When habit will no longer do

Francis Schaeffer taught me that the generation of Americans that lost religion was not the one that acted out in full-blown flouting of spiritual laws, but the one preceding it that was still behaving morally but had forgotten why. These were people (our parents’ and grandparents’ peers) who by and large avoided adultery, fornication, and divorce, but more out of taboo and lack of imagination than out of a deeply biblical devotion to God. Speaking as a man born in 1912, of the World War II generation, Schaeffer wrote in Death in the City (1969):

“It was my generation and the generation that proceeded me that forgot. The younger generation is not primarily to be blamed. Those who are struggling today, those who are far away and doing that which is completely contrary to the Christian conscience, are not first to be blamed. …”

Now chaos has come upon us in the 21st century, and we see no end in sight to the moral collapse, but Schaeffer said this should not have surprised us:

“I am amazed at the evangelical leaders who have been taken by surprise at the changes that have come in our culture in the last few years. We should have predicted them. There’s bound to be death in the city once men turn away from the base upon which our culture was built. … Do you think our country can remain as it has been, after it has thrown away the Christian base? Do not be foolish. Jeremiah would have looked at you and said, ‘You do not have the correct perspective. You should be crying.’”

Those of us who still uphold the truth of the abomination of homosexuality and of marriage as God’s union of male and female should be warned. If we are not individually grounded in the Word of God, in prayer, and obedience, it is just a matter of time before we fall. We need to be sure that our godly living is by sincere devotion and not simply by what Schaeffer called “memory”:

“Men are simply carrying on by memory. They are living only by habit, not because they have a firm, rational Christian basis for their actions, and it is indeed ugly. It is so easy to see this hypocrisy and ugliness in both culture and church that we should not have had to wait for the present generation to tell us.”

Schaeffer concluded, in a book written back when homosexuality was still a remote threat:

“I want to ask a question. … Do you really believe He is there? Why is there so much unreality among evangelicals? … If He’s really there and if He is a holy God, do you seriously think that God does not care that a country like our own has turned from Him? There is only one kind of preaching that will do in a generation like ours—preaching which includes the preaching of the judgment of God.”