The zeitgeist is most visible, perhaps, in the frightening shamelessness that marks our age. It shows itself in dress, literature, art, and music – through their expressions of inner disunity and separation from the Creator, and through their appeal to the lowest human instincts. At a deeper level, it can be seen elsewhere too: in government and corporate corruption, in the breakdown of the family and personal relationships, in schools and universities, in the mass media, in the worlds of medicine and law, and worst of all, in the emptiness and hypocrisy of the spiritual fare offered by so may churches.
Jesus’ stance toward all this is clear: he condemns the “spirit of the age” and exposes it as the spirit of Satan, the “accuser of our brother” and the “murderer from the beginning.” And in doing so, he calls us to ask ourselves, “Where, amid the divisiveness and noise of our time, is the still small voice of God?” – J. Heinrich Arnold, Freedom from Sinful Thoughts (Plough Publishing House, 1997), 23-24
Forum Letter, Volume 48, Number 2, February 2019