Dangerous Undercurrents

Today's western society has failed to learn from the past. History gives us repeated warnings of the dangerous undercurrents that can drag society down into deep and dark waters.

If we put aside our religious beliefs for a moment and read Alfred Edersheim’s description of Roman society in Jesus’ time it is obvious that from a strictly practical viewpoint something has to be done. Our society will share Rome's disintegration if we refuse to take action. I am struggling with how I should personally respond. What can I do?

After reading the following excerpts from Edersheim's book you would think that the renowned scholar was describing New York City, Chicago, or San Francisco. It is a sketch of modern America to the core – no absolute truth; right and wrong are self-defined and relative; live-together, fornicating liaisons as common as marriage; abortion rampant; despair, depression and suicide are common place; “unnatural vices” adorn the mantle of respectability and receive government sanction, etc.


(From Pages 257 to 259 of “Life & Times of Jesus the Messiah, Eerdmans, 1947)

Religion, philosophy, and society had passed through every stage, to that of despair. Without tracing the various phases of ancient thought, it may be generally said that, in Rome at least, the issue lay between Stoicism and Epicureanism. The one flattered its pride, the other gratified its sensuality; the one was in accordance with the original national character, the other with its later decay and corruption. Both ultimately led to atheism and despair — the one, by turning all higher aspirations self-ward, the other, by quenching them in the enjoyment of the moment; the one, by making the extinction of all feeling and self-deification, the other, the indulgence of every passion and the worship of matter, it’s ideal.......

.......But even Cicero writes as one overwhelmed by doubts. With his contemporaries this doubt deepened into absolute despair, the only comfort lying in present indulgence of the passions. Even among the Greeks, who were most tenacious of belief in the non-extinction of the individual, the practical upshot was the same.

It has been rightly said, that the idea of conscience, as we understand it, was unknown to heathenism. Absolute right did not exist. Might was right. The social relations exhibited, if possible, even deeper corruption. The sanctity of marriage had ceased. Female dissipation and the general dissoluteness led at last to an almost entire cessation of marriage. Abortion, and the exposure and murder of newly-born children, were common and tolerated ; unnatural vices, which even the greatest philosophers practiced, if not advocated, attained proportions which defy description.