Non-Discerning Non-Believers

We are seeing more and more news items about the supposed disintegration and decline of Christianity and, indeed, of religion in general. I am quite certain that, along with Mark Twain, the report of the demise of Christianity is quite premature! I have no doubt, for that matter, that religion of all types will be around long after its current detractors have left the planet--or, as Rush Limbaugh would say, "assumed room temperature." But what if anything can we learn from the present hysteria about the state of erligion in the world today. For one thing, we can learn a great deal about the non-discerning non-believer. Many of those who are abandoning religion are not coming to a coolly calculated decision that their past beliefs were wrong. C. S. Lewis said in one of his writings that most people are not reasoned out of Christianity; they just drift away. Many of those who are giving up on religion today are doing so based on an emotional reaction to things they see in the world around them. They see suicide bombers blowing themselves up or fanatic zealots carrying out terror attacks by flying into buildings or attacking people in subway stations and they come to the conclusion that they want no part of religion! This is, of course, quite absurd. It would be like someone who has been a music lover all his life going to a concert of heavy metal rock and deciding that if that's what music is all about, they want no part of it! This would go against all reason and past experience. Not all religious groups are made up of Islamic extremists! And if you abandon Christianity because you don't like Christian conservatives, I can assure you that there are plenty of people who profess Christianity who are not conservative at all. It also seems that religion is on the decline for other reasons in places where it was once quite thriving. Christianity was once on the rise in many Third World countries and places where the church was under severe persecution. Now, many of those places are enjoying a degree of affluence; and in other nations, religious persecution is much less severe than it used to be. So the rural folks are moving to the cities. Many who scratched out a living as best they could on rugged farm land are now earning wages in city factories. The sons and daughers of those who came to know Christ through the work of western missionaries decades ago are now turning away from the faith of their parents. This is truly sad. I do not deny that the church needs to be more vigorously engaged in evangelistic and mission work, spreading the Gospel again in nations around the world. Too often, mission efforts seem to have replaced proclamation with public service. Again, however, we are not dealing here with an inherent flaw in Christianity. We are dealing with the age-old problem of worldliness, the sin of self-centeredness. People will find any excuse they can to turn away from godliness. The problem is not our message, but mankind. Let us deal realistically with the non-discerning non-believer and realize that apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, the worldly person will be blinded to the glorious gospel and the saving truth of Christ. I hope to have more on the changing impact of religion, especially Christianity, in later posts.