SOCIAL UNREST

Lurking behind economic disaster there is always the spectre of social unrest. Economic collapses inevitably cause real distress in many people’s lives which gives rise to frustration and anger followed by unrest. We have seen this phenomenon break out in ugly fashion in the recent demonstrations by students over student fees. There is a degree of inevitability about it

It is not something new, even in Britain (remember the miners’ confrontations when the coal industry began to collapse), but it is never something to be taken lightly or with complacency. It is worth remembering that appalling things have come out of economic disaster and social unrest – the French Revolution, the rise of Hitler, the collapse of the USSR etc. Though we are not quite at that point, none the less all social unrest is ugly. The reason for that is the way in which protest seems invariably to be hijacked by vicious and extremist activists and blatant thugs (as has happened with the student protests); a little of that sort of leaven in the lump changes the whole character of protest, and simply adds chaos to chaos. It is critically important to defuse it in a right manner. Law and order has to prevail. That is the responsibility both of demonstrators and the powers that be. It is difficult when raw emotion (especially anger) displaces hard reasoning. The consequences of escalating social unrest do not bear thinking about!

Lord Rees-Mogg in a newspaper leader wrote, “Britain ought not to be where we are now, having to make decisions under the pressure of riots and huge national debt”. I always gain much from Rees-Mogg, but I think I would have to say on this issue that it was inevitable that Britain would be in the position we are in now in the light of its years of encouragement of wanton consumerism on the basis of debt and its embracing of non morality. We have reached the day of reckoning for a philosophy of living that has embraced debt and indulgence as a way of life. If one generation lives well beyond its means (as the generation from the 60s has) then the next generation will inevitably pick up the tab; this is the root cause of the present situation. It is not surprising that the generation that faces the tab is going to be angry; moreover it will be difficult for that generation to realise that it does not have a “right” to what it wants, having been brought up on an unadulterated doctrine of “my rights” and state provision.

Once again all this needs to be seen through spiritual lenses. If ever there was a contemporary demonstration of the biblical truth that “the wages of sin is death” or, put in another biblical metaphor, “as you sow, so shall you reap”, we have it at the present time. We have lived through a generation that has scorned biblical patterns for living, and is now (at least among its intelligentsia) more scornful and arrogant than ever in its dismissal of those patterns. It persists with pagan hedonism!

We must pray that distress and unrest will lead to widespread and true Holy Spirit revival.



Bob

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