TITLE: A Symphony of Miracles Chapter 3 Darkness or Light? (Revised) 5/21/14 By Richard McCaw 05/21/14 |
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A Symphony of Miracles
Chapter 3
Darkness or Light?
On March 2, 1960 Elvis Presley returned from his tour of army duty in Germany, to continue as a pioneer rock-and-roll icon amidst the increasing rebellion of teen culture. The light of former days was dimming and the kingdom of darkness was advancing against the kingdom of light.
In many homes young men lacked fathers who modeled faithfulness and unconditional love to their wives and children. Many young women also lacked godly women as role models who respected their husbands and genuinely cared for their children. Young people therefore hardly had adults as mentors of righteousness. Their fathers were busy in the marketplace, their mothers in the workplace were competing for recognition, so that the home was left without authority figures and its strongest caregivers, both striving for the material things they considered necessary to achieve for the American dream.
Why was this? A great flood of women had begun demanding their rights. In fact in 1968, feminists protested at the Miss America contest in Atlantic City, arguing that the pageant was sexist. Within a few decades feminist trends were changing relationships between the genders. Females in the workplace had become increasingly dissatisfied with wages that were lower than their male counterparts. At the same time 80 percent of wives were using birth control. Women like Oprah Winfrey became leaders in television production, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in diplomacy, and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the Supreme Court
The darkness that was inching its way across American society was affecting not only adults but also our youth. The generation gap between young people and their parents was beginning to widen as perceptions differed over law and order. Today you can enter many homes and find a radio pounding out some hit song, and television on most of the time, while many of our children grow increasingly out of control.
Our young people have grown tired of empty religion that does not challenge them but abandons them to its external rituals. They will not sit week after week before a litany of scriptures they have been listening to from Sunday School days. Something more must challenge their sensitive spirits! Questions being addressed from the pulpit are not ones they are asking. They want answers for foundational truths: Is there a God? Did Jesus really rise from the dead? Do demons exist? Is the Bible true? How can I relate to my parents, siblings, and the opposite sex?
As a result they take the popular road that offers ease and comfort.
Ask most college students, “What are you looking for most in life?”
So they may answer, “Adults by their examples have taught us that money and sex are the most important things in life. I just want to do what I want, when I want, and how I want!” Some may smile impudently and add, “And I don’t want anyone telling me what to do!”
So they listen to the latest hit songs, and many hang out with rebellious youth, whose mouths are filled with swearing and bitterness, grown out of society’s abandonment of parenthood, or the stress of carrying the responsibility of adulthood before they are mature enough to do so. Their dress and flaunting sexuality says it all.
Since the late 1960’s rock music and popular songs by Lennon, Dylan, Morrison, Springsteen and Townsend have dominated the charts and radio airwaves have had a profound influence on society everywhere. The coffin songs of the early 1960’s were narrative ballads performed in a pseudo-operatic style of crooning, portrayed as representing the Dark Age of popular music
Teenage rebellion involved drug and alcohol abuse, vandalism, theft and other delinquency. Others abandoned societal norms adopting the Goth culture a minority culture, fascinated with death, dark music, depression that emotionally expresses their rebellion.
But in the midst of all of that darkness one young man found light as in a dark corner, an alternative culture that changed his life and brought him into the brightness of the love of Christ.
He says, “I. started smoking at 7 years old, alcohol at 8, pornography at 8-9, pot at 11 and was a pill freak by 12. I wanted so much for my dad to love and show me his attention. But my Dad abused me, and I was bullied at school. At 15 I was addicted to pot and alcohol. Later, when I married 5 times and had 6 children, I abused my wives either verbally, physically or sexually.
“One day when I had no money I went to the church that met downstairs and two ladies showed me love. The first gave me $5.00 and invited us inside. When I entered the church, another lady got up and asked my wife and I to come to the front of the church so she could pray for us. Then they took up a collection for us and gave us $30. When she prayed for me, I was delivered from drug addiction, alcoholism, my extreme temper and the pain in my heart and I fell in love with Jesus. At home I fell on my knees and started praying for God to teach me. Through much Bible study and prayer God sent others to help me. However I found that the Lord wanted to teach me Himself so that I could depend on him alone. Today I am a minister of the Gospel.”
We are living in difficult days. Men love darkness and themselves rather than light, and they love pleasures more than God. But Jesus points the way out of darkness. The choice then must be presented to the countless teenagers and everyone else lost in our society, “Choose THIS DAY, whom you will serve.” For those crying out for deliverance, we must carry the message of hope. “I am the light of the world,” He says. “He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”
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