I read David Wells' book Losing Our Virtue while on vacation, and will be posting some of my thoughts and observations over the next few days. I want to start with a few questions to get you thinking. Do you feel like things in our country/culture are "off"? Do feel like things are just not going right? Do you hear things in the news and think, "I can't believe someone would do something like that?" Have you wondered how things that used to be "bad" are now celebrated?
David Wells' book explores how the Christians and the church as a whole is losing it's understanding of morality. This loss of morality by the church has led to the church being no different than our surrounding culture. Dr. Wells spends a lot of time identifying what the issues are within the culture. A key point of the book is that our culture (and many churches) have traded teaching character formation to virtue clarification.
"The importance of the classical views of the virtues was that moral conduct was seen to be the outcome of character, and it was considered futile to divorce inward moral reality from its exercise in the society or community in which a person lived." (p 14) In other words, who you are as a person is (your internal thoughts and motives) are revealed by your interactions with others. Jesus said, "By their fruit you will recognize them." (Matthew 7:16)
Our culture has divorced accessing who a person is by their actions. The culture wants to say that people are inherently good and that "bad" actions are an exception to that good nature. Scripture says that men are, by nature, evil and our bad actions are a reflection of the sin nature that resides in each person. If you don't believe that people are inherently evil, then answer the following question. "When did your parents teach you to lie?" You don't have to be instructed on how to lie, it comes naturally to each person.
As followers of Christ, we must return to a proper understanding of who we are as created beings. We are designed by God to have a relationship with him, but because of the Fall in the Garden of Eden, we have a sin nature. This sin nature is our disposition and propensity to sin. Sin separates us from God and everyone who dies without forgiveness of their sin will spend eternity separated from God. We must never lose sight of this truth: people are not inherently good, rather, they are sinners and destined for hell unless they come to know Christ as their Savior.
Until we start recognizing that people without Christ really are "lost" and in need, we will never be motivated to tell them about Jesus.
