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| The Church at the Crossroads |
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Just as it did in the time of Jesus’ birth, the world today resembles nothing so much as it does a crossroads. It lives at the critical juncture of competing truth claims and cultural expression. We struggle between Jihad, the tendency toward parochialism and atomization and MacWorld, the relentless gravitational pull of secular homogenization.
Will the world inexorably evolve into a cosmopolitan megapolis or will it collapse beneath the blows of militant tribalism? Whose will wins out? Whose ideas will mould the future, the World Wide Web or the resurgent militant Islam of 9/11 (New York) and 7/7 (London)? What about an endlessly customized, privatized spirituality, particularly popular among the elites and chat-tering classes. Religions whose gods ultimately look like us are always in supply. Perhaps, as Neil Postman prophesied, we will simply Amuse ourselves to Death. If you visit that crossroads, you will also find the church. Balanced on the knife-edge, the Evangelical Church lives in the place between the way it used to be and the way it must become. As it exists, it totters, trying to understand its own identity in the midst of cultural flux and competing claims to its soul. In a sense, of course, it has to totter. Nothing remains stationary. The issue is the position you adopt and the direction you take. To be sure, everyone knows, even those that pine for some idealized past, the future is all we have to possess. >> read complete article |