This is an expanded version of a previous post that I have decided to revise because the spiritual and moral situation of our society has deteriorated further and continues to do so at a rapid rate.
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‘For two hundred years we had sawed and sawed and sawed at the branch we were sitting on. And in the end, much more suddenly than anyone had foreseen, our efforts were rewarded, and down we came. But unfortunately, there had been a little mistake: The thing at the bottom was not a bed of roses after all; it was a cesspool full of barbed wire . . .It appears that an amputation of the soul isn’t just a simple surgical job, like having your appendix out. The wound has a tendency to go septic.’
George Orwell 1940
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It is the Greek philosopher Democritus who is credited as being the first person to suggest the concept of a Vacuum in around 440 BC. His proposal was that the world was made up of small indivisible particles he called Atoms, between which was empty space like a micro-vacuum. The idea didn’t get much traction for a very long time mainly because Aristotle opposed it saying that it was an impossibility.
Eventually however, by around 1600, the concept of an empty space without any matter became much more established after many key scientific experiments over the preceding centuries. Already by around 1300 AD, scholars had begun to speak of what they called ‘horror vacui’ by which they meant nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum, that is that the essential nature of a vacuum is that it seeks to be filled. It is this characteristic of a vacuum that is central to the thesis of this article, because it is not just true in the physical world but also in the spiritual realm.
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The writing of this article was initially inspired by the increasing number of parents, grandparents and others whom over recent times I have regularly heard expressing concerns about the trajectory of contemporary society, the one in which future generations (their children and grandchildren) will be growing up. When I hear such concerns, I am reminded of the above quote from George Orwell.
It is unclear whether Orwell (the author of the dystopian novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, considered by many to be a prophecy) was a Christian, although he appears to have had a quite strong life-long connection with the Anglican Church. Whatever the case, he seems to have based the above quote on the analogy of the True Vine in the Gospel of John chapter 15, in which Jesus pictured himself as a spiritual Vine, and makes the point that true spiritual life requires that the branches (Christians) must remain closely attached to that Vine (him), otherwise they will wither and die.
Orwell’s parable pictures a society, the West, that has for a long time been intentionally sawing off the branch that for centuries connected it with the Biblical world view that both birthed and shaped it, as well as being the source of its many blessings. He implies that the expectation was that by ‘sawing’ itself off, western society would release itself into a new age of freedom from the ‘shackles’ of the Bible, indeed into a ‘bed of roses’.
However, now that ‘down we have come’ we indeed find ourselves sucked into a ‘cesspool full of barbed wire’, the new dark age of a Nietzschean ‘God is dead’ future that is descending on us.[1] In fact, the thesis proposed here is that the issue that underlies the concerns expressed by the parents and grandparents referenced above, and the primary cause of what has happened to western society, is the result of its deliberate rejection of its Judeo-Christian ‘Built-in operating system’ (BIOS), the Bible, and the consequential spiritual Vacuum. The dire result of which is that the West has ‘lost its Soul’, and the resulting ‘wound’ is indeed going ‘septic’, such that future generations will have to live in that ‘God is dead’ future.
It is the loss of Christianity and the subsequent spiritual vacuum created that has resulted in the loss of the very Soul of western civilization, which sees the West being sucked down into a spiritual abyss. This is the abyss of Orwell’s ‘cesspool full of barbed wire’, a Kaleidoscope of neo-pagan tribes which is destroying the very foundations of all that the Bible-shaped society, for all its acknowledged faults, had built up.
The Enemy we face was described by the author C. S. Lewis as ‘That Hideous Strength’, commented on by Anglican Minister Melvin Tinker in these words-[2]
‘This ‘Hideous Strength’ is far more fearsome and all-embracing than Lewis envisaged over 70 years ago. The technology available is far more potent and far reaching in its ability to capture imaginations and minds than at any point in the world’s history. The political will of the opponents of Christianity is strong and unrelenting. The Church by and large appears confused and compromising. The stakes are incredibly high; nothing less than the survival of a civilization and the eternal well-being of countless souls.’
Faced, as it now is, by the civilizational challenge of a society plunging into Paganism, is a situation not faced by the Church in the West for 1500 years. Yet despite the ‘stakes being incredibly high; nothing less than the survival of a civilization and the eternal well-being of countless souls’, there is little but a deafening silence from church leaderships.
Consequences
The loss of its Soul has led to the Degradation of society resulting in the decline of the social compact; that is the previously common, even if often subconscious, understanding of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ behaviour, and the concern to act for the benefit of others and society generally. All such beneficial traits are the fruit of Jesus’ teaching and the Biblical world view that permeated citizens’ minds in the West and, of course often imperfectly, shaped behaviour until beginning to fade over the latter half of the 20th century.
Now in, what I have called, the Degradation there are growing traits of selfishness, rudeness, crudity, uncouth behaviour, lack of respect for others and their property (private and public), largely unchallenged loutish behaviour, an explosion of youth crime, the sexualization of even young children, and ‘Rages’ of all types. Indeed, the epidemic of ‘Rage’ could be considered as one of the defining characteristics of the Degradation. Whether it is parents raging at referees or other parents at junior sport or against teachers and school principals, whether it is those raging against the very nurses and paramedics seeking to help them, whether it is the rising tide of often violent road rage, ‘checkout’ rage at supermarkets, car park rage etc. The list of ‘it’s all about me (or my child)’ bad behaviours continues.
In parallel to all this, we see the loss of ‘quaint’ notions such as common decency, politeness, courtesy, self-control, self-denial, concern for others (and their property), loving your neighbour etc. Indeed, what on earth are those you might say? In addition to this we see rising rates of child and youth anxiety, mental illness and tragically suicide.
We also see this loss of the Biblical BIOS in the spiritual poisoning of our education system from kindergarten to tertiary institutions, the growth of the ‘death-culture’ whether euthanasia or abortion on-demand, and the perverting of God’s good plan for human relationships, families and the general ordering of human society.
Another key and highly destructive consequence of God’s ejection is the tribalization of society. This is the result of the rejection of the Biblical call for ‘One new Humanity’ (Ephesians 2:15), in which-
‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28)
and the implementation of a policy of non-discriminatory multiculturalism exploited by ‘identification’, and the effect of ‘oppressor/oppressed’ Marxist ideology, the ‘Oppressed’ now being any minority group.
Add to this we see the horror of 1930s reflecting antisemitism, of which Adolf Hitler would be proud, once more raising its toxic head. On this, once more in sync with the 1930s, the church again is largely silent.
The diagnosis of all of this through a biblical lens, is that it is the inevitable consequence of a creeping myopic trend in the West as a whole, either with intent or through an ignorant apathy, to reject the faith that originally founded and then shaped Western society for centuries (even if subconsciously for many). It is the faith that provided the basic Australian (Western) moral value system and which was the basis of our world view, our laws and freedoms.
It is the faith that has produced the legion of Biblically driven technological advances that have bestowed an avalanche of blessings on the Christendom countries, but also on the world. (See Killing the Goose)[i][3]
The Thin and ‘Unsalty’ Salt
As Christianity declines, so does the ‘Salt’ (Matthew 5:13) of the preserving and anti-corruption biblical influence in society. In this regard, I came across one small, but I think very significant, indicator of this when I visited the local public library recently. I made a point of looking to see what Christian books were available. However, I couldn’t find any so I asked the librarian if they had a ‘religious’ section. Eventually I was shown a small (one metre long) shelf. Of that, only half had anything to do with Christianity.
I did a quick count of the number of similar size shelves in the library and calculated that the Christian content amounted to approximately only 0.5 percent of the whole non-fiction section. Further there was NOT ONE Bible!
It is evident that the ’Salt’ has all but disappeared.
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The concerns addressed here are becoming more evident every day as we see the steady, unresisted rise of a ‘Brave New World’ of ‘Ninety Eighty-Four’ toxic group-think intolerance and its politically correct ‘thought police’.
Added to this, there has been a decades-long unrelenting attack on ‘Truth’, and its replacement with an ever-changing smorgasbord of alleged ‘truths’ from which we can choose for ourselves no-matter how intellectually nonsensical, mutually incompatible, and toxic for society they are.
To plumb this issue more deeply, what is now rejected is nothing less than the very ‘Nature of God’ Himself. What the majority in the West now seem to be unaware of is that it is the Spirit of this ‘Nature’ that drove-
‘the building of hospitals, the creation of agencies such as the Ragged school movement for poor children, the Red Cross, St Johns Ambulance, the Barnardo’s children’s homes, the YMCA and YWCA, Mission Australia, St Vincent de Paul, Anglicare, the building of schools, the provision of health services, the movement for prison reform, the factory schools, the Salvation Army, the London City Mission, George Muller’s orphanages, evening education institutes for working class people, the National Children’s home, Barnardo’s Homes, the NSPCC, Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, and a legion of other organizations’.
All these were instituted by biblically driven Christians, reflecting the Nature of God by acting for the benefit of society.
It is that Spirit that shaped the ‘Christianized’ nations of Europe which came together to establish the United Nations Human Rights Commission (a fact lost on many), that is now a very bad joke when viewed against the intentions of its founders. It is the Nature of the God from whom emanates sacrificial other-person-centred love, supremely demonstrated on the Easter Cross; the Nature that says ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ as well as ’love your enemies’.
In this of course there is an extremely exquisite and awful irony, for it is this very Biblical world view that provided the blessings available in Australia enjoyed by the many who are now bent on destroying it.
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When the atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche made his famous statement that ‘God is Dead’, he did not mean that there was a God who had died, for as an atheist, he obviously didn’t believe in God. Rather he meant that the culture-shaping belief in God had died. Paradoxically however, Nietzsche, in contrast to the intellectual blindness of those who want to ‘kill God’ today, also realized that the consequence of ‘God’s death’, and the ensuing spiritual Vacuum, was the loss of the Biblical world view that was the foundation of Western civilization, and this would not be a good thing. He expressed this reality when he said-
‘When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet. This morality is by no means self-evident… Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole.’
The belief that the Bible expresses God’s will for the governance of human society, and human relationships within that society, is one such ‘main concept’, the ignoring of which ‘breaks the whole’. The rejection of the One who is ‘Truth’ which is the current trajectory in schools, universities, parliaments, the media and society in general, pulls the right to all aspects of Christian morality from under the nation’s feet, so precipitating a socio-spiritual cultural disintegration and subsequent Degradation of Hiroshimic magnitude. This is the future awaiting our children.
The reality is that our (allegedly progressing) Western society is being sucked into a Vacuum, a ‘back to the future’ pre-Constantinian spiritual and moral Vacuum akin to the Roman Empire in the first three centuries AD. This was, as once again the West is becoming, a society where to be Christian is to be the enemy, to be mocked, persecuted, harassed, used for entertainment and demonized by the twittering (X-ing) ‘thought police’, hauled before the star chambers of ‘political correctness’, and for some jailed.
This progressive rejection of God’s good plan for human society, “The system, a whole view of things thought out together”, is the rejection of the system for which thousands of men and women gave their lives over centuries that we might have the society we now have. The result being that our children will have to live their lives amidst the thudding of Nietzsche’s chickens coming home to roost on the landing grounds of 21st century society, a future in which the poet Yeats’ words sound loudly-
‘Things fall apart; the Centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
Anarchy is indeed now what we see.
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If the above analysis is correct, that it is the rejection of the Biblical world view that has created the moral Vacuum, that is the cause of the current precipitate plunge into the ‘cesspool full of barbed wire’,then Greg Sheridan the political commentator and journalist was correct when he wrote-
‘The West cannot survive without a re-energized belief in Christianity’.
[1] A quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, 19th century German philosopher.
[2] Melvin Tinker, author of ‘That Hideous Strength-How the West Was Lost’.
[3] Killing the Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs – unbounded church.com
unbounded church 