Volume 14 Issue 8
Finding a New York Times in Bogalusa, Louisiana, as I quickly discovered, is just not going to happen. But one young boy did say there was a row of news paper machines down the K.G. (a supermarket,) and he thought, “they had papers from just about everywhere.” As it turned out, “everywhere” was a variety of small places I’d never heard of before, so I settled for the New Orleans Times Picayune. While depositing my fifty cents and mumbling about not being able to find a New York Times, and elderly gentleman watching me read my headline about the war asked me, “Where Will it All Lead?”
Where will it all lead? That question has lodged in my mind ever since. I never got my New York Times, but I’m glad that old man asked me that question. Where will it all lead? I’m sure I don’t know! Who does? Lots of people think they know, but do they really?
We hear so much talk about bold new worlds, new world orders, new strategies, new politics, new educational methods and even new religious concepts. Where is this world going? What are the consequences for the average man or woman? Where will the church as we know it end up in all this? Perhaps it’s all just talk. Maybe nothing will change.
However you feel about it personally, there is one thing we must face. The foundations are vanishing. The most casual interview with a young teenager will reveal that today’s youth do not develop their thinking from the same foundational truths their grandparents enjoyed. One shocking example of what I’m trying to say can be noted in “birthing suites” at hospitals across America. A growing percentage of births are to unwed mothers. In some communities it is as high as 80%. It could be as high as 50% nationally if America doesn’t wake up.
A nurse told me recently that young men came into the birthing suites with their girlfriends to experience the birth process, but have no intention of being real fathers. They don’t care. It’s a game of use, abuse, and move on. These ideas come from some value system that heretofore has been uncommon to our society. Where will this lead? We may not be sure; but the future will be inhabited by people who are essentially footloose from and foundation.
The Marion County Prosecutor told me awhile back that the big trend is men twenty-four or twenty-five years old dating girls thirteen and fourteen, and in many cases, passing diseases to young girls who are scarcely through puberty. He begged me to try and do something.
What kinds of values are these young people working with? What is the source? The answer may lie in music, media, culture, Hollywood, and so on, but certainly not with traditional teaching. Most of us know that when you try to convince people with non-Biblically based values, the work is quite complex. Only the Holy Spirit can save us. But when we mention that to those of this world, it’s like they don’t get it.
Vanishing foundations in business, in religion, and in society create some powerful dilemmas, but may the Holy Ghost give us strength to keep contending for the faith. We’re built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. That is the right place to be. Where all the others will lead, one can only guess, but the truth will lead us home.
