Forty years ago--our dilemmas were . . .

In 1973 in an introduction to Baker's Dictionary of Christian Ethics, Carl F. H. Henry wrote about the concerns of the day. We were a decade beyond Rachel Carson's misguided "Silent Spring" which has lead millions of Africans to their deaths through the resurgence of malaria, five years past the alarmist, best-seller, "The population bomb" by Paul Erlich, three years beyond the first Earth Day, and in the middle of a bunch of street people for Jesus.

So in the introductory essay Henry writes about spending too much money on the space race when millions went to bed hungry, about the exploding population, about junk and toxic waste being spewed into the environment, and of course, the blame the USA needed to accept for the world's problems. And he wrote about the disillusionment in the scientific/technological enterprise and the political arena.

"In the USA the Watergate scandal, worst since Teapot Dome, brought the world's most powerful nation to a political watershed. The disappointing performance of many modern democracies, the frustrated hopes of those who relied on revolution and growing disenchantment with world political organizations--first the League of Nations and now the United Nations--was wrapped the whole cultural enterprise in a mood of gray doom. . . Is the suppression of a clearly defined national interest a reasonable expectation when the alternative is a murky global communality? Are nations facing extinction by totalitarian superpowers likely to agree that a global police force must replace any and every recourse to military response, if such agreements may portend their own eclipse? On the other hand, if national self-interest is to reign unchecked, in what dread calamity will modern history inevitably explode? It is no secret that the present course, if unaltered, could eventuate in full-scale nuclear warfare before the end of this century."

He goes on to call on evangelicals to not ignore God's purposes through government as an instrumentality of justice and order in a fallen society, and to be salt and light in a fallen society.

When one sees the hunger of Christians of all denominations and theological bents starving their souls while nursing at the government grant teat for food pantries, housing and neighborhood renewal, job training programs, and even marriage workshops, it's obvious that churches now find their calling in meeting bureaucratic goals.

"Not since the fall of the Roman empire have social decay and political unrest been as widespread as today," he concludes. It seems to be a very human frailty to believe you have it worse than any who came before, whether you are evangelical, atheist, humanist, or spiritually eclectic.