We have finally come to that point in time which for decades we thought of as a distant mystical location in our future: the year 2000.
No one from the human race has ever surveyed the hinterland of this barely entered epoch. Thus we are naturally apprehensive as, standing on the shores of the third millennium, we fancy all kinds of monsters and mammoths lurking beyond this pivot of the calendar. Some of these we will doubtless encounter, though not exactly in the form we now imagine them.
Alongside the march of time toward this date, there has been the parallel advance of genuinely disquieting mega-movements. At this point I am reflecting especially on our shifting spiritual and moral presuppositions. Some of these have in fact altered the superstructure of the way human beings view themselves, their world and the whole creation. This has, in turn, caused expansive realignments in the ways we think, feel, and live, and also in the kinds of humans we have become versus the humans of 200 or even 50 years ago.
In contrast with the humanity of the past, contemporary men and women, despite the unprecedented panoramas now open, have come to think in limited, mono-dimensional terms. That is, the "scientific" answer has tended to become the only respectable, politically correct answer. We have come to assign to reason and science capacities that by their nature they do not and cannot possess. Reason and science have been accorded an obeisance and authority that is ill placed. This has caused the neglected spiritual side of our God-given humanity to cry out to be recognized and employed. These spiritual aspects of our being are, on the whole, increasingly atrophied by disuse or misuse. This is so even in many of our religious communities and institutions, which in some significant cases have all but become collaborators with and champions of many of these "brave new world" views.
On the heels of this, and in a kind of reaction to it, people now increasingly find expressions for the spiritual side of their nature in an array of improbable, irrational, seductive, and even demonic channels. And so in many cultures and in many people, the rationalistic and the irrational lie side by side as uneasy, yet consorting, bed-fellows. The projected long-term offspring of such an ongoing liaison is disquieting to contemplate.
Modern rationalism and science jump-started our vehicles to travel the road on which we came to incessantly question anything that could not be physically observed or scientifically tested; such as the existence of God and our origin in Him. From there we moved, still traveling down the same road, to challenge many spiritual and moral stanchions that could not stand up to our rationalistic scrutiny.
The next step is well on the way to being taken: that of depreciating and devaluing the gift of our own humanity. Our humanistic yet disrespectful and brazen views of sexuality and our wholesale, invasive aborting of human life in the womb, along with the kinds of arguments we use to justify such behavior are sobering examples of this degenerative megatrend. Increasingly we are like sheep without a shepherd, left to the dictates of a merely temporal rational ism. For "in those days there was no king in Israel [no recognized transcendent authority and] every man did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25, RSV).
We have literally forgotten from whence we came and are, thus increasingly confused about who we are, where we are, and where we really want to go. It is not only the prophetically initiated Christian who urgently wonders where our humanity is heading. Anyone who allows himself or herself to think at all must wonder where a world, stripped of adequate spiritual and moral verity will turn and what kind of self-destructive conduct might be forthcoming, as more and more we are faced with mass extinction and universal cataclysm.
But what does this have to do with our here and now?
While recently perusing old Ministry magazines, my 86-year-old mother pointed me to a striking Carl Sandburg quote that appeared on our August 1973 cover: "For we know that when a nation goes down and never comes back, when a society or a civilization perishes, one condition can always be found. They forgot from whence they came. They lost sight of what brought them along."
Where indeed have we come from and what has brought here? In other words, in the light of Sandberg's discerning insight, what verities must the Christian (and Adventist) Church profoundly affirm and embrace, lest we die? Here are four:
1. It seems to me that the one seminal shift that has most desolated our humanity over the last 150 years, causing what seems to be our eschatological crumbling, has been the questioning or denying of the alpha verity, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." I suppose Carl Sandberg had more immediate historical and political matters in mind when he penned his statement. Nevertheless, allowing his "whence they came" statement to justly encompass the very beginnings of our existence certainly makes it all the more suggestive and true for us and our times. This is particularly so if it is contrasted with the "whence they came" offered by evolutionary theory and its dubious offspring. I believe it is imperative that we stand strong and true to our "whence" as it is expressed in Genesis 1-3.
2. Another closely related actuality that is crucial for us to affirm now with heart and soul is the one that says, "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God...." (2 Tim. 3:16, NKJV). We may argue the finer points of what this means as we try to decipher the relationship between biblical inspiration and inerrancy. But let us by God's grace wrestle our doubts to the canvas when it comes to the supernatural underpinnings of the Bible. Let us bow to the ultimate authority of the One who inspired it, making the Bible our one reliable guide for life. Let us actually make it the paramount, one-of-a-kind enlightener "for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" (2 Tim. 3:16, NKJV) and above all our singular "revelation of Jesus Christ" (Rev. 1:1).
3. A third indispensable verity is the Gospel. The fabulous news is that "God made him [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5:21, NIV). It is that Christ "has become for us wisdom from God that is, our righteousness, holiness [sanctification] and redemption" (1 Cor. 1:30). It is that "now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known" (Rom. 3:21, NIV). An ongoing grasp of this magnificent reality opens the way for the work of the Spirit upon and within our souls, bringing us to maturity in the way we live and move and have our being. Ironically, no truth has been more threatened by our Judeo- Christian heritage than has this one. We must be sure we are standing for it though the heavens fall.
4. A fourth essential is that Jesus is coming again. This certainty becomes a matter of increasing meaning for us as we move toward its fulfillment. The more chaotic our post-modern societies become, and the more the eschatological dust swirls in the myriad winds of opinion, the more precious and indispensable is the actuality of Jesus' promise to come again. The four words, "I will come again" (John 14:1-3) are superbly crucial for our time. They have been designed for this moment in this kind of world. They were spoken at a time when Jesus' disciples felt their faith, their being and their whole world literally collapsing around them (see John 13:33-38).
There are, of course other equally worthy verities that cry out for attention and affirmation. Let us take all of them up with prayer and thought, as we face what this millennial moment portends for our lives, our churches and our future. Let us live out and proclaim these verities wisely yet unashamedly. Let us celebrate and live in the light of our truest origins, not forgetting from whence we came nor losing sight of Who actually brought us to this hour, and thus Who will take us through and beyond it to Himself.
