Remember your Creator in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say,
"I find no pleasure in them"--
before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark,
and the clouds return after the rain;
(Ecclesiastes 12:1-2 NIV)
The Christianity of Korea and the U.S is losing its ‘next generation’. They do not need God. The world they live in is stable, abundant, and peaceful. That world offers them a sweet pink promise, and they trust such promise.
To the ‘past generation’ that experienced ‘the hell created by the people who left God’, the gospel of God was able to be heard quite clearly. They saw human rights coming into light, family and society transforming, occupational values shifting, and material blessings being poured out in morally good ways. They experienced that all of these were started from the gospel of God. They were desperate, and God appeared in front of them as a God of miracles and mercy. Their God was the God of salvation who pulled them out of sin, poverty, discrimination, and illness. They bowed down in front of God and experienced healing.
However, what was ‘Gospel’ to the past generation was no longer Good News to the next generation; they take all the blessings for granted. It is quite ironic that the blessings redeemed by the ‘past generation’ through the Gospel became the reason for not needing God in the next generation. It hurts my heart that the pattern from the book of Judges where generations would repeatedly leave God is also happening to our generation right now.
Our next generation does not know that all the good things we love and enjoy are from God. Those who do not know the world without God are saying that they don’t need God. Living in the U.S., it is common to see people who, although do not have a Christian faith, seem to be more Christian than actual Christians. However they do not know that their such character, value, and peacefulness come originally from God.
Because they do not know that people are made in the image of God, they do not know that the richness of the world they love is something created by the God of abundance. They do not know that their life itself is from the creator God. They do not know that even love, joy, and pleasure are all from God. Hence, they do not find a need for God.
Like the story that Jesus told about the prodigal son who hated his father, and only wanted his inheritance, they only like the things that come from God and not God himself. They believe in Almighty Luck. They think that the world was created by this mysterious luck. Although it is no doubt a faith, they think it is science. They want to believe in Almighty Luck. That is because it is more convenient than having a personal relationship with God, and because it does not constrain them from living the life they want. Such selective belief which is congruent with their ideology blinds them from being able to see the awe-inspiring glory of creation.(To be continued…)
Following the shepherd…
Pastor Jiwon Choi