Our Decaying Culture

We live in a deteriorating culture. Perhaps it’s easy to become immune to what’s happening in America’s once-Christian society, and in a sense just shrug it off as, “Well, that’s how things are these days.”

Now that we’re in 2004, it might be good to reflect on the events of the past year and a few things that shocked us.

As I reflect on 2003, I trust this will be a wake-up call to you—and the church as a whole—to reexamine the position of our Christian faith in the culture. We just can’t say, “Well, that’s just how things are.” If we truly understand the fundamental, foundational reason for this terrible slide, then surely it’s our responsibility as Christians to deal biblically with it.

Consider just a few sad events in 2003:

• At the convention of the world’s largest association of public school educators, the very liberal National Education Association (NEA), where AiG has had a booth outreach for several years, it was reported that a move to keep the words “under God” in the US Pledge of Allegiance was “buried six feet under rhetoric.” One teacher insisted that it would “distract from our secular purpose, education.”
  The article stated that “Convention-wide microphones were used from time to time for sexual pronouncements. ‘I am a gay American … I am a proud, peace-loving lesbian, and I am an American!’”
• A new Barna survey found that “only 9 percent of born-again Christians hold a biblical worldview.”
• A United Nations committee ruled that Canada should bar parents from spanking their children.
• Alabama, USA ordered the removal of the Ten Commandments monument from a state judicial building.
• A leading zoologist said gay people could be seen as the “pinnacle of evolution.”
• CBS news quoted the first ordained openly gay Episcopal bishop in America as saying that the Scriptures do not “address what we are talking about today, which are faithful life-long relationships between people of the same sex.”
  National columnist, Leonard Pitts Jr. then wrote: ‘So what’s the problem? What is it that bothers you about gay people getting married? Don’t read me that part in Leviticus where homosexuality is condemned …
  “I believe The Book. But I also know that it’s impossible to take literally every passage unless you want to wind up in … a mental ward.”
• Three Baptist groups published a series of eleven pamphlets, including: “Myth: Baptists Are Scientific Creationists.”
• The US National Park Service removed three plaques containing biblical Psalms from the Grand Canyon. Although the plaques were returned, the final decision hasn’t been made. (You may have read on our website last month about another Canyon headline making the news, as prominent evolutionists launched a book-banning campaign. They have demanded that the Park Service remove a book about the Canyon—which AiG helped produce—from a Canyon bookstore.)
• Many Presbyterian ministers are praising a denomination’s highest court ruling that ministers may “bless” homosexual relationships.
• The InterVarsity Multi-Ethnic Christian Fellowship at Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA) has been banned from using campus facilities.
• The Telegraph in London reported that the discoverers of the structure of DNA used the 50^th anniversary to assault religion. Dr. Francis Crick said that his “distaste for religion” was one of his prime motives.
• A major gift of $6.8 million will establish an institute at Kent State University (Ohio, USA) to study how and why the human species evolved.
• Last year, we received an email from a pastor in a United Methodist Church about his appearance before the Board of Ordained Ministry:

  In the [preliminary] paper work I stated that I believed the Bible to be inerrant and that the Creation story was totally accurate. During my interview the committee ripped into me. They saw me as foolish for believing God’s Word. They saw the Bible as nothing more than good, moral stories.

  “They are making me go to their seminary to ‘straighten out’ my theology.”

Friends, the above are just a few samples of things happening in America and other Western nations. I’ve said this before, but I want to say it again—perhaps a little more bluntly, for I’m so burdened for this nation.

The major reason America (and the West) is losing its Christian influence and worldview is because the church gave up the authority of the Word beginning in Genesis—and thus gave up the biblical basis for absolutes in the culture.

The culture as a whole now mocks the Bible as an outdated book of myths. Sadly, the church by and large bolstered this impression, by accepting the secular teaching of millions of years and evolutionary ideas.

AiG is at the forefront of this battle today—we’re in the front-line trenches to reestablish the truth of the historicity of the Bible and thus the truth of the Bible’s morality and salvation message. Think of it this way: AiG is evangelizing the church … and the world. What a calling!

What a phenomenal responsibility the Lord has laid upon us. Through Bible-upholding resources like Creation magazine, conferences, the future Creation Museum, radio programs and other outreaches, AiG is doing battle where the battle really wages—for the truth of God’s Word, from the beginning.

The truths of the book of Genesis can open people’s eyes. In addition to so many wonderful testimonies that we receive from our US supporters, we constantly hear from friends overseas about the impact of the creation/gospel message in their lives (often because of the AiG website):

Thank you for your very important work. The truth your ministry presents was the most important factor for me becoming a Christian. Since that time (2 years now), I have been an avid reader of your information. May God continue to bless your ministry.
—Andrew S., in Australia

From Genesis 1 onward, the Bible is God’s revealed history to us, and is the framework from which we must understand our world’s sinful condition. I want to share more of this important truth with you, so please read our new free booklet The 7 C’s of History (pdf, 442 KB).

Also handy as an evangelistic tool to share with family and friends, this booklet presents a summary of the basic message of the storyline for the Creation Museum under construction. The booklet is thus something of a “sneak preview” of the message that will be portrayed by the museum’s first-class exhibits.

This global ministry via the web (our site is in eleven languages), international speaking outreaches and an active translations ministry has been used by the Lord in seeing lives changed and churches reformed.