Facing Hard Times 

Living in a society under the judgement of God

Watching or reading the news in recent days unavoidably fills one with at least a sense of gloom, more likely one of foreboding. It is in the interest of the vast multi-billion pound news media we allow into our homes to create this sense of unease; the worse the news headline, the more likelihood that we will come back to check up on the next update  - and the next.

But there is a growing sense that this time they might have it right.

Changing culture

The slow-motion psychodrama of the Labour Party leadership competition, and thus the leadership of the country, is only the very visible tip of the iceberg. We just need to look at the latest local and national election results, which have seen a swathe of untried, untested and perhaps unsuitable candidates achieve office.

Throughout much of this century we have seen the infrastructure of the country decline; with housing, transport, health and defence all facing massive problems. Meanwhile, whilst these vital areas have been mismanaged or neglected, British citizens have witnessed what seems like a concentrated and successful effort to reconstruct the nation’s cultural viewpoint.

Unidentifiable Britain

Going, if not gone entirely in our educational institutions, are the standards of literature and history which gave us an idea of who we were as a people. Different yes, depending on our locality within Britain and our own interests and education, but still one, owing allegiance to a core concept of life together in Britain. Meanwhile our elites in Parliament, universities, and the media have been busy promoting ideologies that are alien to the British character and people.

British citizens have witnessed what seems like a concentrated and successful effort to reconstruct the nation’s cultural viewpoint.

The concept of an identifiable Britain, however nebulous, has gone. ‘Diversity, equality and inclusion’ has been employed as a steamroller to grind any opposition into the ground – and especially if that opposition is Christian or Christian-based. As historian Tom Holland has pointed out, we in the West are goldfish swimming in Christian waters, and most of us, whether Christians or not, still cling instinctively to the norms instilled by centuries of Christian morality. As the culture which is being replaced was consciously based upon Christian principles, conflict for the Christian is inevitable.

Islam unbounded

Alongside this, and part of it, is the fact that we have witnessed a horrifying, and unrealistic, not to say illusory, support for the spread of Islam. We have seen in too many areas, such as parts of London, the Midlands and North of England, that where the Muslim population grows, any hope of integration disappears. Islam does not seek to integrate but to dominate, and our cultural and political elites still remain blinded by the forlorn chimera of multiculturalism.

As a result of soft-pedalling Islam, we have the shocking reality of a school teacher from west Yorkshire who has been in hiding since 2021 because he offended Muslims by daring to show cartoons of the prophet Muhammad during a lesson on blasphemy. Streets can be blocked by Muslims at prayer, despite there being around 2, 000 mosques in the UK. An MP has been stabbed to death by a deranged Muslim. A soldier was beheaded on the street. Young people were murdered at a concert. Tens of thousands of white (and Sikh) girls have been gang raped.

Muslims can drive cars through Jewish neighbourhoods shouting that they will rape their wives and daughters. Synagogues have been attacked, ambulances burned, and Jews murdered. We have seen an exponential increase in anti-Semitism – most of it spawning from Islam.

We are in a battle for the soul of our nation.  

In response the police, like beggars pleading for a handout, attend mosques and timorously request that Muslims obey the law. Armed Muslim gangs are told no action will be taken against them if they store their weapons in the nearby mosque. 80 plus Sharia courts operate in the UK. Pakistani Muslim clan networks decide by-election results. Seventy-five per cent of MI5’s terrorist caseload are Islamic. More than 40,000 Muslims are on terror watch-lists. 

And what is the result of all this deeply disturbing activity? Our government drafts laws to make criticism of Islam a crime! You couldn’t make it up.

Battle for soul of our nation

If, as recent election results would indicate, the two-party system is dead, there is a straightforward reason for its demise – the simple fact that both Labour and Conservative have failed the British people. They have been too busy protecting and serving their own interests and as a result have neglected those of the ordinary British public. Political power is there to be used for the good of the people, not for its own sake as a prize for election winners.

If the British public has had enough, then that is entirely understandable. Ordinary citizens are looking around for leaders who will steer a course towards a vision of what our country should be like. The rise of populist parties – notably the Greens - with their rather radical and entirely unworkable visions of the future of Britain promise further turmoil. We are in a battle for the soul of our nation.  

 There is no area of human endeavour, individually or for a nation or a community, that God doesn’t care about. 

Our national churches, meanwhile, are emasculated by adherence to the delusion that aping the world in all its folly, and some of its wickedness, will bring about peaceful co-existence with that which should be shunned (I John 2:15-17). As a result, they have done all they can to bring Christianity into disrepute.

We who are Christ’s can no longer retreat into the atheist inspired ghetto that the Christian faith is something to be confined to church buildings or private conviction. Instead, like Abraham Kuyper, we should recognise that Christianity speaks into every area of human life and culture, There is not an inch of creation of which God does not say, “Mine”. There is no area of human endeavour, individually or for a nation or a community, that God doesn’t care about. 

Speaking out

It is possible that some Christians hesitate to engage publicly on moral or social and political issues on the grounds that it distracts from evangelism and makes believers appear judgmental. Yet believers are called not only to preach salvation through Jesus Christ, but also to demonstrate what they believe is good, just and true. There are times when it really is necessary to speak out.

There are times when it really is necessary to speak out.

We live in a narcissistic society that is awash with pornography, in which babies can be killed in the womb up until birth, where divorce is simplified and marriage redefined, where assisted suicide is coming, and where religious liberty and freedom of speech is under serious threat.

All this is an inevitable result of the rejection of our Christian roots. As Dostoevsky warned us in ‘The Brothers Karamazov’, “If there is no God, all things are permitted.”

We live in a society which is under God’s judgement. This deeply onerous situation behoves us, as children of God, to understand the times in which we live, to turn to Him, and hear from Him, that we might know how we should live and what we should do.

(image - c/o https://theaveragescientist.co.uk/)