PrintHOLDING BACK THE TIDE
by Mike Robinson
We are all familiar with those TV images of towns or villages being threatened by flood and the frantic efforts of the townsfolk and volunteers to hold back the destruction that threatens to destroy the town.
I got to thinking recently about floodwaters of another kind that are slowly but unmistakably rising and threatening to engulf our town and our state and our nation.
But there's one big difference between those literal floodwaters and those that threaten our nation. On the TV news we watch as people work tirelessly and sacrificially to build a sandbag levy as a defence against the floodwaters.
In our nation, on the other hand, we are busy dismantling and tearing down the levy bank of morality and ethics that hold back the rising tide of anarchy, lawlessness, self-centredness, immorality, family breakdown and a meaningless life.
It has been trendy for quite a few generations now to deny the moral absolutes of the Ten Commandments. Absolutes are out. Personal preferences are in. Everyone does what is right in his or her own eyes. Black and white values have been replaced by a twilight grey moral standard.
What happens when a society abandons the moral absolutes of its Creator and denies the importance of right and wrong? How far might such an arrogant attitude take us? Read the answer on a prison wall in Poland.
"I freed Germany from the stupid & degrading fallacies of conscience and morality"
Who said that? Adolf Hitler. Where will you find those words written? In a Nazi death camp.
When law-makers and law-breakers as well as the common people begin to treat "conscience and morality" as "stupid & degrading fallacies", we know we are in big trouble.
Doesn't the deterioration and dismantling of morality and ethics in our society bother you just a little bit? It scares me no end! In the name of personal freedom and individual choice, we become like slaves to the latest moral (immoral?) standard. We resist authority and, by default, embrace anarchy.
Oh, dear! It's happened! I've started to sound like a prophet of doom! Next thing you know I'll be getting out the old soapbox and preaching up a hell-fire-and-brimstone storm. Oh, well, if that's what it takes to ring the alarm bells, disturb our apathy, challenge our helplessness and get some action, count me in. What about you?
