Rediscovering The Truth About Creation

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Ironically, the first symptom of spiritual decline in the Fifties could be found in the church! I was not even a teenager. Yet, as a young person looking back, I cannot remember more than one or two individuals in the church or elsewhere whom I would describe as actually living for the Lord. Even within my parents' church, the same church where I grew up and attended until age twelve, I remember many good people, many very nice people, but I do not recall much focus on spiritual living. I grew up thinking that living for the Lord meant something really extreme, like being a preacher or missionary, but that teaching was not correct. One of my first Sunday School teachers probably had the greatest influence on me. Unfortunately, I only had her for a very short time. As sad as it may sound, my most vivid memory of the Fifties-style church is people standing in front of the building after the Sunday morning service, talking about insignificant, worldly matters and smoking cigarettes!

The second symptom of national, spiritual decline during the Fifties was, in my opinion, evidenced by the works of the entertainment industry. Television shows and movies in the Fifties and Sixties, when compared to most of today's shows, were good, clean entertainment. There was not much if any foul language, not much if any graphic violence, and not much if any viewing that was sexually offensive. There also were not any pay-per-view networks or other pay channels to bring filth into one's home. Thus, most forms of entertainment were suitable for children. In today's terminology, we would say rated "G". Many even presented positive themes. However, what did this industry of relatively clean entertainment offer in the way of spiritual programming during the Fifties? The answer is none or very, very little.

Those who rate movies usually evaluate entertainment by the presence or absence of negative factors; such as the bad language, violence, or sexual content just mentioned, but not much is ever said about positive, spiritual content. We do not rate movies "GS" for General-Spiritual. Today, we scan for the negative and undesirable, but we tend to ignore or overlook the positive. In the anything-goes 1990s, there is not much, if any, attempt by the industry to broadcast wholesome, spiritually-enriching programs. The same was basically true during the 1950s!

As a kid, I do not recall seeing any television shows or movies where the intent was to actually worship God or exalt Christ. In my mind, the absence of this type of programming suggests two points. First, because the makers of entertainment must satisfy their viewers to stay in business, the lack of high quality, spiritually-based television means that most viewers of that period did not want such programming. It was a time when people were good, decent, and basically moral, but they did not want to turn on their television and hear about or learn about God! If they had, then the producers of the shows of that day would have met the demand and produced such forms of entertainment.

Secondly, the lack of spiritually-based programming shows that the makers of television programs and movies were not interested in forcing that type of programming on their viewers. Probably such a move would have been ratings suicide simply because uninterested viewers would have just switched channels. Spiritually-uplifting entertainment does not exist to a great extent now and did not exist in the Fifties largely because no one wanted it! This is yet another indication of the spiritual decline which was underway even back then.

The churches of that day, including my parents' church, television, and the movies all influenced my early spiritual well-being. My parents were very good, hardworking people. Most of their friends also were good and hardworking. As a kid, I knew many individuals of high integrity, and I learned much from each. But I did not learn much from any of them about spiritual matters. Even though I, as a young person, knew many adults, I still did not have any solid role models to teach me about the Lord. Concerning the entertainment available in the Fifties, I viewed many very good, fairly high quality television shows and movies. I was spared much of the filth which is aired today, but even so, none of those good, positive, fairly high quality shows exalted the Lord. They were good shows! But they left out the Lord, and while the elimination of filth is certainly not wrong or bad, it also is not the same as making a positive effort to lift up Christ.

In general, I was raised in the midst of a good, wholesome environment. My home life was very average, even very normal. Many families were like mine. Yet, I went from cradle to high school, living among good, moral people and still knew virtually nothing about God. I did not see Him in others, and I did not see Him in the entertainment of the day. What I did see was a whole nation of young people who were being churned out very much like me.

The final symptom of the Fifties which clearly reveals the nation's spiritual attitude at that time was the public school system. I can remember being in the Fifth Grade and having a classmate who served as the school's Chaplain. Each morning, this young girl would read a Bible passage to the whole school over the school's intercom system, follow that with a few thoughts about the passage, and then close with a short prayer. The whole episode lasted less than five minutes!

In 1959, however, when I entered the Sixth Grade, the morning devotions which I had known as a Fifth Grader were gone. For some reason, that daily period which had been set aside for seeking the Lord had been taken away, and from that time on, my fellow students and I were never again given the daily reminder that God should be first in a person's life. Right after that, conditions in the public school system began to deteriorate, and they have not been the same since! For sure, that innocent time of worship each day was making an impression on some young minds. But then, the devotions were gone, and in my case, that sudden change might have been critical. Had our morning worship time not been taken away, many of my later problems could have possibly been avoided. There is no easy way to assess what damage has been done and continues to be done by society's cruel act of not telling its children about the importance of knowing God! My generation was the guinea pig, and now look at the price which is being paid!

These three symptoms - lack of conviction in the churches, non-spiritual entertainment, and the removal of morning devotions from within the public school system - all shaped my early life. If it truly is important to put God first in one's life, then the three biggest influences in most peoples' life were not and are not communicating that critically important message. In the 1950s and 1960s, the spiritual climate was not only characterized by what was done, but as can be seen by these three symptoms, the spiritual temperature of this nation was also characterized by what was not done! Had the churches of that period been on fire for the Lord, had the entertainment industry tried to exalt Christ, and had the public school system not forsaken its sacred trust to rightly train young people, my life would have probably been much different. As a young person, I did not know the truth about God or about right spiritual living simply because my society did not teach me!

Our nation was in spiritual trouble even during the 1950s. The symptoms of that peril have already been presented. In the early Eighties, I started looking at the spiritual condition of the 1950s and began wondering why those people might have behaved as they did. Why were so many of the churches spiritually cold? Why was the entertainment industry clean, but still not spiritual? Why did citizens allow the removal of morning devotions from public school? In general, why had God basically been given a back seat in most peoples' heart and life?

My conclusion was that the spiritual fall of America could be traced directly to the dual influences of the Great Depression and World War II. See Table 2 for a listing of these two causes. In his book, Whatever Happened To The American Dream, though, Mr. Larry Burkett, President and Founder of Christian Financial Concepts, Inc., goes back even further than the Thirties and Forties by saying that the amoral values of the European culture, acquired during World War I, had actually put our nation on the wrong road. He relates that the American GIs returning home from that War spread those values throughout the country [1].

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Table 2. When The Decline Began.

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My opinion, therefore, is that the combination of all of those events was probably responsible for the nation's spiritual attitude and the beginning of its decline. The amoral values, which is simply that of us not caring either way about right and wrong, crept into our culture during the late Teens and early Twenties. Then, the difficulties which were brought on by a national Depression and the Second World War completed the process. At any rate, it seems clear to me that everything was in place by the early 1950s.

Despite our possible acquisition of amoral values during the First World War, however, I do not think that the adults of the Fifties consciously decided to throw the Lord out of their society. I also do not believe that it was a matter of good people choosing to become bad. Instead, what I think is that good, moral individuals became predisposed or distracted by other concerns. At that point, the amoral values which had been acquired during the First World War seized control and became a dominant force. In my opinion, the process was very subtle and very gradual, and it really did not begin to take hold until the 1930s, the 1940s, and even 1950s!

My parents and the parents of most of my friends had grown up during the Great Depression. From all that I have read and am able to comprehend about that time, people were devastated. Unemployment was exceptionally high, close to twenty percent. People were losing everything, and times were extremely desperate! Many of those who were adults in the Fifties had been children in the Thirties, and I can see many of them over a period of years being forced to sacrifice and do without. I am not a Psychologist, but I can understand how that type of long-term deprivation might psychologically affect someone.

For instance, if because of hard times, a little girl growing up in the Thirties could not even have had a doll, then it is easy for me to understand how that same child might grow up wanting her daughters to have the biggest and best dolls. The same is true for boys. If a young boy living in the Thirties had been denied even a baseball glove, then that child growing up to want his sons to have major league-quality, baseball gloves is also not so difficult to imagine. All of us tend to want for our children those things which were or are most important to us, and even more so if we were not able to obtain them for ourselves.

That being the case, for a person to believe that the Great Depression did not affect those young people who grew up to be parents and adults in the Fifties is, in my opinion, being closed-minded. The same applies for World War II. Had the Depression alone been the only difficult challenge of that Era, it would have been tough enough. However, on the heels of one hardship followed another, a World War! My father fought in Okinawa. My father-in-law participated in the Normandy Invasion. The fathers of many of my friends also fought in the War. To think that those men, plus the women who were directly and indirectly involved, were not psychologically affected is being equally closed-minded. I must believe that when someone tries to kill you or your loved one, then you are affected. Therefore, if the parents and adults of the Fifties seemed to be overly committed to financial prosperity or to world peace, then I can certainly understand and appreciate their zeal.

In the Fifties, a church existed on nearly every street corner. The entertainment industry was producing good, moral shows which were very entertaining, and the public schools were at the job of teaching. However, to me, none of these entities seemed to be focused on the Lord, and none seemed to hit at the heart of this idea of right spiritual living. The reason, in my opinion, was our most recent national history! I believe that most parents, because they had endured such desperate, difficult times, wanted their children to have what they, themselves, as children had not been able to have. I believe that most parents, again for this same reason, wanted their kids to get an education and to ultimately find that perfect job, and I believe that most parents, above all else, wanted a peaceful world environment for their children. As a result of these driving ambitions, the entertainment industry, the school system, and even many of the churches responded to the wants of the people by giving them what they desired. Unfortunately, in so doing, I also believe that this strong national focus toward temporal objectives shifted our country's attention from serving an eternal God to serving ourselves. As a nation and a people, we became spiritually distracted and got off course.

Mr. Burkett, in the same book as was identified above, defines the wanting of something better for one's children to be the essence of the American Dream. He states that the older generation has always wanted to believe that the next generation through hard work could obtain a better life, and I think that he is correct [2]! I cannot and will not fault the adults and parents of the Fifties for having had their worldly, temporal desires. After all, they were only wanting something better for their children. Maybe it was just their vision of the American Dream, but I believe that their motives were sincere and understandable. Unfortunately, as I have already stated, whether through the amoral values acquired during World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, or some combination of all three, our nation somewhere in this whole process started in grand style to forget about God.

In 1967, when I had first looked back to my early childhood, I had mistakenly thought that my youthful environment was nearly ideal. Actually, from a spiritual perspective, those times really had not been! They had been characterized by an adult generation which had a poor, ungodly national focus.

Forty years later, not much has changed concerning our ungodly national focus. We may have become more sophisticated and more advanced technologically, but in terms of the three symptoms already discussed, our positions are much the same or worse. In terms of an amoral value system, we have become almost completely despicable. Our lack of morals in the previous generations has caused us to cross all the way over into outright immorality. Today, many but not all churches are still cold and dead. Religion is all around us, yet the true religion found only in Jesus Christ is often distorted and hard to find. Concerning the many vehicles of entertainment, no spiritual content exists in most. Yet, the majority of people are pleased with the industry's unspiritual slant. In the public schools, God and the Bible are still outlawed. Yet, a growing number of individuals are satisfied with that situation, too!

Consequently, the national focus of the Fifties has been passed from the parents of that generation through the children into the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, and now into the Nineties. As a country, we still value education, world peace, having a good job, and making a lot of money, but most people do not have any time, interest, or room for the Lord. Why? Because we have all been molded by a system which does not love, need, or want God!