“We cast down imaginations and every high thing that
exalts itself against God and bring every thought captive to the obedience of
Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)
The primary context surrounding this
essay concerns the upcoming U.S. Presidential election between Joe Biden and
Donald Trump this coming November.
Although the schism distinguishing the sympathies between these
candidates are just as sharp and narrow as any of the past races in recent
decades, several circumstances stand out now as utterly unique, including first
of all our ongoing experience of a persistent pandemic from the Coronavirus. Relevant to the potential outcome of this
outbreak with respect to the election is that Biden’s campaign is blaming the
virus’ economic impact on Trump’s early decision to substantially shut down
businesses for the purpose of staving off its’ spread.
As if this were not enough however,
our society is also wallowing in a deepening mire of cultural dissolution, the moral
decay of which, amazingly, is merely a symptom of its’ intellectual
disintegration. This crisis began in
reaction to a torturous murder of compliant George Floyd (a black person) by
four policemen who apprehended him for a misdemeanor. What has followed has by no means been limited
to a peaceful protest against one incident of police brutality, but instead, at
a material level, entailed overwhelming destruction to multiplied blocks of
property over a multitude of cities across our land. At a personal level, many innocent lives have
been terrorized, some to the point of murder, while police too have been roundly
taunted even as some have also been murdered.
At the same time multitudes of businesses have been destroyed, many
permanently. Finally, at an intellectual
level, as one voice put it, “We are witnessing the suicide of civilization.”[1]
To offer simply one glaring example of the
resulting insanity, it is proposed not merely by a fringe minority of
society, but by a substantial portion of our voting population, that police be
banished altogether. Yet such a
suggestion is obviously senseless. One
has merely to witness the rioting on TV in the absence of any opposition
that has the capacity to stop it, is all by itself a vivid illustration of a neighborhood
that is overseen solely by thugs.
The downhill slide of culture
illustrated above is exactly what the Apostle Paul predicted in Rom.
1:18f. The flip side of this
intellectual coin is stated in Proverbs 9:10 which declares, “The fear of
the LORD is the
beginning of wisdom.” Yet to return
to St. Paul, he sought to instill the practical means for recovering people
who, by their rejection of God, now recline in a bed of nonsense. 2 Corinthians 10:5 suggests that appealing to
manipulative strategies alone cannot restore society to sanity. Wisdom of a kind that leads to harmony on
earth grounds its transformation on harmonizing with the Maker and Redeemer of all
of creation (Romans 12:2). I am not writing
this in order to advocate proof texting every argument with biblical passages,
but rather, in the name of Christ, that we seek and speak truth where-ever it
can be found, even as we must also confront and undermine falsehood. Society cannot change for the better unless confidence
can be restored that our populace is being instilled with a conviction that
conservativism in general more successfully harmonizes with reality than does leftist
liberalism.
To be continued...
[1] James Burnham. “Liberalism…is the ideology of Western suicide.” (https://www.realclearhistory.com/articles/2020/07/08/
the_assault_on_civilization_498524.html).
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