Paul tells us in Ephesians 4:17-32
to put off the old self and put on the new self. The life of the old self is an
indictment of Wall Street, Madison Avenue, The Las Vegas Strip, and the
Information Superhighway, each with their broad gate and leading nowhere. The
new self travels on a different road with tight spaces but not a lot of traffic
and is blessed with hope, peace, joy, and love. For over 1900 years, this was
the default position of Western man and history bears out that when moral decay
set in, empires crumbled. Charles Darwin started it, Friedrich Nietzsche
predicted it, and now we are in it.
Beginning
sometime in the 1960’s, perhaps with the advent of Sexual Revolution I, there
has been an acceleration in the social rethinking in Western society. The
progression is subtle but persistent. The unthinkable becomes thinkable, the
thinkable becomes acceptable, the acceptable becomes the norm, seemingly with
very few people remembering they were ever against it. The ones that do counter
by telling you what time it is. “This is, after all the 21st century.”
Apply this principle to any social development in the last fifty years and you
will detect the pattern. Sex outside marriage, living together before marriage,
no-fault divorce, abortion on demand, body part trade, cloning, gay marriage
and next, polygamy, aka Sexual Revolution II, aka it’s 2016. Not one of these
things was acceptable fifty years ago, much less celebrated and affirmed. Newer
is not better.
Newer is better. We have all heard
this as an explanation of the progression of society. 75 years ago, C. S. Lewis
wasn’t buying it. He saw the same pattern I cite beginning in the late Middle
Ages and the Renaissance, when each scientific discovery nullified the entire
thought process of the preceding age. He points out that this “chronological
snobbery” is to our detriment and that our model will be replaced and our age
risks being dismissed as backward. Newer is not necessarily better.
Try this new thing. Pick up a
Bible. Read the Gospel of John. Read Acts. Then read the news. You may find
your(new)self singing, “Give Me That Old Time Religion.”
