The hard, cold truth is that there is no love. Oh, there are people who claim to love each other and even people who claim to love you, but what they mean is they gain some mutual benefit from associating: sex, shared values and so safety and promotion in numbers, your good looks and or your connections, financial security or gain. Long ago people smiled deeply at each other without sarcasm or hidden motive. They would sometimes hold hands or walk arm in arm. They had a genuine commitment and concern for the other person: how he or she felt, what they were thinking, whether their experience of life was good and if not, how to help fix the problem.
Culture changes by the day. You may be young and think the world you see will continue for all your life: it won’t. Powerful forces are at work to ensure that, and you yourself may be a part of that powerful force. What makes you feel safe and comfortable now may not be there in a few years, and the same can be applied to the one who makes you feel safe and comfortable. Families are no longer forever. Friends are conditional. Politicians are self-serving. Lovers take until they prefer someone else. People come and people go for various reasons: death, a change of heart, a change of fortune, moral corruption, bad planning, faulty dreaming or a grass-is-greener moment. The world you desire is a fantasy. The world which would make you truly happy has been firmly rejected by virtually everyone around you, and most of them have no clue which way is up.
As a great songwriter once quipped, “They pave paradise-put up a parking lot”. The beauty which once existed has been polluted, used, abused, covered in concrete and wrecked. Walls, “No Trespassing” signs, seas of cars, pylons, wind turbines, ugly factories, cookie-cutter houses, roads and blowing hamburger wrappers take the place of untamed vistas. The most attractive and desirable parts of the world were bought, fenced off and pillaged long ago by the rich and powerful, including the politicians who all promised to enrich you and solve all your problems. If you find a beauty spot on the earth enjoy it while you can, because someone is going to commandeer it and cover it in concrete, asphalt and notices before you blink again. The sky isn’t blue anymore, it’s brown. The trees aren’t green anymore, they’re black. The rivers aren’t clear anymore, they’re murky and dotted with blobs of brown bubbles bobbing and blowing in the cold wind.
Whatever lightness, naivety and joy once graced our youth has gone. In its place are a million stored images and scenes of violence; callous and sharp-lipped fallen heroes; sexual acts between people who barely know each other and probably won’t for long, and statements of hateful lies about the rare leader who stands up to genuinely work for improvement. How do I survive in a “me” generation? I take care of number one.
Here’s the hopeful paragraph of optimism at the end, and no, I’m not being flippant. There is one hope for us all, and one hope only. There’s one ray of light: Jesus Christ.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:1-5).
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 