Reading widely, even in carefully prepared materials, one is faced with large contradictions related to facts, trends and conclusions. From several sources, even under the same document covers, there appear reports/stories that amount to contradictions: 1) This Group is Trying to Address the Marked Growth in Religion in America. 2) This Group is Trying to Address the Marked Decline of Religion in America. Which is it, growth or decline? Similar statements have been made about education, business, families, and other themes in their own contexts, and with sub-divisions of them. Newspapers are asserting: America is in Serious Decline in Public Education. First in the world after World War II, American education ranks seventeenth in 2010. American Education is the Choice of the World. (More students succeed from American schools than in any other country or national venue. Hundreds of thousands of non-residents seek American education, making it first preference.) This all may reflect decline at lower levels of education and advancement at higher levels. Then the point follows: Who seeks that education?
One is responsible for his or her own beliefs, and must bear that burden for personal results, no matter what the evidence, or alleged evidence may indicate. So to seek truth, one has to consider a complexity of causes, resources, circumstances, emotions, presuppositions, competencies, and the like. Our search often seems thankless, sometimes tiring, sometimes leading to a kind of despair that asks: What is the truth? Confused, the more casual person may simply advance the concepts gained from the most recent reading or discussion. This is rather easily demonstrated in the responses of an electorate that changes its mind about an official such as this or that for a president or senator or congressman. We discover that for every presumed mistake, a person needs five positives to recover in the minds of his critics. At the time of this writing we are getting, almost daily, the score for the Federal Reserve System’s influence on the economy. President Obama rides statistics daily, gaining a number of points on the scale for the death of terrorist, bin Laden, in Pakistan. Death was achieved by the order of the president to the military (Navy Seals) to assassinate the terrorist leader. Accomplished, it is taken as a victory for the world war on terrorism. A week later there was a bit of an approval drop, partly based on assassination rather than capture for trial. A point is made easy for a person evaluating from a chair in a conference room.
Taking time to analyze the place of Christianity in current life, one discovers that the growth in evangelical Christianity is taken as success. Mega-churches, little known fifty years before this writing, number in the hundreds with the leading one having attendance above 40 thousand persons every Sunday. The influence of evangelicals in various areas of life has been partly measured as forceful, partly because it has matured in some of its procedures, and has gone public. Mainline denominations, with significant exceptions, have tended downward in attendance, sometimes appearing humanistic – as identified in their ministries, perhaps also in some doctrines. Humanists’ churches are decorative baubles in society, not really needed. Evidence can be accumulated, but the ultimate accent may not be on the evidence found in public arenas, but in the teachings and modeling of presumed programs of God. When this elusive factor is addressed, it emerges in public life, and gains its own force, not found in standard statistics. (This does not deny the helpful uses of statistics.) Billy Graham simply preached the gospel and was numbered among the ten most influential persons in the world. C. S. Lewis was read by masses of ordinary citizens. Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul II and others are honored for their faith and service – and influence. We have our embarrassments in those who failed in the media, sold out for small fortunes, have adjusted their message to alleged consciences rather than wholeness – and so the story proceeds. We know our institutions must remain despite human flaws. Our problem continues. Are matters improving for the world, or are they declining? The answer is always the same: in some areas they are better and in some they are declining. The individual seems wise to choose the area or areas in which to make some impact so to become qualified to exert influence, and follow leaders who appear closest to one’s own perception of the better course for life interests. There is a proper activism based on biblical counsel and personal faith. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020