“Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold.”I don’t want this to happen on my watch.
The devil's goal is to cause all people to hate each other and live for themselves. His motto is "survival of the fittest" and "might makes right." He often works through the news media who basically only report all the lawlessness as though it is sensational and then report what is good in such a twisted way that it seems evil. Other forms of media entertain the masses by celebrating and glorifying what should be abhorrent. If Jesus walked the earth today, He would not be entertained by prime time television with the many Christians who are addicted to it.
These factors combined with our fallen nature work together to cause us to hate others and fall prey to cynical thinking. I am certainly prone to this.
While I avoid “mainstream media” for the most part, I’m still tempted to view everyone whom I don’t know well with much cynicism. It seems the only remedy is to think biblically about people.
People are evil and sinful apart from the redemptive work of God through Jesus (see Romans 3). This is the cynicism part.
Because of Christ, we can trust that God is at work in this world now (e.g. John 5:17), restoring people to himself and transforming them from the inside out (e.g. 2 Cor. 5:17). He is working constantly and doing this every day. We never hear about it, because of the devil has a strong grip on the media institutions of our world. The solution is to be salt and light, praying and acting in love as if God is really working in evil people’s lives, through us and the work of the Spirit, transforming them. I can only imagine that if Christians lived this way, got involved in every influential realm of society our world would again be transformed by the Good News of Jesus Christ.
