I hope the new year is bright and beautiful for all of you out there! What we see has so much affect on how we feel, doesn’t it? Where I live the sun shines a lot, but January skies are grey. The cold, monochrome dullness of January is always a time of reflection, soul-searching-and God-seeking for me.
With coronavirus restrictions some of the starkness and greyness of our world is intensified. As if life were not lonely enough at times for many people, now we’re even more cut off from the warmth of human friendship and interaction. We can’t even go out and make face-contact with someone we don’t know-it has to be covered up. In all of this “pandemic” experience I believe we are being mocked and despised and mistreated by our “betters”: by those who take control of our lives in a process euphemistically called an “election”. Those in power love to exercise that power over others, when most of them have no more sense to govern our world than we do-and in some cases a lot less.
We humans dwell in something which has been called the “private sphere”, consisting of our close community of family, friends and personal associates (1). This, traditionally and perhaps for all of human history until recent decades, produced, naturally, a “public sphere” of life where the benefits and product of our family and community experience created and shaped the society as a whole. At home and among friends; at the restaurant; in our shopping centres (which are being replaced by private online shopping); in the pub; at the workplace which was once more labour-intensive and where there was once much more freedom of speech, we grew together, and we experienced a far closer-knit community than we do now. We looked into each- others faces and not at phones.
We’ve arrived at the point in society where the process is inverted. The public sphere works to shape the private: our minds, our family, our community. Government and media are encroaching more and more on what we think and believe, and in many cases now taking away our livelihoods. They’re locking us up in our own homes so that we don’t congregate and discuss and form coherent and unified approaches to the greater world. The mask is a muzzle (Mark Steyn). Trump alone sought our freedom from government, but we are being invaded by those in power and by the cultural influences which seek to shape all of us into the mold of a ruling elite, right where we sit, in our own homes. And in a world where media no longer reports the news but shapes it, creates it, or hides it, we are not easily in touch with what really happens out there.
We, as a society, began to cut ourselves off from one another perhaps a hundred years ago. We developed private cars, private movie houses, private drinking and eating, and paved the way for the wrecking and separation of the family, in deference to Karl Marx who hated the “bourgeoise family”. We no longer discuss openly what our government is up to. And what purports to be “social” media, which is preaching to us in our own homes and on our private devices-is censoring and shaping what is being shared. I can say this from personal experience-I, who have no influence on the world and really can’t threaten the movers and the shakers-have been censored. This is the stuff of Soviet- style control. Control is born of self-righteousness and fear. And we of the Star Wars ilk all know what fear leads to, don’t we!
We are not uniting as a society: we are dividing, and no amount of empty (yes empty) talk of uniting under a corrupt national leadership and corrupt government is going to fix it. More and more we all live in our own little bubbles, with our own little devices; with our own television and gaming consoles to mollify us and hypnotize us; with our own private transport, and even our own individual cultural tastes, with which we think we are championing individuality. In truth we are separating more and more from each other. Individuality and diversity are really the enemies of unity, and enforced diversity is not fairness, it is tyranny.
How many church denominations are there? Is it even possible to count anymore? When a new one forms, someone decides that he could do it better and goes and starts another one! And how many TV channels do we have now? Does anyone know? Are any of them actually worth watching? Do they or any of our entertainment media bring us closer together? Do they build us up? Do they make us happier or solve any problems? No: they are instead the “Soma” of our own false utopia (2).
Once upon a time there was something called the “town square”, or perhaps some other central point in a town or city where citizens would gather or appear together at certain times of the week and the year, and “hang out” openly. They would entertain each other. They would sing, dance, play, flirt and laugh. They may argue over something or engage in some vigorous debate-but at least they were interacting and aiming at truth. And they would compare thoughts on WHAT THE GOVERNMENT AND RULING POWERS WERE UP TO. At my work place, where there are perhaps thirty people in the same building together for an hour or so each day, discussion is kept to a minimum. If there is any discourse through those ridiculous pieces of cloth, everyone stays away from all the subjects which carry any meaning: God, the meaning of life, love and commitment, the value of integrity, the incredible witness of nature, and politics. Instead, any convo is shallow, indirect, inconsequential, lifeless and devoid of warmth.
At the pinnacle of the “public sphere” are those who are actually planning, scheming and plotting to take us into what was once termed a “new world order”, and in which we are to be shaped into their way of thinking and their schemes for a perfect global society. Our nations are to be weakened into mere provinces of one great state. One popular term now is “the great reset”. In the reset which many of the billionaires and the influential are conjuring up for us, our form of government, our minds and our beliefs are to be altered, into a way of thinking without God and without natural affection. Our system of government will not be inspired or directed by we the people, but by a minority who think that their wealth and fame qualifies them to do so. This is nothing short of Biblical. We could call it “Babel”.
Our God created us, but His world has been trashed by those who insist they know better, in the spiritual realm and in the physical. We are living in a twisted age, where the challenges are insipid and are sucking the vigour, the true God-given individuality, and the life out of us all. But…and in Scripture “but” is a huge word…this world is not all there is. The real world, which is and will be governed by the Righteous Judge-our Holy and Almighty God and his only Son Jesus Christ, has the blue-print, the plan and the power for a perfect and eternal kingdom:
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2 Corinthians 4:18).
The world we are in now is our proving ground. While we most definitely should engage in the politics of our time as much as we are able, It’s time to come together with those around us, to look to the Saviour of our souls for guidance and for true and ultimate government, and instead of spending all our time looking down at what that public sphere is brainwashing us with:
“…stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near (Luke 21:28)”f
NOTES
1: Private and Public Spheres in Sociology (thoughtco.com) (not a Christian site).
2: BRAVE NEW WORLD, by Aldous Huxley.
Fuel for Faith 