Ozwitness

Here in Britain there is great concern about the number of knife crimes.  Just watching the news brings another death  – a young man stabbed in the heart. Such stabbings don’t happen by accident; it could not be a blow dealt in self-defence.

Then I was brought a poem written by someone suffering from depression. It started, “”It’s me, not you…”” and went on to reflect a very introspective concern with trying to find a way out of the black dog of depression, which obviously wished the author dead, a cry for help which has become very common these days, especially among the young.

In my own country, Australia, the similar figures for self-harm and even suicide among the very young are worse than alarming, and this can be traced back to the results of drink, drugs, and often, child sexual abuse.

I cast my mind back, and ask my family if they remember anything like that occurring in the days of their youth. Thy cannot. It is simply a symptom of a sick society where lawlessness, drink, drugs, pornography and evil have gained such a grip that some people feel lost and can see no way out of their sad circumstances.

Have we arrived at this by accident? No. We have brought it all about ourselves as a society, by our rejection of all moral authority. It used to be, not long ago, that people understood the difference between right and wrong. In those days every school in Britain had by law to include a dominantly Christian religious assembly in the morning. As a teacher I listened to and gave many myself. Youngsters learned that right and wrong were determined by the Ten Commandments, given by God…  And as a result, authority still existed in schools, in the police force, and the laws of the land, as well as in the self discipline which stemmed from that recognition of a God who determined right from wrong.

All of this is no more. Today it is all about “”me, my ‘Facebook’, self-respect, my ‘rights’,  no matter how evil, and the result is lack concern for others, the concern of which is actually the only way out of the depression which afflicts so many in society. Read about that choice in Leviticus 26, or Deuteronomy 28, and find the Way to overcome depression and gain the moral compass we all need.

Deuteronomy 28:1, ‘Now if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God and are careful to follow all His commandments I am giving you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you, if you will obey the voice of the LORD your God:’…..

But, Deuteronomy 28:15, ‘If, however, you do not obey the LORD your God by carefully following all His commandments and statutes I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:’……

Where did Political Correctness come from?  When we think about it, PC has not been around that long, indeed I don’t rememberer its existence  50 years ago.

It was only really after the end of the 2nd world war that Britain began to lead the way in departing  from the law that had guided her for many hundreds of years – British Common Law, largely created in the period after the Norman ConQuest. Sir Francis Bacon long ago said, “”The Law of England is not taken out of Amadis  de Gaul, nor the book of Palmerin, but out of the Scripture…””   I’m sure most of us can recognise the influence of the Ten Commandments upon our laws even to this day.

The equality of all people before the Law, for example, is another of its legacies, but  the Bible’s  influence upon society began to wane with the Theory of Evolution, and by the 1950’s the churches were on the decline, and even the laws of the land relating to property, marriage and sexual relations all came under criticism and eventually, change.

But the removal of respect for Biblical Law and the resultant changes brought more problems than had been imagined. It seemed that the replacement of biblical principles with ever more detailed acts of parliament brought unintended consequences. Too often the victims of crime were punished while the criminals went free, and child abuse, one parent families, juvenile crime and women’s refuges increased enormously, while all sorts of sexual deviations which could not contribute to society as did marriage, flaunted their pride.

Still worse, Britain’s power, prosperity and position in the world declined, while our deluded leaders led us into Europe and allowed ‘every man and his dog’ into the country unchecked, to satisfy their one world ambitions.

When we stand back and look over these years, we see the consequences of our departure from biblically originated Law, and if we have eyes to see, it is hard not to recognise it as a curse, so who has benefitted,  in Britain and Britains ex-colonies around the world?

Only one is delighted at the success of his influence;

‘Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.’  New Living Translation. 2 Corinthians 4:4