The Western World is Dying
A tragedy is unfolding before our eyes. Though many are blind or unaware and even those who refuse to see, our way of life is vanishing before us and doing so at an atonishing rate.
Misguided Applause for the Demise of Our World
Unfortunately, there are those actually applaude the death of our way of life, who have deluded themselves into believing they know a better way. And they mean to do whatever they can to pull down whatever remnants they can find.
Trending Toward Failure
Below is a short list of problems we face as a nation and as a culture. A word of caution here: Due to the size and strength of this list, it can be rather depressing to read. If you are easily overwhelmed, please consider reading this another time. I do not mean to be an alarmist. But any one of these problems would be serious in its own right. And apart from a move of God, their combined strength will very likely destroy our world – and much sooner than we would believe.
Social Decline
- Loss of community
- Breakdown of marriage and family
- Increasing prevalence of adult immaturity
- Decline in relational skills in the general population
- Losing the distinction between feeling and thinking
- Rapid decline in attention span
- Hyper-sexualization of culture
- Socially constructed reality without God
- Entitlement mentality and self-indulgence
- Worsening racial divide
- Virtualization of life
Ideological Decline
- Rise of relativism and pluralism
- Disappearance of moral knowledge
- Dumbing down of public education
- General decline of material
- Erosion of reason, logic and basic skills
- History devalued and misrepresented
- Emerging “critical theory” and its offshoots
Spiritual Decline
- Cultural contempt for Christianity
- Distractions in Christian faith in the last two centuries:
- Properity Gospel
- New Apostolic movement
- Church growth movement
- Multiple distortions (e.g. Free Grace Society; Joel Osteen)
- Resistance to spiritual formation by many Christian teachers
- Firece defence of theology rooted in a legalistic worldview
Political Decline
- Public dialogue no longer possible
- Censorship of ideas
- Politicization of media
- Riots and anarchy as a means of political expression / mob rule
- Marxists running for high office with some success
- Militant support for abortion and infanticide
- Cancel culture approach to political opponents
Assessment
That these trends are occurring at all is seriously disturbing. Even more alarming is the observation that many of these are accelerating to the point of becoming militant forces. Many of them are even hailed today as “progress” and are promoted with a passion that can only be described as religious zeal. We have truly reached a place where good is called evil and evil is called good.
Any one of these trends would create a crisis in any culture. For example, the growing problem of not knowing the difference between feeling and thinking is sufficient in and of itself to destroy Western civilization. But perhaps the most significant issue here is the fact that this decline has obliterated the tools necessary for solving problems in a secularized society. That is why our problems cannot be solved by legislation or other political means. They are now beyond the power of human beings to correct. Thus politicizing them actually makes things worse. And having lost the means for correcting problems, our way of life will eventually fail and give way to something else.
It would take a book to explore these issues in detail, and it would be too depressing to read. Clearly our problem is spiritual and at this point it has become monumental.
Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph.6:12).
Our only hope is a Reformation and Re-Evangelization of the Church, which may then by the grace of God possess the strength and credibility to bring a message of hope and reason to our dying world and restore the integrity and sanity necessary for a functional society.
And if it turns out that the Western world is irretrievably lost to us, then we will need that same Reformation in order to endure what lies ahead and to thrive in spite of it.