Category: Culture

On a recent night, I was driving home from a discipleship class in Tel Aviv.  The program is for recent Army grads and some who can get off from the Army for a few days.  The administrator is a young woman of great spiritual quality. As a group of us rode home, I mentioned my concern that young adults do not seem concerned to seek and find the truth.  Or they don’t think there is the truth to be found. What difference from my generation! Just before the Jesus movement, I recall that philosophy classes in universities were packed. Students had to be turned away.  This was true at Wheaton. The Philosophy of Religion class of Dr. Stuart Hacket was full every semester. Wheaton was and is an Evangelical Christian Liberal Arts and Science School, but many students had become skeptical. Some took the course to bolster their faith and others to engage a fresh search for truth.  What has happened to this generation?  

My young friend pointed to devices and the internet as part of the problem. In her view, there is something about the constant focus on devices that deadens people.  They cannot give attention to serious reading, conversation. There is a self-focus in their Facebook engagements that does not pursue the outside realities that give meaning.  Yes, there is something wrong when we see people not able to walk down the street without being on their devices. It is certainly an addiction.  

But that is not all.  Many are not capable of discerning when they use the internet.  It can become a conduit of demons. How so? It seeds ideas that young people would never have thought of it.  For example. Homosexuals have argued that their orientation is a genetic given. This was a reasonable argument though wrong.  It has largely been given up since no scientific foundation can be found for it after years of seeking. However, transgenderism is even more far out. At least homosexuals claimed their normal genders of male and female and claimed to be attracted to the same sex.  Every cell of one’s body is either an xx for a woman and xy for a man. A transgender cannot experience foundational experiences of the gender they choose in contradiction to their birth gender. The born male cannot become pregnant, have periods, nurse and have other foundational experiences of womanhood and vice versa.  He can never have a female sexual experience. Now we also see some sectors of women’s sports destroyed as born men dominate the competition. (In reverse, no problem for the NFL!!). How has this spread? Where do young people get the idea that they are a woman in a man’s body or a man in a woman’s body if they did not have a teacher in school tell them this.  The answer is that the internet speaks to young people who are not happy about their identity as men and women. One couple we had known for years had a daughter that was a born female, married and had children. She decided to be a male and is in a sexual relationship with a born male who wants to be a female. He did not get the castration surgery so they do have intercourse.  You cannot make this up. I have shared on the philosophical roots of this radical gender choice theory (Frankfort School) But how does this spread so widely? And now it is politically correct to support it. Think of the child abuse when parents give drugs to pre-pubescent children to turn them into the opposite. The physical cost is high according to some leading doctors. In my view the internet should be off-limits to children and then only used with supervision and training on how to avoid sites and discern false information.  What a challenge! We are also producing a population that is woefully ignorant. Some surveys in America show that many high school graduates do not know the three branches of the government in the United States. This is a population that can be easily controlled by tyranny. It is given to pleasure and dangerously cut off from truth. 

I am not speaking here about a biblical approach to the issues raised by the LGBTQ movement.  I think my readers know that my basic stand is that God sets sexual direction for human beings as part of his creation order and intent.  However, the issue of sexual orientation has a long history in psychology and psychiatry. There has been a progression in the history of the arguments concerning how to understand and approach gay and LGBTQ orientations. 

Historic psychiatry and behavioral psychology (two opposing approaches) both saw gay and lesbian orientations as from environmental influences.   It was considered a behavior problem to be corrected, healed or straightened out. Psychiatry would look into the family dynamics and the wrong relationship between the parents and the child growing up.  They pointed to unhealthy patterns that could produce gay orientations. The analysis would enable understanding and overcoming. Behavioral theory interpreted all behavior as rooted in the conditioning of the subject.  The reward/ punishment system produces a right or wrong orientation. This tends to be more deterministic than psychiatry. Generally, people are determined to be how they are due to the conditioning in their growing up years.  As one practitioner said, sexual orientation is very flexible, and one can be conditioned to get sexually excited by a lamp post. Of course, there is in behaviorism a biological basis for attraction to the opposite sex, but sufficient conditioning can stifle this and create the aberrant orientation.  The answer is to place the person who is wrongly oriented into a course of re-conditioning. The basic biological realities would give the behaviorist the view that heterosexuality was normative. Due to much political pressure associations of both Psychologists and Psychiatrists in counseling gave up these views and voted to accept gay orientations as normal variations to be accepted.  Counseling should be to enable one to adjust and live a good life within a gay lifestyle. This is now the consensus of counseling.  

Following this previous dominant history, the argument was put forth that gays and lesbians were determined to be according to their orientations by their physical makeup.  It is a genetic matter or a brain issue. After many studies failed to prove any such basis for the orientations, many gay writers gave up on this. Within their own counsels they admitted that, though physical determination is a good argument to get straights to accept their gay orientation, it really is a  proclivity they could not explain, is partly chosen and should be accepted never the less.

Post-modernism, based in existentialism has a totally different approach.  Going back to some in the Frankfurt Germany school of Philosophy, a doctrine of radical freedom and self-definition is taught.  There is a rejection of any essence of a person as given by God (since His existence is denied) or given by nature or biology. Once the conscious ego arises, radical freedom to choose becomes understood.  One can, therefore, choose any orientation sexually. The one value maintained is that sexual involvement has to be with consenting adults. The one absolute is that one must not do violence to others. So not only can one be gay or lesbian, but one can be transsexual or consider themselves a man in a woman’s body or a woman in a man’s body.  One can be bi-sexual or polyamorous (multiple partners). It is of the highest ethical stand in such a philosophy that sexual self-definition is an absolute right of human freedom.  Any assertion of traditional morality as incumbent upon human beings is a rejection of the right of self-definition and therefore is hate speech.  This yields such new orientations as a pregnant man (woman’s body) or a man in a woman’s body marrying a woman in a man’s body and having normal intercourse while thinking they are the opposite sex.  It also opens up the choice of surgery to make the body on the outside more like what one thinks of oneself on the inside. The woman in a man’s body will cut off the male sexual organs and create a woman like vagina, or the women will cut off breasts and as much as possible create male organs.  Such surgery is terribly partial since the surgically changed male to a woman can never bear a baby, nurse a baby, or have the kind of sexual pleasure that a woman would have. The women who changes to a male can never have a real male erection or experience of male orgasm (there is no prostate gland).  In addition, every cell of the body will still be xx for a biologically born woman and xy for a man. Hormonal therapy can cause a male to develop breasts and can give a woman a deeper male voice. The evidence is that surgery and hormonal therapy can be very damaging physically. It contradicts the body’s total cellular being. The recent leader from Johns Hopkins University and chief of the Psychiatry department and expert on sexual dysfunctions, Dr. Paul McHugh, argued and still argues that hormonal and surgical re-assignment are health-threatening.  But the LGBTQ movement is a full-blown world view ideology. The right to choose must override health concerns. However, some argue that to practice these things with children who have not the maturity to choose and before puberty have no certainty on an orientation, is child abuse. 

The new ideology is based on the idea of radical freedom, not as much on determined proclivities.  It is also said that people may change and choose differently in the future. Surgical and hormonal treatment might preclude later choices.  One can assert a personal preference for a traditional sexual orientation in marriage but any assertion of right and wrong in orientation is hate speech since it contradicts the absolute radical freedom of each person to choose.  It should be noted that post-modern ethics is not rooted in anything. The ethic itself is actually an anti-ethic since its foundation is a raw choice of what will count as their foundational ethical ideas. It is not a norm outside of ourselves to which we are to conform since there are no objective norms outside ourselves.  Hence it is an anti-ethic ethic.  

There has been a battle between Mexico and the  United States over who to blame for the Drug problem that is wreaking havoc in both countries. The United States wants to go after the drug cartels, but despite many years of effort, it seems that the battle against the supply side is not working well. Mexico claims that the real problem is the demand side. The huge demand for drugs in the United States makes this a most lucrative temptation for crime. Huge amounts of money are made. Supplying drugs that will kill and destroy many lives is a serious gross sin and will land people who do not repent into eternal Hell judgment.  However, I want to speak on the other side, the side of demand. 

First, I want to exclude those who are addicted through pain and post-traumatic stress from war. Such folks need help and empathy. I am personally very connected to this issue due to a close relative who due to great physical pain became addicted. Managing pain medication is a major issue that needs addressing. There are no easy answers. 

However, the big problem with demand is due in large part of the departure from the Judea Christian consensus and its concomitant beliefs and values, including the fear of God, the commands of God and the sacred worth of each individual.  When these values are firmly established in a person’s life they live on the basis of their own worth before God and do not seek to demean that worth by abusing their bodies through drugs or seeking destructive pleasures. Secondly, they believe in the judgment of God and knowing God’s commands against abusing the body and seeking destructive pleasures, there is a fear of God that checks destructive behavior. This is a matter of a robust conscience. This is before attaining to the higher motivation of loving God and seeking to please God. 

The rush to legalize pot for recreation is a case in point. We know that its usage is bad for health, yet the drug is politically correct and the consensus of it being bad for human beings is just not having its warranted effect. What are people being raised to believe in regard to their worth before God, self-respect, and respect for others?   The issue of the demand side is world view conviction and without the self-respect that comes from those convictions, people can not seem to resist pleasures that destroy them. Mexico has a point. Border security is a good and important thing, but no amount of border security will be enough when the demand is so high. The poor in our cities that are dying due to drug wars can be won to faith and discipled to a Biblical world view. 

We could give the same analysis of the claim by feminist claim of toxic masculinity. Maleness is not toxic when young people are discipled in respect for women and themselves.  I know of no young person raised in our high school youth group who sexually abused women. We were taught to respect and even revere women. It was called being a gentleman. So much of our culture is sick due to rejecting the God of the Bible and the Biblical world view that so influenced our culture. No, we were not an explicitly Bible-based nation, but the influence of that world view on our culture was amazing.    

I am only speaking here of profound failures of the church streams and independent churches that claim to believe the Bible as fully true and confess the classic biblical confessions.  I ask one question. How is it that the United States counts so many Evangelicals (all stripes), has been key in electing the present President and yet the culture is in step decline to very destructive directions?  This culture decline is noted by very profound commentators like Dennis Prager, Victor David Hanson, Jordan Peterson. I could name so many others. The universities, entertainment media, the pre-university educational establishment, and the news media all embrace the most destructive causes.  I won’t describe them. My readers can well describe them. Why is the Church quiescent as a minority fosters discrimination against believers, undercutting religious liberty, and requiring believers to endorse sinful lifestyles? Those who speak out are banned from social media! And why is the Church losing its next generation massively?  I note three among many reasons all based in spiritual dullness and lack of discernment.  

• The first major indication of the bankrupt condition of most Christians is that most send their children to the public schools and to secular colleges.  In such schools they will be indoctrinated to the LGBTQ etc. agenda and the rejection of the traditional binary ideas of the sexes and the centrality of marriage.  Inclusiveness excludes those with traditional morals. 40 years ago, we started a school and realized that we needed to take our children out. Children will be taught naturalistic evolution and prepared for unbelief.  Jonny will become Joan. Parents are responsible to see their children see all through a Biblical world view. This cannot be done today in the secular schools. A few years ago, I read the biography of Rabbi Schneerson, the late leader of the Orthodox Chabad Jewish movement.  I don’t agree with many of their views, but through his leadership they disciple their children and lose almost none! We simply do not disciple our children with depth and in a biblical world view. This is a profound manifestation of taking the easy way out among believers. 

• The second failure is the lack of mass mobilization to push back.  The gays bring out masses to promote their agendas. We bring out none or almost none.  Where are those protesting the removal of Christian organizations form our universities because they do not allow members who reject their beliefs?  Where is the massive protest against those promoting the legality of abortion to the ninth month of pregnancy. We are glad for 30,000 in the annual protest in Washington and there should be a million every year.  Where is the massive protest against requiring Christians to give themselves to promote through their businesses lifestyles that they consider sinful? Where is the protest against the attempt of marginalization? We are largely with few exceptions quiescent.

• The third failure is to address systematic poverty.  The emphasis of the New Covenant Scripture is on first preaching the Good News to the poor.  The key to the poor is not just financial support, enterprise zones and other government programs.  The real answer to the poor, restoring marriage and family among the poor and more is the Gospel which is the most powerful answer to poverty.  Where is the Church members that should be walking on-masse in the ghettos of drug dealing and murder and making it impossible? Some could be martyred, but the price should be paid.  Winning the masses of poor to the Lord and then discipling them is the one program that can really work. Yes, some are involved, but it is too few. The failure of the Church to be involved and effectively deal with systematic poverty is one of the greatest blots on the credibility of the American Church.

Some of what we are going through in the terrible moral struggles of the Western world is due to the abandonment of the historic approaches to truth and culture.  Though this is a simplistic summary, I think it is basically a true understanding. I was a student of the history of philosophy and a serious philosophy major in college and graduate school.  So this is my approach to what is happening. Western Society as formed by the cultural elite throughout history can be divided into three eras. The first is what I call the faith/reason period, second, the enlightenment empirical era, and finally the Irrational emotive preference era.  The three are the basic understandings of the nature of Truth and how Truth is accessed.  

The faith/reason era basically was dominant from the time of Constantine to the Reformation and included some of the reformers in the 17th century.  In the faith/reason era there was a joining of Biblical revelation with reason based on Greek philosophy, first with the influence of Platonic philosophies (stemming from philosophers who followed Plato) to Aristotle and the philosophers that followed him.  Knowledge and truth could be discovered both by natural reason its reflections and deductions about reality, or natural knowledge and by revelation. The conclusions of reason and revelation were compatible and sometimes asserted the same truth. The teaching of the Bible and the received wisdom of Greek philosophy were understood as both sources of objective Truth.  Sometimes faith (revelation) was more dominant then reason (Augustine) and sometimes they were in greater equal balance (Thomas Aquinas). Thomas provides us with the height of this synthesis of Greek norms and Biblical Revelation. For Thomas and even for Thomists today, Biblical revelation has the dominant final authority, except that for Catholics that authority has to be meditated by the teaching magisterium of the Church.  This orientation really on faith/reason began in the 2nd century Church Fathers, but really became strong after Constantine and then up to the Reformation which emphasized revelation in a stronger way, but not to the total rejection of reason. 

The second age was the Age of Enlightenment Empiricism.  This period overlapped the first during the Renaissance. The idea is that truth is the conclusion of reasoning about empirical evidence.  This orientation was given expression in Francis Bacon, the father of the modern scientific method. The 18th century established Enlightenment Empiricism in the West.  For Christians it produced the kind of evidential apologetic as seen in John Locke (the British philosopher whose writings were the primary influence of the framers of the U. S. Constitution).  Locke also wrote a text on Christian apologetics and argued for the Resurrection of Yeshua on the basis of the empirical evidence of history. Intelligent design from nature was also important to those of this orientation.  We think of the apologetics of William Paley and his argument form design and Joseph Butler’s The Analogy of Religion, a primary apologetic textbook for 150 years.  Enlightenment Christians produced an individualistic Christian faith.  However, there was the skeptical side of the enlightenment. Only with the enlightenment did the problem of evil seem to undercut faith (see the writings of Voltaire).  Empirical argument also produced doubt about the resurrection and the idea that God was good and loved us. Revelation would then take second place to empirical reason, though the Bible as authority was something that was argued for as a conclusion of empirical reason.  One sees this inheritance in Evangelicalism today. 

Both these approaches have aspects of truth and have merit, but as I have argued, in the Bible,the intuitive, and the work of the Spirit that brings inner certainty though his very own presence needed to be more credited.  We see this understanding in Pascal’s great description of his experience of the fire of God and his reasons of the heart. But this is not to discard reason or the evidence of the truth of the revelation. My one view does try to carefully join aspects of both ages but with a more critical eye focusing on the work of the Spirit in revelation. 

Today’s age is a new and never before seen departure from the very ideas of objective truth as argued both in the Enlightenment and the classic Faith/Reason synthesis.  Today the idea of objective truth to be discovered is rejected. Either from an existential or post modern perspective it is asserted that truth is subjective. This view has become dominant in many taken over many of the leaders in the cultural formation elite.  “Truth is what is true for me.” It is a matter of “my truth.” Therefore, I am entitled to choose my own orientation to life, my morals, my sexual ethics, my own view of what is of value. Today the idea of equality among people dominates, but there is nothing objective to ground this equality orientation.  In this view, one has the right to self-define, and any assertion of tradition or morals against personal self-definition is considered hateful and is to be rejected and called out as hateful to the other who in radical freedom to define oneself. God does not define me, nor his revelation, nor the history of cultural norms, neither in the West or in China or India for that matter (which had very strong definitions too).  In this view the great art, cultural works, literature and more of the West is not valued as superior to the ghetto scrawl on the subway station wall. The banal sound of rap music is equal to Beethoven. It leads to people whose capability of perception of truth and beauty is truncated. This orientation produces distortions and dangers both to politics, culture and personal life. Here are some examples. 

In sexuality, one must be affirmed to self-define according to the proclivities of the moment.  Heterosexual, monogamous, polygamous, promiscuous, transgender, homosexual, and polyamorous all must be affirmed by a new definition of love and tolerance.  Any who disagree are to be shamed and vilified. 

In politics, the norm is socialism.  The idea that evidence shows that socialism always leads to massive poverty is overwhelming, but the evidence is damned.  The post-modern socialists want a world of economic equality, and socialism must work and be enforced despite the overwhelming evidence against it.  Those functioning still in an enlightenment empiricism orientation are aghast at the stupidity of the power assertions of the socialist left, but without addressing the philosophical roots in existentialism and postmodernism, no headway is made.  The socialist politically correct elite see themselves as “woke” not as I see them as indoctrinated in a dangerous subjectivism.

We see the same in the Climate Change power assertions on the left.  The minority of qualified scientists must be tarred and feathered and run out of town since the climate change dangers are too overwhelming, and the subjective left wants to save the world.  Why save the world? There is no answer. The subjectivist could want to destroy the world and forever save a human race from future suffering. One writer desired an end of the human race to save the planet.  The goal is that we are to produce no carbon footprint within ten years. The science is not there to accomplish this. The science be damned because we want to believe this can be done so if we imagine it can be done, and want it, it can be done.  But the science is important. It tells us that a radical end to using fossil fuels will plunge hundreds of millions into poverty and many deaths. The windmills require steel, which is made with coal-fired steel mills! The solar panels require huge levels of mining which itself is carbon polluting.  Then again there is the pollution from the manufacture of the panels. Nuclear power is the best way to reduce carbon emissions, but the socialist left does not like nuclear. Natural gas is a great reducer of carbon emissions through replacing the other more polluting fossil fuels, but no interim solution can be accepted.   That we even think of balancing carbon reduction with the claim to lift people out of poverty or to not plunge people back into poverty is not even an acceptable discussion. For Russia, China, and India, there is no question that they will not go this route, but then the West must do it anyway. It is religious. In all of this, power assertion takes the place of reason and evidence.   Yet, it has no basis in TRUTH. It is a chosen orientation that is given religious zeal as if there was such a thing as absolute truth. So the subjectivist must have an important cause though it is incoherent with his world view.  

The danger of the domination of the anti-reason, anti-Biblical revelation, and anti-empirical subjectivist left is an almost apocalyptic challenge. 

The weekend Jerusalem Post featured an article with the headline asking if the Orthodox Jewish Community could accept LGBT people and especially young people.  It is interesting to note the phrasing. What does acceptance mean? Does it mean tolerance in spite of disagreement with the lifestyles of LGBT people? Or does it mean supporting their basic civil rights?  Or does it mean endorsing the moral and religious legitimacy of their lifestyle? I think the modern Orthodox Jewish community will support the first two meanings of the term, but acceptance does not mean endorsing the lifestyle.  The Modern Orthodox, for the most part, reject these lifestyles as immoral. The ultra-Orthodox is made up of many different streams which will for the most part not accept LGBT people. The ultra-Orthodox do not spend time on the issues of civil rights and are mostly concerned to perpetuate a ghetto of ultra-Orthodox practice, and they will reject openly LGBT people in their communities. 

In the United States, civil rights are probably supported by most modern Orthodox Jews and Evangelical Orthodox Christians.  However, that right ends when it would force artists to do creative expressions that would message fostering the LGBT lifestyles.  The larger question today is if the LGBT community will accept the traditional Jews, Christians, and Muslims who want to proclaim that human sexual expression is reserved for those who are in committed heterosexual marriages and that all other sexual involvements are immoral.   It is possible that both the LGBT and traditional religious communities could support one another in civil rights and mutual tolerance. But tolerance does not mean forced agreement. If you are an observer of the West and America in particular, the question now is if the civil rights of traditional religious people will be respected by the LGBT community or will they seek to get such people fired, shut down their businesses, and picket their homes!   It seems as if anything less than endorsement is considered hate by the LGBT community. Traditional believers say they love the LGBT people but want to promote traditional morality and encourage the LGBT people to give up the LGBT lifestyle and become committed to traditional morality. This will probably only take place by a religious conversion experience.  

Many responded with great alarm to a recent survey commissioned by the Wall Street Journal and NBC news.  Among people aged 55 and older, nearly 80 percent said that patriotism was very important compared with 42 percent of those aged 18-38.  The number that says religion is very important fell by more than 50 percent. Two-thirds of the older group cited religion as very important compared to fewer than one-third of the younger group.  Among the older group, 54 percent said that having children is very important compared to only 32 percent of the younger generation. Hence the American fertility rate is at an all-time low: 1,764.5 births per 1000 women; the replacement rate is 2.1.

One commentator noted that this is the result of leftist indoctrination on the college campus where religious faith, especially Christianity, is discredited and disdained, and where the United States is not explained as a great nation founded on great principles but flawed and making progress.  Instead, students are presented with a nation born in racism, sexism and homophobia. (Of course, one has to ask which cultures before modernity practiced women’s equality and treated women better than the Christian West, or which cultures embraced homosexual relationships.  Did Islamic cultures do so? Do they now? Of course, that is not the point. The point is to discredit the Christian West for the most part and America in particular).

Young adults are the product of an educational system that is destroying the historic national consensus on these three values.  This is a far cry from historic education in America when teachers believed they were the transmitters of the important cultural values that were the national consensus.  These values produced a coherent national identity.  These values made progress possible, for progress is measured by the fulfilling these values or ideals.  The loss of these values is destructive in the extreme. However, we are not without hope. In such a vacuum of meaning, there is potential for great revival.  People can begin to feel the emptiness of it all.

The religious consensus of the United States was Judeo-Christian.  Will Herberg, many decades ago, wrote well about this in his book Protestant, Christian and Jew. He noted that these three agreed on values making up a national consensus.  First that there is a God who holds all accountable. This is reflected in the movie The Ten Commandments and the intermission comments by Cecil B. Demille.  Such values as treating every person as an end in themselves, valued as created in the image of God, and revering marriage and family as the building block of the society.  The Church and Synagogue were respected as foundational in reinforcing values that were necessary to a good society. Patriotism arose from the belief that the country was worthy of the sacrifice of its citizens because it was birthed in unique values of human worth, justice and freedom.

As we have noted in the past, those in charge of culture formation, the educators, especially in the universities, but public schools as well, and in the media in both entertainment and information, have for many years been conveying a deconstruction of all three.  Why have a family if it is likely that the earth will not be able to sustain a worthwhile human life? Why have children since career and personal well-being is more important? Of course, the potential of a positive outcome in raising children is potentially one of the most fulfilling aspects of life.  There is now a self-centeredness and an orientation toward materialism that simply does not desire the personal sacrifice. Yet, relationships are the meaning of life. The loss of faith and hope for the future lead to increased suicide for those whose goals are thwarted. The famous columnist, Cal Thomas, wrote a piece on this survey that I reviewed while I was still in the process of writing this.  He emphasized the constant presence of media with young adults that does not give any sense that the good life is tied to these historic values and bemoaned that this will be a disaster for the nation. Who will be willing to sacrifice in war for a nation that is tribal and that does not have a common patriotism based on the worth of the nation?

As if this was not sufficient commentary, former Defense Secretary General James Mattis decried the state of the country as breaking up into a kind of tribalism with opposing identities that despise one another.  The survival of the nation is dependent on a common identity that was based on the historic values noted herein. And how does this apply in Israel? We as well struggle with the secular orientations of self, though less so.  The ultra-religious despise the secular and vice versa.  There is also a deconstructing narrative from the left that undercuts patriotism in Israel.  On the matter of patriotism, I have always argued for a guarded and more humble patriotism, not a chauvinistic one.  Yet respect for the nation’s values and ideals where they are right and believing in those values and ideals and seeking to form a more perfect nation is a valid motivation.  When a Messianic Jew looks at all this, it is clear that only a return to a biblical world view can reverse these terrible trends. 

In only a few days terrible news about our cultural drift cames into my purview.  I read an article by Daniel Henniger, a great article in the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal on August 8, entitled The Deep Dangers of Life Online.  Then a study reported on in the N. Y. Post stated that 22-25 % of Millennials say they have no friends and some even no acquaintances (positive lesser relationships).  Then a sports writer complained that kids do not play sports “like we used to” and most kids give up sports at 11 years of age.  Then the co-founder of Facebook wrote about its dangers and he does not allow his kids to be on it.  It is habit-forming, numbing and dangerous! Other hi-tech leaders from Silicon Valley decry the effects of the internet and tell families to keep their kids away from it or at least to strictly limit it.  All of this in just two days!  

Henniger points to studies showing that the amount of internet time is strongly correlated to anxiety, depression, and suicide.  He writes, ”I don’t think the human brain was designed to endure the volume of relentless inner-directedness that is driven by these new screens.  It is not natural or normal. Anyone who spends that much time immersed inside their own psyche is headed for trouble.” He goes on to show how the internet foments anger and rage in lonely individuals.  

I well recall the joy of growing up playing sports.  Yes, I was fat and it was difficult, but it was a family value, so I plodded along.  Hours were spent on the field, stick ball, baseball, basketball and football from grade school to college.  We learned teamwork, unselfishness, effort, perseverance, discipline, and yes, friendship.  

In Seminary, I read two books that I often bring up.  Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock and Vance Havners, A Nation of Nomads.  Both decried the fact that we were creating a nation of fleeting and shallow relationships.  Toffler noted that economics was driving moving and changing at such a rapid pace that marriages and friendships would be difficult and that many would just stop trying.  Marriages would not last. Havner called for putting the breaks on. Then I read Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart which recounts what he learned in the Holocaust.  A parallel book was Victor Frankl, also written from the Holocaust where he argued that human life had to find personal meaning to be sustained.   The meaning of life is in relationships. This indeed was a biblical emphasis. What would they think of our fleeting relationships today in the texting and internet culture?  The most important thing is intimate relationships among persons, beginning with our relationship with God. Texting and Facebook cannot replace personal “being there.” Then I think of the feminist movement.  So much of the argument is that women are not being paid equally (they really are for the same job and experience). But studies show that they are not being paid equal as a total sum of income because they take time off for their children and other enriching activities.  Would that feminism did not seek to find primary meeting in climbing the economic ladder to equality with men so they can live as empty a life as the men! Rather would that the protest had been for work for both men and women that enabled time for personal growth in relationships.  Loving and stable marriages and families is on the best level of what life has to offer. Building lasting communal intimacy in congregational life is difficult but when attained is a high value. 

The dystopia of modern life is primarily due to the breakdown of intimacy in lasting relationships, marriage, friendships, congregational community, and volunteer organizations of committed people working together!  The recent spate of mass murders, way before President Trump (he is not to blame for this despite the claims on the left) may be a symptom of the breakdown of relationships in our culture. Anger and loneliness together are a dangerous mixture.  

What is to be done?  We need to unplug and find our primary life offline!  Then we need to commit to build lasting relationships. It is to build a counter-culture, to stay in one place for a long time, to build a congregational community, to build a good family and more.  We have to build a counter culture that is aware of the issues and lives contrary to the trends of our day. It is not easy, but we did it in our building congregations from the days my leadership in congregations.  We seek to do it in Israel as well. We need to raise consciousness of what is happening.