Ancient Rome might have called it revolution. Greeks might have hailed it as the rise of a new philosophy. Middle Age Britishers might have called us all separatists and demanded the rack, and I’m sure someone somewhere might have used the word “witch.” Bonfire, anyone?
But in today’s modern, technologized, politicized, civilized 21st Century, we only say, “That’s just the way things are these days.” It isn’t a crime, you can’t scientifically prove that it’s wrong, and it’s not really hurting anyone, is it? So, give it up. Live and let live. Isn’t that what everyone else is doing? What’s the big deal about the downfall of modern morality anyway? Not that I’m addressing our lack of morals, mind you. No, this is worse. This is our wholesale extinction of them. The fact that we don’t have any. Just like you could walk down the street and find no pet dinosaur romping about in someone’s backyard.
You see, morality has become something of a dirty word here in the West. Moralists share the same boat as Communists: We’re not precisely sure what they are, but we’ve been told they’re up to no good, and we know how to spot one when we see one! The issue can be left-winged or right-winged, old-fashioned or radical, biased or impartial, even good or bad. It is hardly ever right or wrong.
Why? Because right and wrong don’t exist anymore. Drunk driving has unfavorable consequences. Murder will cost you any degree of respect, besides getting you thrown in jail. Giving to the poor is a great way to boost self-worth. Divorce is hard on the children. Helping the stranded driver on the side of the road - well, that’s a bit risky, but he might be grateful and give you twenty bucks. Stealing company money is bound to end you up jobless and friendless, and that’ll be your own fault and no one else’s. Does anyone say anymore a simple, “That is right; that is wrong”?
How would Jesus be received today, I wonder, with His blunt, “Let the dead bury their own dead,” and, “Unless you repent, you too will be condemned”? How, with His exclusive, “I am the way, the truth, and the light”? I mean, really, you must admit that does sound a bit narrow-minded of Him. But we have said we would like to be lowered to the level of animals, which have no moral consciousness; and, in doing so, we have all but lost our own. We have grasped hold of too many contradictions in our speech and thought patterns; and in doing so, have had to let go of our hold on truth.
And the worst is this: Since we have - or think we have - a good portion of the world’s money, the rest of the globe looks up to us. The trends we pick here are plastered on billboards across China. (I know; I’ve seen some of them.) The philosophies we so devotedly preach here are actually put into practice in nations like the Philippines, sometimes to devastating affect. We who claim to be the shepherds of the world are leading the flock down an incline that will quite possibly get us all killed. But is it really wrong, after all? Or is death simply another one of our unfavorable consequences?
