A Lukewarm Society

I am amazed at how many people give no thought or weight to their immortal resting place. Whether it's online with message boards or blogs or at work with co-workers, so many people simply don't put their soul to high esteem. They'll joke about going to hell or off-handedly say with a certain level of pride that they no longer attend any church services.

The flippancy of their attitude toward faith is so astounding to me. They either know the consequences but don't care or have dismissed the idea of consequences all together. Either way, the trend is concerning.

Growing up it was the rare case of a family that did not go to church regularly. Now, I am in the minority. The fact that we go to church every Sunday, that my kids are involved, that my daughter goes to youth group... these are all the exceptions, not the rule.

I wonder how our priorities got so out of whack. No wonder the moral center of the country is up for grabs now. Instead of most of society gravitating toward a common moral core, we are left with millions of individual ideas of what is morally acceptable. Combine that and the power of the media working hard to lay out their own version of universal truth, i.e., moral relativism, and we are now what the bible calls a "lukewarm" society.

The bible does not speak highly of those that are lukewarm. Perhaps we have been too prosperous. Perhaps the struggles that forged our moral center, two world wars sandwiching the great depression, left our parents and grandparents with a greater respect for those things outside of our control that can affect our lives.

After years of relative calm, growth and greed, our focus has naturally turned inward, selfish, and now it's all about us... we've forgotten or have little practical experience with the ravages of life that can turn our safe worlds upside down.

You would think that 9/11, or the multiple hurricanes or the tsunami would have shifted our focus back to God, but we have become desensitized to it all... these events are just five channels of five hundred distractions on our cable box.

My hope and belief is that there is always a path back to God. I just wonder what he's going to have to do to get our society back on his path. I fear it won't be a subtle event, but something much more drastic than what has occurred.

I hope we "warm up" to Him before then so that our chastisement will be lessened and our focus where it should be... back on Him.