THE “UNIVERSAL WOUND”

The author of a recent newspaper article discussing how music can help a sick mind made the following statement; “To speak to us, artists must connect their private wounds with the fundamental, universal wound that comes from the human condition: that of having been born for insufficient reason and consequently fated to die after a lifetime of incomplete meaning”. Here is an intellectual voicing the deep malaise of our times, a pessimism that says that there is no meaning in our birth and no meaning in our lives. It springs directly from a complete denial of the person of a living God. That is where the denial of God always leads to - a blank wall of hopelessness. The elegance of his words does nothing to help his deep pessimism. Perhaps music might be made to echo that pessimism and perhaps that may be therapeutic to a point, but it can, of course never be a cure for pessimism – it may actually deepen it!
The modern intellectual world, and especially those intellectuals whose voice is heard in the media, is rife with such unbelief. Such unbelief does not simply affect their outlook, it affects behaviour. It is only a revelation of a God who in his very essence is holy and righteous that can keep humanity from falling lower and lower in both its understanding and its observance of moral obligation. Man without God is infinitely more adrift in this world than the intellectuals can conceive: he is blind and on course for disaster.
The denial of God, or the form it mostly takes in our society, the attitude that God is simply irrelevant to modern living, is the great curse of our times. The last fifty years have seen this attitude grow enormously (despite some real Christian growth), not only among the intellectuals but in society at large. The pessimism is felt deeply but for many is buried by the consumerism of “eat, drink and be merry …” and the moral collapse is blatantly obvious. That is why society is also blind and on course for disaster.
We have to be faithful to the uttermost in our witness that “the fundamental wound that comes with the human condition” is the wound of sin, but that God has the cure and the healing balm in the life and sacrifice of Jesus. There is simply no healing, no optimism, no hope, no future, no eternity outside of God, but with him there is an abundance of all these things.


Bob

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ASSESSING THE LAST DECADE

I can scarcely believe that a full decade has gone by since I first heard God speaking from Amos through the word “I will spare them no longer”. The summary of what I heard is in audio form on the home page of the website, and in printed form in the website articles. It was a word for the nation, it was stark and its fulfilment was just a matter of time – “I will spare them no longer”. I might add that the word seemed equally addressed to all the western nations, not just our own.
In reading further around Amos I became aware that the fulfilment of that word of judgement in his own generation took 25 years or so, and so I became very interested in what those 25 intermittent years looked like. It seemed to me they would hold very significant pointers to the path we were likely to follow as a nation. They would be years in which the withdrawal of God’s favour in certain areas would become more and more obvious. So I attempted to analyse them from the historical and prophetic writings. The analysis emerged as a paper with the title “Countdown to Chaos” (on the website).
After ten years it’s time to appraise that analysis and see if it is indeed relevant. That is what I hope to do in the next few weeks, and hopefully publish the conclusions. Maybe, however, some reading this column might have insights you’d like to offer? Please do!
My first and immediate thought is that the title “Countdown to Chaos” has certainly not been wide of the mark. “Chaos” is a word used with great frequency in newspaper columns in connection with the nation, but it is also used frequently by others who are accustomed to more sober judgements. At the very least “chaos” is no exaggerated term for the current financial affairs of the nation.
The main points of the "Countdown" analysis of the road to judgement under Amos were 1) Political Disintegration, 2) Political Incompetence, 3) Political Corruption, and 4) Devastating Foreign Intervention. It was these that brought about major national collapse. Perhaps I should have made more of economic and social collapse as a specific issue, for it was certainly part of the “Countdown” in Amos’ day. It has equally been part of our journey in the last decade.
In the column last week I pointed to the bleeding sore of Middle Eastern war that followed the 9/11 attack. Political incompetence and corruption has completely surrounded that saga during this last decade, both here and in the USA. More needs to be said on that, and on all the other characteristics of the “Countdown”. It may be that a revision and a more precise analysis need to be made of those crucial characteristics.
It is not a pleasant task but has got to be done. We need to monitor where things are going.


Bob

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AMERICA UNDER SIEGE

The British Empire lasted at most three centuries. In the 18thC it was “accumulated”, in the 19thC it was extended and “enjoyed”, and in the 20thC it was lost. Such is the pattern of empire that world history presents without exception: empires come and go, no matter how big and powerful. The USA has never had an empire of the British kind, but it has had vast global influence for about a century, the 20thC. Its climax has already been passed, however, and decline has set in. Though, like Britain, its influence will still be significant to a degree, it will no longer dominate the world. The proud title “Greatest Power in the World” is rapidly being washed away. That title is extremely unlikely to survive with any reality even the first half of the 21stC.
The first decade of the 21stC has already clearly demonstrated that. The USA has become embattled with militant Islam and as a consequence ventured into two crippling wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, with little success, draining its economy on a huge, unsustainable and daily basis. Those wars are the real and significant outcome of the twin towers bombing – a bleeding and poisonous sore. On the economic front the US has been plunged into an enormous and unprecedented national debt by persistent high level reckless financial gambling, with the prospect of more debt to come, and with much of its industrial heartland now wasteland. In a mere fifty years it has travelled from enormous wealth to enormous liabilities.

And then there is China, with a much, much greater population and a much greater wealth and military potential moving ahead very rapidly and highlighting the American decline even more.
If one looked at Europe as an entity, one would have to draw a similar conclusion of great decline.
Those who make a study of the decline and fall of empires constantly point to the fact of moral and social collapse (especially, though not exclusively, among the ruling classes) as a powerful contributing factor to decline. Empires collapse when powerful exterior pressure is exerted on them at the same time that their own social strength and cohesion has been sapped by indolent, selfish and pleasure loving lifestyles. It certainly happened to biblical Israel and Judah, to Assyria and Babylon and to Rome. We can see it very clearly in our own times among the powerful and over-proud major nations.
The biblical prophetic message provides the clearest statement of this repetitive historical process; that’s why it is so relevant. That’s why its constant call to come back to God and his ways is so important. The human tragedy lies in its blind and proud rejection of God.


Bob

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