Nov 21 - Romans 12:2

 

Do not be

conformed to this world,

but be transformed by

the renewing of your minds,

so that you may discern

what is the will of God—

what is good and

acceptable and perfect.

Romans 12:2

 

"This world is a mess." Have you ever said that?

 

Well, how did we get here?

 

In his book The Benedict Option, Rod Dreher condenses seven hundred years of philosophical history in the West into one quick chapter. Today, I'm going to do it in one quick devotion. And I want to start with the Reformation ... for an important reason.

As a good Lutheran, I'm good at celebrating all of the positive, transformational blessings of the Reformation. Martin Luther helped restore the authority of Scripture, reclaim a Gospel of Grace, and place the Word of God in the average person's hands. 

 

But ... have you ever heard of the Law of Unintended Consequences. What was the curse of the Reformation? It fractured the Authority of the Church, and though it was awesome to finally have Scripture in individual hands, what happened? If individuals didn't agree with a teaching, they'd break away to start their own congregations or denominations. Certainly, the sixteenth century church needed reform, but the unintended consequence has been five centuries of church fractures and divisions.

I'm about to unfold seven hundred years of philosophical trends that have changed the West. And I'm going to admit, up front, most of these trends -- like the Reformation itself -- produced both positives and negatives. I'm also going to admit to quite a bit of over-simplification ... but it's all to make an important point ...

 

 

Seven hundred years ago, everything in the West -- including meaning, purpose, life, philosophy, etc. -- centered around God. What's happened over the last seven hundred years has been a steady, incremental, and now total switch. Self is viewed as the highest good, and God (if He exists at all) is peripheral. Furthermore, Truth is increasingly a bad word; nowadays, feelings tend to trump ideas.

In quick bullet-point fashion, watch how this happened (starting with nominalism in the 14th century) ...

 

• Nominalism invited humanity to question the absolutes -- the timeless universals upon which all thought was based.
• The Renaissance celebrated human potential. (Do you see the beginning of the rise of the self?)
• The Reformation fractured church authority.
• Which meant in the next generation, the likes of Descartes were encouraging people to question all previous forms of thought and authority.
• I'm so glad for millions of scientific advancements. But new ears of Scientific Exploration produced in humanity the pride of Babel -- "Look what we can do."
• The Industrial Revolution had at least three negative effects. It uprooted and splintered families as people moved to the cities to seek work. Culture was suddenly less agrarian, separating most individuals from the intimate connection to the rhythms of Creation (and to the Creator, in whom "we live and move and have our being" -- see Acts 17:28). Furthermore, with individuals producing less and less of their own food and sustenance, money became a more and more central part of human life.
• Deism – was the belief that God is essentially a blind watchmaker. He created the watch/the world, wound it up, and now lets it run without much (if any) interference. The deistic God is, thus, an inactive God.
• Romanticism trumpeted emotion and personal freedom. (Self.)
• Darwinism provided the first real way to explain creation without God.
• And within a generation or two after Darwin, what was rising? Atheism. Communism. Fascism. Eugenics.
• The was also the rise of the Sigmund Freud and Therapeutic. It was the call to self-fulfillment and self-actualization.
• Modernism believed that not only were species supposedly evolving, but human nature and potential were evolving too. But Modernism came crashing down after two World Wars, the Holocaust, the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on civilians, and a hundred million executed by Stalin and Mao.
• This led to the rise of Post-Modernism and its cynicism. If humanity isn't producing answers, then the individual must be the ultimate source of truth (at least for that individual).
• Thus, Relativism rose, proclaiming, "What's true for you is true for you and what's true for me is true for me."
• Materialism – also rose. We're encouraged to purchase our happiness and shop for our meaning.
• The Sexual Revolution is totally self-in-center.
• And I don't even know if there's a name for our current philosophy. It used to be that Ideas shaped Feelings and Actions. Now Feelings shape Ideas and Actions. Which is why we can't have any civil discourse anymore. To discuss Ideas is viewed as offensive, because you're not debating an Idea at the level of Ideas, you're discussing at the level of Feeling and thus perceived as attacking the person.

 

Do you see it? Seven centuries and God has moved out of the center of our modern, Western, philosophical imagination and Self and Feeling are now the highest ideals.

 

Oops!

 

And a bigger oops? It's that you and I are products of this Western culture. It's the water we swim in. We're so accustomed to it that we don't even recognize that we're drowning.

 

Escape takes intentionality. Reclaiming faith takes being deep. Bringing true hope -- rather than temporary satisfaction -- requires caring about ideas. We need Truth. We need God to be in the center -- in our center. And it starts with personal confession. Change must start with us.

 

Do you want change? Well, I don't know about you, but I want God in the center -- for myself and my family -- because I'm increasingly dissatisfied with our messy, modern trends.

 

In Christ's Love,

a guy who wants to be like

the famous sculpture

in today's header.

I want to be transformed ...

and it start by thinking,

by the renewing of my mind.