in a handbasket

"Do not say, 'Why were the old days better than these?' For it is not wise to ask such questions." — Ecclesiastes 7:10

One pet peeve I have is to listen to people go off about how society is going downhill, especially when it is presented in a church setting.  This is not an annoyance because I think society is in great shape, but rather because it presents an idealized view of where society has come from. A person talking like this is frequently encouraging his or her audience to adopt the social rules of a bygone era rather than encouraging the audience to truly look to Christ.  Prayer is encouraged and the speaker may state that our society's only hope is to turn to Christ, but my experience is that what the speaker interprets as turning to Christ and what the Bible indicates as becoming a slave to Christ as two different things.

I have mentioned the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14) when I discussed a similar topic before, but this is a very instructive story here as well.  In that parable a person who everyone of the time would have viewed as a saint prays thanks to God that he was not put in the circumstances of the obviously sinful tax collector.  I can imagine sermons at the local synagogue rightfully decrying the sins of people who call themselves Jews who aggressively take from their own people while working in conjunction with a pagan empire.

"Our modern world is becoming more and more sinful," someone might point out, "because we cannot even trust those trained by our own rabbis in the Law of the one true God to treat their own brothers fairly.  Can you believe how horrible the world has become?  Can you believe how wretched tax collectors are who dare to number themselves among Abraham's children?"  Such a statement would be true on its face, and I can imagine the audience getting worked into a fervor.  The speech would endear the speaker to most of the audience, because it would build solidarity and would make the audience feel a bit righteous for not being one of those sinners benefiting from his selfish actions.

The key to this parable that Jesus taught, though, was that the person who focused on his own righteousness and others' sins was not justified, but the tax collector who was painfully aware of his sin and approached God with humility was justified.  The sins of Pharisee in the story were not forgiven, but the sins of the tax collector were.  Isn't focusing today on the evils of the times rather than the evils of my own nature doing the same thing that the Pharisee did in the parable?  Does not that sort of speech or sermon sound more dangerous than beneficial when viewed from this perspective?

On a related note, most of the people who talk about how bad things have gotten get their facts wrong, and that is a big part of what bothers me.  Some forms of crime have increased in recent years, but most violent crimes, property crimes, and many other various types of crime have been on a steady downswing in the United States since the early 90s.  A chart on the FBI website indicates that this trend, in violent crime at least, has continued through recent years.  All this does is validate my primary point that, while people are sinners in need of a Savior today, people have always been sinners in need of a Savior.  The times are evil, but the times have always been evil.