CULTURE AND CORRUPTION

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We might define “culture” as the artistic expression of the way in which a society or nation or civilisation thinks, believes and does things. It is a mixture of artistic ability (writing, composing, painting etc.) working on compelling contemporary interests and desires. I grew up thinking it to be also inherently allied to what was noble; culture stood for standards. I’ve had to learn how utterly wide of the mark that early thinking was. I’ve had to learn that no matter how intriguing the artistic element might be, the interests and desires to which it gives expression can be utterly debased; culture can be thoroughly corrupt. Our world does not seem to make that distinction. The Christian must.

The Times “Saturday Review” is typical of numerous places where the intelligentsia unwittingly (or quite deliberately!) reveal just how corrupt our culture is, and take delight in it. Characteristically the large front page headlines this week cried out, “We drank, we smoked, we slept around”. The article which followed featured a group of men engaged in the advertising business, one of who wrote a memoir of their life and behaviour. The memoir inspired a multi award-winning drama “Mad Men” of which the author of the memoir said, “I became an advisor on the show. Audiences were shocked by all the sex and alcohol and outrageous behaviour on the screen. But let me tell you, the reality was so much worse”. The Times article appeared because the memoir has just been republished. The Times felt it was worth a complete front page spread, followed by a second page spread, along with a 14 x 19inch photograph of the author. The article is an extraordinary mixture of obscenity, which provides the real show case for the article, and shrewdness of observation on the advertising world.

What it is really saying is, “Look! This is our culture; this is what we value; this is real living; this is life; let it titillate us!” This sort of article is by no means a “one off”; it is common place. Our culture is as clever and as decadent as ever the “Renaissance” and “Baroque” culture was at its worst, and, it ought to be said, as decadent as great areas of Greek and Roman “Classical” culture.

We should not be snared by the tempting word “culture”, still less by its modern obscenity. The latter is something for profound regret. Music, art, drama should express beauty, something it can never achieve if its subjects are lasciviousness and uncontrolled indulgence, which are the very antithesis of beauty.
Heaven is full of music and poetry, song, drama and endless creativity, but uncorrupted. Things there are “noble and of good report”.


Bob

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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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