Evangelist Dan Mayfield
(BNc) by Dan Mayfield — Life has boundaries. Factions in the world and society divide over where they should be, but all people agree there are boundaries.
The problems Christians face have to do with the world changing into a secular society disconnected from traditional biblical values. What is wrong in the Bible is right in the secular society.
This is not to say there aren’t areas of agreement between secular society and Christianity, but there are huge differences that have become flash points of disagreement.
Malcolm Muggeridge identified the difference between secular and Christian society:
“If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Hefner.”
Muggeridge believed correctly that once a society turns from God, as if God were dead, then society will turn to something else as guide.
We see in secular society this very thing. The lack of morals and ethics is ruining business. Power or sex become the driving forces and there are no boundaries. The pursuit of the Almighty Dollar is the religion and there’s no boundary there either.
It’s not exactly true that no boundary exists in the pursuits of secular society. The secular world acts as if there were none, but it keeps running up against God. God has ordained that actions have consequences.
If the secularists were correct that there is no God, then there would be no consequences either. But God has not freed secular man from the consequences of his actions. If he acts unfaithfully, the secular world, against all that it claims to be true, begins imposing the moral standards it claims do not exist.
On one hand, the secular society says that everything goes, but everything doesn’t go, everything doesn’t work, and the secularist gets slapped back to the reality that everything is not OK because life has boundaries.
These mysterious, inexplicable, pervasive laws remain in place. The secularistic society swims against the current of God’s will.
Does it make them wake up and admit their fault? Mostly not, but only because their lusts for immediate pleasures lead them to bargain away their future.
In hope against hope, they preach their secular values, destructive to self, family, home, and society. As the home collapses, so does society. It’s a collapse that’s predicted by God: You cannot sow evil—the unprincipled anything-goes lifestyle—and still get good.
God is not mocked, says Paul to the Galatians. Men can act as if there are no boundaries. Or society can redraw the boundaries to encompass their latest pursuits of power and passion. But God’s boundaries remain and, until secular society humbles itself to admit them, it will continue to bang its head against the wall, never admitting why it is bruised.
Dan Mayfield has preached the gospel of Jesus Christ in Owatonna, Minn., for 24 years, and with Hazel, his wife of 35 years, enjoys seeing the work of God in their five grown children and nine grandchildren.
Reaction?