A Look Inside The American Heart

Here's a remarkable reflection of the false priorities of modern society.

"I am constantly astonished at people who say they believe in God but live as though happiness were to be found by giving him 2 percent of their attention." (John Piper, Desiring God [Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Books, 1996], p. 268)

"Where is God in your daily newspaper or in your talk radio show or the network TV programming or Time and Newsweek or the theater or the public school classroom? God is the most important reality in the universe. But he is almost totally ignored. And if not, he is as likely belittled as reverenced....Disregard for God is the greatest evil in the West today. It is as though an ant on his anthill should disbelieve in the earth." (John Piper, A Godward Life, Book Two [Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, 1999], p. 19)

"The truth is that, despite the statistics on churchgoing, etc., the United States is a very secular nation that, for the most part, does not take religion seriously. Not only may the statistics overstate the religious reality - people may be telling pollsters what they think makes a good impression - but statistics say nothing of the quality or depth of American religious belief. It is increasingly clear that very few people who claim a religion could truthfully say that it informs their attitudes and significantly affects their behavior." (Robert Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah [New York, New York: ReganBooks/HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1997], pp. 279-280)

"It is one of the defining marks of Our Time that God is now weightless. I do not mean by this that he is ethereal but rather that he has become unimportant. He rests upon the world so inconsequentially as not to be noticeable. He has lost his saliency for human life. Those who assure the pollsters of their belief in God's existence may nonetheless consider him less interesting than television, his commands less authoritative than their appetites for affluence and influence, his judgment no more awe-inspiring than the evening news, and his truth less compelling than the advertisers' sweet fog of flattery and lies. That is weightlessness. It is a condition we have assigned him after having nudged him out to the periphery of our secularized life....Weightlessness tells us nothing about God but everything about ourselves, about our condition, about our psychological disposition to exclude God from our reality." (David Wells, God In The Wasteland [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1995], pp. 88, 90)

"Oh I would not have it said of any of you, 'Well, he may be somewhat Christian, but he is far more a keen money-getting tradesman.' I would not have it said, 'Well, he may be a believer in Christ, but he is a good deal more a politician.' Perhaps he is a Christian, but he is most at home when he is talking about science, farming, engineering, horses, mining, navigation, or pleasure-taking. No, no, you will never know the fullness of the joy which Jesus brings to the soul, unless under the power of the Holy Spirit you take the Lord your Master to be your All in all, and make him the fountain of your intensest delight. 'He is my Saviour, my Christ, my Lord,' be this your loudest boast." (Charles Spurgeon)