This is a series on the erosion of moral, cultural, and ethical boundaries in modern society:
 
 ♦ Part 1 — Moving the Ancient Boundaries
 
 ♦ Part 2 — The Rebel & the Victim
 
 ♦ Part 3 — Undermining Civil Authority

Do not move the ancient boundary stone
   set up by your forefathers.

        – Proverbs 22:28 –

 ♦ The Assault on Religious Authority

Undermining the legitimacy of civil authority and mutating the role of government into an instrument for protecting personal licentiousness — while endlessly chasing solutions to the incorrigible problems thus generated — is a key element in the secular postmodern pursuit of a utopian dream of unbridled freedom without consequences. But it is not sufficient; other centers of authority must likewise be transformed to serve the individual over the common good, or neutralized to overcome their resistance to such trends.

Religion, which promotes transcendent values, and strives to restrain destructive individualism and promote the common good through the development of character strengths such as service, charity, self-restraint, and accountability, is a prime alternative source of authority to government — and serves to restrain its excesses and aberrant tendencies as well. As such it is a prime target for the individualist committed to promoting an unrestrained and unaccountable utopia, enforced by the levers of government power.

The assault on religion takes place on two fronts: from within and from without. Where religion proves vulnerable to such influences, its tenets must be reinterpreted to foster individual gratification and personal fulfillment at the expense of longstanding enduring principles which form its core teachings and traditions. This can be seen in abundance in mainline Protestant churches and liberal Catholicism and Judaism, where there is no longer mention of sin, no calls to personal righteousness and upright moral character, but instead a steady diet of the cheap grace of the social gospel, embracing nebulous but nice-sounding nostrums of social justice, peace, love, and tolerance — while eschewing the individual moral transformation without which such broader social goods are impossible to attain. The end result of this enucleation of core principles and their replacement with the social cause du jour results in religion indistinguishable from its government sibling: Mother Church and Father Bureaucracy pander to the profligate while raging endlessly yet emptily against the growing social evils sprouting from the very self-centered individualism they foster and promote.

But liberal religion is not alone in its inner assault on the moral beacon of transcendent and traditional faith. Equally corrosive is the influence of materialism and prosperity — a corruption found far more commonly in conservative fundamentalist churches. While maintaining an important emphasis on personal morality and character development, such churches pander perilously to greed and the delusion that faith is primarily a means to personal and financial comfort. Rejecting centuries of emphasis on the deep spiritual value of sacrifice and suffering, ignoring ages of warning about the spiritual dangers of wealth, they turn God into a cosmic vending machine, delivering tasty snacks, nutritionally vacuous — if only the proper coinage is inserted into the divine slot. Suffering from an illness? Just have enough faith, and you will be healed! Financial problems? God will make you wealthy — if you give generously to our ministry. Church pews empty? Rock bands and rejection of hard moral teachings will have them flocking to your doors in no time, with ears eager for tickling. When the promised healing fails to take place; when the assured prosperity doesn’t materialize, or doesn’t satisfy; when greedy, bejeweled ministers rape the poor and fleece the gullible, the salutary influence of the church on its culture and citizens is greatly depreciated. And in the process, the self-centered individual waxes strong, wandering adrift with diminished moral compass and warm emotionalism, while the church’s moral authority wanes and withers through frivolity and fecklessness.

The third way which religion itself can foster an erosion of respect for moral values and traditions is — paradoxically — by its involvement in politics. Western democracies, with varying degrees of success, have managed to separate the office of government from the orbit of religion, achieving — more so in the United States than in other Western democracies — a degree of separation of church and state highly unusual from a historical perspective. In its ideal form, citizens are free to practice the faith of their choosing without undue government intervention or censure. Religion, for its part, may opine on political matters, and people of faith may participate freely in the political process, but religion may not directly dictate government decisions or process.

But the line between free political expression of religious values and the attempt to impose religious values and virtue through the power and authority of government can prove treacherously vague for some. Frustrated by what is (accurately) perceived as moral decay in the culture, and the seeming impotence of individuals or government to stem this adverse tide, some religious leaders and their followers pursue the paths of political pressure and the enactment of legislation which attempts to enforce morality from above.

Such efforts, while often well-intentioned, invariably prove counterproductive for several reasons. The secular, post-modern culture is driven by a philosophy of imposing its ideas through power. This takes many forms: from the coercive effects of false consensus (as seen in politically-correct multiculturalism or environmentalism); to the mouthpiece of media, largely sympathetic to its aims and broad in its reach to a culture heavily influenced by sound bites and flashy graphics, eschewing thoughtful, in-depth, balanced analysis; to a judicial system where judges, themselves guided by relativism and subjectivism, find in the “emanations and penumbras” of the law and the constitution novel interpretations which undermine broadly-accepted cultural morality, traditions, and ethics. But above all the postmodern mindset seeks the power of government itself: a blunt club to enforce the tyranny of ideas through law and coercive regulation.

When religion moves into this political arena, where ideas are enforced from the top down through power and rule of law, it plays directly into the hands of postmodern culture

When religion moves into this political arena, where ideas are enforced from the top down through power and rule of law, it plays directly into the hands of postmodern culture, undermining religion’s own moral authority by becoming, in the eyes of secular culture, just another power center, forcing its will and control on others. It sacrifices the power of transcendent ideas, spiritual renewal, and eternal principles to the temporal goal of seeking behavior change without personal moral transformation. What religion in its highest form offers — the radical personal change, transmitted virally from one soul to another, percolating through the culture one soul at a time from the bottom up — is sacrificed on the altar of seeking cultural change without personal conviction. Top-down morality doesn’t work — it cannot work — and attempts to reform the culture by changing laws without changing hearts destroys the very power which religion offers to heal an ailing society lost in the pursuit of happiness through hedonism.

The nature of religion, however, when not co-opted and corrupted by culture, is to stand fast with beliefs and convictions of an eternal and enduring nature. When it resists the influences of dissipated society, countering the selfishness and depravity endemic in a morally-adrift culture, the invariable response is a full-fledged counter-assault on its institutions and values.

The attack may come in many forms, the most common being open antagonism, ridicule, pseudo-intellectual dismissal, and claims of hypocrisy.

Open antagonism toward religion is increasingly common in contemporary Western society. It is often manifested with the projection of ill motives — character traits highly visible in religion’s most vocal detractors — onto those who espouse moral stances against cultural erosion and decay. The correction is ill-received; the resulting hatred is palpable, vicious, and unrelenting. To speak out about the dangers of moral turpitude from a religious standpoint is to be a “hater,” “intolerant,” “ignorant,” “Puritanical,” an “extremist.” The narcissistic culture is tolerant of everything — except being called to task by anyone espousing moral absolutes or the importance of societal restraint and traditional value systems and ethics.

Relentlessly, by every medium — TV, film, music, print media, marketing — the message is driven home: moral relativism; sexual license; the insignificance, dysfunctionality, and oppressiveness of marriage; the sexualization of children; the cynicism about and depreciation of authority, government, religion — the secular culture pounds home its message, day and night, an inescapable barrage which normalizes the perverse and erodes the common traditions which are fibers binding and protecting the social fabric.

Yet dare to question the morality of sacrificing the unborn on the altar of sexual license; or challenge the wisdom of replacing the institution of marriage with the vast social experiment of gay and polyamorous unions; or express caution about giving physicians the power to terminate the sick, you will receive the inevitable response:

“Stop shoving your values down our throats!”

Whose values? Whose throats?

To kill the prophet justifies the profligate, restoring the requisite self-righteousness required to quench the fading embers of a dying moral discernment.

When the culture and its constituents react so, with hyperbolic hysteria and foaming-mouth maliciousness, it is a sure indicator that the heart of darkness has been seared; that there remains — while vastly diminished — some thin wisp of conscience and moral consciousness in the midst of burgeoning barbarism. The extreme reaction serves but one purpose: to destroy the messenger. To kill the prophet justifies the profligate, restoring the requisite self-righteousness required to quench the fading embers of a dying moral discernment.

Ridicule of religion also serves to undermine its authority, and its chief promoters live in the arts and popular media. Rarely a week goes by without some “controversial” artist displaying their “edgy” work of “art” — creative genius the likes of a crucifix in urine, or dung on a Madonna, or a naked chocolate Jesus, or video games shooting homicidal Jesus Christs. That such displays of artistic incompetence stopped being controversial long ago is perhaps the culture’s greatest condemnation, evincing a joyless, vapid, vacuous society amused only by its own fecal fetishes, and shocked by nothing, nothing at all.

The bread and circus crowd finds endless amusement as well in depicting religious people and clergy in the most cynical light possible; in sit-coms and movies, standup and media, the religious play the fool: always uneducated, always hypocritical, always priggish, always bigoted, always self-righteous. Profanity replaces comic proficiency; such tired tirades lost their ability to shock and amuse long ago, leaving only a weary, joyless irony, a sad self-satisfying cynicism playing laugh tracks to drown out the dying moans of their empty souls.

The pseudo-intellectuals come next behind the shouters and the clowns, their furrowed brows creased with the burden of finding new “discoveries” which cast “serious doubt” on old dogmas. They receive as their just deserts some few minutes of fame, enshrined on the cover of Newsweek or expounding their tautological tactates in the pages of Time. They are treated with nodding reverence by all who share their unspoken biases, their conviction that the spiritual is specious, that faith is foolishness, that religion is ridiculous. And thus the culture marvels to discover, yet anew, that Jesus was married to Magdeline, that Judas was a just man, that the Church’s martyrs and crusaders died for a secret conspiracy, that bizarre ancient Gnostic texts hold the real truth which the religious hierarchy expunged to protect their power and privilege. That such libel defies logic, that many lights infinitely brighter than our current “scholars” have utterly shredded their threadbare theories and feeble facts, is lost on a culture too indifferent to care, too lazy to check, and too intellectually ill-equipped to refute.

Bringing up the rear in this insane clown posse are the hypocrisy-mongers. Theirs are the eyes of eagles, ever scanning the landscape for evidence of hypocrisy among the righteous. Of this there is no shortage, of course — especially among those who have traded the quiet strength of personal faith for the center stage of political activism or prosperity ministries. But true hypocrisy — the closet gay minister preaching hellfire for homosexuals; the televangelist preaching chastity by day while chasing whores by night; the embezzler who exhorts the flock to honesty and integrity — need not be present to merit the crooked finger of accusation from these vigilant guardians of secular integrity. For hypocrisy is in the eye of the monger. Straw men abound; the religious are “haters” when they point out that homosexual behavior poses grave risks to body, soul, and spirit — and how can they then speak of “love”? The religious are “judgmental” to say that all men are sinners — and hypocrites when they themselves sin. They are prudes when they reject sexual immorality — and hypocrites when a sex-saturated culture lures them to fail. They are hypocrites when they oppose feel-good social programs which bind their recipients in poverty, and failure, and broken families; hypocrites when they oppose womens’ “health” by opposing abortion; hypocrites when they “put teens at risk” by opposing condom distribution in schools. Those who charge such hypocrisy are themselves never guilty of it, of course; you cannot be a hypocrite when you have no principles to begin with.

There are those who wish for the end of all religion, finding in this passionate longing the hope of a world of peace, and harmony, and brotherhood. There are many more who work towards this goal, tirelessly, chiseling away at its foundations, hoping to crumble its ancient towers. They may yet succeed — at least insofar as a culture sterilized of all traces of religious influence and speech embodies such success. And they then will cast about in blind fury when crushed by the falling stones of the artifice they have worked so diligently to destroy.

The heart of darkness is bound by the chains of churches and the fetters of faith. Woe to those who break those shackles to unleash the savage monster which dwells within.

This is a series on the erosion of moral, cultural, and ethical boundaries in modern society:
 
 ♦ Part 1 — Moving the Ancient Boundaries
 
 ♦ Part 2 — The Rebel & the Victim

Do not move the ancient boundary stone
   set up by your forefathers.

        – Proverbs 22:28 –

 
In prior posts, we began to examine some of the many ways which a society will evolve and act if it seeks to move the ancient boundaries, to chip away at absolutes, principles, and tradition in order to create a new utopia grounded in narcissism and libertinism. Here, I will continue to illustrate the means whereby an increasingly individualistic and relativistic society, having lost its moorings in faith, absolute principles, and tradition, undermines its own foundations. This post will address the undermining of civil authority and government; the next, the assault on religious authority.
 
 ♦ The Assault on Civil Authority

Authority in Western society serves — at least in theory — the people whom it governs. As embodied in government, it exists to protect, to preserve societal order and norms, and to promote the common good. It functions to protect individual members of society from harm from its renegade members, from natural dangers, such as fire or natural disasters, from large societal upheaval such as riots and civil unrest, and from threats to national security or sovereignty. This authority is embodied in both law and the necessary authorized force to restrain the destructive and centrifugal forces in society and maintain civil order.

But law and legal force alone cannot restrain such evil tendencies, short of enforcing a despotic and tyrannical rule which is the antithesis of democracy and freedom. To function optimally, authority must be based on a shared tradition of self-restraint and ethical behavior, operating under the common denominator that the good of society as a whole outweighs individual desires and priorities — and delegating the enforcement of the common good to those in authority when individual license violates societal norms and standards.

In an age of narcissistic individualism, then, authority must be undermined, for it represents a constraint and impediment to the utopian vision of ultimate human freedom posited in unrestricted individual license. For the individualist, personal gain always trumps the common good. The view of authority in such radical individualism is changed: its goal now primarily — if not exclusively — protection of the individual’s rights, and secondarily, the mitigation of the inevitable consequences of such self-centered behavior. In societies where such individualism becomes preeminent, we see the evolution of authority primarily into the guarantor of autonomy and the guarantee of relief from its effects.

There are many instances in modern culture where such an effect can be seen. We see civil authority increasingly protecting irresponsible sexual behavior, through promotion of “safe sex” to children and young adults, and through an aversion to promoting sexual abstinence before marriage in schools and government-funded health clinics. Normalization of same-sex relationships has also been encouraged by laws prohibiting hate crimes (disproportionately applied against crimes against homosexuals and racial minorities, never enforced with crimes against whites and Christians), as well as statutes prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation — even among those whose religious and moral values find such behavior destructive and morally dangerous. Such policies arise and are influenced by the assumption that unmarried teenagers and adults will inevitably be sexually active, and should not be discouraged from doing so, and that all forms of sexual relationships are equally valid and utterly harmless.

At the same time, research for curing AIDS is funded at levels far exceeding its risk to the general population, and government increasingly provides financial support for the consequences of sexual incontinence, destigmatizing the status of unwed mothers and funding the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. While such programs are not inherently wrong, they nevertheless serve to mitigate the adverse consequences of irresponsible sexual actions and reduce in some measure society’s inhibition of such potentially destructive behavior.

In like manner, government has weakened the preservation and protection of traditional marriage over recent decades through the liberalization of divorce laws. At the same time it finds itself struggling to address large increases in crime, child abuse, poverty, gangs, and drug use — many of which are markedly increased by a rising rate of divorce. It may well be appropriate for government to address such problems — but it has clearly also exacerbated them by favoring individual autonomy — the virtual lifting of restrictions on divorce and extramarital sexual relations — at the expense of larger social good. Government must now increasingly pick up the pieces resulting from the very change in direction brought about by its own laws and policies.

Long gone is the idea that an individual has a responsibility for his or her own actions, or that one has a responsibility to community well-being over personal self-interest. We now expect government to place no restrictions whatsoever on behavior which we deem personally fulfilling but which is often quite detrimental at the societal level. We then demand increasing government solutions to the social consequences of lifting these very restrictions.

The age of great legislators, those who pursued national interest over personal gain and political power, is long gone — for the citizens no longer cherish such values.

It was in the 1960′s and 70′s when we began to hear, with drumbeat regularity, that we must “always question authority,” and “never trust anyone over 30.” This heady, self-righteous individualism felt liberating at the time: surely the young know better than the old, the individual was wiser than the institutions of government. It was an attitude, in no small measure, brought forth by some measure of government deceit and malfeasance, such as occurred with Watergate and with the inept prosecution of the Vietnam war. But the true irony was that this relentless assault on the authority of government — amplified by the megaphone media, who had much to gain by the assault (themselves gaining newfound power and influence) — led not to less government deceit but more, and made the prosecution of war and foreign policy nearly impossible, by constantly assuming that all such high government decisions were rooted in dark personal and political motives rather than the highest national interest.

Government of the people is subject to moral lapse — for it is comprised of individuals who are morally flawed. But for government to function well in a free society, there must be broad-based presumption of good intent: we must believe that government is acting for our best interests, while always recognizing its potential to go astray. The narcissistic culture always operates from the position of pure self-interest — and projects this motive onto others, small and large. The individual cares only about his own desires — and therefore assumes government must always be serving its own interests at its citizens’ expense. The narcissistic culture cares nothing about others — and therefore seeks a government which cares only about lifting all restriction on personal behavior while eliminating all personal responsibility, and offloading the resulting consequences onto others. This corruption percolates upward from citizens to those serving in government. The age of great legislators, those who pursued national interest over personal gain and political power, is long gone — for the citizens no longer cherish such values. We very much get the government we deserve — because we are the government, and we, like Alice in Wonderland, have grown very small indeed, moral midgets in a dark and ever more dangerous world.

As radical individualism molds government in its own image, it not only increases the number and complexity of difficult social problems it needs to address — it also greatly impairs government’s ability to resolve these problems. As citizens, and the public servants they elect, become increasingly unwilling to make personal or collective sacrifices based on principle for the common good, leadership responds instead with solving smaller and largely insignificant problems, while passing symbolic solutions and non-binding resolutions to address the large and growing societal cancers which pose a far greater threat to the society at large. So we get legislation promoting school uniforms and midnight basketball, while ignoring –or passing band-aid legislation to address — Social Security’s impending bankruptcy, a health care system imploding under the weight of staggering over-regulation and vast numbers of uninsured patients, or a failing educational system which spews out students well-versed in feminist deconstructionism but utterly incapable of making reasoned, ethical decisions in the arenas of personal or civic life.

The risk grows even greater with external threats to national security, as elected leadership becomes paralyzed executing military action necessary for defense against mortal enemies. War in the post-modern age is a media circus, virtually impossible to wage with the ferocity necessary to deter and defeat ruthless and amoral enemies. Postmodern media shows every car bomb, “bravely” photographs terrorist snipers hard at work murdering American troops, and flaunts videos of flag-draped caskets. But the media, having fully co-opted the message of moral relativism and the value of selfish individualism over the common good, has neither the interest nor the aptitude to examine broader moral themes, to consider issues of just conflicts and proper national defense, or to pass proper judgment on flagrant evil. They exult instead in self-congratulatory displays of non-judgmental moral equivalence, ensuring that their audience can quickly avert their eyes from the deadly threat which endangers them. Thus American idealism suffers while American Idol soars.

The life lived in self-absorption is pervasively corrosive, dismantling the foundations of free democratic society in its blind pursuit of pleasure at the expense of principle, comfort at the cost of character. We are increasingly ungovernable because we refuse to be governed. We are receiving what we have demanded — and it will never satisfy us, and threatens to destroy us.

This is a series on the erosion of moral, cultural, and ethical boundaries in modern society:
 
 ♦ Part 1 — Moving the Ancient Boundaries

Do not move the ancient boundary stone set up
   by your forefathers.

        – Proverbs 22:28 –

 
The societal trend evident today — the gradual and progressive shift from spirituality and faith-based life principles, to scientific secular rationalism, and ultimately to postmodernism, which is the triumph of tribalism, radical individualism, and emotionalism over faith and reason — has many manifestations. The frantic pace of a society filled with countless pressures and endless distractions permits us at best to focus only on the immediate details of our lives — jobs, children, hobbies and activities. Rarely do we take the time to stand back from our culture and society at large to contemplate the profound changes taking place around us. We wake up one day wondering how things have changed so profoundly, with a sense of discomfort over where we are and confusion about where we they are headed.

As our society drifts away from core principles and absolutes established by faith, culture, and tradition, it has done so in a manner which is subtle, yet highly effective. Many of the ways in which this cultural shift has taken place are ancient; many more are a function of a technologically advanced and media-saturated environment. The underlying forces which erode the safeguards which have protected and stabilized society for centuries are not new; they are, however, more rapid and effective in a culture distracted by material wealth, information saturation, and instant gratification.

This erosion of ancient mores and societal restraints is not some grand conspiracy, some conscious secular crusade to destroy moral values, absolutes, and the pillars of tradition. The forces which batter and belittle absolutes, right and wrong, and the moral law are the inevitable outcome of man detached from divine transcendence. Man of necessity and nature must worship something — which is to say, he must serve, honor, or follow some principles or philosophy of life. While many entities vie for the allegiance and service of man, in its most fundamental sense man must submit either the transcendent Other outside of, and higher than, himself — or submit only to his own inner compass, which spins ever aimlessly, seeking a non-existent true north.

The secular mentality has made its choice — albeit in increments almost imperceptibly tiny — to place as its highest value human intellect and human self-interest. The god of modern man is man himself, in all his intellectual glory, hubris, and narcissism. The vast advances in science and knowledge have made a transcendent God disposable and dispensable — scientifically unprovable, but a figment and quaint creation of a more ignorant, superstitious age. Man now possesses, in his own mind, the intellectual capability and tools to shape the world as he wishes. As such, all restraints become restrictions, all laws become limitations to human potential. We reason that the ancient boundaries must fall, for they are barriers to human progress. Ignorance has replaced evil at the heart of human failure and shortcomings — and hence pursuit of knowledge has replaced the precepts of absolutes and the guidance and wisdom of generations preceding us, as the sole standard for human behavior and progress.

There are no clearcut guidelines or instruction manuals for corroding the culture from within. So, being of a civic frame of mind, it occurred to me that I might write one — or something akin to one, a Screwtape Letters for a screwed-up culture, if you will (with apologies to C.S. Lewis, of course). So here are some of the many ways which you might follow if you wish to move the ancient boundaries, to chip away at absolutes, principles, and tradition in order to create a new utopia grounded in narcissism and libertinism:

 ♦ Find a Rebel

If you want to push the boundaries, to challenge the status quo, to make tradition and principles seem outdated and restrictive, then you should find yourselves a rebel. Not any rebel, mind you — but a very talented one. It is important that the rebel have broad appeal, be it in the area of physical beauty, wealth, musical talent, artistic skill, or comedy. Find a movie star, a talented actor or actress — and you have a perfect platform, the silver screen, from which to promote a hedonistic lifestyle, the glories of unlimited wealth, or the fanciful and exotic religious or cultic interest.

Your star need not be particularly intelligent, as long as they are beautiful, talented, and wealthy. This way, they gain vast exposure in film and media, and you will be allowed only to focus on the benefits of their life choices, while ignoring the consequences. New wife every few months? No problem, they are simply seeking happiness and personal satisfaction. Having children outside of a stable marriage — or outside of marriage altogether? Be sure to emphasize how enchanted they are by their new baby, how the child will have every advantage in life (except, of course, a stable home, discipline, and time with the parents who are too busy jet-setting around the world). Sexual promiscuity? Well, what the world needs now, is love, sweet love.

One need not be one of the beautiful people to be a successful rebel. The comedic genius of Lenny Bruce was immense — but entirely focused on the goal of normalizing profanity, pushing the boundaries of sexual language and profanity, and hatred of religion, especially Christianity. Of course, by pushing the limits society is prodded to respond — and by doing so creates a martyr. Repeatedly arrested for profanity and coarse language in public, Bruce was glorified by those who wanted no restriction on such speech and therefore bemoaned his “persecution” by authorities and a Puritanical culture. When he killed himself with alcohol and drugs, the fruition of a pointless life, he was enthroned as an idol by “free speech” proponents everywhere — and remains so even today.

Like the arts and media, music is another excellent medium in which to find a rebel: rock music in particular draws them like bugs to a light bulb. Combine musical talent with a message of sexual license, drugs, violence, or rebellion, and you have an excellent vehicle for pounding your message home through iPod ear buds. And the rebel–musical or otherwise–need not suffer any real persecution or hardship to ennoble their righteous rebellion: Michael Stipe of R.E.M. can sing of America as under occupation or call for revolution while making millions, living in grand mansions, and flying on private jets. Some revolutionary, some “occupation,” this. Yet his musical talent, and that of others like him, drives the message home methodically through clever musical hooks, complex rhythms, power chords and witty lyrics.

The key attraction of the rebel is their embodiment of the idea that all authority is a restriction of human freedom. By tying a visually appealing lifestyle, physical beauty, or artistic talent with the “freedom” which comes from rejecting the restraints requisite for a civil and peaceful society, narcissism and individualism are thereby elevated above the self-sacrifice, responsibility, and the restraint which a healthy relational community requires.

 ♦ Make Ample Use of Victims

Our natural empathy as human beings can be used as a powerful tool for breaking down societal restraints, traditions and moral principles. The key is to play on people’s fears while you manipulate their compassion, always offering a simplistic solution to a difficult problem.

First, you must find a case which best exemplifies the need to move the boundary. Norma McCorvey, a poor, single Texas woman who claimed to have been gang-raped (a claim she later repudiated), and who could not afford an illegal abortion, served as the catalyst for Roe v. Wade decision. Euthanasia proponents will always put forth the terminal cancer patient in intractable pain, or the end-stage ALS patient, presenting assisted suicide or euthanasia as the compassionate solution, driven home by showing heart-breaking pictures of their slow, agonizing demise. Parenteral notification laws for minors seeking abortions must be opposed because “not all teens come from perfect families,” and because they “put teens’ health and rights at risk” — thereby making the underage teen a victim if she is not allowed to abort her pregnancy without her parents’ knowledge. If you wish to blur the distinction between good and evil be sure to point out how the perpetrator of some horrible crime was abused as a child. How many times have we heard that the root cause of crime is poverty? Poor people should take great offense at such shallow and baseless accusations.

The anecdotal victim you have chosen must then be generalized to the whole, always couched in terms of “freedom” and “rights”: the woman must be free to choose; the suffering have a right to end their lives as they wish; children must be free to have abortions lest their parents abuse and beat them. All who oppose such changes must be portrayed as intolerant, hateful, uncaring, or religious fanatics, caricatured in simplistic slogans: “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries;” “Hate is not a family value;” “Equal rights are not special rights.”

The answers proposed to resolve the victim’s “oppression” invariably invoke a false dichotomy: we must provide condoms in schools or face teenage pregnancy; abortion must be legal and easily available or coat hangers will be back in fashion, killing untold thousands; euthanasia must be legal or everyone will die in agony, without dignity, hooked up to machines. Legitimate alternatives to these solutions must be dismissed, ridiculed, or ignored, or treated as heartless and hateful: discouraging teenage sexual promiscuity is impossible; unwed mothers must never be criticized for lifestyle choices which condemn them and their children to a life of poverty and privation; preventing the suicide of the suffering is cruel and heartless; compassion and support for the dying is an unreasonable “burden.”

If you cannot find a suitable victim, then you must create one — or better yet, invent a whole class of victims. This is most easily done through the use of statistics or “facts” — which can be pure fabrication, becoming true only by virtue of their repetition. Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a founder of the pro-choice N.A.R.A.L. organization, in his eye-opening book Aborting America (p.193), tells of the origin of the oft-cited figure of 5,000-10,000 annual abortion-related deaths prior to its legalization:

How many deaths were we talking about when abortion was illegal? In N.A.R.A.L., we generally emphasized the drama of the individual case, not the mass statistics, but when we spoke of the latter it was always “5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year.” I confess that I knew the figures were totally false … But in the “morality” of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics? … In the last year before the Blackmun era [Roe v. Wade] began, in 1972, the total [abortion-related fatalities] was only 39 deaths.

Ahh, the beauty of postmodernism: when there are no absolutes, “truth” can be molded like putty into any desirable shape or form, in order to serve the higher good of removing restrictions to desired behavior. Therefore, abortion must be legalized, not for its real utility in mitigating the consequences of licentious sexual activity, but rather to prevent the “cruel, unnecessary deaths of 10,000 women a year.” The tables have been turned: those who oppose abortion now become guilty of the slaughter of the innocents, while those who support it are protecting the true victims: 10,00 mythical murdered mothers, coat hangers clutched in their cold, dead hands.

Slick.

These are but two of the many means which push back the boundaries of societal mores and ethics, substituting relativism and individualism for the integrity of solid boundaries based on absolutes, ethical consensus, and moral values which are transcendent rather than transient.

There are many more, to be explored in days forthcoming, as the series continues.

Do not move the ancient boundary stone set up
    by your forefathers.
        – Proverbs 22:28 –

 
Ancient wisdom: a sage injunction uttered in a time when simple shepherds and farmers parsed out land for grazing and grain, speaking to the prudence of respecting contracts, negotiated agreements with those with whom we live, to abide in a measure of peace. Be honest; respect the property and possessions of those with whom you must abide; do not trade peaceful relations for parcels of land.

Yet like so much of this ancient book of Proverbs, its well runs far deeper than it appears, with ageless wisdom waiting for the discerning, those open to its application in different days and other ages. And so it seems that we, as a culture, have been hard at work for decades, if not longer, moving the boundary stones set up by our forefathers. These markers today are not simple rocks in fields or walls on hills to mark water rights or restrain wandering sheep, but are rather the cultural and moral underpinnings of that which we call Western civilization. We are busy cutting wood from the pilings to add garlands to the gables, and wondering why the house leans so far off vertical.

We have, for the better part of a generation, been hard at work hammering away at the underpinnings of Western culture, attacking and dismantling the restraints and boundaries established by many hundreds of years of religious and cultural influence–and have done so, almost ironically, in the name of freedom and liberty. Look back a mere 50 years, and gaze at a cultural landscape drastically different: divorce is uncommon; most children grow up in homes with two parents (always of the opposite sex); sex outside of marriage is strongly censured; pregnancy outside of marriage something shameful. In one generation–though culturally, it seems like a millennium–child abuse, both physical and sexual–have gone from rare to common; serial killers have gone from isolated horrors to the grist of weekly crime TV. School shootings, then unheard of, now depressingly common; newspapers are replete with stories of congressmen soliciting sex from underage pages, buying votes with prodigious pork and sleazy paybacks, or freezing 6-figure bribes in their kitchen Sub-Zeros. Language has coarsened immensely; political discourse is brutal, dishonest, and personal; respect for professions, authority, and government are at a nadir, and dropping rapidly with no bottom in sight.

Of course, such things are by no means new–profligate behavior is as old as man himself. And many cultures, both ancient and modern, have done little to restrain such errant impulses in man–but have thereby suffered the consequence of a resulting legacy of societal chaos and primitive cultural progress, or brutal tyranny to keep anarchy in check. But Western civilization, in contrast, provided the unique ingredients to maximize the potential for man while restraining his darker side.

The crowning achievement of Western civilization is not democracy, as one might suppose–for democracy had been tried in ancient Greece, and later in Rome, with decidedly mixed results: logos alone proved insufficient for rule by the people. It was instead the elevation of the value of the individual and the recognition of the true nature of man: made in God’s image, and therefore capable of great glory and goodness, but fallen, and therefore capable of great evil. This dawning realization and revelation was the gift of the Christianization of Europe, carrying forward to a barbarian land not merely the reason of the Greeks and the moral framework of Judaism (monotheism and the centrality of law in restraining moral errancy), but augmenting it with the Christian emphasis on mercy and forgiveness, redemption and the importance of the individual in God’s design and creation.

Thus was developed–in fits and starts, with many wrong turns over hundreds of years–a system of both society and government highly suited to the progress of man, economically, judicially, intellectually, and spiritually. A system of justice grew up which deterred individual behavior detrimental to individuals and society, while protecting the innocent from capricious punishment and preserving the hope for reform and correction of the wayward. Economic principles based on just and honest commerce and the freedom of the individual to advance himself through hard work–viewed as much as a service to God as for personal gain–led to a growth in prosperity never before seen in history. The belief that the universe was created by a good and rational Being gave rise to the scientific and mathematical disciplines, further advancing both knowledge and material prosperity. The establishment of the contract and commitment of the institution of marriage–strongly promoted by the Church–gave stability and protection to the raising of children, providing a framework wherein faith, morals, integrity, and personal responsibility could be instilled in subsequent generations. Moral and ethical restraints, their origins in religious faith and tradition, were thereby inculcated not only in individuals but by extension throughout society as a whole. Hence society adopted much of the ethic of the Church, even though not every member of society was a member thereof nor believed in its dogmas. There was widespread consensus that such boundaries and guideposts served societal good as a whole while restraining the destructive impulses of man.

But within the burgeoning progress and prosperity of Western culture lay the seeds of its own demise. For the success of science and technology–driven by the underlying assumption of a logical and discoverable universe created by a rational God–gave increasing credence to the idea that it was reason alone which was responsible for the West’s cultural advancement–and therefore the key to its unlimited enlargement. The Age of Reason, the Enlightenment, and the subsequent Industrial Revolution increasingly segregated faith from reason, rejecting knowledge not empirically obtained and thereby diminishing the influence of more transcendent and spiritual disciplines and insights. With the dawning of the microprocessor age, the rate of information accumulation and technological progress has accelerated to light speed–far outstripping Western society’s ability to integrate such vast knowledge into any meaningful transcendent worldview. Driving electrons through silicon at lightspeed has not driven away evil; you cannot fight perdition with faster processors. The modern secular mind sees the solution to evil in knowledge: we may conquer evil (equated with ignorance in the secular mind) with the acquisition of greater reason and understanding. But reason is morally neutral: science may kill or heal, knowledge may decode the human genome or destroy a Hiroshima.

The marginalization of religion and faith in modern Western culture has not been one of simple attrition, with religion falling far behind in addressing the deep fault lines gaping ominously in a technological world; religion has always positioned itself as that most capable of providing such answers, though not all faiths have done so effectively, and some even destructively. There has been instead an aggressive secular evangelism, actively seeking to strip all religious and spiritual influence and impact from the culture, pursuing the dream that by higher knowledge alone we may reach some Utopian vision of an enlightened mankind. To reach this goal, each ancient boundary stone set in place by religion with its moral and ethical restraints and transcendent principles must be moved, that the secular vision of true human freedom through higher knowledge may triumph.

G.K Chesterton, writing a century ago, understood the mindset of today’s secular culture:

Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church … we hardly excuse the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all.

The process whereby these barricades are stormed and toppled–subtly, relentlessly, and mercilessly–is not difficult to discern, if one simply takes the time to look. Over the next few posts, I hope to chronicle the means and methods of this erosion. Such an examination is not merely academic; the pursuit of gnosis without the guidance of faith and transcendent truth leads not to lofty pinnacles of human achievement but threatens instead a dark age of sterile knowledge and unrestrained power.