What's Happened to Our Country? (continued from last week's posts)

Continued from last week...more facts that help answer the question "What Has Happened to Our country?"

#3 - The Rise of Individualism in America

Individualism according to wikipedia.org is a moral, political, or social outlook that stresses independence, self-reliance and individual liberty. The tendency for a person to act without reference to others, particularly in matters of style, fashion or mode of thought.

I know that there are many people under thirty who might think that the American culture has always been characterized by individualism. But that's no so. Something has happened to our country in the last thirty plus years that has caused us to be more concerned about self then others. Maybe we should have saw this coming in the 70's when the best-selling paperback of the decade was "Looking out for Number One" and you could say that we as a people have been doing just that since that time. The consequences of such a rise in individualism has been a sexual revolution that has left us with a teenage sex crisis unlike we have never seen before; and with a cultural acceptance of adultery, homosexuality, pornography of all kinds, and sex education in our schools as early as kindergarten.

Individualism has also contributed to the millions of children that have been aborted since the 70's as well as the increase of divorce in America, corporate greed, drug addiction and alcoholism, and on and on. When self is exalted above everyone and everything else, its tentacles are endless and it's reach is limitless.

Not only do you see Individualism's influence in our culture but you also see it's hold on institutions that have traditionally countered pop culture, the greatest of which is the American church. Thankfully, I believe that there is still a segment of today's American church that still opposes individualism with the teaching and preaching of a true gospel message that focuses on self-denial (in Christ) rather than self-adulation. I also think the foundational tenets of the American military is basically opposed to the ideas of individualism as well. So there is still some hope for the present. But these few institutions influence a minority of people compared to the majority masses that are indoctrinated with Individualism daily by the media (TV, music, movies, etc.), the education systems, and the government. In reality, they are winning the day and changing a nation that was once a people given to self-sacrifice into a people looking for self-gratification.

-Pastor Randy