Challenging Days
Challenging DaysBelow is a convincing quote from a book I have just started to read. It is a fascinating take on the challenges faced by the Church of the 21st Century. The book is called ‘All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes’ by Ken Myers.
“Every generation of Christians faces unique challenges. The first century Church had Caesar’s lions and the Colosseum. Christians a few hundred years later, following the conversion of Constantine, enjoyed more liberty for exercising their faith, but faced the terror of Visigoth, Ostrogoth and Bulgar invaders. Still later the peril of plague swept through Europe and, unlike certain Biblical pestilences, showed no discrimination between the faithful and the wicked. The sixteenth century brought the renaissance of Biblical truth in the Protestant Reformation, but it also brought religious wars and persecution by competing churches.
It might seem an extreme assertion at first, but I believe that the challenge of living with popular culture may well be as serious for modern Christians as persecution and plagues were for the saints of earlier centuries. Being thrown to the lions or living in the shadow of gruesome death are fairly straightforward if unattractive threats. Enemies that come loudly and visibly are usually much easier to fight than those that are undetectable. Physical affliction (even to the point of death) for the sake of Christ is a heavy cross, but at least it can be readily recognized at the time as a trial of faith. But the erosion of character, the spoiling of innocent pleasures, and the cheapening of life itself that often accompany modern popular culture can occur so subtly that we believe nothing has happened.”