Moral Depravity And The Fall of Civilizations

 

 Have you noticed it? We are a society that is slipping. This is not the first time that a powerful society has done so, but this is the first time that said society encompasses the globe.

Over the course of history, there have been numerous people groups that have built societies based on their collective values. Many of these have remained small while some morphed into empires, often conquering surrounding peoples and wrapping them up into their own growing society. One empire has often fallen to the expansion of another empire, yet my underdeveloped understanding of world history indicates to me that the empire that fell had already been in decline for some time before they succumbed to the newly rising empire. They may not have recognized it as a decline, in fact, they probably thought that they were living in the ultimate decadence of their society, but it was a decline none the less.

The most recent empire that most people will consider is the Roman empire. It grew through aggressive military conquest as well as technological advances. The Romans did conquer many nations through their military strategies, but as their legend grew, they were also able to negotiate the addition of smaller nation peoples to their society with promises of peace and prosperity, while also holding the power of the military as an alternative means of assimilation.

But the Romans are not only a picture of the growth of an empire, but also the collapse of an empire. Before they were conquered by the German Visigoths, Rome had become a cesspool of pagan worship, self-gratification and had attained a reputation as a place of intellect and high ideals, where one could develop their own ideas of morality and no one would dare to challenge them. This sounds familiar, doesn't it?

The Americas were born in the hopes of creating a land of freedom and peace. Founded on Christian principles, North America has flourished. The Americas have become prosperous and comfortable. We have more leisure time available to us than our own parents did, who had more leisure time available than their parents did. We have advanced our understandings in all areas far beyond what was understood even 50 years ago. Knowledge has grown exponentially and continues to do so, especially with the advances that are being made in artificial intelligence. A dozen years ago it was said that human knowledge was doubling every 13 months and would reach a point where it would double every 12 hours. The Bible tells us that this will happen; in Daniel 12:4 we read, "But as for you, Daniel, conceal these words and seal up the book until the end of time; many will go back and forth, and knowledge will increase."

Daniel received information about the time of the end in his visions. Daniel 12 is the final chapter in the book of his prophecies, and it lays out information that has not yet happened. It is therefore reasonable to presume that, as we are currently seeing the exponential growth of knowledge to a degree that it's growth may soon be beyond measuring, we are likely soon entering the time of the end if we haven't entered that time already. Buckminster Fuller lived about 100 years ago and he is credited with creating the "knowledge doubling curve". It was his observation that human knowledge has doubled about every 100 years throughout history (presumably that is averaged out over the whole) until the year 1900, when a huge increase in the rate of the growth of knowledge began. By the end of the second world war, knowledge was doubling every 25 years. That is an exponential increase in the accumulation of knowledge.

If this is true, then consider this; just since the time of Jesus walking on the earth, knowledge has doubled 19 times in 1900 years. This does not mean that the full amount of knowledge as of 1 A.D. has increased by 19 times; it is far greater than that. If we assign a value of 1 to the amount of knowledge that humanity had in 1 A.D., and we double it, then we double it again, and we double it again, 19 times for 19 centuries, then we find that knowledge has increased by over 262,000 times! That is not considering the knowledge increase from the 4000 or so years of human existence prior to His coming.

If we do the same thing starting from 1900 to 2025, using the factor of knowledge doubling every 25 years, then in just the last 125 years, we have increased our knowledge by a factor of 16, bringing the total from 1 A.D. to today to over a 16,000,000 fold increase in knowledge, and this is not taking into account the ever increasing rate of knowledge gain over the last 125 years. I am not a mathematician, so my numbers could definitely be wrong, but that is a lot of growth. If we are already at a point where knowledge is approaching the point of doubling every 12 hours, well, the growth is truly mind blowing.

This is not to say that mankind is more intelligent, we are merely smarter. I want you to understand that knowledge is not wisdom. Solomon, in his writings, admonishes us many, many times to pursue wisdom. Wisdom is "better than jewels" (Proverbs 8:11); "a bubbling brook" (Proverbs 18:4); "protection" (Ecclesiastes 7:12); "better than strength" (Ecclesiastes 9:16); "better than weapons of war" (Ecclesiastes 9:18). Wisdom is knowing what to do with knowledge, while knowledge is only the accumulation of what one knows. If I had a photographic memory, I could look at a text book on quantum physics and know all of the facts about it, yet have no understanding about what I can do with it or how to go about that. I would have accumulated facts without attaining the wisdom to be able to do anything with those facts. 

That is the place in which our current society dwells. We have a wealth of knowledge but no wisdom in how to handle it. We are making huge leaps forward in our knowledge of the world around us as well as our own bodies, yet because our wisdom is lacking, we are twisting and corrupting our knowledge and turning it away from something beautiful and instead we are making it grotesque. It is my position that we are just following in the footsteps of the Romans, only 2000 years later. We are so engrossed in our own knowledge and vain in the constant expansion of that knowledge that we are not taking the time to consider what the consequences of our application of that knowledge may be.

We are living in a time when what used to be mental derangements are being accepted, normalized and even propagandized and promoted by who we are supposed to consider as trained professionals and our politicians are tripping over themselves to foist this debauchery on the public in order to gain a few more votes. The result is that more and more people are diving into these derangements in their own confusion and are finding that they are becoming more and more confused. We have rejected God and His knowledge, His wisdom, and we have supplanted that with our own "wisdom". We are not the first to do this, yet we are failing to learn from the mistakes of others. This is what lead to the decimation of the Roman empire and we will see the destruction of the entire western civilization in the near future as a result of following the same paths.

We are allowing and cheering on our youth as they permanently change their bodies in pursuit of what they think they want to be. We are celebrating sexual deviants with parties and parades for an entire month when the Bible tells us that God abhors these things. We are killing our own citizens and calling it compassion when we should be valuing the humanity of the person who is struggling and we should be seeking to help them attain to health again, reasserting God's value on them and what they can still offer to society. And this does not even yet mention the mass slaughter of the unborn on the altar of convenience after having already worshipped at the altar of "consequence free" sex. And we do all of this on the basis of "compassion".

C.S. Lewis is quoted is having written the following: “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. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology) 

We live in an age of "omnipotent moral busybodies"; too smart for their own good (and ours), yet lacking in sufficient wisdom to accomplish good with their smarts. We are in a world that is slipping in its own slop of moral superiority, especially "superior" to those who hold to ancient theological mores. Yet the more that society rejects those mores and pursues personal enlightenment, the more I see the fall of the Roman empire being re-enacted in our time. But this time it will not be the fall of a certain people in one part of the world, it will be the fall of the entire first world civilization that we will witness.

Maybe this is what is needed in order to usher in the time of the Biblical anti-christ. I cannot think of a better way for him to enter except as a knight in shining armour coming to save the developed world from themselves and their self-inflicted destruction. Does this mean that he will garner support from the masses by rejecting the 'woke' ideologies that are infesting our governance now, or will he enforce these ideologies at the end of a gun or the point of a blade? I don't know, but I think either one could be the case.

Either way, the fall of the Roman empire was preceded by an increase in leisure for the Roman citizenry, a pursuit after many gods and a descent into moral depravity that, until the last few decades, made modern civilization uncomfortable to even consider, never mind to discuss or partake in. Can we really be that far away from the fall of our own civilization?

Please feel free to express yourself in the comments section, and to also check out my home page to see if there are any other articles that you may be interested in reading.