I was sitting on a beach in the Florida Keys with my son and his pastor. Out of the blue, the pastor asked me, “Has there ever been a tougher time to be a pastor?” This was not a question I was going to answer quickly. I knew his congregation was embroiled in conflicts related to sexuality. After some consideration, I replied, “Probably not in our lifetime.”
It is not unusual for people to think they live in the worst of all possible times. This is often a symptom of people not knowing or forgetting history, which is replete with tough times.
That said, we do live in tough times. The intractable problems of my lifetime include racism and racial tension, the plethora of guns and gun violence, the great inequities between the superrich and the rest of us, the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and perhaps the most ominous of all, climate change. More recently you can add to this list rising authoritarianism and the opioid addiction crisis. Indeed, we live in challenging times. But living in challenging times to the east of Eden is part of the human condition, part of our human experience.
