"So What?"
In the Sunday paper, this past week, USA Today published an article entitled "God, religion, atheism 'So what?' That's what many say." The article speaks of two men.When Ben Helton, 28, signed up for an online dating service, under "religion" he called himself "spiritually apathetic." When Bill Dohm, 54, "turns his eyes toward heaven" the article says, he is just checking "the weather so he can fly his 1946 two-seater airplane. Neither men are atheists. They simply shrug off God, religion, heaven or the ever trendy search for meaning and purpose.
Their attitude could be summed up as "So what?"
Various surveys were quoted indicating that 44% spend no time seeking eternal wisdom and 20% said it is useless to search for meaning in life. 28% said that it is not a major priority in my life to find my deeper purpose. We live in a society today, the article says, where it is acceptable to say that they have no spiritual curiosity. Ben Helton, the 28-year-old student, said the more he read evolutionary psychology and neuropsychology, the more it seemed to him that "we might as well be cars. That, to me, makes more sense than believing what you can't see." Are we really just cars with a sophisticated computer?
We live in a fuzzy, "make up the rules as we go" culture that celebrates the idea that all truths are equally valid. Personal experience and personal authority matter most, thus Scripture and tradition are quaint irrelevant artifacts.
I think I see, through my 61-year-old, retired pastor colored bias glasses, a response from the church that is mostly sincere and sadly, in the North American church, mostly ineffective. It seems that most of the effort is directed towards becoming stronger Christians, stronger churches, deeper spiritually, and at the same time more relevant. Not unlike rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
I don't have much of an answer for this except to think that this elusive answer exists someplace out of "the box". Something radical needs to happen if we as followers of Christ will somehow interface with the "so what" society where we live in a manner that is redemptive to people and reconciling to God.
Somehow we as Jesus people need to challenge the status quo of society through lifestyle, relationship, personal testimony (speaking words that clearly define us as Christians within our personal sphere of influence), and seeking (yes it is legitimate to seek and to save that which is lost (and yes, people are lost and wandering without Christ) to have conversation with the many "so what?" people we know. lots of parentheses in that sentence… Kind of hoping it is follow – able.
The apostle Paul said for me to live is Christ. He believed that apart from Christ he was not reconciled with creator God and that he was living dysfunctionally in the world formed by this God. The answers do not come easily, but I am praying in these days that we will love God enough, and share his heart enough to be used by him to bring people he loves with an everlasting love into a personal relationship with him. It really does matter.
