I’m a storyteller. I collect stories by watching movies and TV. Sometimes this is hard on me.
I don’t know whether these TV shows reflect something in Western culture that has really happened, or are just being shaped by somebody’s agenda. But it really does seem, in this vast collection of fiction, that the default position of almost all the characters is ABC–Anything But Christianity. The few Christians who do appear in the screenplays are almost all portrayed as nuts, and the other characters respond to them as they would to a strange animal species inexplicably appearing in their midst.
It is not “unbelief,” because there’s nobody who is without some set of beliefs or other, but rather “misbelief.” They don’t believe in God, they don’t believe in Jesus Christ. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what they believe in. Other times it’s easy: their own smartness, the State, Science, evolution, the coerced perfectibility of man, or some other inanity.
When I was growing up, virtually everyone I knew was a Christian of some kind. Some polls tell us that most people, at least in America, are still Christians. But the TV shows and movies tell us Christianity is over. Are the producers trying to make it be over by saying it’s over? Say it often enough, and people come to believe it, and it becomes true.
So I don’t know whether it’s true or not. But if it is, how did it happen? This has all been within my own lifetime. People are now proud of things they ought to be ashamed of, love things they should hate, and hate things they should love.
What can we do but proclaim Christ’s Kingdom, God’s sovereign grace and love, and truth as revealed in God’s Word? We can’t make them listen. No one can force anyone else to accept salvation.
O Lord our God, keep us from the evils of this age. We fear the institutional church has lost its power: but who knows if that was not your will, because you have something better in mind for us? Give us wisdom to understand these times, so that we might more wisely serve Our Lord Jesus Christ, Our Savior and Our King. In Jesus’ name, amen.