Pay the Piper

Where to start? This article by Sally Morgenthaler has so many different branches that we could discuss! I think what most impacted me though is this: we played the song, now we have to pay the piper. Sally in her article talks about how the church for so many years was functioning on a misconception of where the people were. She basically presents that the church functioned in a modern way. Modern in the sense that based on all the discoveries of that time period and economic growth we finally understood how life functioned and that it would only be a short while before we figured everything out. I believe the church did in fact conform to that idea and that it bought into it. Then when suddenly (suddenly in our human perspective) the world turned upside down the church’s, and all of the United States’, view of life changed. Sally writes, ”Surprise! We are neither masters of our destinies nor masters of ourselves. We are not, as we imagined mere decades ago, one government program or one scientific discovery away from utopia.” Exactly. I agree completely! The sad thing about that statement though it that the surprise wasn’t for the un-churched alone, the church was also caught. Speaking of the effect 9/11 had, Sally wrote, “Suddenly our enforced-happy, you-can-control-your-world services could no longer maintain the illusion of relevance. Easy-answer, religion-as-personal-project Christianity came up short-way short.” Again, I agree full heartedly. However this is where we split ways. Sally Morgenthaler explained the effects very well but she didn’t explain the reason. The reason we were caught unawares was precisely because we conformed to the world. We bought into the idea that man was going to figure out life. If we had preached the bible, would that have happened? If our songs had reflected man’s true nature would we have been surprised that man doesn’t hold the answer to the universe? Of course not! So what now? Where does that leave us? Sally Morgenthaler would say that now we have to realign. Realign with what? The bible? Amen! But that’s not where she would have us align with. Sally believes we have to align with culture and post-modernity! WHAT? Isn’t conforming what got us here in the first place? Why would we turn to a cosmo-vision that, when the knowledge of the bible is the lowest it has ever been, we would allow the average Joe believe what he wants and have none to correct him. This article is by far the saddest to me because we haven’t learned. We played the song and had to pay the piper. Why are we playing it again?