Posted on 12/21/2003 3:46:23 PM PST by nickcarraway
Forgive me for playing prophet, but I think this will be the last Christmas of the 20th century. Yes, I know that the 20th century actually ended a few years ago, but I'm thinking of it as an era. This Christmas a certain era will end.
Call it the era of Christianity lite. Much popular religion of the century descended into mere feel-goodism. Gone was all serious reference to sin, repentance, suffering, atonement, evil, anything unpleasant.
God was in heaven and all was rosy. Say your prayers, try not to hurt anybody, never be "judgmental," and everything will come out right. Business will go well. The kids will behave. You'll never get sick. You'll acquire lots of "stuff." The Father in heaven became a Grandfather in heaven.
Christmas was similarly sterilized. When we were given anything beyond Santa Claus, coloured lights and canned carols, we might actually see a baby, a manger or a star. But Herod's massacre of the children in Bethlehem was certainly never mentioned, nor the dire warning to Mary: "A sword will pierce your soul also" (Luke 2:35).
It was rarely acknowledged that all this unrelieved sweetness and light was much at odds with the Christianity of the New Testament or the actual experience of Christians through much of their history or what ordinarily happens to us ordinary people. Business did not always go well, kids did not always behave, people did in fact get sick (and died, too) and along with all the "stuff" came credit card bills that are now, we're told, astronomical. So 20th century people gradually slipped away from the churches on the sufficient grounds that what they were saying seemed utterly unreal. Such was the era of Christianity lite.
There is convincing evidence now, however, that the era is over, and that the 21st century will see some fundamental changes. I don't mean a massive return to the church, but rather a massive turn of the churches away from Christianity lite.
The after-effect of 9-11 has been a general decline in the credibility of what's called "post-modernism," the belief there are no such things as moral truths. You have your moral truths, I have mine and no version whatever can claim to be really true. This means that the people who deliberately murdered 3,000 innocent civilians had just as good a claim to be right as those who thought otherwise. Nobody, apart perhaps from professors of "ethics," can swallow that line any more, and this has thrown the whole post-modern phenomenon into doubt.
The continuing probability of terror, wrought in the name of an Islamic God, will spur more and more thought about who or what God actually is.
A "spiritual" awakening is going on. According to a recent cover story in Time, Canadians are flocking into prayer groups that meet outside of churches, though they're often sponsored by churches. Such a ferment has preceded every major religious revival. They begin as strictly non-institutional, but they rarely remain that way. Genuine "spirituality" makes people want to do things for God. So corporate action follows and some sort of institution becomes necessary. "Spirituality," in other words invariably turns into "religion."
This may sound extreme, but I think it will happen. Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion, will prove to be the most attended Hollywood movie ever made. (This excludes, of course, the Campus Crusade movie Jesus which is already and by far the most attended movie ever made, but it is not usually considered a Hollywood product.)
The Gibson production is emphatically not Christianity Lite. It portrays the crucifixion for what it was, "a bloody, dusty, sweaty and sordid business." That is, it follows the New Testament account. Never has a movie received so much advance attention - an 18-page review in the New Yorker, columns in every major American newspaper, sophisticated Washington crowds openly weeping. It will hit very hard.
So consider this the last Merry Christmas in the age of Christianity lite. The new century will see a new Christianity which in fact is the old one. And a very different Christmas. Less sugary, but far more real. And it's about time.
And this: Seven Age Dispensationalism
The whole thing. All 66 books. The "happy verses" and the verses requiring repentence and subjection to the Word of God. All of it.
Would you Christians that can say what they believe and why or cult fodder?
You might have to re-write that sentence. I cannot understand it. :0)
That is the only statement with which I disagree in that article.
There is definitely a division taking place in this country.
God is separating His people from the chaff, but I'm not sure that translates into more religion, per se, just a desire to be closer to God through urgings of the Holy Spirit.
One of the hallmarks of this "Christianity Lite" was, and to a large extent still is, the belief that church is a social gathering place whereby mere presence and a ten percent tithe guarantees one a place in Heaven.
"They profess that they know God; but in works they deny Him." Tit 1:16.
God knows our hearts.
Our worship of Him on Sunday morning doesn't constitute our spirituality unless we follow that with His work.
"Ye shall know them by their fruits....." Mt 7:16.
I am thankful to the Holy Father for this time of choosing.
We must either be for Him or against Him.
"I know thy works, that thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee from my mouth." Rev. 3: 15, 16.
I wasn't bashing Christians.. it has to do with doctrine.. and when doctrine contridicts scripture...
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