I shouldn’t get my instructions about how to live a godly life from politicians or movie stars or bloggers. If I am living according to Scripture, I will see the world differently, and that means I will sometimes be misunderstood and considered prudish, judgmental, out of touch, and irrelevant, even by some in the church. I have to learn to be okay with that. 

It used to be easier to be a “decent” person. It was easier to come to the end of a life imperfectly lived, in which mistakes were made and convictions shifted through different phases, without being labeled a bad human being. We used to be allowed to think wrong things until we figured out better ways to think. It used to be permissible to say the wrong thing, to do something stupid, to hold a belief that was different from our neighbor’s, without being written off as hopeless, vile, or worthless.

These days, something as benign as leaving a shopping cart in a parking lot or putting a dog in the backyard is enough to make Americans despise each other. It seems that the era of general agreement about what makes a person “good” is over. Can we expect to see funeral crowds dwindling because, in our ultra-sensitivity, in our refusal to see beyond a careless word or deed, in our determination that any belief that contradicts our own is indecent, we will no longer allow people to be honored for the good that God accomplished through their imperfect lives? Are vitriol and mistrust the new languages of humanity in this nation?

It appears so.

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