Recently I saw three young men in a shopping centre, with their faces fully tattooed. They were completely unrecognisable. One of them even had on his forehead in large letters, 666. I could only see their eyes through all the dark disfiguring ink. People all around me stared in horror and unbelief and shook their heads. Their unspoken words conveyed the thought: How could someone do this to themselves.
I withdrew and realised that these three men were an allegory of a society gone wrong. This was not just individualism, but rather unbridled rebellion, where graffiti is no longer to be found on the walls of the city, but rather on the faces of men. All our Relativism, Post Modernism and Rationalism has no answer to a society producing this social disregard and contempt for anyone else.
I realised that day how much society has changed just in my lifetime. The age of innocence is over. The age of reason is here. I hardly recognise the world from the reference point of my teenage years.
People have been conditioned to believe that desire is the highest law, that license to do whatever you want is liberty, and that man is accountable only to himself. This anarchy is legitimised by unrestrained media output dominated by immorality, nudity, and filthy language. We have replaced decency with decadence. Good is now bad, and bad is now acceptable. Restless turbulent spirits who previously were regarded as a continual blight on society, are now celebrated as influencers in this irreverent new world.
My kids are growing up in a world without manners, with disregard for adults, with contempt for parents and rules, and off-course with no spiritual belief system on which to anchor their morality. Education, Psychology, Science and Political Correctness have failed us. The world today doesn’t so much need people of greater intellect, as those of true moral character.
The Good Book says: For the influence of this world will all its lust and passion is passing away, but He that regards the will of God will live forever. 1 John 2:17
© Rui Coelho
