"There was a day in which people did not think of themselves in primarily individual terms. Instead what it meant to be a person was largely defined by one's relationship to such communities as family, history, parents, ethnicity, nationality, city, religion and trade...
However everything changed in the days of the church father Augustine... [He] did not look outward to his social network but rather inward to his feelings, convictions, longings, and the like. This elevated the importance of the autonomous individual in understanding the essence of humanity...
In light of this historical transition, the average person, including the average Christian, is far worldlier and less biblical in his understanding of who he is and why he exists than he is aware. He thinks in worldly categories rather than biblical categories because the culture in which he lives is so fundamentally unbiblical in its thinking Sociologist Christian Smith has said that the true religion of most people in the West today, regardless of what religion they profess to participate in, is moralistic therapeutic deism. By moralistic he means we are good individuals who can get better, not sinners who need actual salvation. By therapeutic he means that it is counseling and therapy, not God or the church, that enable our betterment. By deism he means that God is not really involved in our lives; we are essentially on our own with the occasional exceptions of God answering a prayer we send him or sending us a pithy insight to aid our betterment."
- p111-113 Doctrine.
Do you think our focus on the individual has changed our human makeup? It seems to certainly have changed the image of the human on earth. To the point where it continues to effect even those saved by Jesus.
Do you agree with this view?
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