Facing Today’ s Challenges with Hope in Christ
by Jason Weimer, Director of Publishing, CruPress
These are challenging times. People feel more isolated, divided and polarized than ever. Technology advances faster than we can comprehend it, or envision the scope of its effects. Discerning between trustworthy content and disinformation in our social newsfeeds, and even legacy media outlets, has become difficult. Commerce, politics, relationships, societal stability— everything feels uncertain.
And this doesn’ t account for personal struggles— health, economic, mental and emotional— you and I carry daily. It can feel exhausting, baffling, infuriating, even hopeless.
Yet these are not unprecedented times. God’ s people have navigated upheaval and uncertainty before, and the counsel given them and the manners they walked in offer encouragement and hope for us today.
A particularly relevant example comes from over 2500 years ago: Israel’ s Babylonian exile. After Babylonian armies overthrew and destroyed Jerusalem, a group of Israelites were captured for resettlement and servanthood in Babylon. Imagine the emotions these exiles would have felt: bewilderment at God’ s seeming abandonment, fear of life under Babylonian rule, defensiveness or even militance of their ways and culture in the face of this foreign enemy.
Historically, Christians have seen this exilic period as a metaphor of our earthly sojourn. Rescued from enslavement to sin and designed for union with God in heaven, God’ s people wander in a kind of exile in this wonderful but disfigured and broken world. First Peter even calls us“ God’ s very own possession” who are“ temporary residents and foreigners” here( 1 Peter 2:9-11, NLT).
Yet certain historical periods make us more acutely aware of this reality. David Kinnaman, president of The Barna Group, coined our age digital Babylon several years ago, and penned a book, Faith for Exiles, addressing the challenge. In it he describes the strong cultural tide pulling us away from rootedness in Christ. For example, he shares that the average 15-to-23-year-old annually consumes 2,767 hours of screened media, while the average 15-to-23-year-old churchgoer annually consumes only 291 hours of spiritual content. The adage“ you are what you eat” doesn’ t only apply to our diets. And these statistics were gathered nearly a decade ago; the tide has only strengthened.
Extending the analogy, if our present age parallels Babylon, a prior age may echo Jerusalem. Though America has always been a place of religious freedom and pluralism, Christianity has overwhelmingly influenced laws, values, mores and other societal structures. While myriad pulls away from Christ-centeredness have always existed, growing in one’ s faith was far easier and more natural in midcentury America than today. The cultural flow was, generally speaking, moving that direction.
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