March 27, 2011
The Vancouver Sun newspapers ran a report headlined, “Canadians losing faith as religion faces extinction” on March 23, 2011.
Part of its report read, “Researchers said that as the masses who claim religious non-affiliation swell, it becomes more appealing to join the ranks of that group. The model predicts that for societies in which the perceived utility of not adhering is greater than the utility of adhering, religion will be driven toward extinction," the study said.”
Faith has been categorised among trends such as fashion and a matter of vogue. As it becomes less ‘in’ and ‘cool’ to be religious, it becomes less and less attractive to be identified as a person of faith.
There used to be a time when ‘spirituality’ is used exclusively to refer to things or actions that spring from a sacred source. However, ‘spirituality’ has evolved today to also mean a personal state of mind, a totally individual inner path, without engaging with the supernatural.
Meditation used to be on the Word of God while meditation today probably means emptying your mind of any thoughts and achieving a peace within yourself.
Prayer used to be the language between man and a known God, while it is now used loosely to refer to remembering the person in our thoughts and messaging an unidentifiable Being up there, if there is really one. Never mind that the Divine may or may not be there.
We live in a spiritually confusing time and a media-shaped time.
Unless we are committed to invest our time, live and grow into the values of the Holy Book, we will be sucked into the world’s trend and hoodwinked into Satan’s lie.
.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Of course this is an alarming statistic, but if following Christ is a relationship and not a religion, then we do not need to worry too much about this.
ReplyDeleteMaybe this is a sign of good things to come... if religion-affliation declined and religion became extinct, then maybe more people will be able to find Christ's love and have their lives truly transformed without the distractions and confusions created by man-made religion and rules.
Ex: Communist China wiped out all religion. It was an atheistic state; a state with empty souls. When they finally opened their doors, there was an explosion in number of Christ-followers and there still remains tremendous growth of people following Christ. Today, there are more Christians in China than in the USA.