(12/31/16)

How can I be sure, in a world that’s constantly changing?

So began the lyrics of that 1967 song first recorded by the Young Rascals.   The question still haunts us – and haunts even more a half a century later as the world is not only constantly changing, but changing at lightning fast speed – all the time. Medical doctors, historians, sociologists, mental health professionals, social commentators, and representatives of virtually every other specialized discipline are expressing deep concerns that the rate of change is speeding up so fast that we are inviting severe problems in every aspect of our lives – our thinking, our emotions, our planning, our sense of security, the physical, metabolic, and neurological functioning of our bodies – let alone the assaults rapid change brings to a soul that needs rest and stability.

Three years after the Young Rascals musically raised the haunting question about change, futurist writer Alvin Toffler developed the concern more fully in his 1970 classic work Future Shock. Accurately predicting the effects of technology, especially computers and rapid digital communication, Toffler warned of the dangers of “too much change in too short a period of time.” This would bring, Toffler described so perfectly, “shattering stress and disorientation.” We would become “future shocked”. The burden of constantly adapting to changing situations would bring feelings of helplessness, despair, depression, uncertainty, insecurity, anxiety, and burnout, along with overall social confusion and an inability to make thoughtful decisions. The changeless would be overwhelmed by torrents of rapid change.

Now, particularly on the verge of a new year, Christians both feel and fear the “future shock” that has become “present shock.” Our entire pace of life (especially here in the metropolitan New York area) is constantly speeding up. We’re always in “fast forward.” While technology has, in many ways, made our lives easier; in other ways it has made life more complicated – each week we have “upgrades” to the software and apps whose wonders we’ve already had little time to master. Computers crash. Email accounts get hacked. We live in fear of security breaches and the time it takes to correct them. Are we really saving time?   When you look at the big picture, are we really better off than we were before the computer revolution that began in the 1980s?

And with all-surrounding sound and pictures and comments and statistics and what we simply call “information”, Toffler’s prediction that careful personal and social decision-making processes would be undermined and dislodged has become reality. Views of gender, sexuality, right and wrong, good and evil, the beautiful and the ugly, are like moving objects on the rapidly whirling merry-go-round that life has become. And we all reach points (more often than we want to admit) when we echo the title of the old Broadway musical Stop the World! I Want to Get Off!

Now what I want to suggest to you; in fact, what I want to declare to you is that this need of the human soul and body to hold to the changeless in a rapidly changing world is an absolutely tremendous opportunity for Christians, and for the Christian Church.

  • We are people of the changeless God. “I the Lord do not change” said the Lord Himself through the prophet Malachi – in a passage meant to encourage God’s people who had seen and would continue to see many changes in their lives and their culture.
  • While we experience rapid changes all around us, all are part of the perfect will of God. “The counsel of the Lord stands forever. The plans of His heart to all generations,” says the Psalmist in Psalm 33. Silicon Valley is not sovereign. God is.
  • God’s Word remains changelessly true regardless of how rapidly changing our world is. “Forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in all generations.” (Psalm 119:89). And it adds the comforting truth that God’s “faithfulness endures to all generations.”
  • No generation (including our own) will be without the witness and power of God’s unchanging truth. “His truth endures to all generations” says Psalm 100:5; and Jesus Christ as the Truth incarnate will “get glory in the Church throughout all generations forever and ever” declares the apostle Paul in the triumphant end of the third chapter of the book of Ephesians.
  • The risen and reigning Jesus –-who is the same yesterday, today, and forever – is with us always, even to the end of the age. How thankful we should be that this is part of the Great Commission of the Church.

But – and here’s the big question – How do we hold the changeless – God Himself and His truth – in such

a rapidly changing world?  And add to that How can I be sure – in a world that’s constantly changing?

That’s what begin to wrestling with on today’s edition of A Visit to the Pastor’s Study