WAKE UP TO THE REVOLUTION

Decay The West’s preoccupation with material wealth and economic growth is a sign of its moral decadence and spiritual poverty. The recent history of the West is a tale of moral decline, in which those robust virtues needed to build a civilisation have been slowly corrupted by materialism and complacency. 

Our nations have become geographical areas without purpose where our governing class, in Wilde’s words, ‘know the price of everything and the value of nothing’. The shallow Left who control our media and politics have abandoned the intellect in order to shelter in emotion. For them the greatest sin of all is disagreement, which they term ‘hate’.

Revolution We have undergone a revolution in which only one side fought. Progressives have seized control of most of our institutions, fomenting grievance, division and discord, trashing our culture, sacrificing our economy on the altar of woke. How did it happen that a culture which contributed so much of value to human development, intellectually and materially, should become hollowed out?

One side knew what they were doing, deliberately changing Western culture to remake it in their own image. They eradicated the foundations by atomising society. A sense of shared culture and history was replaced by a power struggle between groups who were taught to deeply mistrust each other. Post-modernism, which saw all of life as a struggle between the powerful and the powerless, left a corrupting legacy. We have been encouraged to see ourselves as victims of those with whom we share a society.

One result has been the corruption of society where even the basic building blocks of social cohesion were undermined. Alternative family structures were lauded, same-sex parents, unmarried parents, single parents all were praised and used by the media. Whenever the media do a vox pop on the latest social scheme they wish to highlight, the person interviewed is liable to be a single mother of three living in social accommodation.

Those of us who do not belong to the governing class and and who suffer the consequences of their luxury beliefs were aware in the back of our minds that something was going on, but unsure just what. We witnessed the elimination of objective reality, especially concerning sex, we grumbled about ‘political correctness gone mad’ and we did nothing. We allowed things to go their way until we arrived at the present stage: imminent cultural collapse.

It’s important to fully grasp the reality of our situation. When asked ‘How are you?’ we automatically reply ‘Fine’ even if we are breaking apart inside. Culturally, too, we want to deny reality and pretend that everything is fine. Well, everything in the West is not fine.

Compare life fifty years ago and today. Consider the television programmes we watched. Re-runs of comedies such as Dad’s Army or Fawlty Towers are given trigger warnings in case they cause trauma. Meanwhile our screens are awash with sex and violence. Sex Box on Channel 4 featured couples who agreed to come on to the show and have sex in the titular ‘sex box’. 

Responsibility Who is to blame? The governing class who are implementing these social disasters and encouraging social contagions such as the transgender craze are responsible. But if I go away from home leaving the windows open and the doors unlocked, I bear some responsibility if I am robbed. Ordinary everyday people who just wanted to live their lives in peace allowed this to continue until their children and grandchildren were stolen from them.

Even those who would consider themselves social conservatives bear responsibility. They have desperately pretended that everything’s fine, and that if they just keep voting for the mainstream conservative party of their country it will all work out in the end. It is difficult to awaken everyday social conservatives to recognise how abnormal the situation is.

Only now, on the point of collapse, are people beginning to realise what has been happening around them. Throughout Europe and elsewhere, conservatives and the hitherto quiet people who didn’t want to be involved are turning to populist parties, but it is questionable if they have the expertise to turn the tide.

build your relationships, to God and those closest to you

However the main responsibility lies with the gatekeepers, those with the task of defending the right, of promoting truth and virtue: the church. The institutional church has been pitiful, trembling at the thought of saying ‘No’. In fact it is worse. The institutional church has too often eagerly said ‘Yes’ to whatever culture-sapping idea the shallow Left propose.

Importance of Christianity Francis Schaeffer reminds us: ‘Rome did not fall because of external forces such as the invasion by the barbarians. Rome had no sufficient inward base, the barbarians only completed the breakdown – and Rome gradually became a ruin.’ The ‘inward base’ which formed the foundation of the West was the Church whose teaching shaped our morals and our expectations, and which gave us a coherent society gathering around an affirming concept of human worth.

Religious belief, which infuses culture, has tremendous effects on political, social and economic life. Religion tells a person how the world works, it provides an interpretive framework for reality. At the heart of every culture there is a belief; in the West that was Christ the King. Here in the West we dethroned Christ and have tried alternative monarchs: science, technology, freedom, democracy and most commonly of all sex and prosperity. None of them works. 

The situation we face cannot be remedied through politics, economic recovery or better management techniques. The only way to fix it is through a return to truth: the truth about ourselves and the personal responsibility we have for the reality we inhabit. This entails a return to the Truth who created all reality (John 14:6, Colossians 1:16).

In the meantime build your relationships, to God and those closest to you. After God our first responsibility is to our family. Do your best to make your spouse and children’s life better. When my wife and children are happy and prospering, I can know happiness myself. When your family becomes stronger, you become stronger. We need that strength for the days ahead.