Wise Words With...

Holding the line in a changing world

The world is a rapidly changing place. Whilst it took up until 1800 for the global population to reach 1 billion people, it only took the next 200 years for the population to reach 8 billion people. The first computer I used had 3 kB of RAM. My current computer has 5 million times more RAM. It took 12 years for 50 million users to adopt the mobile phone. It took 19 days for 50 million users to adopt Pokemon Go. The world is a changing place.

And society is changing. It always interests me the reasons why people choose to send their children to Nowra Christian School. The most prominent reason seems to be that people are searching for a community that reflects the values that the family possesses. The values of society have changed very rapidly. I would describe it as a yearning from our community for how things used to be.

What is interesting is that the Bible is very clear on who Jesus is in a rapidly changing world. 

Hebrews 13:8 says that 

'Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.'

And there are many other scriptures which speak about how God does not change. The questions should be asked why does the Bible go out of its way to point out that God does not change? I suspect it is because human nature is to change. Technology changes, we come across different world views, and we expect that God will change as we do. But the Bible is clear, God doesn’t change. 

The message of the bible about Jesus is clear: Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead for the purpose of reconciling us to God the Father. This is the core message of the Bible. We must be careful of mission drift.

We could give lots of examples of mission drift. Mozilla Firefox was originally started as open-source software to keep the internet free. It later moved its focus into content curation and political censorship. Harvard University was originally founded to train Christian Ministers. Today it is a secular research university.

I love the fact that Nowra Christian School has an open enrolment policy. Our school is a place where all people are welcome, and many people come here enjoying the values and the culture of the school. We will always remain true to the message of the Bible and the values that it teaches, because whilst society and its values may change, Jesus’ reconciling work on the cross will always be relevant to humanity and there will always be a longing for how things should be.