As Charles Taylor puts it, there are those critics of contemporary culture who cast themselves in the role of 'knockers' - ie, they have a gloomy outlook on the contemporary world and chart a decline in moral standards since the 1960s. The opposite outlook belongs to the 'boosters', who are characteristically more optimistic about the progress of humanity in the current era.
Now, it is customary for evangelical preachers to be 'knockers': they will, without fail, offer a social analysis that is very negative. In trying to contrast the biblical view to the current world view, they characteristically talk about the decline in standards, about modern individualism and so on. The contemporary world is cast as one in which something valuable has been lost.
Like Taylor, I want to say that things are more complicated than either the boosters or the knockers realise. Sociologically, I think it is inaccurate to be either optimistic or pessimistic. I think standards have changed to some degree - and in some ways definitely for the better (contrary to what you hear from evangelical pulpits).
Theologically, I want to say that human beings have not become MORE evil in recent decades - the pre 1960s past was not a golden era of human morality and we would be greatly mistaken to read it as such, or to portray the gospel as a nostalgic hankering after a society that never existed anyhow. It is right to try and discern what the particular evils of our times are: but not to see them as charting a decline necessarily.
There's more to say, but - I'd love to hear what you think.
18 comments:
I think you've made an important point, Michael. Every era has its good and bad points, and we shouldn't idolise any of them. Certainly the 1950's were an era when much of "middle Australia" advocated a "nice" middle-class morality that fitted in well with some aspects of Christian ethics. But yet at the same time there was rampant racism, sexual abuse was covered up by all sections of society, and greed, lust, adultery & the abuse of power and every other form of evil were still going on, just as it does today.
I would say, that personally I'm very greatful that I live now and not earlier, seeing some huge problems with previous eras and thanking God I don't live in them and with their faults.
That said, I feel like more of a knocker, since it seems like the trajectory of humanity's advancement is to maximise the damage that our sinful natures can do. Humanity may not be any more degenerate, but the scope of its impact could be.
Plus, I think I'm influenced by an apocalyptic eschatology and a general sense of the senescence of the world
Why would you be against saying people have become more evil (in some ways or senses)? Sin depraves, the world has had more time to sin, the world is more depraved. There is a similar spread and increase of sin in Gen 3ff, don't you think?
I wonder what a creation affirming post-mil account of societal goodness might look like?
I would have thought we could expect society to get worse and worse and the church to get better and better and that the culture will be increasinly influenced by the gospel and so transformed as God's Kingdom comes and his will is done on earth and it is in heaven?
Michael: Good point. Let there be listening, and (as you say) discernment; there is no subsitute for paying close attention to the phenomena.
Marc: Your statements are wildly speculative.
Michael: how about space rather than time? Do you see evils in the UK that aren't as prevalent in Sydney (or vica versa)? Or are we all so glocal now you can't make observations like this?
My favourite example of this was the rector's wife in the church where I was a teenager... she was wont to say the world had got so much more evil than when she was a girl... Her childhood? WW2...
So many secular writers push the fear of the new, I think a big part of the discourse of losing childhood / sexualising of children is rife with this... its way too easy to just paste it holus bolus over into christianity.
Mark Hadley wrote a counter-intuitive piece for the Southern Cross that sounded like it was a "mourn the lost innocence of modern yourth" piece but it actually went towards a plea to lose the sentimental childishness of our gospel presentations.
Well, Bruce, I did off a text for the spread of sin! Is that cotroversial to you?
One can hardly expect the full case in a little comment but here are a few quick thoughts:
The Bible repeatedly speaks of the increasing wickedness of the "world", does it not? They will go from bad to worse. Terrible times will come.
Admitedly this might all wax and wane from place to place and time to time, but we can see a pattern, even as there is a pattern to the growth of the church over the centuries?
What about all the parables that speak of the growth of the kingdom? The Lord's Prayer being answered that God's will would be done, his kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. The glory of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. That mountain will be the highest mountain etc.
As an historian, I'm not a big fan of comparing societies along the lines of some arbitrary measure of progress. For one, we have more and better data (empircal and experiential) about this era than any other, which hardly makes any comparison fair. And we're entirely at the whim of how other contemporaries interpreted their ages. Where objective cmparisons can be made, we can measure progress, but how we measure values and worth is beyond me.
Conversely, it's fun bagging the crap out of self-important propagandists for this age. And if it's fun, it can't be bad, can it?
Michael, thank you for this - I agree with where you are going.
It has long seemed to me that it is quite pernicious, theologically speaking, to erect a 'golden age' - be it the '50's, the 19th century, the Reformation, the Middle Ages, the time of Jesus, or what have you - and then do what we can to get back to that or hold it up as a model. One reason this is a problem is because it tends to be myopic about the very real sin and limitations of these times, while being pessimistically observant about the present day. The analogy between this habit of mind and idolatry is straightforward.
But another, related reason is this: if it is true that the kingdom of God has come already, but not yet in its fullness, then our 'golden age' always lies ahead of us and not behind. We can catch hints and glimmers of it here and there, perhaps, but we cannot imagine the fullness of it yet. So to set up a previous age as 'it' mistrusts God - not a position most of us would fancy being in, I wager.
Finally, to be blindly (or ideologically) committed to being either a 'knocker' or a 'booster' ends up being just that: blind. And although there is hope in God that even the blind might see, to willingly embrace blindness risks missing seeing what God is up to in the world. Why would we want to do that?
I wrote a bit about postmillennialism at
http://mpjensen.blogspot.com/2007/07/postmillennialism-temptation-best.html
My concern is partly that in counting a libertarian and decadent culture such as ours as worse, we fail to see the sin and evil that is rampant in more rigidly structured societies, with their propensity to hide evil away from view. Part of the reason 'the 60s' ideology has been so powerful is that it critiqued the violence, greed and paranoia of the previous generation hiding behind a thin veneer of moralism.
Marc: As a courtesy you deserve an answer from me, although frankly I'm at a loss as to what to say. Yes, you offered a text for the spread of sin (Gen 3 and following) ... and drew a long bow to the world becoming consistently more depraved over time, meaning contemporary history. I called this wildly speculative because, well, it is. Yes, bad things happen on an increasingly large scale in the story of Gen 3-6; but this is addressed in extremely direct terms within the narrative. (There was a covenant involving a rainbow in there too, as I recall.) And on the other side of the deluge, the dispersal at Babel is followed immediately by genealogy, and then the call of Abram. Is this then followed by a progressive spread of sin --- the world getting worse --- and the children of Abraham getting better, on Genesis' own account? I think not. Nor does the rest of Scripture appropriate Gen 3-6, 9-11 in this manner.
And yes there is apocalyptic literature in Scripture; and Jesus speaks in parables about the action of the word of God in the world. How one should, from this, "expect society to get worse and worse and the church to get better and better", is obscure. Whatever the implications of Rev 1-3 in the present, the progressive improvement of the church is not among them.
Your earliest question to Michael was "Why would you be against saying people have become more evil (in some ways or senses)?" but I see nothing in the initial post, or in this line of criticism generally, that denies this possibility. Surely though, one needs to emphasise "in some ways or senses". It's a mistake to elevate criticisms that are particular to some time or place to the level of some cosmic trend, or to make them wholesale. There is enough darkness in the world without painting all of it black. And I see no mandate to do this in Scripture: it is no part of witness to Christ to be inaccurate about the world around us. Following Michael's last point, if you want to truly criticise developments since the 60's, you have to acknowledge what is true and right in them.
A propos of the 60's I read the following quote this morning, from a letter by Samuel Beckett to Theodor Adorno, on the behaviour of student radicals: "Was ever such rightness joined to such foolishness?"
Don't call people after colloquial terms for female body parts.
While most evangelical preachers have the basic tools to shed some light on the direction of our culture, their critique is too often weak, unthoughtful, thin on analysis, informed by irregularities in pop culture. And with such a modest set of observations, no wonder why preachers are more inclined to be negative towards our culture: its easier to be that way.
But what is of genuine concern is when these critiques make their way into the pulpit where they are delivered with enough moral shrill to be received as "insights."
Preachers who are not prepared to offer a concise, thoughtful evaluation of our culture should not offer any. And when these evaluations become judgements (as they so often do), then...
" judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness ... "Do not go beyond what is written." (1 Cor 4)
Surely the mid-late 19th century wasn't as bad as the mid-late first century anyway!
I reckon people just don't like change... immorality isn't so bad as long as it's the immorality we're used to!
What is genuinely novel since the middle of last century is the sheer number of people on the planet. Never before has global population exploded as it has done during the decades of our lifetimes. I suspect that this has meant that the pace of both "decline" and "progress" (in different areas - geographical and cultural) has significantly increased.
MJ - "My concern is partly that in counting a libertarian and decadent culture such as ours as worse, we fail to see the sin and evil that is rampant in more rigidly structured societies, with their propensity to hide evil away from view. Part of the reason 'the 60s' ideology has been so powerful is that it critiqued the violence, greed and paranoia of the previous generation hiding behind a thin veneer of moralism."
As byron smith points out, it depends whether you are talking quality or quantity whether there is any progression in societal sin. The quality of human sinfulness does not change, but the quantity does, whether we are talking about hypocritical repressed legalistic periods or 'free-thinking' libertarian periods. Greater concentration of people in cities makes for sin on a grander scale. It has always been so.
People who think our society (or even our human nature in the extreme view) is qualitatively worse than those that have gone before are as mistaken as those who think it is qualitatively improved. It's just different in its local expressions. As a society we make moral advances in some areas and go backwards in others (speaking from the viewpoint of traditional Christian morality and ethics).
You only have to know Western history to understand the folly of thinking that we are either only progressing or only regressing. Yes the period from the Depression to the 1950s may have been outwardly more in conformity to certain Christian values, but look at the 1920s, the 1890s, the 1790s, or any number of other decadent periods and you see that these mores go in cycles, fluctuating between naughty and nice, between legalism and vice.
Hi, I'm Mike
Good discussion. Western culture is clearly dying. As a product of Christianity, it is more vulnerable to judgment. This follows the OT pattern. But since the first century, worship is now centralised in heaven, and cannot become totally corrupt as a visible institution. As the West exercises its democratic right to extinction, Christianity is booming in other cultures.
When earthly Jerusalem becomes Babel and starts ministering Wormwood, God cuts off her generations quickly (Romans 9:28). We have kicked like a fatted calf. If Western culture dies, so be it. There is always a Remnant.
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