I have a friend who does a lot of teaching in Africa. He says that the number of conversions to Christianity in the southern 2/3rds of the continent has skyrocketed in the last century. But there is little change in the poverty level, AIDS epidemic, general promiscuity, ethics and corruption levels, housing and latrine arrangements, et c. The reason is that while folks become Christians and look forward to heaven with Jesus, they have not been taught the whole story of the Faith. That is, they have not understood what a Christian worldview is all about. They don't see that God created things, created all men and women in His image (with the proper dignity that deserves), what it implies now that God called unfallen Adam to name animals and till the garden (order, organize, learn to plant and harvest, exercise dominion). They don't see about the space/time Fall that has affected all things, not just their individual souls, and that redemption means that God has not only given us heaven but calls us to justice and righteousness here and now. That we must stand against the effects of the fall in all of life, that we must use the life we have for His glory in the here and now. That the Lord loves His creation and once called it good, and that in the next life we will have heavenly bodies, we'll not just be disembodied spirits, that we are made for physical communion, et c.

In place of a fully-orbed Christian worldview, the African Christians continue to hold to animism -- the same animism they held when they were "converted." So, in this world they believe one thing, and for the next world they believe something else. It is as though the gospel really were John 3:16 without the rest of the bible for context (and even then you have to insert your own name instead of "world" to keep it as narrow as people are taking it).

I think we are doing the same thing in our culture here -- we think the work of the Christian is to preach the gospel and convert souls, and beyond that the only connection the Faith has with day-to-day life is that it calls us to help the new converts go out and create more converts. It is the "life-boat" mentality that sees this world as a sea to be resucued out of -- we have to reach into the sea of this world (with all its commerce, music, film, art, relationships, meals, sports, pets, education, politics, history, sex, and books) and save people into the lifeboat of the church. Then the Church becomes a safe place to stay until we go home to be with the Lord. In that Church, we can live without questioning our assumptions about life -- we can continue to be materialists just like the Africans continue to be animists. This is why the Church has so little influence on the way we do our politics, commercial endeavors, academics, or spend our leisure. We in the West are simply living on the borrowed capital from past generations who DID know what this all meant, whereas the Africans have spent all their capital (or have never had it).

This is why I think the answer to the decline of the West (and the poverty of India and Africa) is a restatement of the whole Gospel, with all its implications for justice, commerce, art, education, leisure, marriage/sex, family, politics, et c). We should be reading Schaeffer and Kuyper, as well as Pope John Paul II's work on the connections between reason and faith. It is not at all impossible that we will soon have a generation that sees no connection between what they do on Friday night and what they say they believe on Sunday morning. When Paul writes "don't be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" he is writing to the Roman CHRISTIANS -- he is not calling unbelievers and pagans to faith in Christ, he is calling the faithful to do more than just hope for heaven. (this is by no means to say that we have to have our worldview in place before He'll save our souls -- rather this is the work He saves our souls FOR. We don't need an education to become Christians -- thank God! -- but after we are His, He begins to teach us what it is all about!)

Integrity means that we DO what we say we BELIEVE. (may our gracious Lord grant us His power to bring these two together in our lives).