Recent years' bombardment of big events make room for big opinions. But are there small things occurring that have an even bigger impact?
Pot calling the kettle black
It's easy to look around and notice a rapid, steady decline of values and character in our society. As believers, we attribute the fallout to fallen nature, label it sin and sometimes camp in self-righteousness. But the specific sin factors that create social decay aren't readily apparent because they occur slowly, over decades, removing points of reference. If you've every been out in the open ocean you know the value of landmarks. Without islands or the coastline, everything looks the same all the time, even when hundreds of miles have been sailed. With no point of reference, you can't see your progress, whether you intended to sail or have been dragged off course by the current. I propose here that many believers today are caught in the culture current.
Pharaoh didn't forget. He was never taught.
From Exodus 1:8, NIV "Eventually, a new king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done."
What Joseph "had done" was deliver thousands of Egyptians and surrounding nations from famine. God worked deeply in Joseph's life, preparing him for leadership that would have profound impact for the posterity of his contemporaries, as well as his own. Unfortunately, Pharaoh didn't get the historical memo, which freed his imagination to speculate the purpose and future of the Hebrew people in the land of Egypt.
Emphasis mine, verses 9-14 “Look,” he said to his people (ie, his tribe, those very much like him), “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. 10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.” 11 So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites 13 and worked them ruthlessly. 14 They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.
What has been lost?
However absurd the omission of history Pharaoh acted upon, it is not a dilemma restrained by ancient history. This writer is confident that we are perpetually one generation away from major mistakes like Pharaoh in terms of values and understanding. While looking through recent history, I contemplate the alternates of "what if?" What if Christians of the 60's and 70's generation imparted a more profound sense of the fear of the Lord in the next generation? Would we have kept the reverence needed to keep Him in our homes, binding our families together?
What if 9/11 never happened? Would we feel safer? Children today will not experience the laissez faire freedoms their parents readily forfeited in exchange for security. The atmosphere of fear, uncertainty, and devastation of the time demanded it. That was just 21 years ago, which makes me wonder how far present society has drifted from our risk-ready forefathers who weathered, tyranny, hardship, and difficult labor to build this nation.
Historical voices become restrained by the grave and by unturned book pages.
Convictions: Where Values and History Meet
Any civilization is only one or two generation away from overlooking enough history to make mistakes of Pharaoh's magnitude, or to recall enough of it selectively, which is an equal mistake. If circumstances were different, Pharaoh would have learned factually about God's people and his view of them friendlier. Our values, paired with an understanding of history, shape and congeal our convictions, dictating how we deal with the present. A lack of history and values shape our convictions just as much as a broad education with solid, godly values. It is within our nature to want to make sense of the world around us, and we do so within a spectrum of our own limited, biased perspectives and a grasp of history. The grander the level of personal experience and broadness of historical understanding, the greater the capacity to understand what is happening presently and what actions should be taken. Which means that our children, at age 18, need to be armed with enough historical facts, life experience, character development, and godly values to be able to face a ballot. Without this, politicians like Pharaoh are able to play into plebeians' ignorance and self-centeredness. Many younger voters today clamor toward socialist policies without having a grasp of the historical context of the thing they reach for; it is a direct result of lack of life experiences and biased historical delivery. I unapologetically place the blame squarely on their education (or lack thereof) from their parents and their educators, the biased delivery of historical facts, and an absence of pro-posterity, life-guiding values.
Values, as C.S. Lewis proves in Abolition of Man, are what separates man from beast. Once distilled, there is a set of universal, core values that prove immovable and eternal (think Ten Commandments). If a society operates outside these values by rejecting them or creating their own, that civilization eventually discovers their utopia is a castle made of sand. It may appear beautiful for a moment, but it will not weather time. Creating values proves the need for them and a rejection of them all together makes man a carnal beast, given over to selfish desire, every man for himself, dividing even between parent and child (see abortion). At the end of the day, truth based values are immovable and weather time.
Living history is handed down by individuals
Each individual in every generation must diligently face the responsibility of stewarding the values and history delivered to them by their elders. Concurrently, the elders have a responsibility to deliver it unbiased and well. Each person must receive it, analyze it, and come to their own conclusion before passing passing the baton to the next generation. And we have to do our best to deliver the historical facts without weaving in our own subjective narrative. Transcending temptation, the teacher must train the student to interpret the facts using universal values and let the student face the facts himself, all the while equipping him to carry on the tradition. It is a high and lofty objective indeed. Each student must be taught the discipline and tradition of rising out of the valley formed by each decade and perceive the expanse of history both objectively and subjectively while becoming a slave to neither. We, as individuals, must make the journey to the peaks and see for ourselves the events that define contemporary culture in each generation. It is not enough to have hearsay of it and put it back on the shelf. Why? Because ultimately, the treasures of being a free-thought individual are at stake, and is not divisible from our daily life.
C.S. Lewis's commentary on progressive thought and values, found in Abolition of Man describes this problem eloquently (emphases mine): "Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors. This modifies the picture which is sometimes painted of a progressive emancipation from traditional and a progressive control of natural processes resulting in a continual increase of human power. In reality, of course, if any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power. They are weaker, not stronger: for though we may have put wonderful machines in their hands we have pre-ordained how they are to use them. And if, as is almost certain, the age which had thus attained maximum power over posterity were also the age most emancipated from tradition, it would be engaged in reducing the power of its predecessors almost as drastically as that of its successors. And we must also remember that, quite apart from this, the later a generation comes-the nearer it lives to that date at which the species becomes extinct-the less power it will have in the forward direction, because its subjects will be so few. There is therefore no question of a power vested in the race as a whole steadily growing as long as the race survives. The last men, far from being the heirs of power, will be of all men most subject to the dead hand of the great planners and conditioners and will themselves exercise least power upon the future."
Read that section again and let it sink in. Those who seek to promote progressive values by funneling and screening the past simultaneously limit the lessons of the past and the potential of future generations. By only giving the best and withholding the worst, one generation wields incredible power to shape its decedents without the decedents ever having a say so in how they are formed. They are delivered into a bondage they will never be able to perceive or break free from as long as they are denied the same tools as their predecessors.
Thus the most "evolved" generation will be the most groomed, the most denied, the least free. Equally defeating, as long as parents model the practice of selectively choosing how children see history in the highest esteem of progressivism, the children will selectively throw off the perceived restraints in the same name of progressivism and freedom.
Tribalism & Lovelessness
Now, please read this next point twice, once from a liberal standpoint and again from a conservative standpoint: If we are handed a controlled narrative that points us in a predefined direction, are we really equipped to be free thinkers? We have an obligation to strive to understand the many points of view that come to the table in our time or else we risk slipping into the tribalistic thinking that makes it us against them. And by definition, no tribalistic person can objectively deliver history without falling into the trap defined by C.S. Lewis. (Now read it again.)
I have a deep concern for our children's generation because of the division of our day. We must deliver an objective narrative of the events taking place while presenting a centuries-wide perspective for our children to behold. It isn't us against them. Its humanity against evil spiritual forces. There is a greater force at work than the people we disagree with on social media: For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12, NLT)
If we forget this in the midst of tribalism, we will lose sight of the Father's heart and love for people. Those we disagree with need Jesus just as much as you and me. Not more. Not less. If we are more concerned with being right than understanding the way a conclusion was reached, we have exchanged idealism for relationship. When that exchange occurs, discussion can't happen and no side wins members.
However, there are instances where no amount of listening, understanding, and discussion will win over someone's conclusion. It is in this scenario, I believe, believers are open to the most danger. What do we do with those we conclude can't be won to the side of godly values?
We patiently pray for them, bless them, and love them.
Let's not forget that as much as we are passing on a verbal account to our children, we are modeling values to our posterity. Lovelessness is just as bad a thing to hand down as any other, perhaps the worst.
How we act and speak about things at home are always being observed by youthful eyes. During this time of division, children are learning how to close themselves off from hearing opposing views. They are missing conflict resolution and relationship restoration. They are watching their fellow citizens become ideological boogiemen, with an unspoken understanding that interacting with them will make them defiled and unholy. Self righteousness teaches that authority is first subject to personal opinion of worthiness while God's law teaches authority is the product of office and position. Social ailments such as these trickle down and through generations, dissolve man's understanding and awareness of his duty to submit to God.
If you read that and see behaviors in yourself that put you in the violent ocean current of hate culture, it is never too late to repent. This reader found herself in there and can testify the Father is waiting to rescue those who get swept away by lovelessness.
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