How the American Church has Messed Up

I. The Church has Ignored the Importance of the Mind

This really began, I think, following the Scopes trial on evolution. During this trial, a certain person was manipulated into claiming to be an expert witness on the Bible, and then was torn up on the stand during the examination. Following this, the Church, as a whole, turned its back on public schools and universities. Instead of flocking into the Ivory Tower, believers fled into their own institutions and private schools. These, I am sure, always existed. Yet they became rallying points for Christians who, on the whole, forgot and even demonized the significance of real critical thought and higher learning.

We see the results of this. You see, prayer in schools being forbidden is not the great evil of the public school system. Prayer being tossed out is merely a symptom of a much greater social movement amongst American people, a movement that is a challenge to the Judeo-Christian values which make this country possible, and a movement that has been left unanswered. It is not that Christ has no answers for such people and such movements as these, it is that the Church has been too frightened to hear the questions and has therefore muted itself.


II. The Church has not Prepared its Youth

Some surveys report that about 75% of evangelical Christian youth who attend college lose their faith during the course of their studies. In a way this is very much related to the first point. The problem here is that Christian youth are being given a thin veneer of apologetic and theological education and then being lectured at by atheists with PhDs. What did we expect to happen? We cannot just glibly gloss over serious questions that demand serious answers and expect the Church to be just fine. Critical questions of the Christian faith are a good thing! They provide opportunity to really engage with people who may be curious and they give us a chance for us to learn what it is we really believe. How can we do this if we are not prepared?


III. The Church is Overly Involved with Political Conservatism

Just because something is politically conservative does not mean it is Biblical. Jesus wouldn't necessarily vote republican. The strange thing with this phenomena is that Jesus encountered the same thing in His day! The Pharisees, the conservative religious leaders, were in bed with the Roman Empire in order to preserve their vision of what Israel should be. In fact, they were so deeply involved with preserving their vision of God's Kingdom that they came to have no room for God himself. Let it not be so in our day.


IV. The Church Taught Popular Theology

I put that in the past tense but there are many who still do. "Health and Wealth" Gospel preachers who give us ten steps towards our miracle without ever mentioning the crucifixion. There are no miracles withoutt he crucifixion, and there is no better life without the cross. Mr. Smiling Preacher never mentions the cross in his latest book, and he attempts to avoid it, the defining feature of Christianity, when he preaches!

We sold out to popular theolgoy several decades ago when we affirmed that people are basically good. What happens whe, beleiving this, people see bad things happen to good people? They cry out that God is unfair, that we are being cheated, when the Bible tells us that not one of us is good! If we had taught that all along, then maybe isntead of blaming God when trials come along we would be equipping the world how to deal with them and how to find God in them.

What Is Wrong With The U.S.A.?

I think it is because we have no sense of who we are. If I could boil it down to a single word, a single cause of so much of the malaise gripping the country right now, it would not be "economy" or "money."

It would be "family."

Or the dissolvement thereof. You see, the family is the single root social organism of society. It is the place wherein we are first defined by our parents and siblings, and the organization within which we first begin to establish, for ourselves, who we are. Yet this fundamental fabric of society is being threatened. How is this so?

Children desperately need parental involvement, discipline, and love. They crave it, even though they may be angry at receiving it. For example, I once worked with a child for one week at a summer Bible school in NYC. He acted out quite a bit, particularly during recess, often requiring that I chase him down before he would come back inside. I thought, at first, that he just hated authority figures.

I learned, later that week, that his father had up and abandoned the family just a few weeks ago. That was when it hit me in which, I think, was God giving me a bit of advice: the child wanted me to chase him because he wanted a male authority figure who was willing to pursue him in love. Now, being as young as he was, I couldn't expect him to verbalize that. Nor, indeed, could I expect him to thank me for disciplining him when I had to.

Our need for parents is deeply imbedded within the very core of our being. If they are absent too much, even in order to help the family survive economically, it can have a damaging effect upon children. It is imbedded in us to such an extent that fatherless homes have a far greater tendancy to produce violent teenagers with untamed passions or daughters who become pregnant as teenagers. This is not only the product if a father is physically absent from the home, but also if he is physically there but so emotionally detached that he may as well not be.

The reason why teaching children to be abstinent does not work as effectively is because the parents are not there to provide solid sense of identity and acceptance within the family. A lack of these can provide an enormous temptation for teenagers to find such things in sexual relationships. Such yearnings exist already, but would undoubtedly be amplified by lack of belonging and acceptance.

Furthermore, without good parental guidance adolescents are far more likely to engage in dangerous activity. Not just violent or sexual activity, but also drug-related activities. When teenagers are trying to establish, for themselves, just who they are exactly, and there is no guidance or structure to be found in parents, they are left to find answers "in themselves." Being so young, however, I suggest to you that there is, despite what so many Hollywood films and popular songs say, very little to be found inside ourselves. What we do find is confusion, pain, darkness, doubt, which the world is waiting with already even if the parents are actively involved and loving their children.

Adding to the confusion is the dissolution of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. With everything we have already seen, the drugs, sex, pregnancy, gangs, violence, etc. there is enough confusion in the teenage world. So much so that grades are plummeting because it has a serious impact on people's ability to simply function, learn and grow. When the idea of gender itself becomes blurred, the confusion will only grow. Fatherless homes, which by definition include homes in which children are raised by lesbian parents, are highly destructive to children. Quite simply, a man is no replacement for a woman, nor is a woman a replacement for a man although, given divorce rates, they are often forced to be. This is why a healthy heterosexual relationship is always superior to a "healthy" homosexual one, and is evidenced in how healthy it is for children to have both fathers and mothers.

I seriously think that the reason why American schools are falling behind is not ultimately a lack of funding, although I think that schools could use more. Nor is it because our children are simply becoming more stupid. The reason why are children are averaging a 50% drop-out rate in cities across the country is because of the problems and stresses of life itself, often waiting for them both in the schools and at home. Without parents, teenagers will find a family one way or another, whether it be gangs, friends, or a family of one with a teenager locked inside his own head, or any combination thereof.

Then, these teenagers will go on to have children of their own. The problem will only get worse. What is the problem exactly? People are abandoning their families through divorce, booze, or money. You know, even if a parent works an incredible amount of hours to be able to give their children nice things, but is never there to spend time with the child, the love the parent may indeed feel could very well be lost on the child. This is becaue love is never ultimately measured in what things we get from someone, it is measured in the time spent with the person him, or her, self.

What secular answers are there to all of this?

Incarcerate? Sure, we need to for the sake of public safety, but incarceration often creates an anger towards the system on the part of the convict. It also requires someone learn how to survive in prison, which is most assuredly not how someone survives in the community, and can easily lead to recidivism.

More funding for schools? Sure, schools can always use more money. If the students are too worried about Saturday night, how they are going to have to defend their turf, or about being pregnant, then somehow the importance of geometry seems to be lost.

Lower the cost of living? This way at least one parent might be able to stay at home with the children. If this is even possible, however, it merely provides opportunity for parents to be home with children, not the desire.

I suggest to you that it is in Jesus Christ we find not only the answers we need, but the change in heart to want to change. He changes not only what you do, but what you want to do, and why you want to do it. That is why a recent survey revealed that teenagers who claimed to have a personal relationship with a higher power are 50% less likely to even get involved with drugs in the first place. I'm not saying that once we have Jesus all our problems will be solved. I'm saying that without Him, we can't even begin to solve our problems.

We often tend to think that we have a hierarchy of needs. I need food and shelter before I can think about why I am here,, or what is good. I say to you, dear reader, that this is exactly the opposite. This is why the teenage world faces so much confusion and destruction. So many have the things they need for life, but they have no reason to use them. People need a reason to eat before they need food. If life is pointless, if we are just random collections of molecules, then there really is no reason to eat at all.