Editorial: The year ahead & what to do about it

Around the time we decide to put up the Christmas decorations and consider whether we’ll write down New Year’s resolutions, we’re barraged with predictions about what the coming 12 months will bring.

Marv KnoxThis is understandable for at least two reasons. First, folks like to take vacation around Christmas, and columnists can write their 2016 prediction columns early, schedule them to post on their websites and spend the holidays away from work. More significantly, future-prediction is enormously popular.

If you don’t believe it, schedule a Bible study on “The End of the World” at your church. Folks can’t wait learn the identity of the Antichrist. (I can remember when it was Henry Kissinger, and Edmund Muskie, and Saddam Hussein.) They’re curious to learn if “the mark of the beast” has anything to do with embeddable computer chips. (I can remember when it was credit cards.) And they want to know if the red horse has anything to do with AIDS, or cancer, or Islam. (I can remember when it represented the Soviet Union.)

As it turns out, people are innately curious about the future. We just wanna know what’s going to happen.

Hits and misses

Of course, predicting the future is a fool’s errand.

To cite a couple of obvious illustrations: Lots of folks in the part of Texas where I live thought the 2015 Texas Rangers were going to be lousy and this year’s Dallas Cowboys were going to be fantastic. We were giddily wrong about the Rangers and miserably mistaken about the Cowboys.

Yes, predicting the future is slippery business.

Who could’ve guessed a real estate mogul and a brain surgeon would, at least for a while, lead the pack of Republican political candidates? And who could’ve thought a socialist would make any kind of serious run for national office?

We might have predicted gun violence would continue to tear at our national psyche. But we probably could not have thought we would know far more than we wish we knew about what happened in a church basement in Charleston on a hot summer evening or what occurred at a holiday party in a government office in San Bernardino.

We could go on like this for pages, couldn’t we? But the point each time would be the same: Surprising, shocking, heart-rending and sometimes heart-warming events blot every calendar every year. To paraphrase the great humorist Dave Barry: You can’t make this stuff up.

What’s going to happen

That said, here are a few predictions for 2016:

• The United States will elect a new president, and the outcome will result in deep division. That’s an easy one, because everyone who is running will divide us, at least initially.

• Gun violence and racial tensions will continue to waste young lives. But given our political divisions, we won’t do much about it.

• Other challenges—climate change, crumbling national infrastructure and government fecklessness, to cite but three—will threaten our future. But given our political divisions, we won’t do much, if anything, about it.

• Individually, Americans of all races, ethnicities and creeds will respond heroically to all manner of catastrophe. Their stories will offer glimpses of hope.

• If you root for a sports team, chances are excellent you’ll get your heart broken. But if you love sports, you’ll revel in stunning, exciting, mesmerizing competition.

• Doing church—both on the broad scale and in your own congregation—will be harder than ever. That will be true, not because there’s a “war on Christianity,” but because the increasingly secular nature of our society is pulling against the church. And where it will challenge our congregations isn’t at the point of reaching unbelievers, although that is crucial, but at the point of losing members’ attention. More and more Christians who say they’re active actually attend less, volunteer less, give less, think less.

• Still, churches will bear witness to their faithfulness to Jesus and their love for humanity. They will minister creatively, compassionately and sacrificially. You will read about many of them right here in the Baptist Standard.

What to do about 2016?

Meanwhile, what do we do about 2016—about all we can and cannot predict? Several responses come to mind.

First, practice spiritual discipline.

This is the “Sunday school answer,” but it’s no less true. Read the Bible. Pray. Do not forsake assembling together with other Christians for worship, study, discussion and encouragement. These actions will shape your heart and your mind, and without them, none of us can endure.

Second, think theologically about the world around us.

Thinking theologically means, at the very least, looking at the world through a biblical lens. Of course, the Bible is broad and varied, and people come down on all sides of issues and proof-text from the Bible. So, start and end with Jesus. If you don’t know where else to look, read Matthew 25 and Luke 4 every day and then read the paper or listen to the news and think about how to respond.

Third, respond ethically to others.

This is a corollary to the second point, but it is equally important. Far too often, people who call Jesus Lord and attend church think and act no differently than typical people in their own culture. Try to imagine what Jesus would do in situations. Ask: Is this action redemptive? Will it benefit others? Will it generate goodwill? Will it help others see Jesus as the incarnation of God’s love? If you think every issue has a simple answer, or the answer always serves your personal financial or political interest, or it only benefits people who look and think and live like you, you’re probably not thinking about things the way Jesus would approach them.

Fourth, and finally, resist cynicism and lean into gracious optimism.

This a doozy of a challenge, especially in a divided country with a broken-down political system. A fine line divides cynicism and reality. But if we believe Romans 8:28 is true—“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose”—then we believe we can participate with God in bringing about good in all situations.

If we are people who infuse the reality of Romans 8:28 into others’ lives, 2016 will be a year of blessings. No matter what else happens.