The story of any society is the story of its primary beliefs and fundamental ideas about the nature of reality. For a long time in America and in the West, those primary beliefs were significantly shaped by Biblical (Judeo-Christian) teaching. Now, that is less and less true. A new fundamental belief system (virtually religious in the way it functions in society and culture) is becoming more and more dominant in the inevitable contest of ideas.
And so for example, the Old Wisdom said that man was fallen, and thus there was a strong current of evil and folly at the core of his nature that kept leading him to choose self-destroying and shalom-shattering ways. The "New" Way of Thinking teaches that human beings are basically good, and following one's own heart is the best course to take in the whole range of choices that one faces in life.
But even apart from divine revelation, how anyone, in light of the actual events of human history (including current events), and the honest assessment of one's own heart, and in light of the increasing manifestations of folly and vice in popular culture and media -- how anyone, defying all this evidence, can seriously maintain that human beings are essentially good is incomprehensible to me.
The "New" Beliefs may well prevail in the clash of the core ideas that shape the West; but the Old Reality will still play out too....we will reap what we have sown.
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