At the risk of sounding like a complete old fogie, (and I’m sad to confess that somehow I’ve finally gotten to that age), I find the post modern church severely lacking in a couple of things I was taught early on that were essential to Christian life.

Number one is reverencing God.

A great many of us in my generation, lovingly called the baby boomers, have enjoyed a lifestyle unprecedented by anyone before us. Yet, somehow in our “it’s all about me” mindset, we’ve lost our gratitude toward the God who prospered us, just as He cautioned the children of Israel in the Old Testament not to do.

In our personal quest to acquire all that is good in this life, somewhere along the line we also developed a serious apathy about the after life. Because we were so “busy” chasing the American dream, we chose to let televangelists and mega-churches take over our individual teaching of the gospel, and the personal modeling of Godly principles all believers are called to do. Because we got too busy to pray and to read our Bibles, we also relied upon pastors and others to seek God, and to have our personal relationship with Christ for us.

So much of the emphasis of our modern worship services is on the make-me-feel-good-about-myself gospel, that we’ve pretty much left God’s chosen agenda out of the equation. As we’ve aged, we have, along with our children, become more of a generation of religious consumers and purpose driven groupies rather than Presence centered activists. Even though we baby boomer Christians pride ourselves on our tolerance and compassion for others, our generation actually spends far less time in practical service to those in need than any other generation before us.

However, because so many of us do tend to put our own goals above our responsibility as blood bought members of Christ’s body, the spreading of His gospel has suffered more than anything else, from neglect on the part of His chosen people. In fact, to a generation so concerned with self image, sharing the gospel outside of church nowadays is considered downright embarassing. And this despite our being one of the largest and most influential generations in history, 80% of whom claim to believe in God.

I was also taught, early on, that personally modeling the integrity of Christ in all our ways was something every Christian should do to honor God.

However, that sort of Christian life lesson isn’t taught much nowadays, because our self-seeking culture no longer honors God first. Instead, it teaches us it’s all about how much we can get away with and not be held responsible. We are even told by some of our religious leaders that “sin management” is out of style in this new age of religious tolerance. We are led even further away from any real sense of Christian responsibility by an overly indulgent society that encourages us to think of ourselves as victims if we’re criticized or disagreed with nowadays. With all that going against us, we Christians think we have to go with the flow too, in order to fit in.

Because our generation is much more into appearances than our parents were, we often allow ourselves to be both inwardly and outwardly intimidated by what people might “think” if we actually determined to live a truly holy, morally upright life. Some of us sincerely believe if we really dared to stand up for the truth God, no matter what, we might not be accepted in our families or our social groups. That, in our approval seeking generation’s eyes, is the worst thing that could possibly happen to us – short of taking away our financial security, of course. Somehow, we must wake up and stop using our precious religious freedom to create more self-serving clones of ourselves, and begin to actively practice our Christian faith in more needful and mindful ways.

It’s not just about praying that our loved ones get saved, and thinking our job is done. It’s not about just going to church, and writing a generous check to missions on Sunday, thinking we can bribe God. It’s about being more committed to His chosen agenda every day, in our own practice of Christianity, for everyone’s sake. It’s about not watering down the gospel message, or changing God’s truth, in order to get it across. We shouldn’t have to do that anyway if we’re being living proof of Christ’s ability to transform lives and renew minds. It’s not about us Christians trying to gain the world’s approval by going with the flow. It’s about being concerned enough with someone else’s welfare to tell them why they need to come to Jesus and repent of their sins, so they can escape God’s judgement of the world.

We don’t know how much someone’s else’s decision of whether to spend eternity in heaven or hell is going to be influenced by how effectively we model Christ in our individual areas of influence. We may not realize, this side of heaven, how many anonymous souls are saved by our public professions of the truth about the priceless gift of salvation that Christ made possible on the cross – for all who would believe. The fact that all the people we know don’t believe is precisely why this generation of Christians needs to get our minds off filling up our pocketbooks, and get back to filling our lives, and everyone else’s, with the real treasures contained in God’s Book.

Reverencing God and having the integrity of Christ will never win us any brownie points in today’s largely secular society. Nor will it go over well in many radical fringe groups of the church itself, who are more interested in the emotional experience of religion, than the reason behind it. No matter what denominational beliefs we may have however, God’s basic message does not change from generation to generation. These are very serious times, and if we are to leave behind the same legacy of Christian truth that we were given in the beginning, we need to be as serious about conducting God’s business as we have been about conducting our own.