When military officers, for having extramarital affairs, are being court-martialed, expelled from the service in disgrace, losing their pensions, while their commander-in-chief is having oral sex in the Oval Office with an intern the age of his own daughter and then lying about it to a grand jury, and who willfully subverts and obstructs an investigation for eight long agonizing months, and is permitted to keep his office by gutless politicians, and still has a high approval rating by the American public, what kind of days are we living in?
When an Ohio appeals court sets free a man convicted of 10 counts of confessed rape against an 8- year-old girl, simply because the judge in the sentencing happened to quote the Bible about harming children and therefore "denied the defendant the right to a fair trial" and broke the alleged "separation of church and state", what kind of days are we living in?
When half of all marriages end in divorce, where a majority of married people are having extramarital affairs (check the latest studies), where babies in the act of being born legally have their brains sucked out and their tissue harvested for "scientific" purposes, what kind of days are we living in?
We are living in the "difficult times" the Apostle Paul wrote about to Timothy when he said, "people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness but denying its power." No words composed today could more accurately describe these times we are living in.
Usually I get angry when I watch the evening news. I've almost stopped doing it for my own peace of mind. How is a Christian person to live and act in these days in which we live? Should we be storing up food? Stockpiling guns? Living in little communes in Montana and building bunkers? Should we be withdrawing ourselves from society, taking our money out of banks and buying gold, cutting up our credit cards? I must confess that sometimes I feel that desperate.
But is that the kind of mentality and activity the Bible instructs us to follow? From my reading of Scripture, it seems that spirit is totally foreign to the New Testament and the spirit of Christ. Jesus said not to store up treasures here on earth where moth consumes and rust destroys. He said not to be anxious for food and clothing, for what will happen tomorrow, but rather trust in our heavenly Father to provide for us in good and lean times. He said that those who live by the sword will perish by the sword. He said we were to love our enemies, and overcome evil with good.
In these days when people's love has grown cold, when society values worthless, even perverse things, the Word of God instructs us to abound in love, to be people of holy and godly conduct, to work hard at being at peace with all, to approve the things that are truly vital and prize what is excellent and of real value. In the midst of this crooked and perverse generation, we are to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach, appearing as lights in the world.
In these difficult time in which we live, I have decided to repent of trying to be accepted by the sophisticated, cynical, worldly set. I have decided, like Francis of Assisi, that where there is hatred, I must sow love, where there is injury, pardon, where there is doubt, faith, where there is despair, hope. I have decided that I will stop whining about being misunderstood, and try to be understanding of others. I have decided to follow Jesus.
@ copyright 1999 by Scott H. Northrup. All rights reserved.