Hatred is often directed towards the things that are closest
to us: Christianity and Western Civilization, the principles that had once made
the West great.
Why? These provide the criteria by which we judge ourselves.
If we feel judged - and to some degree all of us feel judged - we ordinarily
hate the source of these judgments.
For instance, capitalism represents the demand that we
succeed and the threat of failure, while Christianity represents the accusing
finger which convicts us for failing to maintain its moral standards.
I too had been a hater. Consequently, I embraced the counter
cultural and those who belonged to it.
Before Charles Manson had moved to LA, where collected his
band of assassins who murdered on his behalf, he stayed with my roommate and I
in Berkeley, California. Bob, my college roommate, had met Charlie on the
Berkeley campus one night for an impromptu jam session. Bob played his guitar
and Charlie found a can for his drum. At the end, Charlie asked Bob, “Do you
have a place where I can crash?” We had a couch in our living room, and so Bob
invited him back.
Charlie was a talker,
and we were glad to listen. He seemed to be quite “evolved,” so we thought he
was cool. He talked about dropping acid and dancing with the energy of the
surrounding trees, and killing cops, but that was what the “Woke” folks were
also talking about, and so we enthusiastically listened. He never showed any
interest in us or in what we were thinking, but why should he!
We never thought of him as a psychopath. One night, Bob
slipped into my room to excitedly ask me, “Who does Charlie remind you of?” I
told him I didn’t know. Bob continued, “Doesn’t he remind you of Jesus Christ?”
Annoyed, I answered, “Bob, I’m Jewish, and Jesus doesn’t trigger any image for
me.”
Why were we not able to see Charlie as the psychopath he
evidently was? And how was his subsequent group of women, who accepted him as a
Christ figure, unable to see the disconnect? We were possessed with the
zeitgeist of the sixties, and the past and its lessons were no longer relevant
for us. We were also driven by the pressures to conform to what we experienced
as oppressive. Therefore, we were receptive to the approaching new age where
love and peace would reign. We were ready to reject the ancient repressive
restrictions of Christianity in favor of the Age of Aquarius and free love. The
choice was easy.
Similarly, we can also ask how the cult leader, Jim Jones,
had succeeded in luring almost 1000 idealists to commit suicide. And how was Adolph
Hitler able to take control of the minds of a highly educated nation, perhaps
the most educated nation in the world? He proved that even “education” is no defense
against the insanity of our age.
The Manson girls had been in denial as they murdered their
innocent victims. Is it possible that we too can be similarly blinded by our
social context?
Even now, educated Westerners are celebrating Shariah Law,
although it undermines the human rights that Westerners value, and seeks to
even destroy the West, along with perhaps the most debunked and genocidal
philosophy of Marxism. Why? They are the “counterculture,” which seeks to
dismantle the West, its moral standards, and its “oppressive” moral judgments.
Why this auto-immune response? All systems make moral
judgments, right, but we are more sensitive to the criticism of those things
closest to us. Consequently, we feel more judged by our own society than by
others and, consequently, seek to destroy it. No matter how benign our society
might be, we are inclined to undermine and deconstruct its authority.
Christianity had provided the glue and rationale for the
Western world. Destroy its rational basis and you dissolve the glue. Destroy
its credibility, and you destroy the foundation, and now the West withers under
the unrelenting attacks.
There are no perfect societies because there are no perfect
people. We are the source of our own evil, which arises in every society and
utopian experiment. However, it has always been more convenient to blame
society than to blame ourselves.
Why? Because we feel judged and undermined by it, even
though it has nurtured and protected us.
Not everyone feels this way. I no longer do. Why not? I no
longer seek my society’s approval or feel condemned by it. Nor do I have to
rebel against the influence of my parents. Why not? I have found a better
source of validation in my Savior Jesus, who loves me so much that He died for
me, even while I hated Him:
·
God shows his love for us in that while we were
still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified
by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if
while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much
more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (Romans
5:8–10)
Jesus has bought and
won my heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment