Dateline: 4 October 2006
As I've stated in my book, Writings of a Deliberate Agrarian, and in other places, the Industrial Revolution of the mid 1800's led to the total upheval and near destruction of traditional, Biblically-based, predominantly agrarian, family life. A way of life which, I hasten to point out, had been lived to various degrees by Christians for centuries. My point being— the typical way of life for families in our modern culture is a complete historical abberation.
The Christian church was inexorably reformed by industrial thought and attitude too. Take, for example, the modern-day evangelical alter call. These days, syncretistic and scientific psychological methods are often used to achieve high numbers of "decisions for Christ" within the shortest amount of time. But such decisions are often shallow, short-lived, and, ultimately, counterproductive.
I suspect modern Christianity, as practiced by the masses, is so far divorced (in time and practice) from true Christianity that we who call ourselves Christians, and see the error, have a hard time understanding how it should be and how to get back to where we belong.
Herrick
ReplyDeleteI think a big part of the problem is that the modern chuch uses the Sabbath day service for an evangalizing event instead of a day for God's people to perform an act of covenant renewal. That's what worship is, covenant renewal. I have attended church services in the past where the only people in the pews were church members that professed Christ and were baptised. At the end of the service the pastor would ask over and over if anyone needed to be saved. Nothing like the shepherd causing the sheep to doubt their salvation. Its the same problem with all this "seeker sensitive" nonsense. If an unbeleiver walks into a Sabbath worship service they should feel like outsiders in another world. I could go on and on about this but I have got to scoot back to the barn. Still have half a cow to cut up and some fence to string.
Thanks for a good post!