Worn Out Nations Pt. 1

or: Stressed Bodies Succumb to Sickness Pt 1

Now you've likely noticed that when you are fit, healthy, and well fed sure you still can catch a cold, but when you are over tired, stressed, and run down you catch cold much more easily. OK same goes for civilisations. When they are functioning efficiently and well, sure they can be conquered, but they are much more easily overrun when they are dysfunctional and weakened internally.

Hayek even put the theory that social organisation has evolved in a Darwinian sort of way. Societies that had a more functional organisation tended to survive better than those that didn't work as well.

So back to our theoretical malevolent spirit. From the last two posts we had got a picture that the sorts of things such an entity would try to produce in a society to destroy it were in fact happening in the West. We were building ourselves a nice path to destruction.

Today I want to begin the idea that there is a last twist of the knife: Making our societies stressed and run down so they succumb easily.

So far I've said that whatever ups and downs Christian faith has endured over two millennia, there is an identifiable process happening since the late 1800's that has been both systematically and cunningly destructive to Christianity and all it stands for. On one hand weakening society and on the other depriving organised religious bodies of the power to rescue us. It is indeed so cunning a process that it lends further plausibility to the idea of a malevolent intelligence at work.



Then we noted that even the best intentions of humans over the past decades have gone wrong. What seemed like good ideas have had unintended bad consequences or have veered off into a destructive path. Tragically now a generation is emerging that would not and indeed could not defend itself against invasion.



We now see a last twist of the knife, our societies are being sapped of their very health, vitality and functional organisation. They will be prey to being taken over from without or within.



We are divided. There is internal hatred. There are seeming irreconcilable differences: we not only disagree but we cannot imagine how a rational human mind could even think what the other believes.



For ages Britain, Australia, the USA and some other western countries have had stable two party government. It wasn't perfect. But each party knowing that a slight shift in popularity could give government to the other party did much to keep them honest, and attentive to the electorate. So although nations were roughly evenly divided conservative / labour, or Republican / Democrat, there were two notable features – Firstly each party was pragmatic enough to do things out of the other party's play-book to make the country run better; Secondly whilst voters were loyal to their party, there was no hatred.



All this has changed. Changed in so many ways! But I will take just one.



Our nations are now divided on the very nature of what we want our society to be. This transcends party lines. And, at least on one side, it wells up to passionate hatred not just of the ideals of the other side, but of the people as well. We are nations psychologically in civil war.



“Left Vs Right” is too simplistic – even if we could agree what we mean by “the Right”.



“Left” is almost a usable description. “Progressive” is a term often used as a self-descriptor. Barak Obama and Hilary Clinton epitomise it in the US. The Antifas protesters, the Black lives Matter group, and the students who bar any dissenting viewpoints from being expressed on campus are all manifestations of it. But it is a multi-headed hydra. Different sections are passionate about different issues, but subliminally they all recognise each other as collaborators in a greater scheme.



That greater scheme is, simply put, a collectivist takeover of our nations.



The coordination of disparate groups and people of no discernible group to a common goal is so extraordinary that it again lends support to some invisible supra-human mastermind. Let me describe some of the themes of collectivist governments and you may recognise how different interest groups are all acting like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle fitting together to complete the picture.



Collectivist governments:
Stress the group as everything and the individual as nothing apart from its role in promoting the welfare of the group.
Stress wealth re-distribution. The famous catch-cry was: “from each according to his ability: to each according to his need”
Stress centralised control of the means of production. (ie government says what factories will be built, what and how much they will produce; sometimes even what jobs people will do and where they will work)
Destroy religion: It is seen as a threat, or at the very least in competition with the Collective for control of people's minds.
Destroy the family: Once again family ties are seen as competing with the State for control of people's minds and allegiance. Hence the classic collectivist ploy of getting children to spy on their parents and to denounce any non-conforming views.
Destroy freedom of speech and thought: The views of the collective have to be ruthlessly enforced simply because they are philosophically arbitrary. All dissenting voices and views must be suppressed.



Look around and you will see groups pushing one or more of these objectives. Attack on family, Christianity (It is the dominant religion), freedom of speech, freedom of ideas and academic thought are all too obvious at the present.



There are also groups pursuing goals that a collectivist regime would suppress once in power. The are being fostered now precisely to cripple the economies and social cohesion of our societies to facilitate a collectivist takeover. Of course whilst our societies are crippled, we may succumb to invasion first! Either way if collectivists succeed we are in for a very nasty time! This is an important issued and I will examine it next.



It is a fact of history that everywhere collectivism has been tried it has failed. The result has in every case been economic failure leading to misery and starvation, it has led to dictatorship with its secret police, gulags and concentration camps, the spread of misery, and the stifling of thought. China is perhaps the only one that has emerged out the other side of failure, and only time will tell if this was temporary and due to a temporary slackening of the reigns of centralist control.



Do we really want this for our countries?

Social Progressives: Today's Idolaters

Social Progressive : Today's Idolatry

In the Old Testament the continual failing of God's people was to abandon him for worship of idols. In the new testament the call of missionaries like Paul to pagans was to give up their idols and believe in God through Jesus.

What of Western society today? I say that we have abandoned – or are well into the process of abandoning – God for a new idolatry. Not the crude idols cast from metal or carved from wood or stone, but every bit as real, destructive and demonic!

So if it is not these externals, what are the real features of “idols”?

Through Jeremiah God says: “you have abandoned me, a spring of living water and hewed out cisterns for yourselves, cisterns that can hold no water”. I think this gives us both a cause and effect: the basic idolatry is putting our trust in any “thing” other than God. The result is that we forego the utterly dependable “spring of living water” and end up with something which will ultimately always fail us “cisterns that can hold no water”.

So take the example of agricultural life in ancient times. God controlled the weather and promised Israel prosperity if they served him and obeyed his laws. Instead they continually fell to believing that Baal controlled the weather, attributing Gods providence to another! Then they tried to propitiate Baal by such destructive things as ritual prostitution and human sacrifice. This led to God withdrawing his provision – sometimes heralded in advance as with Elijah announcing as God's spokesman: “there will be neither rain nor dew until my word.” At other times reflected on later as in the common prophetic: “I gave you famine in every city; yet you did not turn to me.”

So our modern idolatry is simply making substitutes for God. As In the past, we have also attributed the good things God has wrought, to our idols and embraced practices which can bring only misery.

The most obvious substitute is in morals.

The proper source and authority for morals is God – his perfect moral character exemplified par excellence in Jesus, and his commands revealed in the scriptures. As I have often said, being human we may disagree and debate on how to understand and apply these, but vitally we accept God as the ultimate reference and authority.

The substitute moral authorities are human collectives. Here God is specifically excluded from consideration. Moral values and decisions are humanly derived and the group proposing them depends the psychological weapons of propaganda, 'group think' and social engineering to obtain conformity within their number and on stamping out competing voices and brute force to impose their chosen rules on society.

In Australia, and I suspect the West generally, the “new morality” has been diametrically opposed to the “traditional” moral mores largely formed by Christian thought. I hope to be more detailed in future posts. But as to results we are already seeing some of the misery caused by the new sexual morals through marriage and family breakup and its devastating effect on children plus the magnified incidence of sexual abuse of children by step-fathers.

Another substitute is “Nature” instead of God.

The Bible stresses the fact that God created the heavens and the earth and everything in it. The “how” is irrelevant. If science is right about the mechanisms (as I think likely) that detracts nothing from God's role. Scripture teaches that the earth and its plant and animal life belong to God and were provided chiefly as a home for us humans (whom God created in his image) and given to us to dominate and manage for him. This gives a very balanced and nuanced approach to dealing with the natural world.

Modern Western environmental activism and “animal rights” movements reject all this. Instead they deny all the above. In varying shades from a sort of pantheism or nature worship to treating “the planet” as an end in itself, they show a strong tendency to be anti-humanity. Take just one example: in Australian waters we have a surging population of “great white” sharks – partly because of bans on fishing them. Increasing numbers of surfers are being attacked and killed by the sharks. “Conservationists” lobby against culling the shark numbers claiming the ocean is their (the sharks') domain and if humans enter it and are killed, so be it! This is a truly frightening, and not isolated, attitude.

Some marks of the new paganism:

a) As stated, the opposition to and active destruction of traditional “Christian” morals and values (for example to value of human life and joy; and virtues such as goodness, kindness, fidelity and self control)

b) Opposition to Christianity to the extent of utilising groups whose morals clash violently with their stated values. For instance pandering to and encouraging Islam and using it as a stick to beat Christians with (eg Christians are “islamophobes” hence morally bad) even when treatment of women within Islam goes against every fibre of feminism!


c) It runs with the worst in human nature – which is the easy downhill road; whilst the godly fight against that nature, try to reform it and encourage the best in it – which is an uphill road!
For instance the encouragement of sexual immorality (which needs little encouragement!) is like the pagan religions of old; The whip-thin vegan “I use bicycle not polluting car” echoes the self flagellation of many pagan religions which as scripture teaches does nothing to reform corrupt human nature.

Another feature I have noticed goes hand in hand with progressivism is hatred. Love is the teaching of scripture, but it goes against the grain to love others as ourselves, and particularly to love our enemies, yet this is the goal we strive towards. Hatred on the other hand is a strong passion that comes easily out of corrupted human nature. And I have noticed that almost uniformly adherents to “progressive” beliefs hate with a passion all who dare to disagree with them. Mercy is a Christian virtue, even in dispensing justice the motto grown into Christian jurisdictions has been “justice tempered with mercy”. Adherents to the new paganism conspicuously show no mercy.

d) It is Nietzschean in its definition of “truth”. Traditionally in Christian societies “truth” matters. A statement is true if it corresponds to reality. For the new morality truth = utility. A statement is true if it advances your adgenda.

e) The new pagans look to a perfect world created by humans: Christians see this world as always in a process of decay due to corrupt human nature and are encouraged in their attempts to build a better world by the assurance that Heaven, ruled by God, will indeed be perfect.

Saving the West. 2: Calling all Progressives

2: Calling All Progressives

I have some shocking news for you, you have been sold a counterfeit!

“there is a way that seems right to humans, but its end is the way to death” (Proverbs 14; 12)

You were probably attracted by Progressive ideas because wanted the best – to end injustice, poverty, oppression, hatred, domestic violence. You wanted to save the world! You signed up with what looked like the best bet for doing this. But progressive socialism, for all that it identified real things that were wrong with the world, for all its promises, for all the vision of a utopia on earth that it painted, is fatally flawed. It can never deliver on those promises. It will, like a bowling ball aimed at a mark look for most of its run as though it is going straight for it, then at the last veer off to one side and miss it completely.

For the bowling ball it is because it has an inbuilt bias. For progressivism it is because it leaves human nature out of the equation. Its Achilles' heel is that human nature has an inbuilt bias too.

For those who are thinking: “Surely you just described 'the Church'!” you are quite right. In fact it proves my point that human nature can sour the best of things and best of intentions. The Church has exhibited everything from the best of humanity to something close to the worst. No argument about that! The two main reasons Christianity succeeds where every other system ultimately fails are these:

1. God knows all about the problem of human nature: so his plans to save the world take this into full account

2. God invites humans into a new relationship with himself through his son Jesus, who is both God and human. Only a few take up this invitation, though many pretend to. Those who do take it up find that God works with them to slowly heal the flaws in their human nature, so they are able to be part of God's work of saving the world to a degree that still seriously flawed humans cannot.

So if you really want to save the world, your first step in the right direction is to begin a friendship with God through Jesus Christ.

Of course you will need some more information about him to decide to do that, so lets begin:

Do you yearn for the sort of better world that God yearns for?

Do you hate domestic violence? So does God.

“The man who hates and divorces his wife” says the Lord, the God of Israel, “does violence to the one he should protect”. Malachi 2: 16

Do you hate economic systems that make the rich richer and the poor poorer! So does God.

“Hear this you who trample the needy … skimping the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, … selling even the sweepings with the wheat. The Lord has sworn by himself, the Pride of Jacob: “I will never forget anything they have done”.” Amos 8

Do you hate all forms of injustice? So does God.

“I the Lord lave justice; I hate robbery and wrongdoing” Isaiah 61: 8

Do you hate oppression? So does God.

“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: 'You have gone far enough, princes of Israel! Give up your violence and oppression and do what is just and right.” Ezekiel 45:9

Do you long for world peace? God intends this in his heaven.

“He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war any more.” Isaiah 2:4

Do you long for harmony with nature? God intends this in his heaven.

“the wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox … They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain” says the Lord. Isaiah 65: 25

Would you like a world without pain? God intends this for his heaven.

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” Revelation 21: 4

On the other hand, do you wrongly accuse God for the problems of the world? Jesus perfectly represented God, look at what he actually did.

Do you still blame God for disease in the world? Jesus healed everyone who came to him.

“Jesus went through all the towns and villages … healing every disease and sickness.”
Matthew 9: 24

Do you blame God as though he does not care about the suffering sicknesses cause? Look at just one episode in Jesus life:

“Jesus went to a town called Nain … As he approached the town gate a dead person was being carried out – the only son of his mother, and she was a widow… When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said “Don't cry” Then he went up and … said “Young man, I say to you, get up!” The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.” Luke 7: 11 on

Do you blame God for bad deeds done by 'the Church'. Jesus had trouble with the church of his day!

“Jesus called out in a loud voice 'Lazarus come out!' The dead man came out … Therefore many believed in him … but some went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting … (they said) “If we let him go on like this everyone will believe in him” … So from then on they plotted to take his life.” John 11

I could go on, but I think this very brief thumb-sketch may be enough to have you saying something like: “That must be some different God to the one I know about!”

Precisely! The god you “don't believe in” does not exist. It is just a human construct, an imaginary caricature. Rather like the Unicorn!

You were right to refuse to believe in that god. But there is a God who really does exist, the one I've just sketched a few characteristics of.

Curious? Like to know the truth about God? Read on as we do a quick jog through the Bible picking up more clues. Before that however I want to lay to rest a couple of false arguments that seem to often get re-told and never refuted.

NEXT WEEK: False Argument 1: God can't exist because there is suffering.

Manners  and  Morals

Thursday 11th April 2013

These are more closely linked than you might at first think. A baby growing up learns much from its surroundings and its interactions. One of the vital things it learns is the protocols for interactions in its family and beyond. Sociologists call this “socialisation”. It is vital in an evolutionary sense because an individual's chance of survival plummets if it is rejected by its family, or outcast from its social group. So it should come as no surprise that humans are very good at learning social mores and manners, in fact we have a significant part of our brains, the frontal lobe, specialising in this function. The recent film “Quartet” features as a sub-plot a sanitised version of a man with frontal lobe damage. The film manages to make it amusing that he has no social inhibitions. In real life I have seen for instance a wife throw her frontal-lobe-damaged husband out because she could not cope with his lack of social awareness. It is disastrous, not amusing.

The point of this rather long winded introduction is that humans have evolved with the ability to make fine judgements on appropriate behaviour.

Manners are both noticeable and subtle. A century or so ago what you did if you were in a social setting and another person entered the room was quite complicated, but people's brains produced the right behaviour without hesitation. It was complicated because it depended on many factors: your age, gender and social status. The other person's age, gender and social status, the degree of intimacy between you. (ie were you family, friends acquaintances or strangers) the formality of the setting, and say for an older gentleman standing when a young girl entered, a desire make the other person feel accepted perhaps even honoured.

Quite complex, but our frontal lobes are so well developed for this very task that while we had to be taught the particular customs of our society (socialised) the requisite calculations were performed so seamlessly that it seemed 'instinctive'.

I can remember as a boy, I never had to think (let alone agonise over the right action) if I was sitting in a crowded bus or train and a lady was standing. I got up and offered my seat. It was a 'no-brainer'.

By the time I was working once clear-cut social rules were being ignored. Then the train situation became a nightmare. What was I to do? My old social training told me to get up. The new mores were to stay seated unless the lady was clearly unwell or heavily pregnant. Now I had to decide what to do in every situation. Sometimes I got up – one time I remember a man standing nearby elbowed the lady out of the way and sat down himself! Sometimes I looked out the window pretending I could see no lady, but growing redder every minute with embarrassment.

Oh how much better it was to have clear rules of behaviour!

Some of you may now be anticipating the connection I am about to draw between manners and morals.

Just as the old manners were swept away in the 60's and 70's, so too the old morals are being eroded. In the case of morals it seems to be a pincer movement.

One pincer is tearing down the old in order to erect the new.

I can remember when “censorship” was being attacked as evil paternalism. I was a bit late for “lady Chatterley's Lover” although I remember my sister reading a smuggled copy of the banned work. I was in time to go to a rebel performance of a play which had just been banned for its lewdness. And I am embarrassed to say that when there was uproar over a TV (yes we had it back then!) show where the amorous young man put his hand up the girlfriend's skirt, I wrote to the newspaper pointing out how much more suggestive Shakespeare was in “King Lear” which was our English text that year.

Half a century or so on is censorship a thing of the past? Not likely! Oh the old censorship was pulled down, only to be replaced with the censorship of “Political Correctness”.

The punishments, interestingly are far more harsh under this new brand of censorship. You can be as lewd as you like in print or film. You can be as blasphemous as you like – as long as you only blaspheme the Christian God. But dare to transgress political correctness, say a comment, even light-heartedly in jest that is male chauvinist, racist, or against say same sex unions and you may face utter ruin. Public pillory (metaphorically– for now), loss of job, friends, career and all this with no possible expiation of your 'sin' or any hope of redemption.

I am not saying anyone ought to make such comments, just that the punishment does seem rather harsh.

The other arm of the pincer movement is the pulling down of the old morality as a guide to actions, not as with the example above to replace it with the “new morality” but to leave people without rules at all.

This is reminiscent of the ancient Israelites having to make bricks and find their own straw. People now face the prospect of having to work out “what is the right thing to do” for themselves as well as do it.

This of course is the point of comparison between manners and morals I was leading up to in telling my experiences of giving my seat to a lady on the train.

Come back next week for more discussion on this arm of the pincer