Societal Erosion
We live in a world that is intent on tearing itself apart, with the best intentions. We are putting so much value on the individual person that we fail to see the long term implications that our decisions and actions will have on society as a whole. When we, as a society, see a person or a group of persons suffering, or as seems to be the case more often than not, appearing to be suffering, society wants to defend them. That's a wonderful sentiment! But we seem to have forgotten that actions and decisions should have consequences. The removal of consequences for bad decision making not only does, but already has created an environment wherein there is little thought given to the outcome of ones actions, at the personal, corporate and even the governmental levels of society. Without consequences and the related pains that come with them, we don't pay a price for jumping before we think things through, and there is no incentive to do better, to think things through and to consider the effects that our actions and decisions have.
Besides this, we have also become a narcissistic civilization. When we see someone else getting special attention or acknowledgement of their achievements or suffering, we want that too. After all, aren't we more important than so-and-so? The more narcissistic among us also want to be seen to be helping the lowly around us, so as to elevate themselves above those that they appear to be helping, and everyone else. Unfortunately, often these efforts are less helpful to the beneficiaries than they are merely a form of virtue signalling. The previous Canadian government had virtue signalling down to an art form. The one positive thing that I can say about the Mark Carney government is that the virtue signalling has all but completely ended.
Unfortunately, many of the "suffering ones" that we have identified in society in the last few years are those that society has cast as the outsiders for most of history; and for good reason. As fairly new countries on the world stage, Canada and the United States of America were both founded upon the Christian values that our founding fathers believed in, and those values have served us well! People from around the world want to come to Canada or the US because we are seen as bastions of freedom and security, places where people can come and make their own lives and seek personal success without fear of government or religious oppression. But is that really where we are at right now as a nation? We are turning our backs on our Christian heritage, the one that has made us the envy of the world for the blessings of freedoms, wealth and health that we have been enjoying. As we turn our backs on God, He is removing His blessings from us.
Let's look at the acceptance of the LGBT movement for example. I believe that this began a major turning point in the direction that our nation, Canada in this case, is moving. The Bible is very clear as to the unacceptability of the lifestyles and practices of the LGBT communities, yet we are embracing and supporting those lifestyles as good and normal. There is nothing normal about men having sex with men and women having sex with women. It doesn't even work properly physiologically, never mind emotionally or spiritually. It's like taking the male end of an electrical cord and trying to connect it to another male end. IT DOESN'T WORK, AND IT NEVER WILL! We call these parts male and female for a reason - the names are based upon the physiological differences that set men and women apart and it is logical - male fits into female and it doesn't work any other way. And that is only the physical difficulties in making these lifestyles work, but I don't want to get further into that, because there are other ills to be addressed as well. Although, the other ills would not have become the problems that they are today if we had continued to recognize the wrongs of the gay lifestyles.
The acceptance of these "alternative lifestyles" as they have been called has led to the push to accept other "alternative lifestyles" such as those of the transgenders, transracials, trans-species, trans-age, and the list goes on and on. We are arguing about what to call people who don't "identify" as male or female and are creating literally hundreds of new words to call them! And we're supposed to remember all of these too, upon threat of imprisonment, and that's assuming that the mob of "tolerant" people don't actually pound you into the pavement.
I believe that we are made in the image of God. That doesn't necessarily refer to our physical appearance, but I believe more so the fact that we are the only creatures with the knowledge of right and wrong and the ability to choose between the two, as well as possessing a spiritual aspect that makes that choice necessary and important. In other words, we are created in the image of God in that we have a sense of morality. Yet today we are being bombarded with corrupt ideas such as the lack of objective truth. Everything is subjective. We can all decide what is true for us; I can decide what is truth for me. And since I can decide where my own moral boundaries should be, I only have to convince myself of the validity of my own reasoning. Since I probably have something in mind that I want to claim as okay and morally right, it probably won't take a lot of argument to convince myself, and then I can go on my merry way with not a hint of guilt. And as more and more people fall for this flawed line of thought, and get more vocal about it, society as a whole is being led down a path from which there may be no return.
While there are many ills in society, one that really catches my attention as a first step on a slippery slope is the acceptance of the LGBT lifestyles. Now we can go farther back and trace this to societal acceptance of marital infidelity, premarital sex, etc, but I am not looking to trace the root of all wrongs all the way back through time. I am focusing on what I feel are the most damaging theologies of our modern era. God speaks very specifically against any form of homosexuality in several locations in the Bible, and as the two main countries in North America have been built on Christian ideals from the inception of both, homosexuality has been looked down upon by society in general for most of our existence.
But then people started turning away from absolute truth, although not stating it as obviously as they do now. Homosexuality slowly became not the thing that was openly spoken against, but the thing that was whispered about quietly, then promoted, and now even proclaimed in the streets. In the last couple of decades in particular it is paraded out on public streets with public nudity and lewd acts performed in front of strangers and children, of all things. Our law enforcement should be arresting individuals for these acts, but instead have been tripping all over themselves to be involved in the marches. Our leaders should be speaking out against it, but instead schedule as many of these parades as they can find into their agenda, to be seen as supporting those individuals involved and the acts that they perform. We are even seeing acceptance of these lifestyles being taught to our children inside the classrooms, without the knowledge of parents.
The introduction of these ideologies always has an end goal. We have been seeing the expansion of alphabet lifestyle acceptance, especially in the schools at the hands of liberal teachers (products of university ideological dogma), and now it has expanded to encouraging children into permanent states of confusion around their own sexual and even gender identity, including far too many stories of teachers accommodating and even encouraging children to explore their "gender identity" away from and without the knowledge of their own parents. How have we come to a place where teachers are this brazen?
This is not a new phenomenon. When my youngest child entered Kindergarten, they had a brand new, just graduated teacher. This young woman seemed to think that just because she had an education, she knew better than the parents of her students. I don't know if she tried these things with other parents, but she tried to dictate to us how we should be preparing our child for school, even going so far as to complain when we would send a single, mini chocolate bar in our child's snack, insisting that we send only healthy options. After a string of other instances, that was the last straw for me and I let that young teacher know that she was just the teacher and that she should leave the parenting to us.
But this was the mindset of someone who had just come out of university, and this was well over a decade ago already. I can only imagine the air of superiority that the universities are inculcating the minds of these future teachers with. How bad is it getting with our new doctors and lawyers and scientists? Will they understand the limits of their own self-awarded moral superiority? Is this the real purpose of modern universities, not to teach our young people how to think, but what to think?
We are living in a society that has decided that every person is a victim except for the white man who is the perpetrator of all evil. This 'liberator' chooses to take on the chains of the burdens of their chosen victim. In this way, when the white liberal helps someone who is not white with absolutely anything, they can feel morally superior.
C.S. Lewis spoke to this malady of human interventionalism in this way: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
I have long said that racism would be all but gone except for the constant screaming about racism emanating from the mouths of those who have never experienced it. Cries of "systemic racism" are used to rally imaginary victims to 'the cause' and to use this mass of humanity as a bludgeon to silence legitimate criticisms. How is it that talks of reparations to black slaves keeps entering our conversations when the vast majority of black people alive today who would receive these reparations have never lived under its yolk? Those who did legitimately suffer are virtually all passed on by now, yet the "moral busybodies" feel that they have to dredge up past violations in order to signal their own virtue.
Is it possible that there is a sense of guilt about the standard of living that we have attained that drives these people to want to flagellate themselves and society as a whole? This is a destructive pattern, but it is one that is constantly entertained. Is it any wonder that our society is beginning to hate itself and tear itself apart?
We need to begin to recognize that, while some people have been cruel in the past, not all people are cruel. While people have suffered in the past, people are not necessarily suffering in those same ways today. While past wrongs were wrong, we are now committing equally as egregious wrongs through over-correction. We need to stop looking to fix past wrongs and instead focus on not committing new wrongs.
Perhaps another C.S. Lewis quote sums up the problem more succinctly than I can; " Those who do not think about their own sins make up for it by thinking incessantly about the sins of others." If this is true, then the erosion of our society stems from people placing more weight upon the sins of others than their own sins; always trying to make the other a "better person", thinking oneself to have already achieved a sort of sainthood.
Yep...that sounds about right.
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