The truth is, this is not my grandmother’s world. She wouldn’t recognize it, and actually, neither would my dad, who has only been gone five years. That racial tension of the Sixties that we thought was getting better? Um…not the last time I watched the news. Those abortions that fix unwanted pregnancies? How often has the news interviewed women who wish they’d made a different choice?
Sex outside of marriage? My grandmother would have turned purple with shame if she had done such a thing. Have you noticed that no one even considers it an issue today? It’s just everyone’s choice.
And that’s true. I’m not picking on these things to make anyone in those situations feel attacked or guilty. I’m suggesting that maybe the social changes of the past one hundred plus years aren’t so inconsequential as they seem.
I’ve done a lot of research in my years as a novelist and the scariest thing to me is that in history, when people threw off moral restraints and “did what was right in their own eyes”, things didn’t end well for that nation.
Right now there is a great divide between what people consider important in the way of social issues. To some it is racial tensions, climate change, gender equality, and many other current legal rights. To others it is saving the lives of the unborn, rescuing those in sex trafficking, providing clean water to poor countries, preventing suicide, opening orphanages to children whose parents were victims of AIDS. And the list goes on.
But do we have to be divided? God called Christians to preach the good news about Jesus but also to be peacemakers and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Perhaps it is time to start that new conversation without platitudes or dogma or emotion on either side of the discussion.
