In my view the two major challenges that modernity presents are distractions and peer pressure.
Prior to the modern era most of one’s time was taken up by task that contributed to continued survival what little time was left one used to procreate or pray for God’s aid in one’s continued survival. Faith was a help to keep one’s spirits which was necessary to overcome the challenges that life presented.
For us living in the industrial world life is much easier than those who lived in the age of Christendom. Modern life also offers a cornucopia of entertainment diversions with which to occupy the ample free time that living in the modern age provides.
Death is no longer the constant threat that it once was. Modern sanitary systems and practices make food borne diseases relatively rare. Broken bones are not the threat to life that they once were. Most of the common diseases that were frequent killers in the 18th century and now rarely deadly.
The causes of death in the age of Christendom were mysteries. That uncertainty drove the mind to God. The community sought the face of God and those that openly doubted God’s existence were pushed out of the community or were shunned.
Most of the hard facts of life that once drove the mind to God are no longer the hard facts of life and have been replaced by cheap entertainment.
Today in a large part the table has turned, and God’s existence is openly challenged and dismissed. To openly profess God’s existence and omnipresence is to be considered odd, eccentric or maybe dangerous.
Peer pressure in modern life is on the side of the adversary. All of the distractions of life are on the side of the adversary. Politics is on the side of the adversary. In my estimation even the Pope is on the side of the adversary.
The Church is on the ropes and needs to punch its way out.
“The Church is on the ropes and needs to punch its way out.”
Agreed - but how, exactly? I think that’s what Os Guinness is grappling with. This issue needs to be dealt with. The church, for the most part, seems to be striving for relevance by compromise - and has become the Church of Laodicea (Jesus’s letters to the churches in Revelation). He said it was lukewarm and he would rather it was cold or hot.
Which leads to an interesting question: what does that mean? Why would cold, specifically, be preferable? Cold Christians vs. lukewarm Christians. We probably understand the idea of hot, or fervent Chritsianity. Maybe cold refers to fierce determination in the face of such moral anarchy?
How should the church deal with this insane, utterly immoral, trivial information overloaded, technological age?