Hi again Diablo,
As to your question, “Why does this kind of thing keep happening? and why, as others have noted, does our society seem to be becoming more and more coarse, uncivil, uncaring, and violent? Why is the family falling apart and why are our children turning out so poorly? (All of these factors are of course related, each factor affects the others.) Well, I’m neither a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, but I know that my answer to that particular question is not going to be very popular. But hey, I’d rather attempt to tell the truth and be hated (as the prophets of the Old Testament were when they exposed the corruption of their society), than peddle comforting lies so that men would like me. The answer is not race, nor economics, nor a lack of firearms, the answer is that our society has sown the wind for many years and is now reaping the whirlwind, we’ve been traveling steadily down a broad path that leads to destruction, and we are gradually drawing near and nearer to our destination.
We began that journey when we self-consciously chose to cast off all biblical moorings and decided that we could build a society based only upon what was right in our own eyes. We conned ourselves into believing that all men were basically good at heart and that with the benefits of a little education we could create a utopian paradise here on earth. That process started in the 19th century when we began to teach that man could dispense with revealed religion and be guided by reason alone even in the realm of ethics. As time went on though, and the “every man his own god” spirit prevailed, the idea of any unified body of absolute ethics began to degenerate until in the 1960s the last fragments of the Christian ethics inherited from their parents were dispensed with and the idea of positive law and situational ethics became the norm in our society. Since that time we have seen a precipitous rise in every indicator of social decay, (crime, murder, rape, divorce, teen pregnancy, abortion, addiction, etc.) and every year our children look and act more like pirates and prostitutes and yet we continue to tell ourselves that what we need most is more of the same poison that has been killing us for the last 100 years, and that the real enemies of our brave new world are the people who say that only a return to the Word of God will stop the slide. Like Israel before the Babylonian conquest, we’d still rather embrace the idols that are destroying us, than humble ourselves and turn back to the living God. In our version of the “Emperor’s New Clothes” the little boy who points out that the Emperor is naked gets a sound beating and the obscene parade continues.
The words of Jer. 6:16-19 seem to be just as applicable to us in our time as they were to ancient Israel:
“Thus says the LORD: "Stand in the ways and see, And ask for the old paths, where the good way is, And walk in it; Then you will find rest for your souls. But they said, 'We will not walk in it.' Also, I set watchmen over you, saying, 'Listen to the sound of the trumpet!' But they said, 'We will not listen.' Therefore hear, you nations, And know, O congregation, what is among them. Hear, O earth! Behold, I will certainly bring calamity on this people -- The fruit of their thoughts, Because they have not heeded My words, Nor My law, but rejected it.”
To paraphrase the Apostle Paul, claiming to be wise we have become fools, and are now doing things that even the deists of 200 years ago would have called wicked and socially suicidal. Is there hope for us individually and nationally? I know there is, that is one of the reasons I preach the Gospel of Grace, but without repentance, faith in Christ, and a humbling of ourselves it will never happen – and I speak as one who was walking in that broad path, and who had to have his own foolish pride broken. My hope is that there will be revival and reformation in this land, before we go the way of every decadent and proud empire that has gone before us.
Anyway, there is more I could say, but space and time constraints prevent it.
- SEAGOON
