This is what the LORD says:
"Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, 'We will not walk in it.' Jer. 6:16
When I was a young boy, I walked to my school every school day for seven years [so did I}. After school, I rode my bike to the ball park for my Little League games. {there was only little league for boys and I didn't feel left out] Every Sunday we walked a few blocks to church. The recreation park was a little further away than the ball park and a little closer than the school. Scout Hall was behind the school, so we also rode our bikes, or walked to Boy Scout meetings. Life was simple for us kids and our parents. In the suburbs of Los Angeles, the epitome of the commuter city, we lived life within a mile radius of our home. We even walked to the doctor's office.
Most people used to live this way. Before the automobile, everything had to be within walking distance, or at least horse-and-buggy distance. Communities had to develop accordingly. Each neighborhood had its local grocer, clothier, druggist, school, church, and so on. People knew their neighbors because they could not be avoided. One was constantly rubbing shoulders with them as one worked, worshiped, played, ate, and lived in the same area.
I like our cars. I can hardly imagine life without them. But as I was driving to school, work, the store, and a ball game the other day, I kept wondering, Is this really a better way of life? Our city, Savannah, Georgia, like every other community in America, now sprawls. We have big malls, big parks, big hospitals, big medical practices, nice roads in every direction, and nice air conditioned cars in which to drive. But is this a more humanly satisfying way to live?
While driving through town one evening, I noted the remarkable differences between poor and middle-class neighborhoods. The poor neighborhoods are older, more rundown, and yet abuzz with life. Some folks are sitting out on their porches, rocking and talking. Others are walking on the sidewalks. Still others are congregating on a street corner or at a storefront. What do you see in the middle class neighborhoods? Nothing. Not a soul. Why not? Air-conditioning. In the poor neighborhoods the deprived have no air-conditioning, but do have community. The affluent neighborhoods have air-conditioning, but consequently everyone stays inside, and minimal human interaction takes place. Who then is truly deprived? From air-conditioned offices to air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned houses, the socially impoverished move about, while the economically impoverished, though sweltering, enjoy a rich community experience.
We are technologically superior to previous generations. But are we losing too much in the process? First we walked, then galloped, then rode on rails together. Now we drive, largely with the window up, and go home to hermetically sealed homes, only coming out to take out the trash or grab the newspaper. Once we entertained ourselves at home by reading books aloud. In the 1920s families gathered around the radio. In the 1950s, they gathered around the T.V. Now there is a T.V. in each room. Computers only make it worse. Once the home was a castle, a place of refuge for the family. When behind its doors, the family conducted its affairs without interruption and without outside influence. Now one can hardly eat a meal or conduct family worship without the phone ringing. Sacrosanct family time is violated daily. Friends and strangers alike barge right into the middle of the family's most private and intimate moments via technology. Again my question is, Is this progress? When does life slow down enough so that we can talk? When do we enjoy our neighborhoods? Where do we experience community? In the last hundred years we have gone from life on a porch with family and neighbors to life in isolation in front of a cathode tube. Is the quality of life improving? Is ours a richer human experience? Frankly, I do not believe it anymore. Call it romanticism.
Call it naïveté. Call me a Luddite. We have wonderful toys today. But they have cost us too much. Growing prosperity and technological advancement do not necessarily or automatically mark human progress.
I have labored this point because I believe the church has largely failed to recognize the death of family and community or to compensate for it. Rather than reaffirm traditional practices that build family life and stimulate community, it tends to baptize secular trends that do the opposite. The small neighborhood church gives way to the large commuter church. The friendly country parson is replaced by the suburban CEO/pastor. Older practices such as the family altar and the family pew receive token attention, while new programs are devised that divide families and segregate the ages. In many ways we have become too clever for our own good. We are just as guilty of "chronological snobbery," as C. S. Lewis calls it, as the rest of society. Tried and proven ways of transmitting the heart and soul of the Christian faith to others have been abandoned in favor of exciting, entertaining, novel, but ineffectual alternatives. We pride ourselves in being modern. We look down our noses at previous generations. We have a love affair with the novel and the new. Educational, political, social, and religious fads sweep over us again and again, first possessing the field and all right-thinking people, and then in a matter of months, fleeing to the curiosity shelf in our cultural museums, replaced by yet another untested novelty. The time has come to admit our error and pause to look back, before we again look ahead.
What we hope to demonstrate in the pages ahead is that by returning to the practices of previous generations we may be able to revitalize the family and the church of today. The "ancient paths" of Sunday worship, Sabbath observance, family worship, and catechizing {family discipleship} are where spiritual vitality for the future will be found.
-from The Family Worship Book: A Resource Book for Family Devotions by Terry L. Johnson
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