HOW WE GOT HERE

We look at our society today, its ethics, its education, its entertainment (I use the word advisedly), its politics, its government, and its churches and wonder, "How did we get here?" "Here" is our present situation, the milieu in which we live. For example, how did we get to the point where a man can decide that he's a woman and a woman can decide that she's a man and we must accept their pronouncement and refer to him as "her," or her as "him." If we don't accept their irrational decision, there will be penalties, shaming, guilting, and sometimes legal repercussions. Then when we look at our language, we marvel, sadly, at how it's changed, even among very young children to become vulgar, uncouth, crass, language which would make the Philistines blush.

THE FRIENDLY SKIES

How about this news item: "A number of major airlines including Delta and American have announced that they are adding new gender options to accommodate passengers who identify as non-binary so they no longer have to choose between either male or female." So, how did we get "here?"

THOSE HIPPIES THEN

As we would expect, getting here started a while back, back in the turmoil of the 1960s and 70s. This was the time of the Viet Nam war protesters, the hippies, and the academic and violent revolt of  college students and faculty against Western Civilization (i. e. Christianity). This was a revolt against God-ordained authority. There was an agenda behind the scenes, being played out in rejecting Western Civilization.

THOSE HIPPIES NOW

Today, the hippies and the college rebels have cut their hair, taken a shower and are inside the corridors of power. These barbarians are no longer at the gates; they've gotten the walls. And once inside, they brought their worldview with them, the worldview that there is no ultimate authority who/which is going to tell them what to do. This is why they have no inhibition to change the rules; there are no rules except what they decide. They've been engaged in an agenda to destroy education, to destroy marriage, to destroy the family, to destroy gender. To them, their are no fixed rules governing those the definition of those things.

FUNNY THING

Have you noticed something about them--there's one characteristic that's in the way they live and move and have their being: criticism. From their movement comes an ever-increasing and constant flow of criticism i. e. a criticism of marriage, of the family, of education. This is coming from the universities which allow students to major in "Studies."

Notice something else: they offer nothing in place of what they're denouncing. It's just a tear-it-all-down-mentality. What does that leave us with? What do we replace marriage, family, etc. with? They have no answer. But culture abhors a vacuum. Something rushes in: Chaos. And that's what we're living in today. And that's why it's here.

THE MISSING VIRTUE

In essence, it all goes back to the virtue they despise: humility, the foundational Christian virtue. Augustine said" The most important Christian virtue is humility. The second most important virtue is humility and the third is humility. It's the foundational virtue because without humility, a person cannot accept the Bible its statement of the gospel. That involves humility because part of the gospel is that man is a sinner, fallen, flawed and unable to do anything about it to deliver himself by his works from that situation, hence the need of the Savior.

But since the Fall (Gen. 3) man has been irrationally running from that authority and hiding himself in the trees. We see the immediate effects of the Fall--Adam and Eve became irrational and thought that they could hide from a God who's omnipresent. One can run, but one can't hide. Yet running itself doesn't get a person any distance from omnipresence. Their running demonstrates how the Fall of man changed man's intellect to the point where he believes the illogical.

The solution is that our culture, like the Prodigal Son, must come to itself and return to the influence of the Bible which one permeated our land. The problem isn't political; it's spiritual.