Written by Gary L. Welton |
Monday, April 18, 2022
Data collected from individuals in about 150 countries through the Gallup World Poll, and summarized by the World Happiness Report, provides an answer to this question. In at least one way, we have changed for the better. This survey, conducted annually since 2006, includes three questions about altruistic behavior. Respondents are asked to indicate their behavior in donating to charity, helping a stranger, and volunteering. Answers to all three questions, across every part of the globe, increased by about 25%. During these challenging times, we have become less self-focused, and behaved in ways that showed more love and concern for others.

For the first time in our lives, we have experienced a universal international event, known as Covid-19. The World Series doesn’t come close to being a global event. The World Cup and the Olympics are much more global, but even these events bypass certain parts of the globe (and many around us have no interest in these sporting events). All of us, however, have been impacted by Covid-19. We have all, at times, been wearing masks, monitoring our social distancing, and discussing the pros and cons of various treatments and vaccines.
This pandemic has wrought tragedy in so many ways. We have seen more than six million Covid deaths across the globe, with a disproportionate number in the United States, where we are approaching one million deaths. In addition, there was a surge in alcohol-related deaths in 2020. We have seen heightened levels of anxiety and depression associated with the social distancing, an increased sense of vulnerability, and a loss of perceived control. This has occurred in conjunction with issues of social justice, an opioid crisis, and Putin’s attack on the country of Ukraine.
It is certainly a troubling time to be alive, yet my mother always said that above every cloud, the sun shines. Where can I find that silver lining?
Data collected from individuals in about 150 countries through the Gallup World Poll, and summarized by the World Happiness Report, provides an answer to this question. In at least one way, we have changed for the better.
This survey, conducted annually since 2006, includes three questions about altruistic behavior. Respondents are asked to indicate their behavior in donating to charity, helping a stranger, and volunteering. Answers to all three questions, across every part of the globe, increased by about 25%. During these challenging times, we have become less self-focused, and behaved in ways that showed more love and concern for others.
I have observed such behavior as I saw people donating their stimulus checks to those who needed the money more than they did. I have seen offering numbers within my local church and across my denomination increase in unexpected ways. This survey indicates that we have become more willing, not only to help our brother, but also to help strangers. Yes, I am my brother’s keeper, but also, “we are the world,” and we have indicated that our concerns and behaviors have broadened to the helping of strangers at this difficult time.
Now, as we are anticipating yet another Covid wave in the United States, based on increases across Europe and in certain parts of Asia, and as we see inflation approaching 10%, we realize that our struggles pale in comparison to the citizens of Ukraine. European countries in general, and Poland in particular, have risen to the challenge, welcoming refugees by the hundreds of thousands, even by the millions, demonstrating that not only are we our brother’s keeper, but we are also a keeper of the strangers across the globe.
The Covid years have been a deadly era, and I speak as one who lost a close family member, and as one who grieves with students, classmates, church colleagues, and many friends. In comparison, the Ukraine invasion has totally disrupted the lives of an entire region of Europe. This is an era that will live in infamy.
Yet, there is a silver lining. If we respond by reducing our radical individualism, to demonstrate more concern for our brothers, our neighbors, and the strangers around the world, there will be a lasting positive impact, in the midst of human tragedy. Let’s all accept this challenge.
Dr. Gary L. Welton is assistant dean for institutional assessment, professor of psychology at Grove City College, and a contributor to the Institute for Faith & Freedom. He is a recipient of a major research grant from the Templeton Foundation to investigate positive youth development. Use with permission.

It was among the worst of times when Paul wrote to Titus around AD 65. Ruling the world during this age was Nero, an equally corrupt successor to the degenerate Caligula. By comparison to these two, every President the United States has ever had has been choir-boy-esque. Among Nero’s many inventive ways to do evil (Rom. 1:29–31), he murdered his mother and two wives to secure his throne. He is also believed to have intentionally started a massive fire in Rome which he then blamed on Christians, leading to significant persecution of the Church. Such were the times.
And Crete was the place. Some early Mediterranean converts who were recently delivered from bondage to lots of ugly sin (Tit. 3:3) had planted several local churches there under Titus’s pastoral oversight (Tit. 1:5). Theirs was a culture infamous for its moral bankruptcy. Cretans were known as inveterate liars who were enslaved to evil, beastly behavior, and lazy self-indulgence (Tit. 1:12). If not the worst of times and places, this certainly was a very bad time and a very hard place to live out the virtues of Christ, quite likely worse and harder than ours.
By Way of Reminder
So in Titus 3:1 Paul tells Titus to remind his flocks of seven important Christian virtues. Their need to be reminded implies a tendency to forget. Apparently, top-to-bottom cultural corruption creates a need for repeated conscience re-calibration. While we might not be in such ugly times now, the message Paul didn’t want the Christians in Crete to forget is one God also doesn’t want local churches today to forget.

Genesis opens with the accounts of creation, the Fall, the flood, and the division of nations. These stories are in the text to make important theological points. They become the basis of doctrinal reasoning throughout the rest of Scripture. Genuine biblicists should plunder these chapters, not merely to refute false theories about origins, but to be able to answer the most important questions that people can ask.

When it comes to the opening chapters of Genesis, many conservative Christians spend their energy defending the text against the counter-narrative of evolution. That is right and proper: the theory of evolution entails in all its forms an utterly anti-biblical and anti-human philosophy. Nevertheless, the point of these chapters is not to contradict theories of evolution, which only became prevalent during the late Nineteenth Century. Instead, these chapters are valuable for the theological underpinning that they provide for virtually the entire system of faith and belief—including some categories that are rarely mentioned within systematic theologies.
Perhaps the most important function of the early chapters of Genesis is to introduce us to God. They show that God is Creator, and no truth of Scripture is more important than the Creator-creature distinction. Besides depicting God in terms of His power, they also show Him in His benevolence. What He makes is good, and the good is contextually understood as what is good for humans. God knows what is good, and when He knows that a good is absent (as when the man was alone), He provides it. He is also a God who blesses and, when humans sin, a God who promises a deliverer.
The early chapters of Genesis also explain both who humans are and why they were made. They are the image of God, and they were made for dominion. Within His universal kingdom, God created a world that He did not intend to govern directly. Instead, He planned for this world to be ruled mediatorially by godlike creatures. He gave them dominion, and He blessed them with authority to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth, and to subdue it. They were made to be kings and queens. They were also made to be priests, standing in the presence of God and enjoying His companionship.
These narratives also explain what went wrong with this beautiful vision. God imposed a test upon the first man and the first woman. They were forbidden to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. If they ate the fruit, they would be claiming for themselves the prerogative to determine the good. Instead, God wanted them to trust Him for the good, which He abundantly provided. Rather than trusting the Creator, however, the man and woman chose to declare independence of God, choosing what seemed good to themselves. By declaring independence of God, they necessarily separated themselves from life, for their life came from God. They passed under sentence of death, a sentence that lies heavy upon humanity until this day.
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