A GENERATION WITHOUT GOD

There is hardly any doubt about the visible signs that unmistakably describe the nature and essence of this age. Science, Secularism, pluralism, and their not-too-distant cousins are explaining everything that needed to be explained (or so they thought). Now we have modern medicine, Penicillin, jet engines, Anti-retroviral drugs, the United Nations, and of course science. There certainly is no God. If there were, he’d be somewhere in the list of worldviews competing for recognition.

Stephen Charnock was apt in describing this generation when he declared in his book, The Existence and Attributes of God, that:

“…that age ran from one God to many, and our age is running from one God to none at all”.

This age denies that the proliferation of gods is not some sort of “universal consent” on the notion embedded in humanity’s consciousness. A divine foot will not be let in the door. Everything that remotely resembles a cosmic phenomenon is shut out the door with dispatch. This is an age where we are willing to accept every absurdity that comes with denying the existence of God. It’s an age that says society is getting more and more conducive than a thousand years ago, and that man is becoming more and more decent. But I couldn’t agree more with Ferguson Niall in The Next War of the World, written in September 2006:

“It might have been expected that such prosperity would eliminate the causes of war. But much of the worst violence of the twentieth century involved the relatively wealthy countries at the opposite ends of Eurasia. The chief lesson of the twentieth century is that countries can provide their citizens with wealth, longevity, literacy, and even democracy but still descend into lethal conflict”.

Several decades on, modern man is capable of inconceivable wickedness and evil notwithstanding the wild explosion of enlightenment and wealth. Even though Jesus Christ is bringing light through the Gospel of salvation, this generation waves its clenched fist at everything He stood for—contentment, love, forgiveness, and peace. They’d even come with what C.S. Lewis calls “patronizing nonsense” that our Lord belong to the ilk of reputable philosophers like Gandhi, Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato.

            This is an ‘age of reason’ (there’s a book with the same title); where everything is the product of matter, atoms, ions, and chemicals; where nothing exist except that which is tangible and verifiable; where a bunch of intellectuals are deluded about being too ‘Enlightened’ to believe in the existence of God. In this era, logic defines everything—faith, love, evil, beauty, and logic itself. They simply believe in their icons and figures (Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkings); their teachings, commandments, and predispositions are inerrant. They are non-religious believers.

          This is an age where our sense of wonder is elicited by the grandeur in creation and not in the creator; where mankind is the most exalted object conceivable; where the measure for right and wrong is situational and based on a person’s point of perception.

Little wonder we’re heartless, witless, and helpless because we are godless. We assume that we can make society a better place if only we can improve our laws. But these laws only reveal our flaws. We do not admit a divine foot in the door (What if the rest of the divine torso is already wedged in the door screaming to be let in?). Our lives are our own, which is why we exhaust it on sensualities and depravities.

Sex, greed, opulence, deceit, lust, covetousness, and idolatry are erected on rooftops and public places without shame. Facebook, Instagram, and Tweeter have become centers for moral and ethical standards—public opinion is defining private life and convictions.

        This is a generation where there are several voices trying to drown out divine ordinances as revealed in the Holy Scripture; where the bible is an old book which we keep only because of its cultural, historical and poetic relevance. And we often ask, “What can a book written several centuries ago offer a sophisticated and fast-paced generation like ours?”

        In this age, nothing is spiritual, but everything is physical; nothing is pure, nothing is sacred, nothing is moral except by unanimous agreement. We are our own teachers, our own standard, our own Lawyers making our own laws. We incessantly are running from the free grace that Jesus Christ offers into the slime and slippery slope of worldliness. This is the brazen reality of the 21^st Century. This is a generation without God.