There are times in our lives where we must reflect on the past, maybe past decisions or even events in the past that preceded our very lives but were essential and instrumental in shaping who we are, what we believe, and how we live. That's my goal today! I want us to ask ourselves this question "where would I be today without the Reformation?" I would argue that the Reformation was inevitable and decreed by God to restore his church but just imagine with me for a moment, there was no Luther, no Calvin, no Zwingli, no protestantism, and on and on. What would that look like today?
First let's face the biggest reality of where we would be in the realm of church and worship. We definitely wouldn't be sitting in the "Bible belt" churches of America singing hymns by Wesley or Luther, we wouldn't have expositional passionate preaching, we wouldn't have altar calls or invitations, or anything resembling the American church as we know it! We'd be stuck in dead liturgy given by an inept Catholic priest, following the heretical traditions of the magisterium as we all drift slowly to Hell without the core doctrine of Justification by Faith! There would have been no Great Awakening, no D.L. Moody, no C.H. Spurgeon, no Martin Loyd-Jones, no Billy Graham, no Puritans, and no hope!
With the reality of no Reformation we see that the resulting movements of religious freedom would have never happened. If these movements were removed here's a horrific reality, America and the western world as we know it would still be stuck in a late middle ages sacral state mentality with everything being dictated by the church! There'd be no America, no religious freedom, no Democratic Republic, and our very freedom that we hold so dear may very well have never happened!
Lastly, I want us to think of the age of technology we live in today. Critical thinking was seemingly birthed and nurtured in the age of the Reformation. Freedom from the Roman Catholic church and the Papacy give rise to the ability to think critically without persecution, the ability to challenge beliefs and ideas that the church held hostage for centuries, the scientific method and it's core structure seem to be dependant upon this freedom! I think it would be possible that without the Reformation there would have been no greater enlightenment, no industrial revolution, no explosion of scientific and subsequently technological advances of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Without the Reformation we could very well be living in a different world stuck in a different era, possibly with no TV, no cell phones, no health care system, no electricity, and no comforts of modern day life!
I pray this has given you an appreciation for a time in history that many have forgotten or that many place inside the box of religion but the reality remains, without the Reformation the world we live in and experience would be vastly different and not for the good! God bless!
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