Kidist said...

Aardvark, do you think people's behavior has turned for the worse over the years?

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Now, THAT'S a question. As this is my blog, and my opinion reigns supreme:

Yes.

But a yes with caveats.

"Yes", because there are more people to behave badly, and more to interact synergistically, badly.

"Yes", because people have longer lives, and can get really good at being bad.

Violinist: How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
NY Cabbie: Practice.

I believe the accounts of longevity prior to Noah. In rejecting God, the people's thoughts "were only evil continually". When you live nigh unto a millennium, you can get really good at being really bad. (I also suspect things like the Cydonia Face are remnants of pre-Noahic technology.
With an 800-year lifespan, an Einstein could have developed a relativistic drive, or at least an atomic drive to get us there. How long did it take to go from horse-and-wagon to One Giant Leap for Mankind? This is mere speculation though, and perhaps I should keep it under my tinfoil hat.)

"Yes", because people have cut themselves from moral and spiritual moorings, and by that, self-control, through a cultural rejection of Biblical teaching. Like it or not, the strength of the West has lain in its Biblical Consensus. America has not been a "Christian Nation" (darn hard to baptise a landmass). I could argue that the concept is not tenable, but the fact remains that what governed The West was an overall "Judeo-Christian" mindset, with Biblical underpinnings in intellectual thought, common law and jurisprudence, and man-on-the-street morality. Francis Schaeffer and others have documented this ably, and I recommend Schaeffer as a start.

"Yes", because public behavior has coarsened, with...unpleasant results. Road rage was not a phenomenon when I was a kid. Public discourse has degenerated to who can out-F-bomb the other. (Yes, I have a problem with public vulgarity. It is low, demeaning to the speaker and the hearer, and unnecessary. And Jesus making a godly assessment of the Jewish leaders' character as being "sons of snakes" is NOT equivalent to my calling someone an "S.O.B.").

"Yes", because the church has become a Voters Auxiliary. Our proper mission is making disciples (telling folks how to live, and then SHOWING them how to do it. Jesus walked, talked, camped out, preached and taught with His disciples for three years. We drag 'em to a crusade, "get 'em saved", and ensconce them on a pew. NEXT!), NOT marching on Washington, or Montgomery. Can and should a Christian vote as an individual? Likely so, but the church's purview is not to be a Voting Bloc.

So, in a word, yes.