A Revolution In Culture

From time to time I have listed the various inventions in my life time. Once I listed the things I knew about that had come into existence and went extinct. You know, things like cassettes and VCRs.

What I haven’t thought about before are the many cultural changes. For instance, when I was growing up, grocery stores weren’t open on Sunday. They also didn’t sell liquor. That seems a little shocking, I know, because it’s so far from what we know today.

Here’s another one. When I was young we had one person come to our door and ask for a handout. We lived next to a building that had once been a church, and possibly this man though this was where the parish priest lived. Today, I routinely see homeless people when I’m on my walk. I mean, pretty much every day.

There are lots of other things. For instance, gambling was against the law. Now various states encourage it with their state-run lotteries. Colorado has approved sports betting. And any number of states have casinos.

Maybe the biggest change has been in church. When I grew up, most churches had a Sunday morning service, Sunday school, a Sunday evening service, and a midweek service, usually on Wednesday. Now very few churches have a Sunday evening service (I’m speaking Pre-Pandemic), and the only midweek services are small groups that meet in homes (if that).

When I went to “middle school” which we called “junior high,” the girls wore dresses to school. “Transgender” was not a teenage issue yet and “homosexual” still appeared in the college psychology books under deviant behavior.

Were there problems with drugs? The use of hallucinogens took hold during the hippie era and the Viet Nam War, so people might think there has been no change there. But wait. There are prescription drugs that are in common use now that no one had even heard of. So many more people, adults and children, take drugs of one sort or the other. Reminds me of the dystopian novel that had the whole society taking drugs, which kept them under control.

When I was a kid, people would whisper about someone who grew up with divorced parents. Now divorce is common, and so is living together and not marrying.

Have I mentioned abortion? Well, yes, there were whispered “back alley” abortions. But all that changed in 1973 (in the name of “choice”) when the flood gates opened for the abortion of thousands upon thousands of babies.

Of course, the problem was that many of the cultural mores of those days were not based on anything more than tradition. There was not a particular reason grocery stores didn’t open on Sunday. Once there had been a reason—Sunday was the Lord’s day, not a day for commerce. But when Sunday changed from being the Lord’s day to being a day off work, there was no more motivation to keeping grocery stores closed for business. (Which, of course, meant that more and more people began to work on Sunday. And not go to church.)

There was not a reason for people to refrain from divorce, or to stay celibate until their wedding night, or even to get married.

The point is simple. As we see racial tension grow and riots and hatred fanned in various cities across the US, so many people have said, I just want my country back. But we aren’t “getting our country back” until the heart of our country changes.

Here’s one woman who gave her thoughts on the matter.

I admit, I stopped listening when she got to the part about the guns, but I went back to it, and I’m glad I did because she got to the crux of the issue: prayer.

Well, actually, God.

We have left our first love. We Christians have adopted many of the same attitudes and beliefs that our secular neighbors hold. We are listening more to athletes and stars than we are to Scripture.

The Bible says the beginning of wisdom, and of knowledge, is the fear of the LORD.

I can’t say there’s much fear—awesome respect and reverence—for God these days. In fact as the elements of our society march us toward anarchy, there’s seemingly a disregard for all forms of authority.

While God is a loving heavenly Father, He is still the ultimate authority. He is the One True Judge who, James says, is able to save and to destroy.

When we return to the fear of the LORD, when we bow before Him and admit our sin, maybe then we can have our nation back.

There’s actually something better. Maranatha. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.