Paul says people can have seared consciences as if by a hot iron. He also says, “Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.”

A lot of the result is a general indifference to anything that doesn’t personally effect a citizen’s day-to-day activities.

A favorite evangelist of mine, Oscar Woodall, used to make the point, “America is gospel-hardened.” Unbelief by a person results in calluses that harden the longer they’re unsaved, making it harder for the individual to be receptive to the truth.

In a recent sermon, my pastor, Richard Jordan, reported, “Your children are being raised to believe that worshipping God is just singing songs about how much you love Him. And I want you to know that really impresses God. He’s really bowled over in heaven when you sing, ‘Oh, we love you, you’re so great!’ He knew all that; He told you about it. You know what impresses God? When His Word takes root in your life. What excites Him is when He sees what He’s doing living in you.”

*****

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the fact that I’m now a middle-aged person. Just like old people say, “Boy, it all flew by so quick!” I’m experiencing the same realization.

I expect the rest of my life to go at a near-meteor clip judging by how fast the last few years have gone. I mean, I can’t even remotely grasp the fact we’re now only weeks away from another holiday season. It seems like just a few months ago that I was working out a horrible blunder by an H&R Block rep after getting a letter at tax time from the IRS saying I owed a large penalty sum.

Here’s a great passage on aging from Jordan: “Those of you who are 50, aren’t you glad you’re not as dumb today as you were when you were 40? You see, if you’re 35, you don’t understand that because you don’t think you were all that stupid when you were 25, but wait ’til you’re 45 and you’re going to realize you were an absolute blank at 25.

“Somebody says, ‘Don’t you wish you were 20 again?’ Heavens, I hope I’m never that dumb again! What it’s about is the older you get, the more maturity you get, and the more you realize how it used to be. When I was 30 I thought, ‘Boy, was I dumb when I was 20,’ and when I was 40, I thought I was dumb when I was 30, and then when I was 45, I thought I was dumb when I was 40.

“I got to be 50 and I thought I was dumb when I was 45. Now I’m down to thinking I was just real dumb last year. The time compression with age comes in.”

*****

Now and then, in the context of a sermon, my pastor will tell us different conversations he’s had with a neighbor across the street who is a practicing Muslim.

One time, talking about Ramadan, Jordan said he asked him, “Do you really fast all day long? Are you sure on Saturday, for instance, when you’re in there watching the ball game, you never just absentmindedly go over to the fridge and pull out a bottle of water and suck it down?’ He said, ‘Well, Allah understands.” No, Allah understands nothing! He understands you messed up!”

Jordan recalled a similar experience with a Catholic acquaintance during Lent. The two were inside an Italian Beef stand in Chicago called “Whatsa Your Beef?”

‘The guy knew the guy who ran the place so he went into the back and was going to make himself a beef sandwich and do you know who was sitting back there? The Monsignor. And you know what the Monsignor was chowing down on? A big old Maxwell’s Polish!

“In Lent, you’re not supposed to eat meat but there he was back there eating that big thing. Well, you know, you get to wanting it real bad, and 40 days is a long time not to have something you really want. He made it through about 35 of them so God’ll understand.

“Man, if you can’t even lay off groceries, what about the weightier matters? The real sinful things? Not those cheap little easy things. That’s what religion does. People are absolutely confident they can do it and that’s who Paul’s referring to in Gal. 3:10 when he says, “For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.”

“All the time you’ve got to continue in all the things and you can’t do this little, ‘Well, God will understand.’ Yeah, He understands, all right. Under the law system, He understands you failed!”

Jordan tells of another neighbor from years ago who was a Bahaist who attended the monstrous temple on Lake Michigan in Wilmette, Ill. Bahai is a cult of Islam that worships a guy known as the Bab.

“He got converted to that from Catholicism when he was in the Air Force in Colorado Springs,” Jordan recalls. “He said he went out into the desert and had a religious experience and he was throughly committed to it. I’d never heard of it before, so I was asking him about it, but he couldn’t tell me a thing about what happens to you after death.

“You know, the bottom line to anything like that for me is how do I have my sins forgiven and gain eternal life in heaven when I die. I mean, if you’ve got a tape player and it won’t play tapes, you don’t get mad at it because you can’t watch TV on it—you get mad at it because it can’t play tapes. Because that’s what it’s for!

“If you’ve got an electric can opener that doesn’t work, you thow it away. It’s of no good. I don’t get mad at the can opener because I can’t go out and cut the grass with it. That’s not what it’s for. But I don’t just keep it around when it doesn’t do its job. And I look at religion that way. What else would you have a religion for than to help you get your sins forgiven and give you eternal life!”