Bad news may sell newspapers, but they are selling fewer newspapers today than yesterday.
Bad news is not good for the heart and there is a great deal of good news out there, so view this post as oatmeal for your heart.
Forget the good old days, this is a great time to be alive. When I remember the stories my grandparents told me of their childhood, then it puts todays headlines in perspective.
Here are ten reasons I am glad to be alive now as a traditional Christian and not when my grandparents were young adults in the 1930’s.
Number 1: The Christian church is booming globally.
Christians can bemoan the failure of the “Christian brand” (whatever that is!) amongst Gen-Y Americans, but in the Developing World, where most young people live, Christianity is thriving. Reports of miracles are constant.
Even in the U.S., a hardy “Joshua generation” of Christians refuses new marketing trends and goes on being “mere Christians.” Old leaders are being replaced.
We know liberalism will not grow the Church (see the Episcopal Church). We understand infighting will not help the nation (see the shrinking Southern Baptists). Instead, the Joshua generation has a chance to throw off commercialism, materialism, intellectualism, and anti-intellectualism. The mere existence of Touchstone Magazine and and Biola University (under a dynamic new president) should lift hearts.
Tonight my kids will walk down to see the bright and creative minds of the Torrey Honors Institute put on Tempest. It is fantastic and just one bright example of cultural renewal that grads of the program are serving globally. They need not always be leaders, since in most of the world Christians are already bursting with creativity!
It is a great time for authentic Christianity.
Number 2: The global Christian majority has seen our hedonism and is voting “no.”
As the Methodists discovered, diversity is good for the Church. Each culture has its own blind spots. Our brothers and sisters in the rest of the world are coming to rescue us. Thank God.
A great many churches are going to benefit from leaders of color in the near term.
Number 3: Pope Benedict
He gets it. He is acting. When he is right, and he is often right, the rest of Christendom is listening. A public intellectual as pope is good for all of us.
Number 4: The Rise of Pro-Life Democrats
I am no Democrat (readers will be shocked to discover) but the new pro-life Democrat legislators are a good sign. When the culture of life embraces both parties, or at least finds a bipartisanship in leadership, then we will be on our way to overturning the culture of death.
Number 5: Torture is on the way out.
Every candidate for President will restrict actions against prisoners that are either torture or border dangerously close to torture. A culture of life demands erring on the side of the angels. This is good news.
Number 6: We face disheveled terrorists on the run and not global Fascism and Communism.
The Bush administration has made mistakes, but they have taken the War to the terrorists. Our global situation compared to facing Hitler and Stalin (a situation real to my grandparents) is amazingly good.
Are there problems? Sure.
We don’t live in paradise, but I would rather be alive now than in almost any other time in human history.
Number 7: We live in the golden age of entertainment.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Conservatives (for some reason) fixate on the bad in pop culture. I contend that we live in the Golden Age for traditionalists. I never, ever watch commercials. Nobody can control, in any way, what I watch or when I watch it.
There is bad stuff out there, but there is also the best and widest selection of entertainment ever.
This week my family will watch (via our home network) a Shakespeare film we could never have seen when I was a child. “Nobody” wanted to see it and so none of the “big three networks” would have shown it.
Shows like Battlestar Galactica are deeper, more spiritually interesting, and better made than anything in the “golden age” of television. That does not count getting to see Iron Man and Narnia in the next few weeks.
If you have not seen Tarkovsy (don’t admit it in front of me), Netflix will bring the previously obscure to your door. Of course, if you want to watch 1950’s television and movies all the time (thinking that the Golden Age), you now can!
Heck, I listen to the Bob Hope radio show in my car.
Everything, including the vast majority of good stuff, is available. Use your liberty well . . . and you will not have to worry about the bad.
The Passion of Joan of Arc can inspire you this week!
My Ipod gives me Middle Eastern chant, bagpipes from Scotland, show tunes from New York, and other music that I could never get growing up. I can live in a strong cultural fortress from which to go out and engage the world, the flesh, and the devil. As for the bad stuff, social restraints will soon civilize the web. After the initial shock and awe of exposure to poison, most of us recoil and find a way to use the tools well.
Number 8: The monopoly on information and publication is dying.
I read Daily Kos and Free Republic. I can listen to Hugh Hewitt while Google’s reader gives me the BBC News.
All for free.
Then I can write this down and share it with you. Opinions can be voiced . . . and everybody that wants one owns a printing press. Sure most of us don’t have much to say (critics suggest I have nothing to say), but every so often you will have something to say (even I will!) and then it will go viral.
In the future, instead of fifteen minutes of fame each of us will get one viral post.
Education and contact with many different people is all easier to do from home than ever. My son never set foot in a traditional school, but the home school moms around him (the Beatrice Brigade creating the future) got him ready for honors college work. The resources available are exploding every year. Lewis Dayton Reynolds is free educationally as I never could be.
For the majority of Americans there is a fine public education system, that can get you through college for almost nothing. It is easy to be critical, but it is still the case that if you want to learn America’s dedicated government teachers will mostly do right by you. You can go through high school for free, Junior college for almost free, and to fine state colleges for very little.
It is still possible to work your way through such schools if you take your time.
Public libraries hold the Internet and the wealth of the West for a free card.
Number 9: The fact that an African-American will be the Democrat nominee for President is good news. The fact that he can be criticized or supported on the issues is also good. Win or lose for Senator Obama, the nation will be better for having broken a barrier.
Racism is ugly. When my grandparents were young, the Democrat Party was the party of racism and segregation. Sadly, Christians were also infected by this evil in the United States. Nobody has yet totally shaken off this virus, this original American sin, but things are better.
Thank God for it.
Number 10: We have more wealth to use to do good things.
On the economy, it is worth noting that despite problems the United States is still growing. When you hear economists and politicians say this is the “worst economy since the great depression,” I am here to tell you that it is not as bad as the economy was in the Seventies. Back then when my Nana heard people say that things were as bad as the Depression, she would laugh out loud.
When we hit 1/3 unemployment, huge food lines, and a dust bowl with mass internal migration, then I will listen to doom sayers.
We must help those who are suffering, but not forget that for most of us, that it is better to live now than in 1938.
Of course, the best news is that Jesus is Lord and we are not.
That means we cannot be triumphalist, but we are triumphant in Christ Jesus.
We don’t put our trust in princes or in professors. We follow the King of Kings and He is already triumphant. In this life, His weary and imperfect Church, such a bad example of His love, is always losing, but weirdly always losing in every generation to something new.