The world around us changing, and some big changes are coming hard and fast. Can you remember the time before cell phones? Can you still find a phone booth near you?

Do you remember the first Internet connection, over the phone, with no pictures? Children got in big trouble if they touched the phone, and broke an Internet connection when someone like Dad was trying to read some writing from the Internet, on a monochrome computer screen. If you touched the phone, you could break the Internet link, and loud arguments would start.

Now, visit any coffee shop, and count how many customers are surfing the Internet from a cell phone that they took out of their pocket. And the pictures on the phone are in color.

There was a time when we were seriously concerned about climate change. The big difference from today was the strong conviction that we were moving into “snowball earth” which was a new ice age. We were all going to freeze, and now we are going to fry with global warming.

It seems like only a few years ago when life was completely different on this planet. Another way to say that is, the objects and ideas that dominate our culture, and tell us how to think and act, have changed. Life was so different, back in the nineties. And where were you?

As I write this, I might be older than you, and I don’t want to tell you how things were so much better in the old days, when I walked to school, and home for lunch every day. If you are older than twenty, the world has changed dramatically, in your lifetime, and the rate of change is not slowing.

When you see small children, you can know that their future world will be much different from what you have now.

So, what will the new future look like?

A few days ago, I gave someone a ride to a home Bible study, and I learned one answer to that question. I was invited to come in and join the group. They watched two interesting videos, and they talked for a few minutes. We agreed on one thing: Religion is changing, around the world, and the rate of change is speeding up.

For example; Do you believe in God? The old answer was Yes / Maybe / No, and “believe” meant that we followed the traditions of our families and their culture. We had a lot of that Old Time Religion. Have you noticed now, that we are moving into a Yes / No world, and people are making personal decisions about their beliefs?

A good example of a member of the modern culture is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. You might know that she is a woman from Somalia, raised in the tradition of Islam, who became a refugee in the Netherlands, and a member of parliament there. With that change, she renounced her family’s religion of Islam and identified as an Atheist.

That generated a lot of controversy and anger, and she became world-famous, and a published author. Now she has announced another personal change; she has decided to identify as a Christian. Her life, with personal decisions and major changes, is an example of our changing culture, in the whole world.

If you want to see a video with her explanation.

You can read more:

• READ: Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Wikipedia

One laboratory of change in our modern culture is the city and state of Singapore. In Southeast Asia, researchers have found that most cultures are conservative, and what people believe is really the culture and traditions that their families raised them in. Roughly in the center of the region is the modern city of Singapore, and it shows how the world is changing. People from the region are making personal changes there.

The researchers found that “Singapore also is the only country surveyed in which a considerable share of people have a religious identity that differs from the way they were raised. Around a third of Singaporean adults (35%) have changed their religion during their lifetime.”

• READ: Share of Singaporeans identifying as Christian or unaffiliated is increasing

• READ: Buddhism, Islam and Religious Pluralism in South and Southeast Asia

Welcome to our modern world, where personal decisions happen, and lives change.

Back to that Bible study group that invited me to join; the world is becoming polarized. We used to conform more than we believed, and we stayed close to our family traditions.

Now, younger generations, in all parts of the world, are making personal decisions, and the result is Yes / No polarization. The large majority of ‘Maybe – Sort-Of’ conformists have to share space with young people who break with tradition and choose for themselves. We are moving away from ‘them and us’ thinking to ‘this is the new me.’

Brace yourself.

We are becoming what we were made to be. Some of the oldest religious instructions we have to tell us to make a personal choice:

“Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15)