David Brooks’ column in The New York Times gives a synopsis of where we have come.

Just yesterday in my Church History lecture I was talking with my students about the place tradition had in the Church for about 1700 years. While I will never argue that trusting tradition is always a good thing, I will say it is basically a good thing, and Brooks column helps explain why I believe this.

When we fail as a family, as a society, as a Church, to pass on a moral framework, we get generations that can’t define a moral framework outside their own belief of, “Well, this is what is good for me.”

When societies decided to throw off the authority of the Church in a wholesale manner, then a couple of centuries later decided to throw off biblical authority in a wholesale manner, we truly lost the ability to maintain any sense of a moral compass in community.

And now we are seeing some of those results.

The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste. “It’s personal,” the respondents typically said. “It’s up to the individual. Who am I to say?”

We can blame schools or government or some other civil order, but the Church is the one dropping the ball. When we allow a resurgence of the brand of liberal theology introduced by Schleiermacher, Lessing, and Reimarus in 18th Century Europe, we will reap rewards like this. When we, as the Church, cannot live under authority of the Word of God and church leadership, we will continue to reap these “rewards.”

Martin Luther didn’t want to throw off church authority. He wanted church authority to return to biblical authority so the people could trust the authority of the church once again.

I am not advocating for blind trust. I am saying we are too quick to put people in church leadership positions and then we watch abuses flow. We must take more care in the call of church leaders. (Which we refuse to do as a whole.) We must take more care in understanding the authority of the Word of God in our lives. (Which we refuse to do as whole.)

And we will continue to see results that Brooks describes.

In most times and in most places, the group was seen to be the essential moral unit. A shared religion defined rules and practices. Cultures structured people’s imaginations and imposed moral disciplines. But now more people are led to assume that the free-floating individual is the essential moral unit. Morality was once revealed, inherited and shared, but now it’s thought of as something that emerges in the privacy of your own heart.

We must do better.