Lessons from an Alaskan Glacier

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On a recent cruise to Alaska, my wife and I spent the better part of one day in Glacier Bay National Park near the village of Hoona. The highlight of the experience for me was photographing Margerie Glacier. This brilliant blue river of ice that flows more than twenty miles from its source in the mountains is some three hundred feet high and stretches a mile from side to side.

I was impressed by what the National Park rangers told us. Although most glaciers in Alaska are receding due to global warming, Margerie Glacier remains quite stable. In fact, it is estimated that Margerie advances about thirty feet a year.

As I pondered the cold facts, I began to reflect on how “secular warming” has impacted our culture. Secularism, by definition, derives its worldview from naturalistic observations devoid of a dependence on the Divine. As such, it overshadows the supernatural and the mystery of a God-centered cosmos. In an expanding secularistic society, the end result is an atmosphere that threatens norms historically based in a Biblically-grounded perspective.    

Like most of the glaciers in Alaska, Judeo-Christian values have been noticeably receding the past couple of generations. So, too, has Biblical literacy. If you were to do a survey among elementary children in public schools today, my guess is that most would not be clueless when asked to identify Adam and Eve, David and Goliath or Jonah and the whale.

Several years ago, I was renting a video in a Blockbuster Store. (That in and of itself would indicate just how long ago it was.) Scanning the shelves, a group of high school students chatted among themselves while attempting to find a satirical comedy based on the life of Christ. As they searched for Life of Brian by Monty Python, one of the kids attempted to explain what the video was about. “It’s about the dude who was born on Christmas!” he explained. “I can’t recall his name.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This well-educated young man, schooled in one of the best school districts in America, couldn’t name the person who was born on Christmas. Furthermore, he didn’t realize that the reason we celebrate Christmas to begin with is because of the significance of Jesus’ birth.

Since that startling experience twenty years ago, church attendance across our nation has continued to decline. Local churches are closing at an unprecedented rate.  In addition, the Bible is no longer assumed to be the authoritative source of supernational revelation. Scripture’s time-honored status as the unquestioned and unchanging standard for faith, doctrine and conduct has been replaced by a culture of amoral relativism.

But it’s not just changing trends in church attendance and expanded views of Biblical interpretation that sound a cause for alarm. There is a shift in society when it comes to the freedom to practice one’s desire to share their personal faith. What we used to call personal evangelism is now labeled proselytizing.

Ironically, the word evangelism means “good news.”  But any attempt to try and extol the virtues of one’s faith tradition with an eye towards conversion is now viewed as bad news.

But gratefully there are those who are willing to stand their ground and not cave-in to the boiling influences of society that are melting centuries of tradition and norms. Within the Jewish and Christian communities where I live, minority voices are speaking up about values easily put down by those drumming the cadence of our current culture.

Like the Margerie Glacier, these courageous souls refuse to simply calve off and melt away. But as with that beautiful blue icefield in Glacier Bay, they are an exception to the rule. All the same, their minority voices are needed. We need to be reminded of a rich heritage that is at risk of becoming merely a historical footnote.