Dr Paul Allen

by Ted Peters Our church—evangelical, mainline, Catholic or Orthodox–seems like a sandcastle on an ocean beach. We can stand back and admire our craftsmanship. Then a wave washes up high, and a few grains of sand get eroded. Another wave erodes more of the castle. Wave after wave finally leaves the beach the way it had been before our architectural triumph. Wave after wave of cultural change is eroding our church under our very eyes. Silently and almost invisibly, the digital world is replacing the biblical world. The world of Bible study, hymn singing, praying in unison, and using God as the subject of sentences is becoming forgotten. What now absorbs our attention is a complex array of video gaming, net surfing, Instagramming, Zooming, texting, and sexting. The digital world is actually a disorganized composite of min-worlds. In only half an hour, any teenager can be introduced  to the worldviews of QAnon, Sufism, yoga, new age meditation, naturalism, spiritual-but-not-religious, and

The Innovation Era has brought about a lot of good. Technology has played a role in the growth of the kingdom of God by making it possible to reach many people with the gospel who were previously unreached. Christian colleges and seminaries that provide online learning are educating the masses.  Along with all the progress this age has brought, there has also been great harm. Pornography has ruined marriages and ministries. Work is much more difficult to turn off. Countless worldviews are being shared as anyone who can get online has a public platform to discuss their ideas. Unfortunately, many in our society are buying into these opposing worldviews and are drifting from the Lord and His church. The world I find myself living in is a world like Timothy’s, where “people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Tim. 4:3–4).