What is Wrong with America?
What is Wrong with America?
I little over a year ago, I was blissfully going about my normal life. Things were not great, but things were not bad either. I had normal American concerns, household projects, stress at work, what should I do for entertainment this evening etc. Then, like millions of others, I was suddenly plunged into a never-ending nightmare world. Literally everything changed overnight. One day I was at work and going to the gym, the next day I was at home feeling out of shape, out of kilter, and wondering how long this was going to last.
I started searching for answers, listening to news, podcasts, researching everything I could find. Prior to the CCP virus, I had been able to shut myself out of the world for several years. I didn’t usually get around to voting, and I couldn’t care less about the latest headlines (in fact, I didn’t want to know). I had enough concerns of my own (or so I thought) and didn’t have time to waste paying attention to what was going on in another state, let alone another country. So, when I began paying attention again, I ran across things that I had utterly missed, “Wow, I had no idea that pro athlete died in a helicopter accident! What a tragedy.” It took me quite a while to get caught up, and I guess it is no surprise that you can only hide from the world for so long before the world will find you.
Things that happen in other places often wind up making real, tangible changes to our own personal lives. These things cannot be ignored forever.
One thing I discovered in my frantic searching, was that the cultural degeneration of America was far worse than I had realized. Within the past four to eight years, the country I thought I knew had been changing drastically, and the rate of change increasing perhaps exponentially. The seeds of these changes, I found, had begun to take shape over 100 years ago, and there were warning signs perhaps 45 years ago, but the past decade or less had seen truly massive shifts.
Rewind to over 100 years ago. As near as I can understand it, around the time Darwin wrote his Origin of Species, people started to get very skeptical of religion in general and Christianity in particular. The Sciences were helping humanity to make great discoveries, and mankind began to feel quite proud of our accomplishments and quite disdainful of old “superstitions.” Logic and the scientific method were adequate tools for discovering truth, and we no longer needed to posit the existence of some all-powerful being. In any case, if we could explain how something worked, that took some of the wonder and mystery out of it, and brought it down to our playing field. Books like the Bible came under increasing scrutiny and were subjected to “higher literary criticism.” Proclaiming ourselves to be wise, mankind became rather puffed up and foolish. “The sun is nothing more than an immense ball of gas, utilizing a process of nuclear fusion and floating in an eternal universe” - we said, while ignoring the staggeringly immense power it would take to make even one sun, let alone trillions upon trillions. Somehow, the great unknown cause of all this matter and order was not worth talking about, so long as we could explain how most of it worked. Of course, it doesn’t follow logically that if one can explain how something works, that somehow it means the object in question just popped into existence all on its own and is not astonishingly glorious. And furthermore, who made the laws by which these things function…? these laws which we only discover, but do not invent? Strangely, none of these questions seemed to bother us too much.
During the first half of the 20th century, this foolishness continued. As C.S. Lewis described in his book, The Abolition of Man, this “scientific” doubt about the existence of a Transcendent Being lead to a general doubt about anything Transcendent at all. All of life must be explained as merely individuals reacting to their surroundings within a purely material universe without any overall purpose or meaning. The example he used was from a schoolbook in which the writers had begun the subtle indoctrination of young schoolboys to believe that if they observed a beautiful waterfall, it was not actually beautiful. It would be just a feeling that the observer has about the waterfall. There is nothing inherently True, or beautiful, or worthy of honor in and of itself, but only our interpretations of things. While doing their English Prep work, these philosophical suggestions were being implanted in the schoolboys minds predisposing them to think (without even remembering where they got the idea) that all value judgements are purely subjective and trivial. By removing the Transcendent, and explaining away everything, the education systems of England (and America soon afterward) were creating young men without passion or purpose. Even in 1944, the modern educators were eradicating emotion and sentiment, reducing the world to something unbearably mundane. As C.S. Lewis put it, “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defense against false sentiments is it inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.” (The Abolition of Man, pg 27). He also pointed out that removing all emotion from a student’s life will relegate them to a “slumber of cold vulgarity.” A religion of materialism was being promulgated (the belief that what we see is all there is and there is no transcendent reality worthy in itself of our awe and wonder). By doing these things, he pointed out on page 25 that the educators, “may be intending to make a clean sweep of traditional values and start with a new set.” And that, “while teaching him [the student] nothing about letters, [the modern educators] have cut out of his soul, long before he is old enough to choose, the possibility of having certain experiences which thinkers (of more authority than they) have held to be generous, fruitful, and humane.”
What we see here in 1944, was the beginning of a concerted effort in the educational systems of Western Civilization, to create generations of men “without chests” - in other words, passionless, soulless men who do not believe in objective Truth, and view any emotional response to transcendent reality as “contrary to reason and contemptible.” We are three-part creatures consisting of the head/intellect, the chest/soul, and the body/flesh. Lewis reminded us that “Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism.” Without this “chest” or soul, men will weaken, give in to animal instinct and cannot be virtuous. It is not abstractions that inspired men to storm the beaches of Normandy, but passionate courage. Indeed, in my experience, there is a certain lack of genuineness when a man can speak only facts with no passion. One wonders if he really believes what he is saying if it is delivered in monotones. Moreover, to truly believe something, one must be grounded in objective reality. As C.S. Lewis finished his first chapter, “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” (Pg 37). It was during this time that the “intellectual” first became a soulless animal. But, mercifully, this festering disease had not yet become widespread in the population.
...For that, it would need years more in the “educational system” and a world-wide information distribution platform...
So, here we are in 2021, we have seen the gradual and then sudden outflow of this destructive degeneration of philosophy develop into a fully grown specter of evil. Our post-modern “intellectuals” are utter fools, for not only have they given up on Objective Truth (& sentiment as a thus valid response to it) but they have debunked reason itself! Furthermore, through the internet, smart phones, and social media, these destructive ideas have been spread rapidly - thereby completing our descent into insanity. Suddenly, we find ourselves in a world where there is no truth, there is simply power, and the will to possess it. The “educators” have finally gotten their wish and created an entire generation of humans who want to abolish humanity. In 2020, COVID-19 was added to the mix, and you have churches shut down thus closing the door to one of the only places people could go to be reminded of traditional values. There is a push to replace those traditional values which again Lewis foresaw, “They claim to be cutting away the parasitic growth of emotion, religious sanction, and inherited taboos, in order that ‘real’ or ‘basic’ values may emerge.” (Pg 43). A correct understanding of the human condition (or a brief reading of The Lord of the Flies) would suggest that these “basic” values are to be shunned, not embraced!
So, what is wrong with America?
I believe we have accepted a false and destructive philosophy long taught in our schools, and then spread through our devices, and we are currently near the bloody end of the process of trying to make ourselves “better” - by destroying ourselves.
“The rebellion of new ideologies against the Tao [ultimate Truth] is a rebellion of the branches against the tree: if the rebels could succeed they would find that they had destroyed themselves.” (The Abolition of Man Pg. 56). And what we will end up with is just what the Book of Revelation predicted would happen - a totalitarian World State. “What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.” (Pg 67).
Why did Americans allow this to happen?
America may never have been exactly a “Christian” nation in the sense of being governed by a “Christian” government, but it was was undeniably founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic. The early colonists were largely comprised of Pilgrims and others who fled Europe to find a place where they could practice their denomination of Christianity in peace. Thus, the early republic elected leaders who reflected the shared values of those deeply religious people.
Over time, the influx of other cultures and religions with people who all claimed to know that their particular religion and culture was “True” caused people to recognize that they could not all be true, and therefore to question if anything was true. Also, we were victims of our own success. In our riches, we gave in to self-indulgence and moral compromise.
When a society loses belief in a shared Truth and begins to doubt that reason is a useful tool for finding it, then some form of “truth” must be imposed externally through coercion or the society will splinter into factions and civil war.
Once objective Truth is removed from the equation, insanity results. Without Truth, concepts like freedom and equality can be re-defined. Freedom no longer means removing obstacles so that we can live virtuous lives, it becomes a continual push to remove all rules and boundaries even to the extent of total anarchy. It becomes freedom to do whatever we want, all the time, with no consequences. (Wisdom would remind us that this is actually a form of slavery to self-indulgence, and not true freedom). See Romans 6:16 - “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?”
Equality is redefined from equality of value before God and equality of opportunity, to equality of outcome. We are all equal in value, and in America we should have similar opportunities, but clearly we have different abilities and aptitude’s and make different choices (some poor, and some good). In a world where Truth and Reason rule, it can be agreed upon that equality of value is self-evident, (all men are created equal) and equality of opportunity is worthy goal. On the other hand, equality of outcome is unjust because it necessarily means government must rob those who make good choices (and/or have more ability) and distribute to those who make poor choices (and/or have less ability). Distorted views of fairness, for example, would dictate that a four foot six inch man should be allowed to play professional basketball regardless of his skill etc. In a functioning society, it is the role of a compassionate church to minister to the unusual circumstances of those less fortunate and who did not choose their difficult circumstances. The Church would also influence those making poor choices, to make better choices. But it would be lunacy to reward those making poor choices, hooked on drugs, and homeless with the same outcome as, say, a highly successful businessman. You would be reinforcing their pathology and actually damaging them, perhaps irreparably.
Without truth and reason, there is injustice and lawlessness. America is imploding.
I will close by pointing out that this was all, in a way, quite predictable. In our attempt to create a free society, we welcomed all ideas and viewpoints and there were no safeguards on Truth. In that type of society, it is a valid question to ask why the Ten Commandments are posted in a public courtroom. If the society was not founded on the Ten Commandments, and does not agree that they are True, why not remove them? If the majority of people no longer hold those to be True, then the system in America was designed to allow them to be questioned and removed by a vote. Once America gave up the Truth and God, the clock was ticking on the its inevitable collapse.
There can be no freedom without Truth. There can be no free countries without God.
At this point, it would take a miracle of God to turn this trend around, for the Bible tells us that the heart of man is desperately wicked and that only a few will find the path of righteousness. That is an accurate view of the human condition. Left to our own devices, our self-destruction is just a matter of time. With man, our recovery is impossible, but with God, all things are possible. I am personally praying for a miracle. Perhaps millions of Christians will wake up, like I am beginning to, and start acting like their choices matter. But regardless of the outcome, we who know Jesus must still follow Him and share the good news of what he has done with others. We must be unashamed to stand up for objective Truth, and unafraid to respond with humble awe when we encounter Transcendent Reality. We are called to be salt and light in this dark world, slowing the process of decay until we are taken home, or Jesus returns for us.
The time is short.