatized, some would never want to talk about their
experiences--and still don't. They simply put it all behind them and
went for the good life of prosperity and peace. Understandable. But in
never infusing in their children about the price they needed to
pay to keep the freedom they fought for, they instead,
pampered and sheltered them from every hardship and concept of denial.
That thinking ended up being carried on into the church
and emerging as a "prosperity" gospel. Mega churches were built on this
principal. What has
been the result? Ironically, there is scripture in the Bible that
describes it, found in the book of Proverbs:
(Proverbs 20:11) "There is a generation that curseth
their father, and doth not bless their mother.
There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes,
and is not washed from their filthiness.
There is a generation, O how lofty are their eyes! and
their eyelids are lifted up.
There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords, and
their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor
from off the earth, and the needy from among
men."
I have often looked at this and thought to myself, "why
did Solomon write these verses inserted in Proverbs? they seem so
out-of-place, almost as if they don't belong. Yet, the wisest man that
ever lived wrote them as if almost prophetically describing the generation of
children born to MY generation! For so many of the "baby boomers" would
grow up to become the radical hippies and flower-children of the 60s who threw
off all restraints and moral decency and become immersed in doing "whatever
feels good" and calling it "freedom".
Solomon's "generation" had come into being in our
lifetime!
It is time that we admit that the whole world
suffers as much for what war produces as it does from what war
can destroy. Buildings can be rebuilt, bridges repaired, widows
remarry. But if a war convinces us that denial of oneself is
something we don't want for our children--either in the spiritual as well
as the physical, the result will become a Solomon's "generation."
Telling them of how much we "sacrificed" to give them the "good life" is a
litany of words that have a hollow ring. The truth is "self-evident'. By
crawling into our protective shell and vowing never to drag them into the
reality of true sacrifice, their skeletons never develop a spiritual
backbone!
It takes an understanding of sacrifice to enlist, either
in a country's army or in the army of the Lord. That is why we are told
to "count the cost". A political candidate for president must know that
he will be both hated and loved, criticized and hailed, given power and
possibly paying for it with his life. But a weakling can never please
anyone.
What will a simple, poor watchmaker in Holland produce
when he teaches his children the real concept of sacrifice? In the
case of Casper Ten Boom, his willingness to shelter Jews during the war and
hide them in his home from the Nazis cost every one of them dearly. Yet it
produced in the generation of one who survived, strength and
dedication. Hundreds, perhaps millions came to know the Lord because of
what this godly watchmaker taught his children at the family dinner
table. It lived on in the books written by his daughter, Corrie Ten
Boom, who authored the best seller, "The Hiding Place" after walking
out of a Nazi prison camp at age 50 to travel the world sharing what great truths
she had learned from trials and tribulation.
Even to giving thanks for the bug in her bowl
of gruel and the fleas who were her bedfellows...
Outside the
computer that is sending you this message is a world full of people, most
of them like the two young men in Rockwell's picture above---they cannot
comprehend what I am saying. It makes no sense at all.
But there
are also millions the world over who gasp at our ingratitude
for our freedom to still openly pray and give thanks like
the old woman and her grandson...it too, makes no sense at all.
As Reagan warned
us, "If my generation (and yours) does nothing about it, we will one day
spend our latter years telling our grandchildren what it was like when America
was free".
It seems to me,
I'm doing that right now.
MARY E. ADAMS
August 2010