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Parson to Person: Are we falling back into superstitious dark ages?
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Can you believe we are nearly half-way through another year?  When I thought of that fact the lament of Jeremiah 8:20 came to my mind:  "‘The harvest is finished, and the summer is gone,’ the people cry, ‘yet we are not saved!’" (NLT).

Read carefully the lyrics of a song that is currently popular in the British Isles:

"I want to be rich and I want lots of money. I want loads of clothes and loads of diamonds. I heard people die while they are trying to find them.

Life’s about film stars and less about mothers. It’s all about fast cars and passing each other.

But it doesn’t matter because I’m packing plastic and that’s what makes my life so fantastic.

And I am a weapon of massive consumption, and it’s not my fault it’s how I’m programmed to function.

I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore. I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore. Cause I’m being taken over by fear" (Source:  Lily Allen, "The Fear" from It’s Not Me, It’s You, Regal Records, United Kingdom, January 26, 2009).

Folks, that is the world we live in.  Jesus said that of the last days, "(that) men’s hearts (would) fail them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken" (Luke 21:26, KJV).  Interesting, what Jesus said 2,000 years ago, a popular singer in Europe is singing about today.

This new world reality, if you will, gives believers a tremendous opportunity in our witness.  People are looking for answers as never before (in my lifetime at least), and if we don’t give them solid ones, Biblical ones, truthful ones, they will find those answers in that which is not right or not real.  We’re seeing that today.

Think about it.  Have you noticed the increase of television programs and movies which are dealing with the supernatural?  Why is that?  And why has post-modern thought moved us away from reason and back into patterns of thinking that we once referred to as "the dark ages?"  Our journey to discover what some desire to be a wholly naturalistic world, has left in us a spiritual void which insists on being filled.  Because we have jettisoned the frame-work of rationalism and reason in our post-modern era, we are in fact devolving quickly back into superstition. 

This devolution of soul is reveling itself in the form of what we find entertaining but it also offers the true believer a marvelous frame-work for witness.  People are looking for solid answers, and we who know Christ and believe his word beginning with creation have those answers.  "So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up" (Galatians 6:9, NLT).

 

Dr. John Pearrell is pastor of Gateway Community Church in Covington. He can be heard on the radio on WMVV 90.7 (FM) at 8:30 p.m. Thursday nights.