Another Seismic Shift

We have all watched with horror the events that have unfolded in Japan. The sheer scale of the devastation, the power of nature and the incalculable suffering as a result, is beyond our experience. Watching ships, carrying people, just being turned into matchwood in a few seconds and watching a dark tide engulf whole areas, is something that we have never seen before, since 2004 when the word tsunami first entered the common language. The power of nature seems wholly indiscriminate and unstoppable. The phrase 'seismic shift' takes on a whole new meaning when we see its outworking so dramatically and tragically.

But it occurred to me a few moments before beginning to write this blog, that there is another seismic shift taking place: One that will have dire consequences in the days to come. We are seeing a shift away from Christian values and, like that invidious wall of water that invaded, so ruthlessly, large areas of the east coast of Japan, its steady progress will see the erosion of many of the values that have anchored Western civilization. In the courts and in the media we are seeing a growing number of cases of Christians being vilified, prosecuted and disciplined, in a way that only a few years ago would have seemed unthinkable. There is a different kind of earthquake taking place in the West. It is extending over a longer period of time; there is no Richter scale to measure its force; yet it will bring about the fall of Western civilization as we know it.

Recently I watched the historian David Starkey speaking on television. I disagree with a lot of what he says, but I defend his right to have an opinion. He said this: "We are seeing the appearance of a new form of tyranny. An intolerance every bit as powerful as that which it seeks to replace." He is right. So-called tolerance has an invidious and prejudiced flipside and what we have been told would be the benefits of multiculturalism, has turned people who hold Christian beliefs into intolerant criminals. Moral and social confusion is following in its wake and the 1984 Orwellian thought police are on the trail of anyone who holds beliefs contrary to what society in general holds. It is a new form of inquisition and the tsunami is growing taller and more powerful. We have been warned, in God's Word, by Jesus Himself, that these days would come.