Foundation Crumbling

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Over the summer, I’ve been re-reading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. Haven’t read it since high school. 

The series is set 20,000 years into the future. A Galactic Empire is spread across the stars. But it’s crumbling. Hari Seldon, a “psychohistorian,” foresees the empire will fall, leading to a long period of barbarism. So Seldon puts together a plan to save humanity. At the far end of the galaxy, on a minor and neglected planet named Terminus, he starts The Foundation—a little pocket of civilization that will eventually grow into a Second Galactic Empire. 

Although Jewish, Asimov was not religious. Nevertheless, the Foundation series is thick with Messianic and millennial themes.  

It also made me think of parallels in our culture. 

I don’t know if you realize it, but post-Christian, post-sexual revolution society in America is disintegrating. Fast. For example, here is a story from New York magazine, about a Harvard Law professor who lived with his ex-wife, fornicated with a polyamorous transsexual “family,” and lost his house and teaching position because of it:

https://www.thecut.com/2019/07/bruce-hay-paternity-trap-maria-pia-shuman-mischa-haider.html 

When you abandon God’s plan for the moral life, for family, and society, you can’t help but self-destruct. Sin brings forth death (James 1:15). But there’s hope for every person in that story. They need a Savior. And Jesus is available to them. 

And there’s hope for our culture. As I read Asimov’s books, I thought of my own little family—and Christian families across the nation—as pockets of civilization in an increasingly barbaric culture that insists on destroying itself. If Jesus tarries, we’ll be raising the generation that will have to build society amidst the ruins. 

And ultimately, as we raise our children in faith and faithfulness to Christ, we’re helping to build an eternal empire to come, not merely a galactic one. Come, Lord Jesus!

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Shawn Lazar

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Shawn Lazar is the Editor of Grace in Focus magazine and Director of Publications for Grace Evangelical Society. He and his wife Abby have three feral children. He also works as the associate pastor at Gateway United Baptist Church in Denton, TX, leading the contemporary service (www.faithfellowshipdenton.org). He has written two books: Beyond Doubt: How to Be Sure of Your Salvation and Chosen to Serve: Why Divine Election Is to Service, Not to Eternal Life.

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